"Master, you're awake."
A short-haired woman with a fit, well-toned figure spoke the moment she saw Zhao Cheng switch off the radio.
She was the youngest disciple of the Heavenly Martial Emperor, born into one of the Empire's great aristocratic families. Otherwise, she could never have become the Heavenly Martial Emperor's disciple.
As far as the development of the Force system was concerned, talent was indeed important. But resources and knowledge were even more important. Human talent ultimately had its limits. Even titled powerhouses lived no more than a thousand years. Only knowledge could be passed down generation after generation, with several, dozens, or even scores of generations refining a single thing.
Yet the ancient Force had ultimately been utterly slaughtered by mecha, laying bare the evil wrought by monopolized knowledge.
Every family's methods were guarded as secrets never to be passed on, while the Empire gathered countless experts and scholars and wielded the strength of an entire nation to study a single thing.
Of course, the so-called great aristocrats had now become flowers of yesterday. The Empire's Emperor was far more ruthless than anyone had anticipated. Once the Royal Knights had been established, the subsequent great purge followed as naturally as water flowing downhill.
Everything that had once restricted imperial authority, or might possibly have restricted it, was uprooted by the Emperor and almost entirely wiped out. The few rats left scurrying about were nothing to fear.
As for the administrative chaos caused by destroying those forces, the Emperor did not care in the slightest.
Because the power he held had already surpassed the power held by everyone else combined.
Even if the Empire fell into chaos, it would only mean some people died. What he would reap in the future, however, was a world over which he held