Reinhardt stayed at the Relay Station for several days.
He moved like a ghost, weaving through scenes of prosperity and harmony.
These days, he saw more and became even more silent.
He saw an alien with transparent, dragonfly-like wings, using its delicate forelimbs to weave shimmering hairbands for human children. The children's parents stood nearby, their faces full of approving smiles.
He saw a jellyfish-like creature made of pure energy giving a speech on an outdoor podium at a school. Below, hundreds of human students and various alien students listened enthralled. The lecture's topic was 'The Future of Interspecies Ethics'.
He also saw in the news the Speaker of the United Earth Goverment, a human, shaking hands warmly with the ambassador of a reptilian race named 'Ji'sap', jointly announcing the signing of a new trade agreement. To achieve this agreement, the UEG would open up mineral mining rights in three border star systems to the other party, merely in exchange for a certain 'mind-calming' spice.
Reinhardt's heart remained unmoved.
Not numbness, but a layer of ice formed by extreme disgust.
Every day, he spent a lot of time immersed in the public information network. He was like a greedy sponge, absorbing everything about this universe. He consulted history and found that the United Earth Goverment, in its initial expansion, had also fought brutal wars with aliens.
But they retreated.
After paying a heavy price, they chose an 'easier' path.
Peace, coexistence, integration.
They called it 'the maturity of civilization'.
In Reinhardt's view, this was just another way of saying 'cowardice'.
They packaged their betrayal with all sorts of beautiful words. They established a whole set of theories and laws to prove the correctness of cohabiting with aliens. They even revised their history textbooks, portraying ancestors who died fighting for human purity as 'narrow-minded racists' and 'warmongers'.
This society was rotten to it's very core.
Moreover, it was proud of this decay, spreading its plague throughout the Milky Way.
Reinhardt felt an unprecedented loneliness.
He was like the only sane person in a madhouse. Everyone around him smiled, telling him how wonderful this world was.
But all he saw was an endless abyss.
On this day, Reinhardt left the glamorous central commercial district and headed to the more chaotic lower cargo port.
The air here was no longer filled with the fragrance of plants, but with the pungent smell of engine oil, ozone, and various mixed biological odors. The light was dim, huge cargo containers were stacked like mountains, and various anti-gravity forklifts and transport robots flowed continuously.
All sorts of creatures were engaged in manual labor here.
Reinhardt saw a tall, shelled alien impatiently push aside a human porter blocking its way with its segmented limb. The human staggered, dared not to speak out, and could only lower his head and silently make way.
Reinhardt's gaze turned cold.
He continued to walk forward.
In a corner piled with discarded parts, he heard a quarrel in the distance.
"ᴾˡᵉᵃˢᵉ, ᵗʰᵃᵗ'ˢ ᵗʰᵉ ⁿᵘᵗʳᶦᵉⁿᵗ ˢᵒˡᵘᵗᶦᵒⁿ ᴵ ᵇᵒᵘᵍʰᵗ ᶠᵒʳ ᵐʸ ᵈᵃᵘᵍʰᵗᵉʳ... ᶦᵗ'ˢ ᵃᵇᵒᵘᵗ ᵗᵒ ᵉˣᵖᶦʳᵉ, ᴵ ʰᵃᵛᵉ ᵗᵒ ᵍᵉᵗ ᶦᵗ ᵇᵃᶜᵏ ᵠᵘᶦᶜᵏˡʸ"
A skinny human man was pleading bitterly with three aliens.
The three aliens resembled upright hyenas, covered in dirty tawny manes, with viscous saliva constantly dripping from their mouths.
One of the hyena aliens was stepping on a metal can with its clawed foot.
That was the nutrient solution the human man was talking about.
"Listen, what is he saying?" The leading hyena alien spoke to its companions in a sharp, metal-grating language. They did not use the UEG's common tongue. But the Emperor's blessing allowed Reinhardt to understand most intelligent creature languages in the universe.
"He said it's for his daughter," another companion mimicked the human's crying voice, speaking in a strange, distorted tone.
The three aliens burst into a harsh roar of laughter.
"A descendant of a lower species, does it deserve such good nutrient solution?" The leading alien kicked the can, sending it flying to hit a distant wall with a thud.
It extended a claw and patted the human man's face.
"Remember, you humans only deserve to eat synthetic protein blocks. Understand? Just like the livestock our ancestors kept."
The human man trembled all over, his face pale, but he couldn't say a word. His eyes were filled with fear and humiliation.
Reinhardt saw that not far away, several passing human staff members witnessed this scene.
They merely glanced quickly, then immediately quickened their steps, as if they had seen nothing.
Even more, some directly detoured, with expressions of disgust on their faces. That disgust, he wasn't sure if it was directed at the alien aggressors or at their bullied compatriot.
Reinhardt's blood, in that instant, seemed to ignite.
He remembered the stories passed down on Terra.
Before the Great Crusade, humanity was also enslaved, massacred, and treated as livestock by aliens.
That dark period should have been forever buried with the Emperor's rise.
Yet here, in this so-called utopia, it was re-enacted in an everyday, tacitly accepted manner.
He felt rage.
It erupted like a volcano deep within his soul.
The golden power within him began to boil uncontrollably.
His hands were clenched into fists, knuckles white from the force.
He was just one step away from rushing forward and tearing those three filthy creatures to shreds.
Just as he was about to take that step.
The entire world suddenly became silent.
All sounds vanished. The clamor of the cargo port, the aliens' mockery, the human's sobbing, all turned into nothingness.
Time seemed to freeze.
A grand, majestic, yet infinitely benevolent will descended.
It didn't come from his ears, but directly from the deepest part of Reinhardt's soul.
It wasn't a loud.
It was more like a whisper.
A whisper capable of calming stellar storms.
*Anger is a gift, but do not waste it on ants.*
Reinhardt's body stiffened.
The violent power within him quickly subsided under the soothing influence of this will. It wasn't suppressed, but guided and refined, transforming into a deeper and purer strength.
The Emperor.
It was the Emperor's will.
It had traversed endless dimensions, crossed unfamiliar universes, and resonated with him once more.
*Look up, see.*
The will continued to whisper.
The scene before Reinhardt's eyes began to change. The dim cargo port disappeared, replaced by a magnificent sea of stars.
He saw it.
He saw a massive, boundless fleet. Battleships, cruisers, frigates... each one like a moving city of steel, with the colossal double-headed eagle emblem on its bow shining brightly under the light of stars.
He saw overwhelming landing craft, swarming like locusts towards a green planet.
He saw countless giants in power armor descending from the sky. Their armor was painted in different colors, representing different Chapters. The blue of the Ultramarines, the red of the Blood Angels, the yellow of the Imperial Fists... They were the Emperor's angels of death, the embodiment of humanity's wrath.
They used Bolters to shred the mantis-like aliens into minced meat.
They used Chainswords to cleave the octopus-like monsters in half.
Flames purified the alien cities, and artillery fire razed their nests to the ground.
The planet was burning.
But upon these destructive flames, a new world was being born.
A pure world, belonging only to humanity.
The surviving humans emerged from their underground shelters, kneeling before the Astartes, weeping, kissing the ground beneath their feet.
They shouted the Emperor's name.
The scene changed again.
Reinhardt saw more worlds. Desert planets, ice planets, industrial planets... On every world, humans were fighting for their survival. Under the Emperor's banner, they united, expelling all aliens or utterly annihilating them.
The entire galaxy echoed with one voice.
"For the Emperor!"
"Purge all xenos!"
This was a grand, magnificent future, full of iron and blood, and glory.
A galactic Imperium of Man, ruling all.
This was humanity's rightful stance.
This was the universe's rightful order.
Reinhardt's soul, before this magnificent panorama, felt an unprecedented thrill and excitement.
All his confusion, all his wavering, all his feelings of loneliness, were completely washed away at this moment.
He was no longer a lost soul in a foreign land.
He was a missionary.
A pioneer bearing a sacred mission.
A spark to bring salvation to this fallen universe.
When Reinhardt opened his eyes again, the vision had disappeared.
He was back in that dim corner.
The three hyena aliens and the bullied human were gone.
As if nothing had happened.
But Reinhardt knew that something had changed forever.
His anger vanished, replaced by a cold calm, like the vacuum of interstellar space.
His mission was not to punish a few aliens who bullied the weak.
His mission was to turn everything from the vision into reality.
He would rebuild the Imperium of Man in this universe.
He turned and left, his steps firm, never looking back.
He returned to his temporary dwelling and opened the public information terminal again.
This time, he no longer looked at the laws and news that disgusted him.
He directly called up the United Earth Goverment' holographic star map.
A vast galaxy, containing hundreds of billions of stars, slowly unfolded before him.
On the star map, large areas were marked with different colors.
Blue represented the territory of the United Earth Goverment.
Green represented the territory of the Krill Swarm.
Red represented the sphere of influence of the 'Kraken' Commercial Alliance.
And various colorful patches represented hundreds of alien civilizations that had established diplomatic relations with the UEG.
They were intertwined, carving up the entire galaxy.
Reinhardt's gaze swept over these 'polluted' areas.
His finger slowly slid across the star map, his target clear.
He was searching.
Searching for those forgotten corners, those wild star regions far from main trade routes, those areas marked as 'unexplored' or 'high-risk' in official records.
He believed.
In the early days of humanity's expansion into the universe, there must have been some colonial ships that, for various reasons, deviated from their course and lost contact with their homeworld.
Isolated in their own corner of the galaxy, they had never been touched by the UEG's hollow 'peace' philosophy — never had it bred out of them.
They still carried humanity's oldest instincts: vigilance, suspicion, the cold distrust of the unknown.
Survivors, in every sense of the word. They would be the foundation of his holy crusade. Humanity's last hope in this universe.
Reinhardt called up the UEG's early colonial archives, correlating reports of lost colonial ships with the star map.
This was a monumental task.
But he had plenty of patience.
Because the Emperor's will was with him.
Time passed little by little.
Reinhardt's eyes were fixed on the star map, analyzing every interstellar route, every gravitational anomaly, every supernova remnant.
Finally.
His finger stopped at an inconspicuous corner at the end of the Orion Arm of The Galaxy.
It was an area enveloped by nebulae and asteroid belts, with extremely harsh navigation conditions, marked only as 'unknown' black on the official star map.
But in several incomplete accident reports from thousands of years ago, one word was mentioned.
'Commonwealth'.
A purely human, staunchly xenophobic military polity.
They had taken a completely different path from the UEG.
They were still fighting.
A faint smile finally appeared at the corner of Reinhardt's mouth.
Not mockery, not coldness.
But a smile of relief, having found his direction.
He deeply etched that coordinate point into his mind.
That would be his first stop.
The flame of the crusade would begin to ignite there.