The police force on Ghost Star was exceptionally competent, owing to its incredibly high crime rate and frequent major cases. Even the temporary staff at a small police station were seasoned and courageous. On the very day Jiang Ye's team arrived, a large-scale clash between police and criminals erupted in the planet's capital city. The officers here truly worked with their lives on the line. While officers on other planets might spend their days helping elderly ladies find lost pet cats, Ghost Star officers dealt with stray bullets and faced death daily.
Shao Wan's team was spoiled for choice here, recruiting eighty people in total. Che Zhen and Tang Hanliu, however, didn't recruit anyone.
The third stop was Chinese Medicine Star, a planet with a population of only two hundred million, yet it was a renowned wealthy planet. Its per capita annual income was a staggering 1.2 million yuan, earning it the title of a con artist's paradise, where a single fraud case could involve tens of millions of yuan.
Chinese Medicine Star had only ten cities, all of which were space cities—massive, shiny white disc-shaped structures floating in the planet's orbit.
The entire landmass of the planet was dedicated to cultivating various traditional Chinese medicinal herbs.
Jiang Ye recalled visiting a traditional Chinese medicine shop as a child and asking the old doctor how many types of Chinese medicinal herbs there were in the world. The old doctor's answer was that there were fewer than eight hundred commonly used ones, and less than nine thousand in total.
The Chinese Medicine Star, however, cultivated as many as forty-eight thousand varieties of medicinal herbs.
Some varieties were developed through genetic engineering, but most were alien plants.
Alien plants were actually easy to identify; for instance, giant grasses with leaves ten meters high were clearly alien.
Among them, some herbs had astonishing medicinal effects, including an alien moss named Qs87110, which could cure late-stage cancer with just one bowl of its decoction.
This moss had evolved for hundreds of thousands of years on a few planets on the outermost edge of the Milky Way's spiral arms. This meant it existed long before human civilization. However, due to technological and distance limitations, this miraculous herb had remained unknown.
Although Jiang Ye knew the thought was futile, he couldn't help but wonder if human technology had advanced faster and discovered these alien herbs earlier, perhaps hundreds of billions fewer people would have died in hospitals.
All the medicinal herb fields were equipped with automated irrigation systems and robots of various models. The residents of Chinese Medicine Star only needed to work for half an hour each day, checking the growth of the fields from their home computers and issuing simple commands to the robotic farmers. During the harvest season, they could lie back and reap immense profits.
Tang Hanliu recruited over thirty people from Chinese Medicine Star, all experienced media professionals. The reason these individuals were willing to leave the affluent Chinese Medicine Star was that the planet offered little newsworthy content due to its extreme wealth and tranquility. Jiang Ye Star, as a newly developing planet, was undergoing significant social changes with a constant influx of people, inevitably creating abundant material for reporting.
The fourth stop was Giant Star.
Giant Star, as its name suggested, was a super massive planet with a surface area twenty times that of Jiang Ye Star!
The planet's gravity was originally more than ten times that of Earth, but its core was entirely composed of rare earth minerals, which were rapidly mined by an alien race, turning it into a hollow planet. Its gravity had coincidentally dropped to a habitable range.
After geological surveys, it was discovered that although the planet was hollow, its overall structure remained relatively stable, maintaining a fragile balance and not collapsing for the time being. Consequently, many humans migrated there to settle and cultivate the land.
As the ground beneath their feet was fragile, the entire planet prohibited weapons with a yield of five thousand tons or more, as well as super-engineering projects and extensive mining.
The result was that the entire planet was almost in a state of savagery.
There were no large cities, but villages, towns, and small cities were everywhere. Farmland covered almost the entire planet, along with production facilities like ranches and small factories.
In years of favorable weather, the inhabitants were all amiable and kind.
However, during droughts, they would cover their faces with cloth and go out to rob. Armed with repeating rifles, they would form bandit groups, gathering in the mountains.
When floods occurred, they would all climb trees, waiting with long hooks. Various items would soon float on the water: dead bodies, livestock, poultry, wooden planks, boxes...
The primary reason for visiting Giant Star was to recruit military officers. Several local forces had been striving to unify the planet and establish order, engaging in large and small battles for over a decade. Although the unification of Giant Star was still a distant prospect, a large number of experienced and battle-hardened officers had emerged.
Che Zhen spent several days selecting and recruited fifty people.
The fifth stop was Datong Star. Its name suggested a harmonious planet of "great unity," but in reality, it was anything but.
Datong Star had a total population of 32 billion and an army of fifty million, with forty million stationed at alien bases. This did not include over 4 billion mechanical soldiers and automated intelligent weapons of various models.
When Jiang Ye's team arrived, Datong Star's extraterritorial forces were simultaneously engaged in six planetary wars: four against remnants of the Meer, and two against small-scale alien races. This state of multi-front, high-intensity warfare had been the norm for the planet over the past fifty years.
External aggression and expansion, internal oppression of civilians, and a paramount focus on money and military might were Datong Star's development model.
Currently, Datong Star possessed twenty-three subordinate planets, more than half of which were acquired through aggression.
Aggression against human planets was naturally not permitted, so their conquests were exclusively of alien races.
These alien races often had lower technological levels and were not permitted to join the Galactic Empire. Datong Star's military would then engage in rampant slaughter, utilizing various weapons for extermination. After complete annihilation, they would occupy the territory.
Subsequently, they would release war reports to attract massive investment from the entire galaxy, quickly amassing wealth. This money was then rapidly converted into military expenditure, fueling further aggression against the next planet. Simultaneously, various military technology laboratories sprang up like mushrooms, continuously producing more efficient killing machines and reducing war costs.
Jiang Ye couldn't quite tell if this was a vicious cycle or a virtuous one.
There was certainly a bubble, but as long as the aggression continued, the bubble wouldn't burst.
The Galactic Empire's military had repeatedly warned Datong Star to cease its large-scale extermination operations against alien races. However, these were merely warnings, with no substantive sanctions yet imposed.
Jiang Ye also couldn't ascertain whether this model was tacitly approved, if there were deep, dark dealings behind the scenes, or if the Galactic Empire simply hadn't had the time to address such chaos.
However, the current prosperity of Datong Star was quite astonishing. Skyscrapers in its major cities pierced the heavens, and luxury spacecraft were as dense as mosquitoes on a summer prairie.
This was also the last stop of Jiang Ye's trip.
They spent ten days on Datong Star, yielding significant results.
Che Zhen recruited 160 officers.
Shao Wan recruited 210 police officers.
Tang Hanliu recruited 300 media experts, some of whom were even weaponized, having military service experience, and their work involved information warfare and psychological warfare. These individuals could be appointed to positions in military academies or media universities.
The original spaceship could no longer accommodate so many people, so Jiang Ye temporarily rented a giant spaceship and, along with a large group of faculty members, returned to Jiang Ye Star.