Garrison Point

Rowan went through a complex emotional journey with these Duoqi prisoners of war.

In the initial period, when the Swarm had just taken these prisoners from the Riken Race, Rowan raced against time to develop a method to transform them into Intellect as quickly as possible, fearing that something might go wrong, such as the Star Sea Alliance forcefully intervening and taking the prisoners away.

Rowan overestimated their internal relationships and misjudged their concept of time. As a result, these prisoners ended up staying with the Swarm for over twenty years.

Rowan originally only planned to convert a small portion of the Intellect and then return them to the Duoqi Civilization. But the fact that they simply placed this group of people in the Swarm shows how reassured they were.

Rowan was furious. Was this a sign of disrespect towards the Swarm or towards him? Leaving them for so long without converting them all made him look incompetent.

Thus, the originally Duoqi prisoners all turned out to be Intellect in disguise...

With spies on board, the natural next step was to find an opportunity to release them. After waiting and waiting, the Duoqi Fleet finally arrived. Rowan figured that as long as they softened their stance and paid some resettlement and food expenses, he would return the prisoner to them. After all, maintaining this group of Duoqi in public was somewhat costly, and for their sake, the Swarm had even built a Large Ecological Pod on Chuyun Planet for the first time ever.

And the result?

As a result Duoqi Fleet arrived and, without saying a word, engaged the Swarm in a round of fire before turning tail and fleeing without uttering a sound... Rowan was speechless at how swiftly they left.

Since then, the Duoqi have remained silent, as if they were unaware that the Swarm still had tens of thousands of prisoners of war.

Rowan was at a loss. They didn't want them, and he couldn't very well offer to send the prisoners back himself. Saving face was a minor matter; the main problem was that it seemed too suspicious. Anyone with a modicum of common sense would suspect something was amiss.

The matter dragged on like this, and eventually, because it was unknown how long it would take for Duoqi to remember the prisoners of war, Rowan worried that by the time they remembered, the prisoners might have died of old age. So, he decided to go all out and put the prisoners into Stasis Pod, saving them all the trouble. These spies could go straight to a retirement home when they returned.

Furthermore, contact with the Telo Civilization yielded a lot of inside information. Comparing this with the information provided by the Duoqi Intellect, it became clear that even if the Duoqi Civilization, with its size, had infiltrated, it wouldn't have much of value. There was even the possibility that some of the information was deliberately spread as false information.

Therefore, Rowan considered the infiltration effect of these Intellect to be negligible. As a result, Rowan was no longer in a hurry; they could just wait it out.

As a result, several decades passed, and now, the Duoqi Civilization has finally found some companions. However, it seems they've come to the wrong place and are causing trouble at their neighbor's house...

Moreover, those prisoners of war seemed to be just an add-on, merely the trigger for this incident. In fact, even the Duoqi Civilization didn't seem to care much about them.

This is not surprising, though. More than sixty years have passed; if they were going to care, they would have cared long ago, not now. Therefore, Rowan is even more skeptical about the effectiveness of infiltrating those Intellect of war.

However, if given the chance, Rowan would still choose to send these prisoners of war back. After all, even if there was no news from Duoqi, the sheer number of Node Unit gathered together could still pinpoint the coordinates of a star field, and it would be perfectly legitimate. This would be more effective than having Swarm Meteor slowly drift over.

As for the other party's true purpose, to be honest, if it weren't for the Epoch Clan, Rowan would have instructed the Riken Race to pack up all the materials, technology, and even the finished product of the Life-Extending Serum and send them to them right now.

However, for the sake of a larger strategic plan, they had no choice but to temporarily give up this tempting prize.

The situation reached a stalemate. Although they hadn't achieved their goal, the Koya Civilization's people refused to leave. Every few days, they would gather their people to mess with the Riken Race. Eventually, they even started making unfounded accusations and interfering in the newly built trading city.

However, the Riken Civilization had a good attitude. They specifically found a few good-natured Reken people to chat with them. Anyway, there weren't many of them, and they brought their own food and drink, Riken Race didn't suffer much loss.

The Riken Race's behavior pleased the Koya Alliance, who felt their accusations had worked and became even more blatant in their attacks.

Rowan didn't know what the Koya Alliance meant by "face," but in Rowan view, their actions were utterly shameless.

Fortunately, things soon took a turn for the better. A few years later, the Epoch Clan's fleet returned, this time with even more ships. More than a hundred enormous ships, each over four thousand meters long, slowly approached the Star Port of the Mother Planet Ricken.

The Koya Alliance warships, which had originally occupied the best positions in the Star Port, quickly made way. Compared to the massive and orderly Epoch Clan ships, their diverse and colorful fleet looked like clowns.

This is the Epoch Clan fleet that has arrived from the nearest Garrison Point to Riken, bringing with them a large group of researchers and related equipment. Epoch Clan Garrison Point does not refer to a single military camp; it is a shorthand for a star system that the Epoch Clan occupies outside their territory.

Each Garrison Point is located within a star system, housing not only a fleet but also a large number of researchers. This allows them to communicate more quickly with surrounding civilizations and utilize the unique materials of the surrounding star systems for research. The Epoch Clan has nearly 200 such Garrison Point within the Star Sea Alliance's territory.

It was precisely because they had a vast territory and a large pool of personnel that they were able to assemble a relevant team so quickly and come to the Riken Race. These researchers needed to recreate the experimental data using the Epoch Clan's standards.

Back at the Epoch Clan's main camp, an even larger number of researchers were waiting for this data. The Epoch Clan's focus on Life-Extending Plant far exceeded Rowan's expectations; they couldn't wait for the two ships of materials to be transported back.

The Riken Race was busy again, with a large number of people needed for various reception arrangements. So, whether intentionally or unintentionally, the Koya Alliance was neglected, and the years-long discussion meetings were also suspended.

However, the moment the Epoch Clan's spaceship appeared, the Koya Alliance knew that their plan to obtain information from the Reken authorities had failed. But this did not prevent them from staying there, because a few days ago they had made contact with the Riken Black Market, where they could find what they needed at reasonable prices.

The process was somewhat fraught with difficulties, but the outcome was positive. In the eyes of the Koya Alliance members, it was a lucky and beautiful encounter.

Rowan also believes the same.