On August 13, 833, five days after the Battle of the Ring of Miracles had ended, an Imperial squadron centered around a Shadow Falcon-class carrier arrived in the Yaochi system, carrying three assault divisions, two regiments of armored grenadiers, and one armored regiment.
The Imperial soldiers had just won a glorious victory at the Ring of Miracles, so naturally they were brimming with confidence, even arrogance. Even so, these elite Imperial troops didn't simply rush into an orbital drop. They seemed well aware that the defenders on Yaochi had once been their "comrades," and had swallowed up an equally sized opponent in just three hours.
"These enemy troops—well, the Thirty-Eighth Division of the Commonwealth—are mostly made up of natives, but they're no amateurs. They're far more capable fighters than those flashy fools at the Ring of Miracles! I'm not surprised they wiped out the Aeduka Division. This will be a tough battle! Everyone, stay sharp!" the Imperial commander declared.
The people who understand your abilities best aren't incompetent superiors, but capable enemies.
The Imperial fleet activated its electronic countermeasures as soon as it entered the Yaochi system. It quickly detected the unmanned probes around the gravity well and pinpointed the direction from which their signals were being relayed.
That wasn't enough time for the Imperials to calculate the relay direction with any real precision. But given their usual way of doing things, precision had never been a concern.
So, before reaching Yaochi's near orbit, they launched 48 sublight missiles toward the planet.
The missiles crossed the vastness of space and easily pierced Yaochi's dense atmosphere, rich in negative oxygen ions. Then they struck the rugged, steep peaks without a care in the world.
Fiery explosions soon flared along the undulating curves of the New Kunlun Mountains. Everyone in Marshal Li