The Birth of 4TH.

The Birth of 4TH.

"Ewok jerky?" Tang Xiao frowned.

These people had gone out to capture Ewoks, kill them, and turn them into jerky. He knew that this kind of food was popular in some places, but what he found utterly unacceptable was that Ewoks were already an intelligent species. Though primitive, they could think and possessed a civilization of their own.

One thing Tang Xiao knew was that although the Ewoks were currently primitive people of the Neolithic Era, their brains and bodies had already evolved to a fairly sufficient degree.

They were an exceptionally intelligent race, highly receptive to unfamiliar things. And though they were small, they were remarkably strong and extremely agile. In Tang Xiao's eyes, Ewoks were perfect scouts, jungle fighters, and mechanical engineers.

Therefore, under Tang Xiao's instructions, the residents of the Fourth Civilization colony had all been showing goodwill toward the Ewoks. They gave the Ewoks food and helped them build some simple wooden houses. Work on deciphering Ewokese was also underway, but their language was still rather primitive, so progress was slow.

With that relationship in place, Tang Xiao absolutely could not tolerate anyone hunting Ewoks and turning them into jerky.

However, such things were still fairly common in the Star Wars universe. Many intelligent species were, in fact, on someone else's menu. Perhaps that was the barrier between different races. It was like humans on Earth eating beef—if cows became intelligent one day, could you guarantee that people would stop eating them?

As long as humans did not eat their own kind, that was enough. I'm a human, he's a cow—so what if he's intelligent? Can't I still eat him? Most people probably thought that way.

"And it's an order from Hutt Jabba. You know I wouldn't dare provoke him," Kunto quickly added when he saw Tang Xiao hesitating.

"Jabba..." Tang Xiao's expression changed slightly as he fell into thought. If this involved Jabba, then the matter was somewhat serious.

Jabba was one of the greatest crime lords among the Hutts, a member of the Desilijic kajidic. He was entrenched on Tatooine, running his vast criminal empire. Provoking someone like that was indeed not a good idea.

Tang Xiao stared at Kunto for a long time. Kunto was a native of the Star Wars universe who had practically delivered himself to Tang Xiao's doorstep. And he happened to be a smuggler who drifted from place to place. Tang Xiao needed someone like him to serve as a guide and lead them into further contact with this universe.

With that in mind, he nodded. "You can deliver this cargo to Tatooine, but on one condition—from today onward, you are employees of our Fourth Group. That includes your ship. It is now the property of the Fourth Group. When the time comes, someone will go with you to Tatooine."

Fourth Group? What the hell was that? Well, he had just made it up.

"No! The Cheap Hunter is my lifeblood! You can't take it from me!" Kunto shouted.

"You bastard!!" Mars-Feraci roared and charged forward to attack Tang Xiao. But Tang Xiao merely raised a hand and pushed through the air. An invisible force sent her flying!

Feraci hit the ground with a thud, leaving her dazed and battered. When she climbed back up, her eyes were filled with terror as she looked at Tang Xiao. "You're... a Jedi Knight?!"

Tang Xiao neither confirmed nor denied it. He held up two fingers. "I'll give you two choices. First, I kill you and throw you into space like trash. Second, you work for me. If your work satisfies me, you'll receive a better ship."

"Do I really have a choice?" Kunto said with a bitter smile as he went over to help Feraci up.

"The results of working for me have already been shown to you in part. Think about the comfortable life you've had these past few days. You'll never find anything like it anywhere else in the galaxy. All right, leave your other companions to you. Convince them." Tang Xiao rose, preparing to leave.

"What about our payment?" Kunto asked, summoning his courage.

Payment, my ass. I'm broke myself, okay? Tang Xiao cursed inwardly, but he merely gave a cold, inscrutable smile. Spreading his arms and looking around, he said, "What condition do you think our Fourth Group cannot fulfill?"

Kunto and Feraci glanced at the spacious, brightly lit office, then obediently lowered their heads.

"Make your preparations. I'll go to Tatooine with you, while Feraci will need to rest here for a while." After tossing out those words, Tang Xiao instinctively looked toward the ship's viewport, as though that eye were in that direction. Then he said nothing more and turned to leave.

The moment he heard that, Kunto immediately understood that Feraci had become a hostage. He raised his head, wanting to say something, but Feraci tugged at him and stopped him with a look.

Two more days passed. With Tang Xiao's approval, Fourth Civilization officially became the formal name of their group, and Tang Xiao truly did establish a company to facilitate their operations. It was called the Fourth Group.

Tang Xiao named the colony still under construction Dawn City. It would become the future capital of Fourth Civilization.

Afterward, he enacted a regulation requiring every resident who formed a family to adopt a child and become that child's guardian. These children were the five billion Cryo-embryos stored aboard the mothership. Their genes had all been modified, allowing them to grow into adults in roughly five years. They were essentially artificial humans more advanced than clones.

The purpose of having families adopt them was to let them experience the warmth and care of a family, so that they would not grow up to become mere tools from a cold storage vault. However, in order to keep up with their growth rate, they received knowledge implants every night while asleep.

This policy allowed the Cryo-embryos to be put to use naturally and enabled them to integrate into society once they grew up. Besides, with all supplies currently distributed through rationing, there was no issue of whether families could afford to raise them.

Beyond that, Tang Xiao also formulated a secret plan. He instructed the Engineering Department to build a secret base in a remote part of Dawn Star Planet when conditions allowed. This base would operate under purely militarized management, raising Cryo-embryos in batches. During their growth, the only knowledge instilled in them would be the skills of war and killing.

The first batch of one hundred soldiers began growing there. As the base continued to expand, the number of soldiers would steadily increase.

This was a trump card Tang Xiao was preparing for the war that would erupt in the future. This force had no name, only a designation—the Fourth Legion.

Every soldier's uniform bore the same symbol: 4TH.

These one hundred soldiers were merely a seed. Fourth Civilization's current development could not yet support more soldiers, nor could it provide larger and better training facilities. But Tang Xiao believed that one day, 4TH. would become a mighty force that made the galaxy tremble!

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Note 1: A kajidic was a form of Hutt organization that guided its members' ways of thinking, daily lives, business operations, and criminal plans. The Hutts had many kajidics, each with its own rules, leaders, and organization. The Desilijic kajidic to which Jabba belonged was one of the largest Hutt kajidics.

For ease of understanding, kajidics would henceforth be uniformly referred to as "families."