by <unknown>
This wasn't where things should be going. According to their plan last night, they would cry in the Emperor's Mausoleum, disseminate flyers to the people, and bow and offer flowers to the statue of Blackstar the Great. After they created enough influence, they would disperse.
In such a way, they would make their voices heard without giving any excuse to the authorities. Visiting the Emperor's Mausoleum was the most natural thing in the world. It was even an obligation for every soldier and every Immortal Cultivator of the Imperium. What could the highest authorities do other than secretly cursing them?
But the situation right now was obviously going out of control.
When hundreds of thousands of people were on a riot in the Emperor's Mausoleum, something terrible would definitely happen to them!
Zhao Zhenwu secretly observed Chu Tianhe who was next to him, only to discover that the commander of the gathering today had been completely devoted to his role. The man looked so excited that his eyes seemed to be bleeding. He cried while he continued instigating the people, as if he felt that the atmosphere was not hot enough!
Isn't Chu Tianhe a very famous "general of wisdom"? Why is he acting so stupidly today?
Uncomfortably, Zhao Zhenwu looked at the direction of the Council of Elders and immediately bulged his eyes.
The Emperor's Mausoleum was established next to the mountains. The enormous statue of Blackstar the Great was naturally at a high height. From the high stance, Zhao Zhenwu looked afar, only to discover that black torrents were rolling toward the mausoleum from not far away!
The overwhelming crowds were dozens of times more than the members of the royal family. Also, they were wearing the standard uniform of the expedition army of the Imperium.
The floods of people moved very fast and passed the Imperial Guards' defense line in the blink of an eye. Naturally, the crying and cursing Imperial Guards did not mean to stop them either.
The troops of the Council of Elders?
Zhao Zhenwu grew rather anxious. But he was relieved after careful observation. Unlikely. They are not wearing crystal suits or carrying any heavy magical equipment. No starships are covering them from above either. They are not the Council of Elders' troops!
However, the news that passed on from down below half a minute later shocked him so hard that he almost passed out.
The newcomers were the disabled veterans in the Imperium's counterattack in the past ten years!
They had come from various worlds at the edge of the Imperium to the Emperor's Mausoleum to pay tributes!
Tens of thousands of veterans had already broken into the mausoleum. Ten times or even more people were joining them incessantly from behind!
The lives of the disabled veterans were even more difficult than that of the surplus generals. The latter were taken in by the "Royal Seminar For Advanced Generals" after all, and they could manage to survive with the few subsidies and allowances.
The disabled veterans from the peripheral worlds, on the other hand, were simply kicked back to their hometowns, where they were supported by the local finance.
But right now, the governments of the peripheral worlds of the Imperium were all going bankrupt. They had to submit all kinds of war taxes and national defense fees. How could they find enough money to feed the garbage?
Therefore, the disabled veterans had been dissatisfied for a long time. When they heard that some generals were crying in the Emperor's Mausoleum, they immediately came to join the event too!
This isn't right!
Zhao Zhenwu's brain hummed and exploded with ten thousand questions.
He knew the sufferings of the disabled veterans very well. But now that those guys did not even have the money for food, how could they have afforded the fees of transportation and accommodation when they traveled from the peripheral worlds to the Empyreal Terminus Sector?
Besides, how were the hundreds of thousands of disabled veterans organized and delivered to the capital? It couldn't have been a spontaneous event.
Zhao Zhenwu knew very clearly that, since the Imperium was in an unusual period right now, the jump points and spaceports of the capital were thoroughly watched by the fleets of the four Kurfürst families. Only the starships of the four families could travel without obstacles. The civil carriers had to be examined dozens of times if they wanted to enter the capital. How could the disabled veterans have snuck in easily?
Also, it was too coincidental. They had not cried for long here, and both the members of the royal family and the disabled veterans had come to join them. That was really—
The more he thought about it, the more uneasy Zhao Zhenwu became. Sweating hard, he looked at Chu Tianhe unconfidently and said, "General Commander…"
"Old Zhao!"
Chu Tianhe's eyes were bloodshot, but his face was calmer than ever. Patting his back heavily, the organizer of the event whispered to his ear, "With everything coming to this point, we will be executed anyway. The only way of survival for us is perhaps to make the trouble even greater and turn everything upside down. You used to command troops too. Do you not understand such simple logic?"
Looking at Chu Tianhe's demonic eyes, Zhao Zhenwu shuddered hard. Rigidified, he was unable to say anything anymore.
Chu Tianhe smiled at him in the most hideous way. Then, he suddenly raised an arm and explained, "Look! A million disabled veterans have joined us. We are not leaving today! We will just wait in the Emperor's Mausoleum until the Council of Elders gives us the justice that we deserve! Without justice, we would rather die below Blackstar the Great's feet!"
Boom!
Zhao Zhenwu felt that he had been blown up into pieces. He had no idea where he was or what he was doing anymore!
Chapter 2269: Unstoppable Storm! |
The participation of the million disabled veterans upgraded the crying event into a superstorm that swept across the entire planet, if not the entire Imperium.
When the noises of the storm pressed unstoppably, Dongfang Wei, the prime minister of the Imperium of True Human Beings and leader of the Dongfang family, was having a friendly and constructive discussion regarding the special budget for national defense for the next year with the directors of the Department of National Defense, the Department of the Treasury, as well as many other departments in the prime minister's residence not far away from the Council of Elders.
Or to be more frank, everybody was simply bickering with each other while they were mired in the swirl of numbers!
Dongfang Wang had been the prime minister of the Imperium for twenty years. Many people said that he was one of the most powerful prime ministers in the recent few hundred years of the Imperium. He certainly deserved to be called a prime minister of iron and blood.
That was also the reason why Dongfang Wang knew deeply what an arduous task it was to coordinate and balance the interests of hundreds of Sectors, resource planets, and countless forces, sects, warlords, and super experts as the prime minister of the Imperium of True Human Beings.
On the surface, he was the most powerful and unquestionable lord. Even the emperor had been eclipsed by him.
But in fact, the other three families controlled their troops tightly and established their own systems in their dominions. The orders sent from the prime minister's office were either ignored or pretended to be followed. As long as some policies affected their interests, so much as the loss of one hair, those people would be bold enough to pick up their sabers and fight him. There was even one time when two elders mauled each other right in the Council of Elders like two street thugs!
The other three families were insubordinate, but it wasn't like everybody within the Dongfang family listened to him as the "patriarch" either.
After a thousand years of development, the Dongfang family naturally had a lot of factions within. The seven most developed, heavy industrial worlds were all supervised by a big shot.
Those big shots were all at the high level or even peak of the Divinity Transformation Stage. So
me were his peers, and some were his seniors. He could become the leader of the Dongfang family and even the prime minister of the Imperium only because of the powerful support from those people. How could he be really ruthless enough to deny their interests?
The special budget of national defense for the next year was what troubled him right now.
The Imperium's counterattack had lasted more than ten years. Billions of soldiers had been mobilized. A lot of new worlds had been occupied. The supply lines were stretched again and again. The cost in the attrition and the consumption of the troops had drained the wealth of the national treasury, which had been accumulated for a hundred years. The economics in many worlds in the rear were terrible. Many places were even having famines.
The war could not be fought anymore, and the scale of the expedition army had to be reduced. But the regrouping and the elimination involved tremendous retirement fees and compensations. A lot of bonds and shares had been awarded earlier with the promise that they would be fulfilled after the victory. It would be a great trouble to really fulfill them.
Therefore, the cost of national defense next year would not be reduced at all but would be even more than previous years. It was almost "throes of peace".
The problem right now was that there was no money. Of course, it was not accurate to say that there was no money. There was no money in the national treasury, but the four Kurfürst families still had a lot. However, while they were wealthy, an agreement was certainly necessary for them to provide capitals to fill the gap.
Dongfang Wang went to the other three families to make an agreement. The other three families also looked at him docilely, gently, and obediently, adulating that the Dongfang family, as the greatest family of the Imperium, had unparalleled wealth and power and that its wrist was thicker than the thighs of other families. Naturally, the agreement should be taken care of by the Dongfang family. All in all, the Dongfang family should fill the gap as an example for other families, and when the gap was more or less filled, the other families would follow and make sure that the work was completed.
Whatever Dongfang Wang said, he could not get any money from them. The three families pointed at their starships and Colossi and claimed that they spent all their money on the weapons for the Imperium's attack and that there was no additional funding at all.
Gritting his teeth, Dongfang Wang went to discuss it with the big shots of the factions within his family. The big shots glared at him and said that they elected Dongfang Wang as the prime minister because they wanted him to earn more benefits for the family. Why was he asking the family to devote money when he hadn't earned any? Was he the prime minister from the Dongfang family, or was he from the Li family and the Yun family?
He was talking to the big shots at the peak of the Divinity Transformation Stage who controlled an entire heavy industrial world. Could he kill them and confiscate their belongings? Of course not! He could not negotiate with them.
After all the negotiations, the big shots of his own family and those of other families wanted the same. They had money and resources if they tried to search within the families, but they were not offering them for nothing. Those supplies had to be exchanged for the land, properties, and monopolization rights in the newly-recovered territories.
As the negotiations proceeded, the few resourceful worlds in the newly-recovered territories had already been carved up before the ceasefire in the frontline. Naturally, the peripheral worlds were greatly dissatisfied and thought that their interests had been harmed.
With everything coming to the point, the whole thing had become an unresolvable dilemma.
Without the support of the interest groups within the four Kurfürst families who had money and resources, the expedition army could not be regrouped and reduced, and the national economy could not shift from the warring system to peaceful development. The disabled veterans and the retired officers would certainly cause trouble too, if they did not receive enough subsidies.
But the investments of the interest groups were traded for the rights in the newly-recovered territories, which naturally hurt the interests of many people and many social classes too. It was even a form of betrayal for many local groups who were given a promise before the war. One moment of carelessness, and they would turn the world upside down too. The incident of the Blood Oath Alliance, the rise of the reformists, and the rebellion of Lei Chenghu all began because of that.
Faced with such a predicament, even Dongfang Wang felt a strong headache, not knowing what to do.
He thought of "Silver Fox" Li Jiande, his greatest political rival, who had been dying for a hundred years but never died.
A hundred years ago, "Silver Fox" Li Jiande was also once the prime minister of the Imperium. He worked so hard at that time that he was fatigued and fell from the Divinity Branching Stage. He had been bedridden since then and distancing himself from the politics of the Imperium.
At that time, Dongfang Wang mocked Li Jiande for what became of him in the end.
But now that he was the prime minister himself roasted on a fire, he finally understood the feeling of dilemmas and vaguely sensed that perhaps Li Jiande had made the smartest choice by falling sick.
Perhaps the universe was too huge, but everyone only had limited abilities. Even the computational ability and the wisdom of the Divinity Branching State were not enough to perform effective governance on hundreds of Sectors, right?
Or perhaps the infinite universe was too small to satisfy the desires of every human being?
It was exactly in such a state of mind that Dongfang Wang received the report of the crying event.
He stared at the report and read it for a long time, as if he was trying to see something more between the lines. Holding back the urge of bursting out in a fury, he raised the most critical question.
"Even if the generals from the Royal Seminar For Advanced Generals and the members of the royal family living inside the Emperor's Mausoleum have 'gathered spontaneously', how did the disabled veterans from the peripheral worlds of the Imperium sneak into the capital? They couldn't have directly jumped to the surface of the capital after one space jump, could they?"
Dongfang Wang smelled the scent of a plot.
An adviser proposed that the people who had gathered to cry in the mausoleum should be suppressed and captured because they were in obvious derision of rules and authorities.
Dongfang Wang immediately asked the advisor to leave the room. Pondering for a moment, he made a few instructions.
Firstly, set up a blockage outside the Emperor's Mausoleum to prevent more people from crowding in.
Secondly, the Spiritual Nexus and all the signals near the Emperor's Mausoleum must be cut off to make sure nothing happened there was leaked to the outside world. Of course, the media that was still in the mausoleum must be controlled too.
Thirdly, investigate the origins of the million disabled veterans immediately. It must be found out how they were organized and sent into the capital. It was very important!
Dongfang Wang's reactions were timely enough.
Such standard procedures to suppress riots were often implemented by the authorities of the Imperium. They were quite familiar with the work.
But accidents took place one after another.
The Emperor's Mausoleum was the territory of the Imperial Guards, which had a lot of members of the royal family. Now that they had grown emotional, they showed obvious hatred toward the troops of the four Kurfürst families.
However poor the Imperial Guards were, they still had several hundred of rusted, outdated starships.
Were those starships to be moved to the vacuum and fight the fleets of the four Kurfürst families, they would certainly be killed instantly. In fact, they would've paralyzed and fallen apart on their own before the enemy opened fire.
However, it was still more or less manageable for them to surround the Emperor's Mausoleum and protect their last territory.
The Imperial Guards wer
e protecting the disabled veterans, and the disabled veterans were shouting the names of Emperor Shenwu and Blackstar the Great. It was really a touching scene. What could the fleets and crystal suit legions of the four Kurfürst families do even if they arrived? Massacring those people in broad daylight under the watch of so many eyewitnesses?
The plan on the Spiritual Nexus and the media did not go well either.
There were four groups that provided network services for the Empyreal Terminus Sector. They belonged to the four Kurfürst families. Network was the most critical infrastructure for a modern civilization. The four Kurfürst families naturally did not want to be restrained by other people.
At Dongfang Wang's command, the Dongfang family's service provider immediately cut off the network, and the other two families soon followed too. However, the bases of the Spiritual Nexus that belonged to the Li family had no response at all but still sent the information of the Emperor's Mausoleum to the outside world incessantly.
The media companies were the same.
The four Kurfürst families had all hired a lot of media. One might say that all the "official media companies" of the Imperium were endorsed and monopolized by the four Kurfürst families.
Given the graveness of the matter, the media of the other families naturally did not dare to do anything without the instructions of their superiors.
However, the media under the control of the Li family moved one step in advance and published a lot of shocking news!
Chapter 2270: He Is Crawling Out of His Coffin... |
The high-resolution pictures that were taken from multiple perspectives, and even the panoramic videos from one of the shoulders of the enormous statue of Blackstar the Great, displayed the astounding gathering of a million people. Even if there was no sound, it was already possible for anyone to imagine the roaring tides on the spot.
Such professional ways of shooting could have only been done by the specialists who had worked in the trade for decades.
Or rather, the perspectives of those pictures had been decided even before the crying event took place. For example, the angle from the shoulder of Blackstar the Great's gigantic statue couldn't have been found in a haste.
