The Galactic Jade Shattering Plan was a vast undertaking encompassing the entire roadmap from the Sea of Stars Empire's founding to its ascension. The great colonization movement across the Milky Way was only one part of it.
The Milky Way Last Stand would concentrate Xi Yan's control over the Empire to the greatest possible extent, ensuring the plan's smooth execution. At the same time, it greatly increased the autonomy of the constituent states.
With ascension imminent, Xi Yan no longer needed to consolidate his rule. He granted the local governments immense autonomy, requiring only their unconditional obedience to his plan. As for everything else involved in governing their planets, he simply did not care.
Once the calamities came, they would all be doomed anyway.
Beyond the great colonization movement, Xi Yan also employed technology obtained from the Heavenly People Empire of Faith's Expeditionary Force to begin systematically reconfiguring the Hyperlanes.
Most existing lanes were abolished and new ones established, ensuring that the network divided the various star regions into isolated areas. He would only need to station powerful forces at key junctions to defend an entire region.
What did it matter if the invasion came from higher dimensions? The Demons could use higher-dimensional rules to attack lower dimensions, but universal cosmic rules like the lanes had to be obeyed, no matter who came!
This was the underlying logic of the entire Stellaris universe, a law that both higher and lower dimensions had to obey.
Likewise, based on the Heavenly People's research into cosmic storms, Xi Yan could now deliberately generate Shroud storms and use psionics to transform the stars at key junctions into pulsars.
In a pulsar environment, everyone was equally stripped of shields!
What Xi Yan did was exploit cosmic laws that both higher and lower dimensions had to