Time passed.
As the Azure Dragon Alliance expanded round after round,
the date had reached Federation Year 1688.
At this point, after seven rounds of expansion, the Alliance occupied a total of sixty-eight Black Hole Cavity Realms.
Within the Alliance, any God-tier Civilization that was not overly slack had already acquired at least one Black Hole Cavity Realm of its own, while the Federation, as the strongest,
had monopolized a full eighteen Black Hole Cavity Realms.
In fact, if not for the Federation's population limitations, which left it unable to develop too many Black Hole Cavity Realms even if it seized them, it would have far more than eighteen by now.
After all, most civilizations within the Alliance owed the Federation a mountain of military merit debt.
If the Federation wished, it could immediately call in those debts during the next round of expansion and swallow all the gains from that entire round for itself.
Yet while the Azure Dragon Alliance was flourishing, a dramatic upheaval took place in the Xilbeila Empire, far from the Alliance's territory.
Because Emperor Carrot had kept stringing the Black Church along and never agreed to cooperate with them in launching a new Holy War,
the Black and White Church's patience had finally run out.
An imperial civil war thus began.
At first, no one thought highly of the Black and White Church. After all, it only controlled twenty percent of the Empire's population and possessed neither technological nor manufacturing capabilities. All its war weapons and warships had been supplied by the Empire.
Therefore, no matter how one looked at it, the Church had no chance of victory.
But once the civil war began, the outcome stunned everyone.
In an almost completely one-sided battle, the imperial military was utterly crushed.
The reason for this was