Resurrection Empire

Chapter 1348 - 510: Playing Dead Plan, Building Strength for Ten Years Plan_2

This kind of choice was a knife to the bone for everyone.

But Red Blade Star responded almost immediately, without even giving the clansmen wandering outside as drifters a chance to pack up and come home.

Ren Zhong publicly announced a ban on all clansmen abroad returning to Red Blade Star, expelling all of them from the ranks of the Red Blade Clan, while at the same time cancelling the 20% commission clause they had signed when they first left Red Blade Star.

Other than that, Ren Zhong offered no further explanation.

Some members of the Red Blade Clan said they could not accept this, but more people silently accepted their fate. They understood that Ren Zhong was paving the way for them. On the surface, the connection was cut off, yet as long as they kept their hearts tied to their homeland and buried that feeling deep inside, and continued to pass on their bloodline as people of the Red Blade Clan, then that secret homesickness and the bloodline that was separated by just a sliver of water would remain inseverable.

Within the Star Cluster, a well‑known commentator once described Ren Zhong’s actions with just one phrase: "a warrior severing his own arm."

Nanxiang’s Earldom shamelessly used its size to bully the small, but no one stood up to speak out for Ren Zhong in the name of justice.

Ren Zhong was not surprised by this. Chatting idly with Ju Qingmeng, Ma Xiaoling and the others, he summed up in a single term the social philosophy implemented by the Mechanical Empire: nothing more than social Darwinism.

"Top‑down breeding of gu, ubiquitous and running through everything. On the surface it seems to endorse natural selection and survival of the fittest, which sounds quite plausible, but in fact it is a low‑efficiency form of lazy governance. It ignores the first‑mover advantage brought by capital accumulation, and no longer grants people at the bottom the qualities of human beings, instead turning them into tools. This is a cruel suppression of society’s creative power, and an extreme waste of productive forces. If it weren’t for the abnormal Chosen Ones repeatedly turning the tide, the Mechanical Empire would long ago have been completely dismembered by the Pilgrim, the Sublimed and the Spirit Demon Race."

"As for Nanxiang Marquis’s blockade of Red Blade Star? It’s neither here nor there. The reason I previously announced an opening‑up for cooperation was only to mislead Liu An, to make him feel victory was in his grasp so that he would obediently climb back into his ice coffin. Liu An’s responses are simply too sluggish. Lifespan is his innate shortcoming. I intend to drive a wedge right there."

"The resources captured from the Storm Pirate Group and the Fang Pirate Group are still plentiful, and Red Blade Star itself is a treasure trove whose total reserves far exceed those of Source Star. For the next ten years, we don’t need any outward expansion, and we don’t even need to exchange so much as a thing with others. Red Blade Star must disappear completely from other people’s field of vision and enter a feigned‑death state."

Clearly she could have chosen to return to her clan, but in the end she stayed on Red Blade Star. Gao Ya asked in puzzlement, "Play dead?"

Ren Zhong nodded with a smile. "Yes. Everyone in the Nanxiang Star Cluster knows that there are now two Earls in this Star Cluster: one is Nanxiang Marquis Liu An, and the other is me, Earl Red Blade. But after I made a high‑profile debut, I suddenly fell into silence and stopped dealing with any outsiders. In others’ eyes, our Red Blade Star is no different from a dead star. Of course, in reality we are in the midst of rapid expansion. Earlier I received a research report which argued that Red Blade Star has a larger diameter than Source Star, greater mass, and a slightly stronger gravitational environment, so in theory the maximum population it can support is far greater than that of Source Star. The population ceiling marked in the report is one hundred billion. I’ll discount that by forty percent. We must at least reach sixty billion people. Where there are people, there are infinite possibilities. From here on out, development must be people‑centered."

Once everything was arranged, Ren Zhong took a Shuttle Ship and flew out of Red Blade City, the base city formed by reconfiguring nine Annulus Ships, then landed on a vast plain in the suburbs of the city.

The plain had already been sown with vegetation, and not‑so‑tall groves of trees dotted it here and there like stars.

Between the groves grew herbaceous plants known for their strong reproductive capacity.

At the center of the grassy plain lay a row of square buildings. In front of the buildings stood two tall flagpoles.

One of the flagpoles flew the Red Blade flag, with blazing red as the main tone, embellished with a golden longsword.

The other flagpole flew the Source Star flag, with a deep blue background and the outlines of Source Star’s continental landmasses drawn in thick white lines.

In the past, humans of Source Star had no habit of using flags to carry their spiritual longings. But after Xiao Xingyue’s documentary Long Journey was broadcast, no one knew who first made the proposal, yet the idea of placing some kind of flag everywhere in sight as a form of commemoration first fermented at the grassroots, and then naturally made its way up to Ren Zhong.