Chapter 1 Empire's Exploration

The empire's exploration method advanced step by step, steadily expanding. Currently, the exploration forces had just entered two star clusters and were beginning their exploration from the border star systems.

In a border star system of the Guangchen Star Cluster, a small exploration fleet warped into the vicinity of a lush, green planet. The warship's outer armor was engraved with the emblem of an empire-affiliated star system-level civilization, responsible for exploring this nearby region. This planet was their target.

"Warp complete, arrived at destination, warp engine cooling down."

"Planetary environment probe deployed, analyzing planetary environment and resource distribution."

"Life monitoring device activated, scanning the target planet for signs of life."

In the command room of the flagship, numerous ship crew members were busily operating various devices, while the captain paced back and forth, awaiting the results of the detection.

*Shua*—

At that moment, the door opened, and a man clad in heavy mechanical combat armor entered, his gait displaying the posture of a soldier.

The captain turned his head, nodded in greeting, and asked, "Captain Kleeber, what's the matter?"

"I'm just taking a look." The man called Kleeber replied expressionlessly, his tone somewhat impatient.

This person was one of the Calamity Grades of this affiliated civilization. He accompanied the exploration team to provide armed security.

However, it was obvious that the chances of encountering an enemy worthy of his attention while exploring the Shattered Star Ring were too small. Kleeber's presence was more as insurance. He had nothing to do most of the time, so he was naturally unwilling to carry out this task, which he saw as a waste of his training time.

After waiting for a while, the monitoring results came out and were displayed on the virtual main screen in the command room.

"Report, Captain, environmental parameters have been read. This is a habitable planet with relatively abundant resources. We have also discovered signs of life. We have scanned 730,000 species, one of which is an intelligent life form. They have formed settlements on the surface. According to observations, their civilization is still in the tribal era, the level of intelligence is temporarily unknown, and the population is around 120,000."

The virtual screen displayed the appearance of this intelligent species, which looked like a bunch of goblin-like, short, upright creatures with white skin covered in a large number of wrinkles, looking loose and flabby, like a fatty who had undergone liposuction.

"Intelligent life, that's not bad." The captain nodded. "Then let's contact them in accordance with the exploration guidelines."

The empire had stipulated procedures for contacting indigenous civilizations in its exploration guidelines, adopting different policies according to the situation. For this kind of seemingly non-threatening natives, the main approach was gentle edification. Han Xiao had adopted the edification policy when he first contacted Planet Pangul Greed during the first exploration.

The fleet slowly landed in a forest on the planet. Ground troops disembarked and began to make friendly contact with the indigenous tribes. These native intelligent beings were both surprised and frightened, but also very curious about these suddenly appearing creatures.

With the help of a universal translator, the exploration team successfully established a bridge of communication with these natives, learning about them while explaining their intentions, using various images and pictures to explain the situation of the explored universe and introduce the Red Empire, so that the natives could understand the current situation.

The accompanying doctors also began to conduct physical examinations for the curious natives to prevent them from carrying unknown new pathogens – there were too many such examples – while also examining their physiological structure.

Everything seemed to be in order. Kleeber, bored, strolled through the busy camp.

Turning his head, he suddenly saw a native leaving the queue for quarantine and sneaking towards a house in a native tribe.

Kleeber didn't think much of it and was about to look away, but at that moment, a strange sense of alertness rose in his mind.

His footsteps immediately stopped. Most Calamity Grades possessed keen intuition, occasionally predicting certain threats. Generally, the stronger the Super, the more they would trust their intuition.

"Something seems wrong..." Kleeber frowned, turned around, and followed the sneaky native, pushed open the door, and walked straight into the native house.

The native was sitting in the corner with his back to the door, not knowing what he was doing. Hearing the sound behind him, he seemed startled and suddenly turned his head to look over.

"What are you doing?" Kleeber's ominous premonition grew stronger.

The next moment, the native's expression suddenly became twisted and ferocious. He suddenly took out a bone dagger and stabbed it towards his own neck.

*Sha!*

A gust of wind blew past. Kleeber acted with incredible speed, instantly flashing in front of the native, lightly flicking the dagger out of his hand, and lifting him up by the neck.

He didn't know what the native meant by this, but stopping him was definitely the right thing to do.

However, before he could question him, the native's body suddenly trembled, foaming at the mouth, his eyeballs bulging, and he died on the spot.

"Poisoned himself?" Kleeber was surprised.

At that moment, exclamations suddenly rang out outside the door. Kleeber, carrying the corpse, ran out and found that a commotion had occurred among the accompanying doctors. A large group of doctors was surrounding a medical device used for physical examinations, and more doctors were crowding around, as if they had discovered something.

Kleeber flew over directly and looked at the person in charge of the doctor group as soon as he landed.

"What are you doing?"

"Your Excellency, look at this genetic test report!" A doctor said with a look of surprise. "We have discovered that there are major defects in the genes of this intelligent life form, and these defects actually show traces of artificial genetic modification, which has suppressed the brain capacity of this intelligent species by more than 80%. In short, someone castrated their intelligence!"

"You mean, this is a domesticated species?" Kleeber's heart thumped.

At that moment, an unexpected event occurred!

*Rumble*—

At that moment, everyone felt the ground beneath their feet suddenly tremble.

The next second, all the spaceships sounded a piercing alarm!

"Alarm! Alarm! High-energy reaction detected, comparing to the event model database... Matching complete, 【Primal Psionic Eruption】 match rate reaches 99.8%, please evacuate immediately! Please evacuate immediately!"

"Primal psionics?!"

Including Kleeber, everyone's expressions suddenly changed drastically.

Kleeber seemed to suddenly think of something. He smashed the skull of the strange native corpse in his hand with a punch, upturned the body, and poured everything out. An extremely tiny mechanical device mixed with serum fell down.

The moment he saw this mechanical device, Kleeber's pupils shrank, and he instantly understood.

This was a life signal sensing device. In short, when the user's life signal fluctuated or even ended, the connected device on the other side would activate or close – the primal psionic eruption was related to this life signal sensing device!

*Rumble!!*

The planet instantly collapsed inward, and jets of blue energy burst through the surface and shot into the sky.

Immediately afterward, the blue color spread rapidly across the earth, polluting the entire planet.

Mountains, rivers, forests... land, sea, sky, everything was swallowed by the blue color and transformed into a part of the primal psionics!

Expansion, endless expansion!

All matter disappeared into this blue color. In the process of matter-energy conversion, an unparalleled amount of energy was released. The escape speed of this exploration fleet could not even keep up with the expansion speed of the primal psionics, and they were all swallowed by this blue light.

Kleeber rushed out of the spaceship, still trying to escape, but the endless blue light submerged his figure. In the face of this earth-shattering primal psionic wave, even a Calamity Grade was just a mass of undifferentiated matter.

And the same scene was playing out on more than one planet on the border of the Guangchen Star Cluster.

...

Beacon Star, command conference room.

Not long after the last meeting, the remote projections of all the representatives of the forces participating in the exploration gathered together again.

This was an emergency ad hoc meeting, and Han Xiao and a group of Beyond Grade As were also urgently called to the meeting.

Looking at the casualty statistics on the virtual screen, the atmosphere in the room was heavy.

"As you can see, our exploration forces encountered an accident in the Guangchen Star Cluster." Tarrokov's tone was heavy. "More than six thousand warships were destroyed, the death toll exceeded seven million, including two Calamity Grades from affiliated civilizations."

Hearing this, many people were immediately in an uproar.

"What happened to them? Did they encounter a very powerful indigenous civilization?"

"Is there such a powerful native in the Guangchen Star Cluster?!"

Han Xiao narrowed his eyes. He only knew that this native civilization had caused trouble for the empire, but he did not fully understand the detailed process of the war. After all, this happened during the version update, and players in his previous life had not personally experienced it and could only learn about it from historical background information.

Tarrokov pressed his hands down, signaling everyone to be quiet, and said in a deep voice:

"The armed forces of these natives are more powerful than you think... They have mastered psionic technology. These lost teams were all annihilated when they encountered primal psionic eruptions while exploring planets. We have reason to believe that this is a trap set by that unknown native civilization."

As soon as these words came out, most of the representatives present gasped and their expressions became astonished.

They could accept indigenous civilizations with powerful military forces, because with the empire's warship technology, suppressing indigenous civilizations was not a problem. No matter how strong conventional military forces were, they could not pose much of a threat to their exploration army.

However, an indigenous civilization that had mastered primal psionics was a completely different matter!

In the explored universe under the jurisdiction of the three major civilizations, primal psionics were absolutely prohibited weapons, with terrifying power and serious subsequent pollution. This weapon possessed absolute deterrent power.

And this group of natives had also mastered primal psionic technology?

How exactly did their tech tree climb?

Could they also have some unknown black technology?!

In the hearts of most of the representatives present, a strong sense of fear arose.

The feeling of facing this kind of indigenous civilization was different. In interstellar society, even if you did not possess a certain technology, you knew that this technology existed, but when facing a powerful indigenous civilization that had never been seen before, who knew if they would suddenly pull out some unimaginable black technology from their crotch?

Many civilizations present had experienced exploration era wars, and at this time they felt like they had returned to the exploration era – no one knew what terrible trump cards other civilizations possessed, such as the Glorious Federation's High-Dimensional Apocalypse Transporter, the Arcane Church's Pantheon Scepter, the Evolutionary Civilization's Aberrant Missiles, and so on.

This group of native civilizations was naturally not bound by the rules of interstellar society and did not care about randomly throwing primal psionics around, which was very dangerous. It was like a child playing with a pistol, and everyone present had a premonition... the casualties this time would probably not be small.

"Then what is the empire's plan?" Someone couldn't help but ask.

Tarrokov said coldly: "The current situation shows that this native civilization is not friendly to us and poses a high threat. According to the *Exploration Guidelines - Indigenous Civilization Contact Regulations*, we will adopt the 24th response plan."

Hearing this, many people's hearts tightened.

This was the last response plan. Compared with other plans, the content was very simple – use war to deal with the target until they were exterminated or enslaved.

The hegemonic civilizations that had come from the exploration era wars had never been kind men and women.

The Shattered Star Ring was a microcosm of the exploration era war. The difference was that the three major civilizations had become hegemons and had the confidence to adopt gentle methods, while the weak were more likely to protect themselves.

The more powerful the natives, the stricter the attitude of the three major civilizations.

And the natives who had mastered psionic technology had become an obvious threat. The Red Empire did not mind nipping them in the bud, reducing an annoying hostile star cluster-level civilization, which was also beneficial to the entire interstellar society.

Scanning the audience, Tarrokov said coldly:

"We know almost nothing about them, we don't know their location, we don't know what species they are, but the other party has launched precise attacks against us, which means they have a certain amount of intelligence in their hands, and before that, we had not contacted this civilization... so we can judge that someone is secretly plotting, and those stowaways are the most suspicious."

Hearing this, the civilization representatives present had different expressions and all thought of the same thing.

This was not difficult to guess. A single civilization could not cover all aspects of the tech tree, and the power of interstellar society was that technology was mutually circulated. It was the stowaways who packed a lot of advanced technology from interstellar society and threw it to the native civilization, including psionic technology.

Those Super Star Cluster level civilizations also had enough motivation, first to kill the empire's armed forces, second to delay the exploration progress, and third to indirectly eliminate powerful native civilizations and make more space for the Shattered Star Ring.

Of course, they did not throw technology at everyone. Only advanced native civilizations with sufficient productivity would be regarded as targets, otherwise giving them technology would be useless.

"I declare that the exploration plan of the Guangchen Star Cluster is temporarily suspended, and the empire's exploration army officially enters a state of war." Tarrokov's tone was heavy.

Everyone's faces were stern and they nodded.

Before solving the opponent, they would no longer continue to explore slowly. The empire had rich war experience and countless cases to refer to, which was an advantage.

The opponent, on the other hand, had a temporary advantage in intelligence, but this advantage would not last long. With the trap of the primal psionic eruption as an event anchor, the empire's precognitive ability user troops could come in handy, and the mechanists were not useless either.

The empire was gathering troops, and the Black Star Army had to respond to the conscription as well, but Han Xiao did not intend to take action himself. He mainly let Nero and a group of subordinates participate, and he would send mechanical troops to protect them secretly.

He knew that the Kunde Race did not have a Super system, their individual martial power only consisted of various armored warriors, and the biggest threat was strategic-level psionic bombing. As long as they avoided this kind of battlefield, they could reduce casualties.

"My advantage of knowing the map can be of some help." Han Xiao thought to himself.

...

At the same time, deep in the Guangchen Star Cluster.

Spaceships carrying countless civilians disappeared into the depths of space. Watching this scene, every Kunde Race soldier who stayed behind had inexplicable emotions flowing in their hearts.

"Report, the wanderer fleets of every colony star have set off, all carrying the local civilians, and loaded with all the seeds of biological and crop that we found, and will go to find a new home."

Listening to the report from his subordinates, the Kunde Race leader nodded silently, and the other high-level leaders were also silent.

The crashed spaceship did not deceive them. They secretly arranged for some enslaved affiliated races to contact the other party, and the other party was indeed called the "Red Empire", and was as powerful as the data showed.

Although the other party looked friendly, which was somewhat different from the data, in the eyes of the Kunde Race, what was hidden under the friendly appearance was still the intention of colonization and control.

The future could be predicted, and this made the Kunde Race unacceptable – originally, this entire star cluster would be their resource for development, their ladder for evolution, but now the Red Empire had come and wanted to take away these resources. As the data said, their way out would be blocked and they would no longer be able to develop normally.

In this regard, the Super Star Cluster level civilizations were not all lies, and they had a deep understanding of this – telling the truth was the most brilliant bewitchment.

The Kunde Race was unwilling to become an appendage, and the universe was so vast that they still had a way out.

Planning for defeat before victory, while deciding to resist by force, the Kunde Race made the worst plan, packing up most of the civilians and sending them to the depths of space, leaving behind the spark of civilization – whether they won or lost, staying here no longer offered an opportunity for normal development, so it was better to send their clansmen to find a new home that would not be disturbed.

And those who stayed behind to defend the old home were only the Kunde Race's assembled army, prepared to fight to the death.

As the theory of cosmic relations stated, war was always the necessary path to peace.