Chapter Summaries

Ning Zhiyuan used the Galactic Throne’s flak cannons, lasers, and superior speed to destroy Shoigu’s pursuing fleet. Alexei finally gave up his attempt to capture the ship and begged his remaining forces to return.

• Ning Zhiyuan ordered the flak cannons and red lasers to attack Alexei’s ships, destroying their shields and inflicting heavy losses.
• Alexei ordered his remaining ships to charge the Galactic Throne, hoping to exploit a blind spot beneath the vessel.
• Ning Zhiyuan accelerated the Galactic Throne away from the attackers, then used its greater speed, range, lasers, and reloaded flak cannons to keep destroying them.
• Alexei’s staff officers urged him to surrender, and Alexei realized his fleet had been outmatched by the Galactic Throne’s tactics and capabilities.
• With fewer than ten of his ships left, Alexei abandoned his bid for the Galactic Throne and shouted for his forces to return and protect him.

Xi Yan celebrated the destruction of the rebel fleet and the Central Grand Hotel, consolidating military and political power as the Empire’s de facto ruler. After Shoigu was executed, Xi Yan ordered survivors hiding in an underground shelter to be exposed to gas, and Veronica sheltered him from the sun.

• Ning Zhiyuan’s fleet pursued and destroyed Shoigu’s fleeing warships, leaving Alexei hopeless and without a fleet.
• Xi Yan celebrated his victory among the hotel’s ruins while Ailiveer, Veronica, and Prigozhin watched; Ailiveer fainted at the scene.
• Xi Yan explained that he had sacrificed Veronica’s fleet to lure Shoigu out, then ordered artillery and special forces to destroy the hotel and search its ruins.
• Xi Yan’s soldiers captured Shoigu, reported that he had confessed and revealed his hidden assets, and then executed him on Xi Yan’s order.
• Xi Yan learned that more survivors were hiding in an underground shelter and ordered soldiers to pump in gas under the pretense of providing fresh air.
• Veronica opened a black parasol over Xi Yan as sunlight scorched the ruins.

After defeating the Shoigu-Gerasimov rebellion, Xi Yan secured control of the Empire’s armed forces and dealt with the captured officers. He prepared to begin interstellar expansion after the military recovered, repairs were made, and new ships were built.

• Ning Zhiyuan reported that the rebel fleet had been destroyed and the Starport retaken, and Xi Yan rewarded Ning Zhiyuan, Veronica, and Prigozhin with new responsibilities.
• Xi Yan ordered Prigozhin to train Army personnel as naval crew and oversee personnel development across Military Headquarters.
• Xi Yan spared the surrendered rebel officers by ordering their deportation, and soldiers dragged them toward the airlock without spacesuits.
• Ning Zhiyuan told Xi Yan that Alexei had killed himself, ending Xi Yan’s plans for a public trial.
• Xi Yan declared that humanity would expand beyond its star system, then left the Starport to focus on repairs, cleanup, and building science and construction ships.
• Xi Yan realized it was January 1, 2200, the day he had reclaimed power and become the true Marshal.

After crushing the Shoigu-Gerasimov military clique, Xi Yan returned to the government building and began reorganizing the empire under his authority. While considering the empire’s economic and resource problems, he decided to abolish private ownership and replace the capitalist system with public ownership.

• Xi Yan returned covered in blood and announced that he had executed the Shoigu-Gerasimov military clique and dismantled its forces.
• Xi Yan ordered General Prigozhin to investigate the remaining rebels and their families and seize their property.
• Xi Yan instructed Beta to prepare a plan for a Cabinet and governing bodies while reserving final decision-making authority for himself.
• Xi Yan assessed the empire’s technological, mineral, food, and alloy shortages and concluded that it needed expansion and greater research investment.
• Xi Yan decided to replace the empire’s capitalist system with public ownership and direct state allocation of production.

Xi Yan considered replacing private ownership with public ownership and began addressing the empire’s government and citizens’ welfare. He remotely contacted the Science Ship in the Kolmakhian System, where chief science officer Mardun Elwin explained how the crew explored through robots.

• Xi Yan decided that the empire should reform its institutions and put production, distribution, and public services under imperial control.
• Xi Yan delegated government reform to Beta, Ailiveer, and the Secretariat while preparing to improve citizens’ living standards.
• Xi Yan contacted the Science Ship exploring the Kolmakhian System and connected to its crew through a remotely controlled robot.
• Mardun Elwin introduced himself as the ship’s chief science officer and explained that he directed its operations remotely from the Academy of Sciences.

Xi Yan ordered Mardun Elwin and Science Ship One to prioritize surveying nearby systems for resources and colonizable planets instead of spending months studying ruins. He then prepared for the Empire’s work meetings and continued consolidating his rule, with plans to eliminate threats to production and citizens’ interests.

• Xi Yan told Mardun Elwin that the Empire would fund science and exploration, then ordered Science Ship One to leave the ruins of Kolmakhian IV for other systems.
• Mardun reported that Science Ship One had mapped the Kolmakian System and was surveying ancient structures on Kolmakhian IV.
• Xi Yan ordered Mardun to leave an Automated Observation Post and prioritize surveys for minerals, Energy Credits, and colonizable planets.
• Science Ship One relayed Xi Yan’s orders and activated its Hyperdrive to travel to a neighboring system.
• Xi Yan reviewed Beta’s schedule and imperial documents before heading to the Capitol Building for the Empire Work Conference and Cabinet meeting.
• Xi Yan noted that the Empire’s elites had become more cautious after his crackdown and resolved to remove threats to resource production and citizens’ interests.

Xi Yan staged a vote on creating a Council, then had soldiers seize the officials who supported it and declared that the Empire’s officials must obey him. He left the meeting having ordered severe punishments for prisoners and announced his uncompromising rules for judging loyalty and opposition.

• Xi Yan encountered a retired veteran who praised his actions, then ordered Beta to recruit the Empire’s veteran specialists as instructors.
• Xi Yan overheard officials arguing about his power at the Empire Work Conference and took the stage to address them.
• Xi Yan apologized for the casualties caused by his attack, proposed a Council to oversee his power, and called for a vote.
• After nearly half the officials supported the Council, Xi Yan ordered soldiers to restrain them and send them to the Generator District as Raw Material Tier citizens.
• Xi Yan told Ailiveer to draft a decree abolishing the death penalty in favor of downgrading citizens to Food Tier or Raw Material Tier, and proposed sending prisoners to Bio-Reactors.
• Xi Yan declared that officials were only to obey him, recited rules defining all opposition as proof of his own correctness, and began the meeting.

After the Interstellar Human Military Junta celebrated its new homeworld and Xi Lie’s death, Xi Yan addressed the Empire’s officials, threatened dissenters, and reorganized the government around his command. He announced the abolition of the private economy and proposed an Empire-wide real-time data system to support state ownership.

• Ailiveer reported that the Cybrex Alpha Ring World’s first segment had been converted into a colony and that Xi Yan’s forces had defeated the Shoigu-Gerasimov rebels.
• Xi Yan congratulated officials for surviving his screenings, warned them against defying him, and ordered dissatisfied officials sent to the generator districts with Raw Material Tier rights.
• Xi Yan abolished the Assistant Protector General position, assigned military posts to Ning Zhiyuan, Prigozhin, and Veronica, and established the Cosmic Expansion Department under Military Headquarters.
• Xi Yan announced an intelligence agency and secret police, threatened officials who placed their own people in government, and declared that private enterprise would be replaced by state ownership.
• After a young secretary warned that a central database could leak data, Xi Yan insisted that an Empire-wide real-time statistical system would provide the computing power needed for public ownership.

Xi Yan announced a public ownership system that would abolish the existing currency and provide citizens with basic necessities and jobs, funded by compulsory labor and Labor Points. He ordered General Prigozhin to prepare an organized purge of those who controlled the Empire’s resources, while Beta declared the plan feasible.

• Xi Yan proposed centrally allocating food, consumer goods, housing, and jobs to every citizen and abolishing the existing monetary system.
• Xi Yan set a twelve-hour workday and compulsory labor in exchange for free basic necessities; Beta explained that ordinary people already worked nearly twenty hours a day.
• Ailiveer calculated that the plan could at least double resource production but warned that the Empire lacked sufficient reserves and that worker motivation remained a concern.
• Xi Yan promised to seize resources from the Empire’s wealthy and ordered General Prigozhin to remind him to carry out an organized cleanup.
• Xi Yan proposed awarding Labor Points according to workers’ output so they could buy better goods, and Beta declared the public ownership plan feasible.

Xi Yan adjourned a meeting after demanding authoritarian laws that prioritized production and science, then visited the Academy of Sciences to redirect research toward the Empire’s needs. He left the scientists with new funding and research priorities as he pushed to prepare humanity for future threats.

• Xi Yan demanded new imperial laws that downgraded the rights of unproductive citizens and privileged the Marshal, then ended the meeting.
• Ailiveer warned the officials to do their jobs or risk having their families sent to a Generator District.
• Xi Yan told Beta that he was rushing to strengthen humanity against hostile factions, including the Contingency and the Devouring Hive Swarm.
• Xi Yan promised the Academy of Sciences a large budget and ordered the physics team to research Fusion Reactor and Global Energy Management.
• Xi Yan ordered the society team to focus on agriculture, including Hydroponics Farming and Ecological Adaptation, instead of Alien Zoo.
• Xi Yan approved the engineering team’s Powered Exoskeleton research and urged them to develop Robotic Workers and study the Ring World.

Xi Yan directed the Cabinet to begin forcibly transferring private property to public ownership, purging the bourgeoisie, and expanding the Empire. In the following days, his regime used fabricated news to celebrate the purges, while families of the accused disappeared into the Generator District.

• Xi Yan chaired a Cabinet meeting and ordered Prigozhin to seize control of the Ring World, confiscate wealthy citizens’ property, and arrest those labeled rebels and their supporters.
• Xi Yan instructed Mardun Elwin to involve sociologists in educational reform and cultivate obedience and loyalty to the Empire.
• Xi Yan ordered Veronica to provide ammunition, Ning Zhiyuan to ready faster-than-light ships, and construction crews to establish a stellar base in the Kolmakian System.
• Xi Yan’s regime released doctored reports claiming he had purged corrupt officials and rebels, winning public approval from Ring World residents.
• Xi Yan’s purge included wrongful convictions and the removal of entire families to the Generator District, which the regime concealed from the public.

Xi Yan prepared to impose public ownership on the Ring World and ordered Veronica and Prigozhin to begin a purge of the bourgeoisie. As he rallied public support online, the troops stood ready and Ailiveer called to him from outside his office.

• Xi Yan used his military authority to prepare an operation against the powerful bourgeoisie on the Ring World.
• Xi Yan posted on the public forum about his proposed public-ownership reforms, and public support surged after he promised free necessities and services.
• Xi Yan identified company accounts and paid bots opposing the reforms, then bantered and argued with netizens to build momentum.
• Veronica and Prigozhin reported that troops were ready, and Xi Yan ordered them to confiscate property and eliminate the purge targets without leaving survivors.
• Xi Yan told his commanders to assure soldiers of the purge's righteousness and to investigate and secretly execute subordinates with ties to the targets.
• Ailiveer called to Xi Yan from outside his office.

Xi Yan met with Wang Defa, a lobbyist representing the colony’s wealthy business community, to discuss nationalization. After rejecting the capitalists’ arguments and killing Wang Defa, Xi Yan ordered the military to eliminate the bourgeoisie and their supporters.

• Ailiveer told Xi Yan that business leaders were trying to learn his intentions about nationalization, and he invited a representative to meet him.
• Xi Yan searched online for Stellaris and Paradox but found no results, then received Wang Defa in his office.
• Wang Defa offered Xi Yan a briefcase of cash and asset certificates, which Xi Yan accepted before discussing nationalization.
• Wang Defa argued against nationalization and described his workers’ wages and living costs, angering Xi Yan.
• Xi Yan shot Wang Defa and ordered his forces to kill the bourgeoisie and their supporters rather than arrest them.
• Prigozhin received Xi Yan’s order at the Army Command Center and began the operation.

The Empire’s Army raided wealthy estates across the Ring World under Xi Yan’s orders to eliminate exploiters and seize their property. After liberating enslaved maids and arranging aid for them, one squadron destroyed the estate and moved on to its next target.

• A young Army officer led soldiers into a tycoon’s estate, arrested the family, and executed the tycoon, his wife, and their daughter after questioning them.
• The officer learned the maids had been trafficked and held as indentured servants, then freed them and arranged temporary identification, housing, food, and work through Imperial aid agencies.
• The rescued maids thanked Xi Yan, received seized money for living expenses, and teased the officer after Masha asked for his contact number.
• The officer ordered his squad to report no survivors after finding a child in the nursery, then led the troops away as they bombed the estate.
• Xi Yan’s superiors praised the squadron, while raids and mass liberation efforts spread across the Ring World.

Xi Yan rejected the capitalists’ proposal and launched a purge of the Ring World’s exploiting classes, beginning by destroying Aceworth’s skyscraper and seizing his businesses. With Army troops taking control across the districts, Xi Yan expected a new Empire to rise from the old world’s ruins.

• Aceworth and other capitalists worried that Xi Yan would purge them after Wang Defa entered the Administration Building and failed to report back.
• Xi Yan told Aceworth that Wang Defa had been buried in the Agricultural District and rejected the proposal he had brought.
• Xi Yan declared that he would not leave the Ring World’s economy in the capitalists’ hands and ordered Aceworth to look at the sky.
• A Low-Altitude Warship fired a missile at Aceworth’s skyscraper, while Army troops assaulted the surrounding commercial district.
• Army troops transferred businesses into imperial ownership, leaving their personnel in place as official employees of imperial enterprises.
• Xi Yan watched the smoke rise as troops across the Ring World continued eliminating the exploiting classes.

Xi Yan completed a bloody purge and nationalization campaign that reshaped the Interstellar Human Military Junta. Meanwhile, Science Ship One explored the Amaterro System and discovered a human colony ship orbiting Amaterro II, leaving the crew unsure who its people were.

• Xi Yan ordered the purge of the bourgeoisie and corrupt officials, then nationalized the middle class's private assets under a new currency system.
• Science Ship One entered the Amaterro System, surveyed Amat Eiro IV, and reported mineral deposits to Military Headquarters.
• Mardun Elwin directed the exploration of the system, where the crew studied anomalous Amat Eiro III and noted Amat Eiro II's lush surface and thick atmosphere.
• The crew spotted a spindle-shaped metal structure in orbit around Amaterro II and approached it for investigation.
• Mardun ordered the crew to signal the vessel, and they learned it was a colony ship with technology and language nearly identical to theirs, apparently crewed by humans.

Mardun and the Interstellar Human Military Junta discovered the stranded Hyacinth, whose crew had been lost for decades and was running out of food. The Hyacinth offered star charts and information about Amat Eiro II, and the chapter ended as the Marshal joined the call.

• Mardun recognized the stranded ship as the Hyacinth and contacted its crew.
• The Hyacinth's captain explained that the colony ship had separated from the Autumn Chrysanthemum and that over a hundred thousand people aboard needed food and rescue.
• Mardun told the captain that the United Nations of Earth was thriving and that the Autumn Chrysanthemum had founded the Human Federation.
• The captain offered voyage data and Hyperlane charts in exchange for help, then revealed that Amat Eiro II was inhabited by a pre-FTL plant civilization.
• The captain explained that the Hyacinth's settlers had tried to colonize the planet but were driven off by its united, xenophobic natives.
• Mardun opened a new communications window after receiving an excited message from the Marshal.

Xi Yan consolidated public ownership across the Empire and imposed harsh measures to suppress crime and corruption, but the Ring World's resource shortages threatened his reforms. A distant Science Ship then reported a possible colony world, leaving Xi Yan thrilled by the discovery.

• Xi Yan used the Army to arrest capitalists, crush criminal networks, and seize the property of opponents and middle-class citizens.
• Xi Yan reorganized imperial institutions, established public resource distribution, and recruited loyal university graduates while threatening officials with collective punishment for corruption.
• The administration's reports revealed that the Empire produced abundant energy but lacked food, minerals, and alloys, so Xi Yan ordered construction ships, mining, shipyards, and Science Ships.
• Science Ship One reported from the Amat Eiro System, and Xi Yan reacted with excitement to its discovery of Amat Eiro II.

Xi Yan learned that the missing colony ship Hyacinth had been found with 114,514 people aboard, and ordered a warship to rescue them despite the Empire’s food shortage. The survivors confirmed that a wormhole had sent them more than a century into the future, and their captain asked to colonize the planet they were orbiting.

• Xi Yan was startled to hear that Science Ship One had found Hyacinth with 114,514 people alive, and he explained the ship’s history as one of six arks lost after a wormhole collapsed.
• Xi Yan arranged a rescue after learning Hyacinth had only one or two months of food left, ordering Ning Zhiyuan to convert the Left and Right Protector Ship to carry supplies and bring the colonists back.
• Xi Yan worried that the Empire’s food reserves were falling despite Green Apple production, while the lack of transport ships and agricultural capacity left him desperate for a colony.
• Mardun and the Old Captain compared dates and discovered Hyacinth’s crew had traveled from 2103 to 2200, though the Old Captain recalled the ship aging rapidly near the wormhole.
• The Old Captain asked to colonize the planet beneath Hyacinth, and Mardun welcomed the prospect of new agricultural districts for the Empire.

After discovering that the natives of Amat Eiro II were edible and their planet ideal for colonization, Xi Yan promised the Hyacinth's crew a military-backed return and used generous benefits to rally them. He then prepared to contact the United Nations of Earth about the colony ship.

• Xi Yan learned that Amat Eiro II was habitable and its native species edible, then asked Ning Zhiyuan to arrange military forces and transport ships.
• Xi Yan declared the Hyacinth's crew provisional citizens and appointed them colonists tasked with retaking Amat Eiro II when his fleet arrived in two months.
• Xi Yan promised the crew public ownership, free necessities, labor points, and preferential treatment for their families, prompting loud cheers.
• Xi Yan considered using the colonists to establish food production on Amat Eiro II and privately fantasized about processing alien species into canned food or Green Apples.
• Xi Yan contacted Beta to connect him with the United Nations of Earth and identified its current Grand Marshal as Bai Fengfeng.