"God of War" Lei Chenghu was quite right about one thing.
After human beings explored the three-dimensional universe in the form of "space jumps" and conquered thousands of Sectors and tens of thousands of resource planets, "attack" was always a hundred times simpler than "defense" in any universal war.
Lei Chenghu was not an enemy from the outside world. He was a great commander in the Imperium's army who had been on the battlefield for two hundred years. It was also possible that he had the help of the mysterious forces from the capital. He knew the navigation maps, the distribution of troops, and the jump coordinates of the various Sectors of the Imperium like the back of his hand.
He could choose the target of his attack at will and appear in any space zone out of nowhere.
However, it was impossible for the defenders to distribute all their troops to every Sector and every planet equally, because they would only be crushed one by one. Therefore, they could only focus on the targets.
The attackers had almost infinite initiative in attack. What limited them was resources.
It was true that the attackers could choose infinite targets in the first jump attack, but the choice and the battle that followed would consume all the fuel and ammunition that they had.
If they could not achieve a glorious result in the first battle, they would not be able to launch a second jump and would be trapped on the burning battlefield alive.
Such an attack and defense was somewhat like a duel between two gunmen who were holding flintlocks.
The flintlocks could only be fired once. It was certainly advantageous to fire first, but if they missed the target, all their hopes would be gone.
Therefore, predicting the first target of the Thunder Fleet became the most important task for the "latecomers".
When the words "Honor the Majesty and settle the rebellions" spread out to every corner of the capital and even the ears of every person in the Council of Elders, Lei Chenghu's target was already obvious.
Yes. For the angry soldiers in the frontline and the interest groups in the remote and small Sectors who had been wronged, was there a better place for a riot than the capital?
The "rebels" that had been gathered in a hurry in the Third Battle Area were naturally unable to conquer the capital, theoretically speaking.
However, anything was possible in a war. Didn't Wuying Qi, the border general of the Star Ocean Republic in the past, march to the capital in a similar decapitation strategy, control the parliament, slaughter the representatives, and eventually usurp the entire country?
The lesson of the founding emperors was so clear that the Council of Elders couldn't help but be scared that the Council of Elders today would become the parliament of the Republic a thousand years ago if the same thing happened again.
Ghostly rumors could be heard on the streets and even in the depths of the underground crevices.
Many people knew that the flags of the rebels had been raised high everywhere in the sea of stars and were about to sweep across the capital. Even if they could not conquer the capital, they would smash the heart of the sea of stars into smithereens.
The intelligence from various channels that were more confidential, on the other hand, stated with certainty that the investigation on the incident of the Blood Oath Alliance a while ago had raised intense dissatisfaction from various parties. Right now, many forces in the capital other than the four Kurfürst families had secretly joined the rebels, or rather, the "reformists".
As soon as Lei Chenghu's fleet appeared at the edge of the Empyreal Terminus Sector, those forces would rise up and cooperate with the Thunder Fleet to take down the capital!
The intelligence systems of the four Kurfürst families were functioning crazily at ten times the speed to search for the source of the rumors. A lot of stealthy guys were indeed caught. They even cracked quite a few secret bureaus of the reformists.
The result of the interrogation of the members of the reformists was a piece of shocking news.
The reformists led by Queen Li Linghai had been operating in the capital for decades and infiltrated the critical nodes of the capital. The seemingly impenetrable defense system was already riddled with holes.
The shocking intelligence was like the poisoned dagger that had been stabbed into the throats of the elders brutally.
The elders had long been wary of Li Linghai's ambitions, but however wary they were, they only considered her to be involved in "palace politics". They did not expect that she would raise a powerful rebel army outside of the capital through such crazy approaches.
Judging from Queen Li Linghai's infiltration in the capital and the magnificent combat ability of the Thunder Fleet, if the reformists were to march at the capital without considering the consequences, it was at least twenty to thirty percent likely that they could occupy part of the ground of the capital planet.
If the two parties really fought on the ground of the capital and split the heart of the Imperium into halves, the thousand-year Imperium would be ruined.
The elders from the four Kurfürst families were not necessarily loyal to and passionate about the word "Imperium". Many ambitious guys had even imagined more than once that, if the Imperium did fall apart, the twenty or so Sectors under their control would be independent, and they would be able to be emperors themselves. Wouldn't that be a great feeling?
However, those big shots in the Yuanying and the Divinity Transformation Stage boasted high computational ability and rationality. They knew that "Imperium of True Human Beings" was the "greatest common divisor" of all the complicated interest groups.
The Imperium might be terrible and annoying, but without the Imperium, the hundreds of Sectors would certainly become loose sand again and enter a new "warring states in the sea of stars" that was even crueler than the past.
They would certainly attack and kill each other until everybody was exhausted and wounded and destroyed by the Holy League one after another.
Since none of the four Kurfürst families were confident to swallow the entire universe, the Imperium would become an existence that they had to defend.
To defend the Imperium, nothing must happen to the capital. Any large-scale war that took place in the capital would certainly raise a series of unpredictable chain reactions. Because of the enhancement of the butterfly effect, it would evolve into a devastating storm that would sweep across the entire Imperium!
"The rebels must not be allowed to break into the atmosphere of the capital planet!"
"The ambitions of the Thunder Fleet and the reformists must be killed in the cold space at the edge of the Empyreal Terminus Sector!"
It was the unanimous demand of the elders.
To achieve their purpose, the military machines of the four Kurfürst families were all functioning in the most violent manner.
A month ago, when the incident of the Blood Oath Alliance took place, the four Kurfürst families had already dispatched countless elite warships of their families to jump to the capital to control the situation.
Today, at the cost of fuel and starships, they ordered more elites from the family territory to arrive at the Empyreal Terminus Sector as quickly as possible to replace the defenders whose loyalty was very questionable.
In only twenty-four hours, more than fifteen fleets had jumped to the capital one after another.
Even the capital of the Imperium, which was best known for the dense sailing routes and the incessant starships that came and went, barely received the arrival of so many super warships at the same time. The ripples that were spreading out from the four-dimensional space were like the tides of an ocean and could not be calmed down for a long time.
It was very ironic that both the "rebels" and the "rebels" of the reformists and the elites of the four Kurfürst families were summoned for the same reason — to defend the wise, invincible, and infinitely great emperor!
With the reinforcements of fifteen fleets, plus the dozen fleets that had been stationed in the capital before, the terrifying number of fleets that were scattered in the capital planet had reached almost thirty.
The best troops of the Imperium of True Human Beings, except for the major battle zones in the frontline, had all been gathered in the capital, waiting for the arrival of the Thunder Fleet in silence.
The rebel army would definitely come. All the elders firmly believed this.
Because the rebels did not have bases in the rear, the resources could only sustain the daily consumption of the fleets for a month at best.
With every passing day, the scales of victory would be tilted to the four Kurfürst families. In the competition of willpower, the first to collapse would be Li Linghai, Lei Chenghu, and the so-called "reformists"!
However —
…
In the second quadrant of the Imperium of True Human Beings, the Divine Rain Planet of the Divine Rain Sector, one of the four Kurfürst families, was the core territory of the Li family.
It was a planet with abundant rainwater and resources, which was very suitable for the growth of all kinds of crops.
What was even rarer was that the mother lodes of rare crystals and metals were hidden below the ground of the planet, forming a rarely-seen "industrial and agricultural planet". It was highly rated among all the planets in the Imperium.
Naturally, the Li family had built continuous farms and mines of spiritual energy and crystals around the Divine Rain Planet. They had also developed a splendid metropolis that could accommodate tens of billions of people. They had also built an enormous space dock on the orbit of the Divine Rain Planet, which could produce almost all the warships below heavy destroyers.
In short, it was one of the most important core worlds of the Li family. It was even responsible for the transportation of resources to the few Sectors nearby.
It could be seen from the three enormous space gates that were almost a thousand kilometers long at the periphery of the orbit of the Divine Rain Planet.
The three space gates were like three enormous lighthouses in an equilateral triangle. The brilliance that they unleashed was enough to rip apart the four-dimensional space and spread across the entire Imperium, guiding the starships from various directions of the Imperium to jump to the Divine Rain Planet incessantly.
On the No. 3 space gate of the Divine Rain Planet …
In the past twenty-four hours, too many fleets from various worlds of the Li family had jumped to the Divine Rain Sector to refill their fuel and ammunitions before they jumped to the capital. Even the staff of the three space gates had exhausted their life and soul to navigate crazily.
At this moment, the emergency mobilization had come to an end. Everybody's nerves were more or less relaxed. Many people were sleeping in the messy operations room. Even those who were still at their posts were exhausted. Their eyelids were fighting nonstop, and they could not raise their spirits no matter how their superiors scolded them. Occasionally, some of the guys who were refreshed with drugs were hiding in a corner weirdly, whispering to each other about the reformists who suddenly jumped out of the darkness and the great show that was about to take place in the capital.
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