The Cybrex Alpha Ring World was made entirely of metal. Beyond its cities lay nothing but bare metal flooring. Once ordinary people left the urban areas with their comprehensive infrastructure and resources, they had no way to survive in the wilderness.
Thus, once more than three million Army troops surrounded every city, the fate of every imperial citizen was effectively in Xi Yan's hands.
The various Assault Corps had already arrested all the more influential capitalists. Public trials were held in the cities that same day and broadcast live across the Ring World, giving the long-oppressed citizens a much-needed outlet for their resentment.
Some of the smaller wealthy merchants and tycoons were dealt with outright at first. The rest were simply thrown into generator districts, where their biological energy would produce electricity and give something back to society.
As for the most heinous underground businesses, with their drug trafficking, human trafficking, and other dark supply chains, Xi Yan certainly wasn't going to let them slide.
You dared do this in my Empire?
Time to come down hard!
Xi Yan sent the remaining Army troops into the slums and lawless neighborhoods of every major city. Their thorough investigation not only failed to get to the bottom of things, but implicated more and more people, revealing the vast web of vested interests behind it all.
At last, Xi Yan encountered resistance. The entire criminal underworld was trying to stand against him.
These unsavory things had flourished in human society since ancient times. No civilization in history had ever eradicated them completely.
But today, Xi Yan refused to accept that.
Compromise once, and you'll keep giving ground. Even if I have to turn the entire Ring World upside down, I'll stamp out these threats to the citizens' safety!
The Marshal flew into a rage and immediately ordered that anyone discovered could be executed on the spot without reporting first. Those who confessed would be spared and could live on to generate electricity.
The Army searched even more frantically, throwing the entire urban area into turmoil. Fortunately, the Empire had already driven the ordinary citizens out and sent them into factories for compulsory labor. With plenty of food and good meals provided, there weren't many complaints.
These frenzied searches naturally unearthed even more dark secrets, but Xi Yan's stance only grew firmer: when in doubt, throw bombs. If bombs couldn't destroy it, use incendiaries. In short, scour the underground with heavy firepower. He refused to believe anyone could escape.
Judge them in the name of justice!
Over those few days, fires blazed throughout every urban area, burning the shadowy corners red.
All darkness was reduced to ashes under Xi Yan's doctrine of superior firepower. Every so often, he vaguely felt a few assist icons popping up over his head.
Karma up, up-
Of course, the consequence was that the Empire's population fell by over a hundred thousand. Most were members of the exploiting class or criminals involved in underground businesses. They deserved worse than death.
The Empire still had billions of people. A few casualties were merely a matter of scraping poison from the bone. Nothing to worry about.
Just a little temporary pain. Better a brief agony than prolonged suffering. Curing an illness at its onset was better than waiting for it to erupt later.
For the Empire, every sacrifice had meaning.
Xi Yan, the great philanthropist of the Sea of Stars, felt neither guilt nor empathy. He was truly the Great Xi King of the Sea of Stars.
But to ordinary people who had endured more than twenty years of exploitation, Xi Yan was the great leader who had liberated them. He had driven away the capitalists riding on their backs and finally allowed them to live in the sunlight without fearing for their safety.
They no longer had to work from dawn to dusk, day and night. At last, they could hold their heads high and support themselves with their own hands.
A small portion of the middle class, however, started indulging in idle thoughts once their bellies were full. Quite a few bleeding hearts emerged to oppose Xi Yan's King of the West-style actions. Xi Yan merely laughed them off.
With billions of people in the Empire, a few idiots were only to be expected.
He promptly took their property into public ownership.
The Empire had quite a sizable middle class, but they were nowhere near as stubborn as the bourgeoisie. Xi Yan easily brought their property into public ownership, then provided them with resources and social services according to the same standards as everyone else.
Deprived of their pampered lifestyles and faced with the pressure of making a living, these citizens began working hard. Those bizarre comments online dwindled at once.
Clearly, they'd just been eating too much!
Since the comprehensive resource distribution system hadn't yet been established, these radical animal-rights activists, radical environmentalists, LGBTQ+ people, and assorted other freaks had no food to eat and could only find jobs in the Empire's industrial districts to support themselves. Busy working for their meals, they naturally quieted down with their strange remarks.
Xi Yan laughed scornfully.
So much for that. Matter really does determine consciousness.
After eliminating class differences, Xi Yan immediately instructed the newly reorganized imperial institutions to take full charge of implementing public ownership while gradually establishing a resource distribution system, ensuring that basic food and consumer goods reached the people.
To prevent embezzlement or withholding during resource distribution, Xi Yan temporarily added a provision to imperial law: if a local distribution agency had problems, every employee would be demoted to "Raw Material Tier" and have their property confiscated.
An old method passed down since Qin Shi Huang's time. The ancestors' tricks really worked.
The deterrent of such harsh laws and severe punishments was enough to ensure clean, efficient resource distribution.
Everything revolved around efficiency and output!
Of course, Xi Yan's series of King of the West-style measures left a great many vacancies everywhere from the imperial central administration to local institutions.
Xi Yan soon came up with a solution.
Didn't we build plenty of universities in our colonies?
As it happened, after all these years, the children born after the colonies were established were just about ready to graduate.
These were the Empire's homegrown younger generation of workers: utterly loyal young people with noble morals and pure hearts, all future pillars of the Empire. Xi Yan ordered the personnel department to recruit on university campuses.
All he required was good character and a willingness to refrain from shady tricks in positions with plenty of opportunities for graft.
As for the work itself, AI could help them handle it, and experience could be gained gradually.
But greed and corruption would not be tolerated!
Want to line your pockets with money from my treasury?
Don't even think about it! I'll send your entire department off to generate electricity!
Under Xi Yan's threat of collective punishment extending to nine degrees of kinship and even their colleagues, every imperial official began holding themselves to strict standards while supervising others even more rigorously.
So, although collective punishment was very backward-
The same principle still applied: as long as it was efficient!
Watching the Empire flourish, Xi Yan, the supreme Galactic Emperor, smiled in satisfaction.
All those days of rushing around without a moment's rest, personally attending meetings to discuss various systems, hadn't been wasted.
Advanced technology and a newly built information-processing system with immense computing power ensured error-free resource distribution, forming one of the foundations of public ownership.
Our Empire is flourishing!
Of course, such sweeping reforms inevitably brought some problems.
For example, resources were still an issue.
After working around the clock to establish a computing center, the imperial administration soon submitted detailed documents on resource production and consumption. The statistics were calculated according to Xi Yan's requirements, tracking monthly output in real time using the same standards as the game Stellaris.
The largest output was electricity, or energy credits. Combining the output from the Ring World's star with that of the generator districts, the entire Empire's monthly energy credit production approached triple digits.
Xi Yan was dumbfounded when he saw that output.
That can't be right. Why is production so high?
Is this Cadet difficulty?
Then, after Xi Yan saw the output of the other resources, his confusion instantly vanished.
Consumer goods and minerals had only single-digit outputs, while alloys barely exceeded ten units.
Food production was running at a net deficit.
After the free distribution system went into effect, the food deficit became even more alarming.
"With all due respect, the food you're allocating to each person already exceeds the average. I recommend distributing a little less," Beta said expressionlessly.
Xi Yan merely scoffed.
Try cutting it, and stability will drop below 30% in minutes!
Xi Yan quickly made his decision. "Have 90% of the food factories produce the synthetic food Green Apple. As for all those miscellaneous foods, either classify them as consumer goods or stop production!"
"I've always thought that producing so many different foods makes it difficult to improve production efficiency. We might as well just make healthy, delicious Green Apples."
As he spoke, Xi Yan took out a Green Apple and bit into it, then nodded repeatedly. "Synthetic food: convenient, quick, and nutritious. We'll distribute this from now on. Once we've built up our civilian industrial base, we can produce other foods."
"That would indeed reduce our food consumption, but it still wouldn't quite suffice in the long run. We'd barely achieve a net surplus."
Beta calculated the results instantly.
"Truuue."
Xi Yan drew out the word.
That was the drawback of a Ring World.
A Ring World could provide vast amounts of housing, trade value, and research points, but produced very few basic resources.
The Cybrex Alpha System had no planets besides the Ring World, so the entire nation's mineral production was essentially nonexistent. Alloy production was sustained entirely by dismantling the wreckage in the Ring World's orbit.
As for food, they hadn't even researched Hydroponics Farming Technology yet, which said everything about their food output.
"Have Military Headquarters build more Faster-than-Light Construction Ships, at least five. Send them to the Kolmakian System and the Amaterro System. Get some mining started right away and improve the Ring World's industrial capacity."
Xi Yan issued the order.
"All right. I'll pass it along."
"Next, how many alloys do we have left? We should've stockpiled a few K over these twenty years, right?"
Xi Yan stared at the report sent over by the Computing Center. "Apart from food and minerals, we have plenty of other resources. Go build a Starport in that Amaterro System, and put shipyards in both building slots."
"Oh, and prioritize building two Science Ships. Promote some Science Officers and send them out to survey resources and chart the stars."
"Three Science Ships should be enough. Focus on finding habitable planets."
The key point: habitable planets!
Then we can demolish all the Ring World's industrial and agricultural districts and replace them with commercial or research districts!
The resource statistics report in Xi Yan's hands already used the Universal Standard.
One energy credit equaled one trillion kilowatt-hours of electricity. This was the Universal Standard originating from the Fallen Empire.
At Xi Yan's special request, even the report's UI had been designed to resemble the familiar Stellaris UI. That made it much more comfortable to look at.
On the resource statistics document in Xi Yan's hands, food output had visibly turned negative.
It had turned red!
Unforgivable!
Xi Yan's blood pressure began soaring. He slammed his fist on the table. "Goddammit! I want a Colony World! Give me a Colony World!"
Just then, Science Ship One sent a message from nearly a hundred light-years away, and Beta casually forwarded it to Xi Yan.
Xi Yan opened it impatiently.
"Hmm... Amat Eiro II... huh? Holy shit! You're actually delivering, bro!"
On my knees before the moderators here, please let this pass. Seriously, this is just an ordinary Stellaris player's fantasy, not a promotion of anything bad. It's just for a laugh. Please let it through.
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