In the Third Battle Area of the Imperium of True Human Beings, at the edge of the West Mist Sector, was the No. 223 resource planet that did not have an atmosphere and had an extremely harsh environment.
The West Mist Sector was a small world three billion kilometers in diameter. The star in this place was still in its youth. As a result, the seven planets around the star were all affected by the intense gravitational changes and could not form a dense atmosphere at all. Therefore, there was not a single habitable planet.
The ever-changing gravity and the movement of the earth's crust, the tearing of countless planets, and the exchange of materials caused by the collisions of various meteorites caused quite a few satellites of the West Mist World to contain rich amounts of rare metals and crystals.
The West Mist Sector was the most remote world in the Third Battle Area, and the No. 223 resource planet was the most remote planet in the West Mist Sector.
The place boasted a precious mother lode of "nickel fusion crystals", which could significantly enhance the damage of the cannonballs and even increase the radius of destruction by more than 100%.
Therefore, after the Imperium took back the West Mist Sector from the Holy League, it sent a small fleet to the No. 223 resource planet.
The mission of the fleet was not to defend the No. 223 resource planet in the possible counterattack of the Holy League. The base of the expedition army did not expect that they could do that at all.
They were only responsible for cleaning and reconstructing the mining bases that had been sabotaged by the Holy League in the harsh, desolate worlds as "engineers".
It was the mission of the Ninth Fleet of the Third Battle Area of the expedition army of the Imperium, also known as the "Red Nimbus Fleet".
The Red Nimbus Fleet was a ragtag army and a local armed force. Or to quote the noble families in the capital, it was' a mobster jumbled up by a bunch of bumpkins'. It was the epitome of thousands of ragtag armies.
The Red Nimbus Fleet was from the Red Nimbus Sector, which was not conquered by the Imperium, or to put it more nicely, "joined the Imperium" until five hundred years ago at the end of the Imperium's Great Expansion Era.
That was because, at that time, the ruler of the Red Nimbus Sector wisely chose to surrender when faced with the overwhelming army of the Imperium. Also, the Red Nimbus Sector was a barren land with extremely poor resources. There was nothing of value except for the billions of hungry people. Therefore, the Imperium generously granted the Red Nimbus Sector a considerable degree of autonomy as long as the Red Nimbus Sector paid taxes and soldiers regularly and obeyed the orders of the Emperor and the Council of Elders when the Imperium required them to attack the enemy together with the Imperium.
Despite such "generosity" and "mercy", for the people of the Red Nimbus Sector and even the Immortal Cultivators, life in the past five hundred years was still extremely difficult.
The taxes of the Imperium were heavier and heavier every day. Other than the taxes that were directly paid to the court, the four Kurfürst families were also draining the Imperium with all kinds of "fees" and "special taxes" under all kinds of pretexts.
The magical equipment and the industrial products produced incessantly on the assembly lines from the dozens of highly-developed industrial worlds at the center of the cosmos flowed into the Red Nimbus Sector like tides, completely destroying the industry system of the Red Nimbus Sector that was rough and underdeveloped but relatively independent in the beginning. The Red Nimbus Sector was tied to the bottom of the chain of interests of the noble families, reducing it to an insignificant component on the assembly line.
Five hundred years ago, although the technologies were relatively underdeveloped, the Red Nimbus Sector could still produce Crystal Suits, armed shuttles, and even starships on their own. They could even produce one or two of the simplest space jump units.
However, today, on the surface, the magical equipment that the people of the Red Nimbus Sector used was more delicate, glamorous, and powerful, but none of the Crystal Suit was the Red Nimbus Sector's own brand anymore. All the Crystal Suit factories of the Red Nimbus Sector had been acquired by the sects under the four Kurfürst families. The "outdated" assembly lines were all smashed and replaced with brand-new assembly lines that were "generously donated" by the noble families.
Naturally, the core technologies of the assembly lines were all in the hands of the noble families at the center of the cosmos. It was impossible for the people of the Red Nimbus Sector to learn them.
Furthermore, some of the factories could not produce a full Crystal Suit anymore. They could only produce 5% of the components on the Crystal Suit, and the other 95% had to be shipped from the center of the cosmos and assembled on the spot.
As a result, the independent industrial system of the Red Nimbus Sector completely collapsed, and all the bargaining rights were lost. The nobles and the noble families at the center of the cosmos clutched their throats and reduced them to a place of magical equipment and resources.
What was even more pathetic was that, except for manpower, the Red Nimbus Sector did not have any resources that were abundant enough to supply the entire Imperium.
The price of labor in this place, on the other hand, was suppressed to an appalling level. According to the lords from the center of the cosmos, it was because the price of labor in the Red Nimbus Sector was cheap and the workers were honest and hardworking that the magical equipment factories were established in this place. Otherwise, the lords could've simply left and established factories in other Sectors. They could've even replaced all the human workers with spiritual puppets.
They were here to feed the workers. They were here to do charity for the compatriots of the Imperium!
While they were bragging shamelessly, the arrogant lords had completely forgotten that it was exactly because they had crushed the local sects and magical equipment factories of the Red Nimbus Sector with all kinds of sordid and shameless tricks during the hundred years of dumping, that billions of workers were left without food or shelter.
However, the lords were not saying that for nothing but sitting in the bridge of a heavy cruiser. Even when they landed on the ground, an entire legion of Crystal Suit was around to "protect the factory". What could the workers of the Red Nimbus Sector do?
A strong worker of the Red Nimbus Sector worked hard for a year in a magical equipment factory under the banner of the four Kurfürst families, vomiting blood and even having his lungs atrophied, but he still could not feed his family and had to send his wife and daughter to the entertainment clubs at the center of the cosmos to "work" for the noble families at the center of the cosmos, supporting his family with the money that was full of humiliation and stink. Such tragedies were not uncommon in the Red Nimbus Sector in the past hundreds of years.
The noble families at the center of the cosmos even extended their hands to the agriculture of the Red Nimbus Sector, replacing the local rice and wheat of the Red Nimbus Sector with "spiritual rice" and "spiritual wheat" that had been genetically modified through secret techniques and other alien crops.
It was because those "spiritual rice" and "spiritual wheat" had a high yield, a great taste, and a lot of nutrition and calories. In the beginning, the food groups under the control of the four Kurfürst families even offered high subsidies so that the workers who worked hard in the factories for a meager wage could only afford the food that they provided.
Therefore, the foreign food groups expanded very quickly in the Red Nimbus Sector. In only a hundred years, they had absorbed the small and medium-sized food groups of the Red Nimbus Sector itself and purchased the land from the peasants, exactly like what they did to the magical equipment industrial system of the Red Nimbus Sector a hundred years ago.
The Red Nimbus Sector was "autonomous", but it was still a part of the Imperium after all. It was impossible to establish independent laws to stop the outsiders from conquering the cities and territories. They could only watch the foreign food groups dominate the world.
After most of the land and the sources of seeds were controlled by the foreign food groups, those guys finally revealed their intentions. Waving the blades of law, they changed the genes of the spiritual rice and the spiritual wheat with secret techniques so that all the seeds could only be harvested once but could not be sown again.
In other words, the Red Nimbus Sector had lost all the seeds of its crops. If they needed to be sown, they could only purchase them from the foreign food groups incessantly.
Even though the people of the Red Nimbus Sector intended to develop their own excellent seeds through secret experiments, they discovered, to their surprise, that the "alien cash crops" that the foreign food groups offered to them in the past for them to grow on a large scale and buy back the fruits at a high price could significantly change the composition of the soil!
After being polluted by the alien cash crops for a hundred years, the most fertile soil of the Red Nimbus Sector was only suitable for the seeds of the foreign food groups. Other seeds would only wither on a large scale even if they sprouted after being sown.
At that time, when the outsiders purchased the sour and bitter "cash crops" from them at a high price and claimed that the rich people at the center of the cosmos liked the taste best, the people of the Red Nimbus Sector even burst into laughter at the weirdness of the rich people at the center of the cosmos.
Today, the people of the Red Nimbus Sector finally realized what the "bitter fruit" tasted like as if they had just woken up from a dream.
What the rich people at the center of the cosmos tasted, however, was not the juice of the fruit but the taste of their blood.
The realization came too late.
From industry to agriculture to the entire training system of the Red Nimbus Sector, everything had been invaded and sabotaged by the outsiders from the center of the cosmos. Everything had fallen into their hands.
Even though the Sector Master of the Red Nimbus Sector still had the nominal "autonomy", what was the point?
It was even worse than direct invasion.
After direct invasion, a government was bound to be established, which was obliged to govern and protect the local people.
But now, everything was economic, done by the sects of the populace. They swallowed up all of the benefits, while all of the 'obligations' still fell on Scarlet Cloud World's autonomous government, on the heads of those dumbstruck Sector Masters.
The life and death of the people of the Red Nimbus Sector did not concern the center of the cosmos at all. They only cared about the "brutality and exploitation" of the local Sector Master. The best that could happen was that the four Kurfürst families would leak some of the leftovers as relief assets when the situation became unbearable. Nothing more.
The ordinary people of the Scarlet Cloud World lived this kind of life where they did not have enough to eat, where they did not know if they would live to see tomorrow, where they struggled on the edge of life and death.
The Immortal Cultivators of the Red Nimbus Sector, on the other hand, were no better than the ordinary people.
In the past, when they boasted their own industry and agriculture system, the Red Nimbus Sector required the support of tremendous Immortal Cultivators. The Immortal Cultivators enjoyed a high position and enjoyed tremendous benefits. They were the unquestionable local tyrants.
But right now, the surging tides of capital and technology from the outside crushed the dignity and dreams of the local Immortal Cultivators first.
When their own sects were crushed by the foreign conglomerates, they had to swallow their pride and work for the foreign conglomerates. But even if they fought loyally for the rest of their lives, and even if their offspring worked for the foreign conglomerates for generations, they would still be bumpkins in the eyes of the foreign conglomerates. They would never be able to enter the core management of the conglomerates, which were always parachuted from the center of the cosmos!
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