He was not present at the scene, so it was difficult to judge the situation.
Regardless, this was an opportunity to try.
"You decide, and strictly guard against feigned surrender."
Jiang Ye decided to be bold and entrusted everything to Che Zhen.
...
Two days later.
Che Zhen arrived at Jiang Ye Star with the surrendering enemy commander to meet the general in his office.
The enemy commander was named Diao Zi, a short-haired girl with a pretty face, but she always frowned, appearing unhappy.
"Greetings, Commander!" Diao Zi snapped her boots together, stood at attention, and saluted.
"Please sit, are you all settled?" Jiang Ye asked.
"We're still working at the original base, but we've changed sides." Diao Zi sat down, clearly a little nervous.
"She made a great contribution, providing me with the location, scale, personnel list, passwords, and mine locations of the Egg Star base," Che Zhen said. "Her subordinates are also very reliable, doing what they should be doing."
"It's not a feigned surrender, it's a genuine one." Diao Zi's eyes were melancholic. "We request that our citizenship applications be approved as soon as possible."
"Before approving your citizenship applications, I need to understand some things," Jiang Ye said.
Diao Zi immediately adopted an expression of attentive listening, appearing quite submissive.
"Why did you surrender?"
"I felt that the Egg Star forces were no longer suitable to remain in, and the Jiang Ye Star forces are quite good, so I surrendered," Diao Zi said. "My subordinates all agreed; they've wanted to leave for a long time."
"What do you mean by 'no longer suitable to remain in'?"
"The salaries of the Egg Star forces are only one-fifth of ours. Dangerous missions that could be done by mechanical soldiers are assigned to living people to save money. The atmosphere is also terrible; some divisions like to beat up new recruits. In my former division, over forty new recruits were beaten to death last year, all with table legs studded with nails. They didn't report the deaths, and they ate up the quotas. Theoretically, a division should have ten thousand people, but many divisions only have four or five thousand, pocketing the salaries."
"There are factions everywhere, backstabbing each other, warlords are rampant. Take the development of Birong Star for instance. Several bases were supposed to support me, but they all ostracized me and refused to provide support. They even mocked me on the communication channel."
"There are many other annoyances. I couldn't stand it anymore, so I surrendered," Diao Zi said indignantly. "Besides, I'm not an Egg Star native; I'm just an immigrant. I don't have any particular loyalty. Although Egg Star's economic scale is huge, life there is quite miserable. The apartment complex where I lived had an organ market across the street, where many poor people went to sell their organs. There's nothing worth cherishing about such a hometown."
Jiang Ye was surprised.
There were such hidden secrets.
"Are there any more Egg Star troops stationed on Birong Star who could defect?" Jiang Ye asked.
"Yes, my fiancé's unit. He's also wanted to leave for a long time and doesn't know where to go. I contacted him yesterday and persuaded him to come along, but he..."
Diao Zi suddenly stopped speaking, her expression awkward.
"What did he say?" Jiang Ye asked.
"He... he said that Jiang Ye Star is too small and a bit poor," Diao Zi coughed dryly.
Che Zhen looked embarrassed. How could she say that directly?
"It's not as rich as Egg Star now, but you have to look at the long term," Jiang Ye said calmly. "How many years has Jiang Ye Star been developing? In another ten years, it will definitely surpass Egg Star."
"Moreover, who cares which planet is rich? Of course, you go where the salary is higher. Egg Star has money, but they don't give it to you, so what's the point?" Jiang Ye said. "You should try to persuade your fiancé properly, tell him to abandon the darkness and embrace the light, and also, don't be a scumbag."
"Yes!" Diao Zi nodded vigorously.
Jiang Ye's words hit home. She had been very angry these past two days.
She had already defected. Why didn't that damned man follow her? How could they get married if they weren't together?
"Alright, have Che Zhen arrange a job for you later," Jiang Ye waved his hand.
Diao Zi and Che Zhen immediately stood up, saluted, and left.
Then, there was a knock on the office door.
"Come in!"
The sound of high heels clicking, Xu Yan entered.
Jiang Ye was slightly taken aback.
She was dressed very beautifully today, in a white tight-fitting dress, her long white legs and figure perfectly outlined.
She had also styled her hair, making it fluffy and flowing, exuding a charming and sexy aura.
"I'm here to report on my work," Xu Yan sat down confidently and smiled.
"You've worked hard, being gone for so long."
"What's so hard about it? I've made a lot of money," Xu Yan couldn't help but laugh.
Jiang Ye's expression was subtle. He knew how much this female boss had earned, after all, it was his money.
"Now there's good news and bad news," Xu Yan took out her phone, unlocked it, and handed it to Jiang Ye. "I've taken many photos of Birong Star in my album. You can take a look first."
Jiang Ye took the phone, feeling a peculiar sensation. Mobile phones involved a lot of privacy, and generally, one wouldn't show them to people they didn't trust completely. Xu Yan had just handed it over.
Upon opening the gallery, several albums immediately appeared.
[Selfies] [Private] [Work] [Screenshots] [Birong Star]
Jiang Ye tapped on the [Birong Star] album.
There were over five thousand photos. If one didn't know better, they might think Xu Yan was a photographer gathering material.
The mountains covered with mining machines, newly smelted crimson steel bars, mechanical soldier miners covered in yellow dust.
The planting greenhouses covering over a hundred acres, with various crops growing lushly.
The flapping machines, blackened by the rain, and soldiers loading high-explosive bombs onto the aircraft.
The newly built military base, with toilets so clean and white you could sleep in them, a spacious dining hall, and some soldiers eating breakfast, dipping fried dough sticks into frothy soy milk.
The Mi'er Forest being engulfed by flames, green vines burned black, detaching from the trunks and falling to the ground like shed snake skins, white and curled.
Xu Yan's phone had good performance, and the photos were around six hundred megapixels, similar to human vision, with all details clearly discernible.
Jiang Ye handed the phone back to her. "It looks quite good. Tell me the good news and the bad news separately."
"We've taken over a military base and a power station from Egg Star. The military base isn't valuable, but that power station is quite large, capable of supplying a city of one hundred thousand people. Egg Star must have had long-term plans, but their long-term plan was aborted before it could be implemented," Xu Yan said. "We haven't reached the territorial edge yet, but the climate has already changed. Recently, we built another 180 acres of greenhouses, which have just completed their first harvest. We have too much produce to eat."
"You can build a granary and store it for future needs," Jiang Ye said.
"We're already building it. I didn't use your money. Wei Hongyang allocated a small mine to me, and the funds are coming from the mine," Xu Yan said. "The first phase of the project involves building four large underground granaries that can be filled with preservative gas and sterilized regularly. Fresh fruits and vegetables can be preserved for one to two years, and dry food can last from when Li Yuan raised his army to when Zhao Kuangyin donned the yellow robe."
Jiang Ye nodded with satisfaction.
Food reserves were crucial, as the development of Birong Star required self-sufficiency.
Food was very cheap, so using spaceships for inter-stellar transportation every day would be very wasteful. Wouldn't it be better to use the expensive transportation capacity to carry valuable goods?
"We are currently opening six mines simultaneously, and we have identified twenty-four mines, but we lack manpower and excavators, as well as smelting equipment and factories. Opening too many mines is meaningless," Xu Yan continued to explain.