Warhammer: Open the door! Human League players!

Chapter 160 Cleansing the Nobles

Those imperial officials who dared to speak out against her were all blown to pieces on the spot by Anne.

The high-ranking officials of the Imperial Ministry of the Interior fell silent instantly. Everyone's breath caught in their throats, their hearts stopped beating, and no one dared to utter another word. They could only suppress the extreme fear deep in their bones, bow their heads, and silently retreat from the hall with hearts full of terror.

Anne's ruthless and decisive actions caused a huge uproar within the upper echelons of the empire.

Since Guilliman awoke from his millennia-long slumber, restarted the regency system, drastically weakened aristocratic privileges, and tacitly allowed the Alliance of Men to enter the heart of Terra to stabilize order, the resentment and resistance of the old imperial aristocracy have grown stronger day by day.

This group of vested interests, who have occupied the top of the imperial power for thousands of years, have monopolized resources, held power, and enslaved ordinary people for generations. They have long regarded the hereditary privileges, class solidification, and the decomposition of ordinary people as the ironclad rules of the empire.

In their rigid and corrupt class consciousness, the common people at the bottom are born to be consumed by the empire. The survival, honor, disgrace, hunger, cold, life and death of hundreds of millions of people are far less important than the face and privileges of the aristocratic class and the absolute authority of the old imperial system.

And now, the Human Alliance dares to kill imperial officials in the imperial palace.

Unforgivable!

A silent yet deadly resistance, capable of destroying Terra's power structure, quietly begins.

Throughout Terra, hereditary nobles and internal affairs officials at all levels reached a tacit understanding of mutual respect and cooperation without any public orders being given.

No one raised an army in rebellion, no one raised a flag of rebellion, no one openly defied the regency edict, and no one issued any articles of treason. They simply used the most intractable and insidious method of the imperial system to undermine the entire regency regime.

The Primarch's power astonished the Empire, and the Empire's efficiency in internal affairs astonished the Primarch.

All official business in the region came to a standstill, private grain reserves across the territory were left unattended, all disaster relief material channels were locked in a special way, and grassroots disaster relief orders were completely blocked, plunging Terra's entire system of livelihood scheduling, material circulation, and logistical supply, which was barely able to maintain itself, into a state of complete paralysis.

Guilliman's personal regency decrees, though passed through layers of bureaucracy, seemed to have become nothing more than empty words.

"The allocation of grain is controlled by those dead nobles. Do you think I'm an idiot for saying you know nothing?"

Upon seeing the Ministry of State's report, Guilliman laughed in exasperation.

These nobles shifted all the blame for the slack work onto those whom Anne had killed.

The spearhead is aimed directly at the People's Federation.

Guilliman wielded the Empire's most complete and powerful machinery of violence, with the Astartes Chapter and the Terra Guard under his command.

He never cared about the lives or deaths of nobles, nor did he care at all about the downfall of the old elites.

In terms of ruthlessness, he could purge all high-ranking officials and slaughter all hereditary nobles overnight, completely eradicating this group of parasites without any psychological burden or political pity.

But the cruelest, coldest, and most unsolvable reality before him locked away all of the regent's ruthless methods.

"They are coercing the empire!"

The empire is now on the verge of total collapse.

The famine is not a local disaster, but a global life-or-death crisis that sweeps across Terra and affects trillions of people.

For ordinary people, a difference of one day may be insignificant.

However, given Terra's massive population of trillions, a single day of delay could mean the deaths of tens of millions, or even hundreds of millions, of civilians.

Human lives are lost in seconds, and the collapse of civilization is imminent; there is simply no room for trial and error.

The most fatal flaws in the power structure were now fully exposed.

Guilliman controlled absolute military power.

Astartes can quell rebellions, kill enemies, suppress riots, defend cities, and crush any armed rebellion.

Space Marines can handle the political affairs of Altera, but they don't understand the social order of unfamiliar Terra, where food reserves are distributed, how to coordinate resources across the entire region, the bureaucratic network of millions of levels, or the supply network that spans the entire Hive City.

The army can kill people on Terra, but it can't supply food to Terra.

The time was too short; even if every Space Marine was a superhuman, they couldn't take over Terra in a short time.

It might take over Terra's basic living system in a few months, but if it takes that long, billions of people could die.

Terra is too big, with trillions of people, which is an extremely distorted number.

The entire empire's internal affairs system, material channels, warehousing network, hierarchical allocation, and overall dispatching power are 100% controlled by this group of nobles and high-ranking officials.

The access rights to all the lower-level granaries, the material quotas for all districts, the supply routes for all urban areas, and the mobilization system for all disaster relief personnel all depend on this corrupt, inefficient, yet irreplaceable old bureaucratic network.

Guilliman was perfectly lucid at that moment:

He could kill all the lazy nobles.

But he needs time, time to regulate the empire.

If all the nobles were to die, the empire's food distribution system would be completely disrupted, resource allocation would be reduced to zero, and disaster relief channels across the entire territory would be rendered useless.

They did not rebel, mutinied, or stage a coup; instead, they used "collective inaction" to shift the blame to the dead, leaving Guilliman, who held a million-strong army and wielded the thunderous power of the empire, with the power to slay dragons but no way to save people.

Less than an hour after the food blockade began, millions of ordinary civilians in Terra died silently in endless despair, agonizing hunger, and the terror of impending death.

Within the endless beehive city, wails and sobs filled the air, and everywhere one could see the impoverished people on the verge of starvation and on the verge of death.

The rapidly increasing death toll on the screen pierced Anna's heart, who held the truth of the Human Union in high regard, and also ignited the raging fire that had been building up in Anne's heart.

Even with their superior military strength and numerous troops, the two were helpless in the face of this soft rebellion and widespread dereliction of duty.

In just three days, the Human Alliance will have a way to solve the Empire's famine.

But how many civilians will starve to death in these three days?

Terra has been starving for months.

We are currently in a state of extreme tension.

If the Ministry of the Interior were to use its unique characteristics, it would cause a bloodbath effect, with starvation spreading at an alarming rate.

The holy land of Santa Tera, with its trillion-strong population, simply cannot withstand such an endless and devastating food shortage.

At that time, the only path left for Guilliman, the iron-fisted regent, was a humiliating and twisted path that crossed the line—restarting the empire's most cruel and inhumane starch factories, feeding the living with the dead, and barely maintaining the starch production of the lower classes in Terra.

But this is undoubtedly a complete compromise with the corrupt old aristocratic forces and a bowing to the old imperial rules that have been in disarray for millennia.

With the regency regime's foundations unstable and the reform system not yet fully implemented, Guilliman could eliminate some unruly elites, but he could not completely purge the bureaucracy in the short term.

"Damn it, those bastards!"

Deeply mired in self-doubt, Anna eventually ventured alone into the tranquil, solemn, and sacred imperial palace, where she found Fang Yun, who was overseeing the secret plan.

When Anna finished recounting the devastating famine across Terra, the insidious malfeasance of the nobles, and the regency's predicament, Fang Yun's clear and calm eyes were instantly covered with an icy chill.

He slowly began, "Since they hold high positions but refuse to fulfill their duties, then they shouldn't be living."

"The richest people in Terra are these nobles. No food? Let them fill this famine hole with their endless wealth and grain reserves."

Fang Yun's self-illumination fell upon the enormous figure behind Anna, saying, "These powerful and wealthy people may seem innocent to you, but in the face of the life and death of billions of lives, doing nothing is the greatest sin."

"I do not judge whether they are blindly loyal to the corrupt old empire or whether they kneel before a golden throne that has been silent for millennia. I only uphold one eternal iron law: those who betray humanity are guilty of a grave sin!"

The cleaning has begun.

With a population of trillions, the empire needs about a billion tons of food a day.

Approximately 40 million tons of food per hour.

Is this a lot?

a lot of.

On average, it's enough to raid ten high-ranking noble families every hour.

Of course, these are just the supplies they have stored in Terra, not the wealth they possess.

The wealth they possessed was more than ten thousand times that of the food.

The more nobles who slack off, the more starvation there will be, which will only accelerate the confiscation of their property, and at the same time, the more people will die.

This was a bloody cleansing.

This indiscriminate cleansing caused a huge uproar in Holy Terra.

In their age-old, corrupt class consciousness, ordinary people at the bottom are merely slaves and consumables of the empire, appendages of the rule of the top elites, and their life, death, honor, and disgrace are all insignificant.

"I'm going to take this to the High Lord! I'm going to take this to Guilliman!"

Anne looked at the terrified noble executives of the Ministry of the Interior and said, "There are many starving civilians in Terra right now. We can borrow your whole family!"

"Sue Guillier? Ha, the People's Federation doesn't care."

The mechanical humanoid legion swept through the defenses, energy barriers, and security arrays of all the mansions, penetrating deep into the secret vaults, underground chambers, and top-secret storage facilities of the powerful and wealthy.

Massive quantities of life-saving food, medical supplies, daily necessities, and strategic supplies that had long been monopolized, hoarded, deliberately sealed, wasted, and allowed to rot and mold were seized and confiscated one by one.

These life-saving resources, which could have saved starving people, were hoarded and monopolized by high-ranking officials, left to rot and become waste rather than be released to the market or flow into the starving, impoverished urban areas.

The swift and decisive crackdown operation was launched across the entire region, with relentless and brutal killings day and night.

In just half a day, hundreds of nobles and high-ranking officials were purged on the spot and uprooted, completely removed from the Terra power system.

As for whether there are any innocent people involved.

I don't care about this or that.

The massive amount of supplies released from lockdown completely broke free from the shackles of the old bureaucratic system. Through the rapid coordination, global deployment, and precise allocation by the mechanized forces, they were continuously transported to the major famine-stricken areas of Terra.

The horrific scene of death and devastation across Terra was swiftly contained, the pervasive wailing and lamentation from the lower classes gradually subsided, and the surface famine crisis was completely averted.

As the Human Alliance takes action, a bizarre and deadly power struggle is quietly exposed to the public.

The highest-ranking official of the Ministry of State Affairs, seated in the main seat, had a raging fire and a sinister scheme burning in his eyes. He spoke first, his voice deep and authoritative, carrying an air of tyrannical power that turned black into white.

"Fellow colleagues, see clearly the chaos that currently exists in Terra!"

"The recent turmoil in the Holy Land and chaos in the court are due to the excessive arrogance and overreach of the Human Alliance!"

"These alien, wriggling beings, reside in the sacred land of Terra, overstepping their bounds and wielding the power of life and death. They wantonly slaughter the imperial hereditary nobles, arbitrarily confiscate imperial and private property, trample on the empire's millennia-old laws, disregard the regency's authority, and disrupt the order of the sacred land!"

"If these evil foreign forces are not completely eradicated, the legitimate imperial line will surely collapse. Will the empire still be our empire then?!"

The High Lord of the Interior was furious.

His power was most severely affected by this coup.

Pushing for a food program was his attempt to regain power.

This plan is radical.

His original plan was...

First, instigate a conflict between the Human Rights Alliance and the Empire, kicking the Human Rights Alliance out of Terra. Then, use resources to blackmail Guilliman and regain power.

But the People's Alliance went even further, flipping the table in protest.

As soon as he finished speaking, the Pope of the state religion, dressed in a pure white robe, slowly rose. His face was solemn and holy, but his eyes were full of extreme prejudice and xenophobic murderous intent. He publicly nailed the people to the nails of irrefutable religious sins.

"The Human Alliance's ideology differs from the Imperial doctrine, its armed forces are not under the control of the Divine Emperor, its influence interferes in the Holy Land's administration, it slaughters loyal subjects of the Empire, and it disrupts the order of the Sacred Territory—it is undoubtedly heresy and absolutely incompatible!"

The Pope's statement is tantamount to endowing the purge of the League of Peoples with a sacred religious justification.

The high lords in the crowd instantly echoed, their anger rising and killing intent hardening: "Heretics who wreak havoc on the Holy Land deserve to die!"

"Outcasts and aliens must not be tolerated!"

"We must completely eradicate them and eliminate them at the root!"

Everyone tacitly agreed to a unified narrative, completely defining the Human Alliance that saved Terra as a heretical force that would overthrow the Empire, thus paving the way for the impending purge by private soldiers and a coup d'état.

Amidst the clamor of condemnation against heretics, the chief representative of the Cult of Machines, who had been sitting silently and observing coldly, finally slowly raised his head and spoke.

The hoarse, cold metallic friction tone is devoid of emotion, yet it conceals an extreme, calm greed and calculation.

"Our Cult of the Machine God is willing to stand with the Ministry of State Affairs."

Upon hearing this, the noisy conference hall fell silent instantly.

The representative of the Mechanicus openly stated all their ambitions without any concealment: "The Human Alliance's exclusive mechanical humanoid legion is a blasphemous creation, and our Mechanicus must seal it away!"

The Mechanicus needs a reason to interfere in Imperial affairs.

The Ministry of the Interior needs military assistance to gain a new power structure.

Anna sat upright in the main command seat, intently reviewing all the data from the entire Terra famine, coordinating the allocation of disaster relief supplies and the deployment of troops. The entire command center was quiet and orderly, with the data flow running smoothly.

Just then, the cool and orderly electronic synthesized voice of AI No. 7, the exclusive intelligent AI of the Human Union, suddenly broke the silence in the cabin, accompanied by an abnormal alarm.

"Anna, an abnormal offline data stream has been detected."

"Multiple damaged, out-of-contact, or partially destroyed robotic humanoid combat units failed to comply with the on-site destruction agreement and did not return to the designated assembly area."

"The system has detected a clandestine, encrypted transport route: some mechanical humanoid remains and malfunctioning machines have been secretly taken away from the surface of Terra by an unknown force."

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