Jiang Ye and Weng Zimo talked for over three hours.
After the conversation, Weng Zimo received his orders and left to begin contacting larger warlord factions on Wheeler Star.
Jiang Ye was not idle either, and the next day he boarded a warship and headed for the Exile Star.
The first thing he did upon arriving at the Exile Star was, of course, to go home and dote on his beloved wife.
Both Jiang Ye and Cen Yemeng felt that their doting was a waste of time and affected their work progress, but they couldn't help themselves every time they met. It was like two magnets, snapping together, impossible to avoid.
After the doting, it was time for serious business.
Inspecting the military factories!
Jiang Ye held intensive talks with the directors of various military factories on the Exile Star, privately instructing them that there might be large orders soon and that the factories should prepare in advance, including recalling certain investment funds, purchasing raw materials at low prices for stockpiling, and preparing for production line expansion.
Jiang Ye also met privately with Huang Bingyan, the Minister of War on the Exile Star, and appointed her as the overall person in charge of military hardware supply for Wheeler Star, coordinating the timely delivery of goods from various military factories.
Huang Bingyan was deeply moved. This was, after all, a significant responsibility and a testament to Jiang Ye's trust in her.
Although Jiang Ye now possessed four major planets: Jiang Ye Star, Birong Star, Exile Star, and Spiral Star, as well as two territories: Meteorite Star and the Xinke Asteroid Belt.
After careful consideration, Jiang Ye decided to entrust the military hardware orders for Wheeler Star to the Exile Star, showing favoritism to this planet.
The Exile Star's location was special, on the edge of the Galactic Empire. This opportunity could be used to vigorously develop the Exile Star's military industrial enterprises, which would also facilitate future military hardware exports.
After all, planets on the edge of the Galactic Empire bore varying degrees of defense pressure, and strange alien species could appear from the deep dark universe at any moment, leading to immediate conflict. The military hardware market had infinite prospects.
The military factories that Jiang Ye focused on inspecting were mostly traditional ones.
For example, factories processing traditional firearms and ammunition, such as machine guns, submachine guns, assault rifles, pistols for individual soldiers, as well as mortars, howitzers, rocket launchers, rocket-propelled grenade launchers, and landmines.
More advanced were the mecha factories. Jiang Ye specifically instructed the engineers to begin designing in advance, stating that they should not sell overly advanced models to Wheeler Star, but only primitive models with inferior performance, and to reduce costs through design as much as possible to earn more money.
There were also car factories, armored vehicle factories, drone factories, warship factories, and so on. Jiang Ye inspected almost all of them.
Some factories Jiang Ye had never even heard of, and they looked unremarkable from the outside, but upon entering, they were a different world, with outrageously large scales and outrageously advanced equipment.
Listening to the data reported by the factory directors, the declared output was 400,000 artillery shells per month, while the concealed output was 17 million artillery shells per month. The vast majority of these goods were sold to certain interstellar arms dealers for exorbitant profits.
Of course, the concealment was external, mainly to evade production scale restrictions imposed by relevant industry associations. The money earned was still submitted.
Many similar factories had considerable concealed production. Normal military hardware, whether the projectile or the outer packaging, had information markings such as "Made in Exile Star" or at least the industry code of Exile Star.
However, the concealed military hardware were all "three no" products: no "Made in Exile Star," no Exile Star code, and sometimes even bore the codes of other planets, often garbled sequences intended to confuse.
These "three no" military hardware were packed and sold to certain interstellar arms dealers, who then transferred them to smaller arms dealers. These smaller dealers traveled across the universe in spaceships, dumping the goods onto various planets.
The armed forces of the receiving planets had no idea where the weapons in their hands were manufactured. Occasionally, if there was a code, it would yield no results upon inquiry, or point to a ghost planet long since depopulated.
Jiang Ye also specifically examined the internal documents of the factories and discovered that a lot of goods were actually going to his father-in-law.
Jiang Ye's first reaction was that it was inappropriate.
But upon closer thought, there was nothing inappropriate about it.
Exile Star was managed by his wife, so it was natural for the military hardware produced here to be secretly sold by his wife to her father.
And it wasn't free goods; his father-in-law paid generously for each batch of goods. These funds ultimately ended up on Jiang Ye's accounts and were then spent with Jiang Ye's signature. In short, the entire process was a case of keeping the benefits within the family.
As for the concealed production, it was concealed from outsiders. Cen Yemeng had no intention of hiding anything from her husband, and Jiang Ye had access to these factory data files at any time.
In short, this tour of the military factories left Jiang Ye dumbfounded.
Jiang Ye had a feeling that the wider the territory he controlled, the larger the population, and the greater the economic scale, the more situations he would be unable to see.
Jiang Ye could see the annual profit reports of the military hardware business, and where each military factory was located, but that was just a data point on paper, very abstract.
In places he had never been, military factories like these operated day and night, opening in droves, growing like grass after a spring rain.
Each military factory had a large number of workers whose fates were tied to the factory. They toiled, lived, and experienced all sorts of stories, both cliché and absurd, like isolated, independent small worlds.
While Jiang Ye slept, countless small worlds were operating on each planet. While Jiang Ye worked, countless small worlds continued to operate, but Jiang Ye did not know what each small world was specifically like or what had happened there.
This feeling was quite peculiar.
Before leaving Exile Star, Jiang Ye went to dote on his beloved wife again.
While doting, Jiang Ye shared this feeling with Cen Yemeng.
Cen Yemeng smiled, "I've had this feeling for a long time. Husband, let me recommend an ancient book to you, "Invisible Cities" by Calvino."
"What is it about?" Jiang Ye asked.
"The entire book is fictional, depicting conversations between Marco Polo and Kublai Khan, mainly discussing the various cities within the empire."
"In ancient times, there was no remote communication system, no real-time data, yet Kublai Khan established an extremely vast empire with his horse cavalry. The empire's territory was so vast that it exceeded the emperor's imagined boundaries," Cen Yemeng said. "There were some cities that the emperor would never be able to see with his own eyes, nor had he even heard of them, yet the emperor ruled over those cities."
Jiang Ye pondered for a long time, "Wife, you've precisely described my feeling. I now have so many planets, and on these planets, there are many places I may never visit, many place names that are completely unfamiliar to me, yet I rule over them."
"Thinking about it is almost magically absurd. I, a mortal being, not some immortal capable of moving mountains and filling seas, can actually rule so many planets." Jiang Ye's expression was complex. "The Galactic Empire is the same. Civilizations of higher-dimensional beings rule countless star systems. I haven't seen those higher-dimensional beings, yet I obey them. They are unaware of my existence, yet they can command me. The most miraculous thing is that such a structure can develop effectively, allowing countless beings to expand beyond the Milky Way."
"So the truth is, it's not your own strength that rules these planets," Cen Yemeng smiled. "Just as you often say in your speeches, Jiang Ye Star is the Jiang Ye Star people's Jiang Ye Star, and Birong Star is the Birong Star people's Birong Star. It's just that the people of Jiang Ye Star and Birong Star believe in you, so you are the head of the planet."
"The reason why humans or other alien civilizations can stand out among all beings is that we, as higher species, can believe in things that are unseen and intangible, thus uniting us."