Xi Yan's era had begun

Xi Yan left the ruins littered with pieces of the people, took a spacecraft back to the government building, and warmly waved goodbye to his personal guards.

The guards seemed somewhat afraid of him, though, and finally bowed deeply to him.

Xi Yan thought little of it and walked into the building covered in dust and blood.

A junior clerk passing by spotted him and immediately let out a piercing shriek, dropping the documents in their hands.

Xi Yan's white-and-gold marshal's uniform was covered in dried blood. Hardened flakes fell off as he walked, and the heavy bloody stench immediately sent several clerks into fits of dry heaving.

He had picked it all up in the ruins, and Xi Yan actually took pride in it.

"What's wrong?" Still looking bewildered, Xi Yan glanced down at himself. "Doesn't smell like anything to me."

"Lord Marshal," an official asked in terror, "that blood on you-"

"Oh, speaking of that..."

Xi Yan immediately declared with pride, "The Shoigu-Gerasimov military clique conspired to rebel. I've executed every last one of them and dismantled all their military forces!"

"Our country has finally regained its stability!"

"!!!"

"What! That's wonderful news! May victory always favor the Lord Marshal!"

"Victory belongs to the Lord Marshal!"

Once they learned where all that blood had come from, many of the younger clerks became visibly excited. After all, this was their first time seeing their marshal return triumphant after wiping out rebels.

Some of the more mature, levelheaded clerks, however, were puzzled. Why would the two perfectly respectable Assistant Protector Generals have rebelled?

Of course, some people also looked terrified. Clearly, they were remnants of the rebels.

But none of that mattered. Someone would be coming to arrest them soon.

"General Prigozhin, we need to thoroughly investigate the remaining rebels and their families. Their property and everything else must all be taken over. I'll leave that to you."

That was what Xi Yan told Prigozhin.

Dealing with people was such a hassle. Killing one person wasn't enough; you had to finish off their entire family.

Fortunately, the Interstellar Human Military Junta had only enjoyed twenty years of stability, so no major family-based power blocs had formed yet.

"Heaven brings forth all things to sustain mankind, yet mortals still resent its unkindness. They know not that locusts and vermin infest the land; those who drain the people dry are all the king's servants~~~"

Reciting this beautiful ancient poem, Xi Yan slowly made his way upstairs, delighted that he had successfully eliminated his rivals.

Still, the combination of his gentle smile and blood-covered clothes gave his subordinates quite a fright.

Bang!

"Kids, I'm back!"

The moment the elevator doors opened, Xi Yan rushed out impatiently and flopped onto the nearby sofa.

"Welcome back, Marshal."

Although Beta roamed the entire empire's network and was everywhere at once, he still dutifully offered a greeting.

"Anyway, Beta, coordinate with the generals and our lady Secretary of State to divide up the powers in more detail. It's time we started building a more efficient imperial administration."

Xi Yan touched his Wristband and instructed, "Draw up a detailed plan for allocating powers, including the formation of a Cabinet and all the various governing bodies. Leave the final decision-making authority with me, but make sure the country can function stably whether I'm here or not."

As the Marshal and a wise Stellaris player, Xi Yan only needed to decide matters of national importance and retain the authority to intervene in any affair. All other powers could be delegated.

In other words, Xi Yan still wanted to turn himself into something like the will of the nation.

Immersive Stellaris.

An empire built this way would be an autocratic empire, but with institutional safeguards in place, it could continue developing steadily even if something happened to Xi Yan.

Xi Yan spaced out in his office for a moment, then headed upstairs to his private residential floor.

Time for bed!

Work? Work my ass! I'm the Marshal. I have the right to work whenever I please!

After all, he had only arrived in this world a short while ago, yet he had already rapidly familiarized himself with the empire and brazenly launched a civil war to seize power. That had been no small test of his mind and nerves.

Far too much had happened that day. Besides, Xi Yan felt that his personality had changed considerably, becoming more [kind and merciful].

Whether it was the loss of his memories from his previous life or the transformation of his thinking, Xi Yan had yet to figure any of it out. All he could do was adapt.

Anyway, time for a bath.

Xi Yan stripped off his filthy "dragon" robe and casually tossed it onto the floor, then found a shirt and shorts in the large concealed wardrobe beside his bed and hummed his way into the bathroom.

A huge, spacious bath! And an artificial hot spring! I never got to experience anything like this in my last life!

"Outside this window~ this night~ shimmering with light~"

Humming a little tune from his previous life, Xi Yan filled the bath and lay down in it.

Luxury fit for an emperor!

As he soaked in the comfortably warm water, Xi Yan began clearing his mind and pondering other matters.

He had finally completed this technology.

[Planetary Unification: In ancient times, nations and tribes waged war against one another. Now, however, all are united beneath the empire's banner. We shall never, ever perish.]

By the game's standards, the Interstellar Human Military Junta was already off to a very fast start.

It had completed the society research technology [Planetary Unification] in 2200, and it had the highly efficient Ancient Intelligent AI Beta, an intact ring world, and some advanced technologies beyond the starting set. By any measure, it was stronger than its in-game counterpart.

But this was reality. The neighboring Human Federation and United Nations of Earth had begun developing long ago. By comparison, his Interstellar Human Military Junta was developing far too slowly.

Only now, with all power in his hands, did Xi Yan truly have the ability to command the entire empire.

Now he could freely set policies and lead his empire into interstellar expansion.

Science and technology were the highest priorities for imperial expansion. Xi Yan had noticed that his country generally neglected technological development and still used technology from the United Nations of Earth dating back more than twenty years. At least the years spent repairing the ring world had improved its engineering technology somewhat.

That won't do!

Divert part of the budget into scientific research!

Whenever Beta has nothing else to do, he needs to help with research at the Academy of Sciences!

The best news was also that this was reality rather than a game. In the game, the entire nation's efforts could only research one physics technology, one sociology technology, and one engineering technology at a time. But in reality...

As long as there were enough scientists, they could research a whole bunch of technologies simultaneously!

Yet that would undoubtedly consume vast quantities of resources, giving Xi Yan another avenue to consider.

How can I quickly save resources?

The ring world could produce large quantities of energy credits-that is, electrical power-but its mineral and food production was extremely low.

The entire ring world was made of metal, and its agriculture depended entirely on small amounts of artificial soil for growing crops.

They did not yet have hydroponics farming. As the population increased, the demand for food would become increasingly urgent.

Then there were alloys, an important resource for the empire's development. They could be used to build colonies, stellar bases, and ships, with warships accounting for the largest share.

Alloys had to be smelted in industrial districts by consuming minerals.

And minerals had to be obtained by mining various planets.

In a typical shattered ring start, one section of the ring world would be damaged and capable of producing minerals. But this Cybrex Ring was an intact ring world with no mineral output whatsoever.

Moreover, constructing a ring world required breaking apart and reassembling every planet in the system. So never mind a damaged ring world section-the Cybrex Alpha System did not even have any other planets. Its mineral output was essentially zero.

So where did the empire's alloys come from?

In fact, they scavenged other ring world sections, recovering metal scrap from the surface and junk in orbit to smelt back into alloys.

When Xi Yan learned this from Beta, he was stunned for the entire afternoon.

So we have to expand! Find colonies and resources!

Expansion... Building mining stations around planets or stars with mineral deposits could provide some minerals and energy credits, but secondary outputs such as consumer goods, alloys, and research points required various districts and jobs on colonies. Those could not be rapidly increased in the short term.

Even with basic resources, they still needed people working in processing industries to produce those goods.

That brought him back to the overall resource problem. If increasing the empire's income was too slow, he could only look for ways to cut expenditure.

Exactly. Stellaris had all kinds of upkeep costs. If he could find a way to reduce them, wouldn't that effectively mean having more resources?

Xi Yan lay in the steaming water, silently thinking as he gazed through the one-way glass at the enormous ring stretching into the heavens.

Hey, the Interstellar Idea King has a new idea!

Private ownership of the means of production is simply too inefficient! Resource waste and imbalanced distribution are seriously damaging the empire's economy, and the existence of the bourgeoisie is a major obstacle to my control over the entire empire.

The thought that, even after he had become Marshal, the ordinary people beneath him were still being exploited by capitalists made a fierce anger blaze in Xi Yan's heart.

So...

I'm going to replace our Interstellar Human Empire's backward capitalist system with outright public ownership and completely abolish the private economy!

The empire's immense power will directly allocate all means of production and quotas, deliberately replacing the bourgeoisie and stripping this evil system, which has run rampant for over a century, out of this newborn empire!

And along the way... drastically reduce resource consumption and improve production efficiency.

We call that efficiency.