The Republic Senate Building had been transformed into a massive coronation altar. Combat engineers erected a huge holographic projection array atop its dome.
Four crimson beams shot into the sky from four directions around the building, converging beneath the clouds to form an Imperial emblem more than ten kilometers in diameter.
Under the beams' glow, the outer walls of the Republic Senate Building were dyed blood-red. The murals, reliefs, and columns that had once represented the various member systems of the Galactic Republic were rendered unrecognizable beneath the corrosive red light.
At the building's main entrance, engineering robots pushed the statue fragments that had been crushed by tanks to either side, leaving behind a broad, straight red-carpet passage temporarily laid with alloy plates.
The passage extended all the way to the center of the square, where a hastily built coronation platform was undergoing its final adjustments—four pillars supporting a dome.
At the center of the dome hung a massive crimson emblem of the Fourth Empire, held aloft by four mechanical arms. Directly beneath it stood a throne carved from obsidian and covered in Sith inscriptions.
This building had once been the heart of the Galactic Republic, a symbol of democracy and order.
In this hall, Palpatine had once stood at that podium and addressed thousands of senators, ending the Galactic Republic's twenty-five-thousand-year history and reorganizing it into the Galactic Empire.
But even so, the Republic's ghost had always remained. Palpatine had never managed to erase the Republic's final symbolic significance in his lifetime.
Now, Tang Xiao intended to finish the job completely and utterly!
—He would bury the Republic for good and crown himself Emperor of the Fourth Empire. Yes, what he wanted to bury was the Republic!
Because only the Galactic Republic was considered the legitimate government in the