(Bonus update with thanks to .Loli God-Emperor Extracting Loyalty and Dedication. for the tip.)
Within a single minute, the T'au leadership inside their various key facilities suffered a devastating blow.
Apart from the military representative, three senior T'au officials died. T'au society instantly descended into utter chaos, its capacity for coordination and organization approaching zero.
With enemy warships due to arrive in two days, this was nothing short of a catastrophe!
Worse still for the T'au, the heavily guarded Space Elevator had become a lethal Radiation Zone!
Time went back a few hours, to before Li Qinwu's Fortune emerged from the rubble.
Li Qinwu had more or less finished touring the planet and proposed visiting its Spire.
The planet's Spire was populated entirely by T'au.
Li Qinwu had previously toured only the Middle Hive and areas near the surface, never visiting the Upper Court. His sudden request to go there put some of the T'au on their guard.
But Shui Rou felt that the Inquisitor's willingness to visit the Upper Court and engage with T'au society might mean he intended to move closer to the Greater Good.
So she made the decision on her own, agreeing to let Li Qinwu into the Upper Court.
After taking a rail train and a Hive City elevator to the Spire, Li Qinwu found that it had become an entirely T'au world.
The buildings were T'au in style, and everyone walking the streets was T'au. There was not a single human.
The T'au strolling through the streets had eyes full of pride.
Their people were born rulers on this planet.
Even the most worthless among them could rule millions if thrown into human society.
Thus, the ordinary T'au, whose people had seized political power, regarded themselves as superior beings, their faces smug and arrogant