Bowing to reality, the M'tok Union's last fleet chose to surrender. Xi Yan gained control of it without losing a single soldier.
As the saying went, a defeated army collapsed like a landslide. Once an empire like the M'tok Union showed signs of such a crushing decline, it could never regain the advantage.
Xi Yan had even prepared for a bitter struggle, but ever since the Community Fleet defected, their military operations had been a string of victories.
Everywhere they went, the people welcomed them wholeheartedly, bringing food and drink to greet their liberators. In no time, the vast M'tok Union collapsed on every front. Its enormous fleets switched sides, laid down their arms, and surrendered respectfully, while all its colonies changed their flags that very day and pledged allegiance to Xi Yan.
Xi Yan's newly recruited Army troops were still completing their final training on the Ring World and Amat Eiro II.
More Army troops were essential if he wanted to bring these M'tok colonies' institutions into line with his own and eliminate those aliens.
Prigozhin, who had thought he would spend the rest of his days far from the center of power as an Army minister enjoying a comfortable retirement, unexpectedly discovered that he mattered again.
The Empire had no compulsory military service for its citizens, so he had to recruit and train new Army troops.
These troops would be deployed to the surrendered colonies of the M'tok Union, where they would suppress the aliens through coercion and violence.
But it was still a little too early for that.
Before he formally began governing the surrendered colonies, Xi Yan had more important things to attend to.
Various ceremonies, for instance-all those procedural formalities.
Six months later, representatives of the M'tok Union, several surrendered Directors, colonial governors, and fleet