Warhammer, I really didn't intend to form a second empire!

"Immigration enthusiasm is higher than expected, and the military and barrister systems are more attractive than anticipated."

"The transition of the theocratic system in A-1-B was smooth. The original priestly class completed a round of power reduction and redistribution within three months. Most of the lower-ranking priests were trained and incorporated into the grassroots administrative system, while the rest were dealt with."

“The mining progress at A-1-C is also going smoothly. The daily output of the heavy element vein has reached our initial estimate. General Sun Wu’s SCV there has successfully mined the first batch of refined samples. Before setting off for the B-2 system, a batch was sent to Qiankun Star by transport barge and is currently en route.”

Zhao Zheng nodded slightly.

"What about the battle report from the B-2 side?"

Another staff officer stepped forward in response.

"General Sun Tzu's expeditionary force has entered the outer perimeter of the B-2 star system. The latest long-range detection data shows that there are multiple high-energy signal sources in that star system, which are irregularly distributed and do not quite match the radiation characteristics of natural celestial bodies. They are very likely remnants of orbital defense facilities."

Zhao Zheng's brow twitched slightly.

Are there any signs of human settlement?

"Yes, a large amount of organic thermal signals have been detected on the surface of the third planet, with a preliminary estimate of a population of between 80 billion and 300 billion."

"According to the news sent back from the front, they are very likely remnants of the Old Night era of humanity."

Zhao Zheng's gaze lingered for a moment on the pale blue halo marked B-2 star field on the holographic star map.

This number might be just a fraction of what a world-building empire might be in, but for the Qin Empire, which was still in its growth phase, Zhao Zheng understood better than anyone what 300 billion people meant.

With millions of soldiers, enough to support the industrial workforce of at least one star sector, Zhao Zheng's fleet expansion plans, which were locked on blueprints, could be put into production ten years ahead of schedule...

But the prerequisite is that those people are human and that they can use it.

"Remnants of the Old Night Era... Is the data accurate?"

"General Sun Tzu's fleet established a deep-space listening array about three light-years away from the B-2 system and intercepted a large number of electromagnetic wave signals from the surface of the third planet."

The staff officer pulled up the spectrum analysis chart, and data of various wavelengths and amplitudes jumped around on the holographic interface like a chaotic electrocardiogram.

“A considerable portion of language patterns conform to the human language structure. Although they have undergone thousands of years of independent evolution, their human origins can be basically confirmed.”

"What about those high-energy signal sources?"

"The analysis is still ongoing. At least twelve suspected orbital defense platform debris structures are distributed along the orbit of the third planet. The surfaces show numerous signs of modification, and the degree of damage to these structures varies. The oldest traces may be thousands of years old, while the most recent ones are no more than three hundred years old."

Zhao Zheng paused, but didn't say anything more.

"Let Sun Wu handle it himself. If he needs any fire support, just let him know. The Empire has no shortage of firepower. If he finds the enemy to be troublesome, contact me immediately and I will take action personally."

"Yes."

As Zhao Zheng turned to leave the tactical analysis room, he paused for a moment at the threshold.

He suddenly sensed an extremely subtle disturbance coming from the edge of his psionic vision, though it was swallowed up by him in an instant.

But Zhao Zheng did sense this spiritual energy. It was not fierce, nor did it carry any chaotic evil. It was as if it were just a "pathfinder" confirming its location.

This spiritual energy was so far away that even distances measured in light-years seemed insignificant in comparison.

Zhao Zheng did not turn back and continued walking along the corridor toward the bridge. His steps were steady as usual, but his psionic perception was like a net that had been suddenly tightened, extending infinitely outward from the Lishan and going against the current along those faint subspace resonance pulses.

It was a brownish-red planet, not very large, and it didn't have a trace of blue color on it. The fluctuations of psionic energy were coming from it.

That is Holy Terra, humanity's home planet, a planet that can never be abandoned.

Just now, having finished the war of unification and completely wiped out the remaining Thunder Warriors, the Deus Ex Machina and Mars have reached an agreement to unify the entire human empire of the solar system. Under the leadership of the Emperor, they have launched a great expedition atop the Eternal Wall.

That psychic energy was the Emperor issuing a declaration to the galaxy.

This Central Asian psychic kid, who could subdue the largest fragment of the strongest Celestial God while riding a horse and wielding a spear since the Middle Ages of Ancient Terra, now fully displayed his prowess, his powerful psychic energy undisguised, and the golden sun in the warp shone brightly at this moment.

A massive fleet, blotting out the sky, had appeared above Terra. At the Emperor's command, they activated their warp engines in all directions, marking the first step in humanity's revival.

The Great Crusade has begun. The Emperor is traversing the galaxy, preparing to lead his golden legion and twenty legions to sweep away all aliens and rebels along the way.

Just a moment ago, Zhao Zheng sensed a barely perceptible tremor within the Emperor's spiritual energy.

Zhao Zheng could almost see the emperor's gaze directed in his direction from a distance.

The two of them looked at each other for the first time, separated by a distance of countless light-years.

This was the first time Zhao Zheng had seen what an emperor looked like. His father in this biological sense did not have a majestic and domineering appearance, nor did he possess any charm that would make people blindly fawn over him at first glance.

He has now transformed into a tall giant clad in golden armor using his psychic powers, but Zhao Zheng can see through his true nature and core at a glance.

He was just an ordinary middle-aged man, with an unremarkable look of worry and weariness between his brows, and his skin was yellowish-brown, just like Zhao Zheng's.

Beside him was a young man who also used psionic powers to disguise himself as an old man. His face was also tired and worried, but there was a glimmer of hope in his eyes. He looked at the fleet launching its attack in the sky and seemed to see hope.

Neither Zhao Zheng nor the emperor spoke; they simply gazed at each other silently.

In Zhao Zheng's eyes, the Emperor was an ordinary middle-aged man, but the golden sun in the subspace was shining brightly.

In the Emperor's eyes, Zhao Zheng was an unseen giant subspace black hole, just like those soulless beings, except that the feeling this black hole gave him was so familiar.

This is one of his offspring lost in the galaxy, the Emperor can confirm this, and this is the third offspring he can confirm is alive and doing well.

One is Alpharis, who was secretly trained under Macado's command, and the other is Magnus, who could communicate with the Emperor using psychic powers even in the nursery.

The Emperor had not expected that his offspring's nature in the Warp would be like this, because he had not endowed any Primarch with this ability when he first designed it, and the natures he had searched for in cooperation with Chaos were definitely not the enormous Warp black hole before him.

Zhao Zheng withdrew his psionic perception. The gaze that spanned countless light-years was like a string that had been stretched and then released, trembling for a moment in the depths of the subspace before falling silent.

The Emperor did not probe, nor did he actively release any oppressive psionic fluctuations.

He merely confirmed Zhao Zheng's presence before withdrawing his gaze, like a navigator who had spotted a distant light in the vast night sea, memorized the location, and continued on his way.

Zhao Zheng could sense that the golden spiritual energy was moving away, sweeping towards other directions in the Milky Way.

The emperor is searching for his other offspring. He wants to ascertain their whereabouts and then retrieve them one by one at the appropriate time. These are the strongest commanders he has created for the Great Expedition, each one a weapon of war he has painstakingly crafted.

If it weren't for that crazy woman Erda, the war of unification would have been over long ago. Why would it have taken so long to start the Great Expedition?

The Primarch must be retrieved. The Space Marine Legion cannot be without a commander, and it also needs the Primarch's genetic material to mass-produce Geneseeds. Currently, the Legion is still too small.

"Has it already started?"

Zhao Zheng muttered to himself, his voice so soft that only he could hear it.

On the main control panel of the bridge, the holographic star map was still slowly rotating, and the dark red expanding arrows quietly pointed to the distant star system. The edge of the empire's territory was still only a pale blue halo the size of a fingernail.

Zhao Zheng sat down in the command chair, his gaze falling on the boundary line of the halo, his fingertips lightly tapping the armrest.

"Send orders to all frontline fleets: the time required to conquer all target star systems shall be halved. If any planetary defense forces make any unusual moves, do not wait for reinforcements; take the planet first and then report."

"Any colonizable star system discovered shall be placed on the priority list for development from this moment on. I want to see immigrant ships arrive on those surfaces within three months."

"Also, send an order to the headquarters of the Qiankun Star Dynasty to reduce the schedule of all Space Marine modification surgeries by 40%, expand the scope of logistics, I need more soldiers, and from now on all workshops and arsenals will work overtime, increasing the working day from twelve hours to fifteen hours."

The communications officer quickly took notes and left.

Zhao Zheng leaned back in his chair, his gaze piercing through the deep starry sky outside the porthole, falling on a distant and unseen direction.

The great expedition has begun, so he must take bigger steps on the journey.

Chapter Seventeen: It's those damned greens again.

Within thirteen minutes of Zhao Zheng issuing the order, the command system of the Lishan completed an encrypted broadcast covering the entire Qin Empire's explored star domain.

The encrypted instructions, traveling at the speed of light, were relayed in leaps along the repeater array, arriving one after another at the expeditionary fleets and colonial outposts scattered across twenty-two star systems, as well as the underground strategic command center of Chiyang City on Qiankun Star, within microsecond time differences.

When Li Jing received the order, he was standing on the bridge of a reconnaissance ship on the outskirts of the Yulin star system, his gaze fixed on the slowly rotating brownish-red planetary surface on the holographic screen.

The dark red, vitrified surface reflects a metallic sheen under starlight. The rift valleys that were once filled with green nests have been completely flattened, and large-scale solar arrays and atmospheric transformation stations are being laid out section by section by SCVs and large engineering equipment.

His fingertips paused for a moment on the tactics panel before he began adjusting the advance plan for the entire expeditionary force.

All sixty reconnaissance ships that were originally planned to remain on the outer edge of the Yulin system for a second round of orbital scanning were moved to the forward deployment sequence. He reorganized them into two outpost clusters, which then rapidly advanced toward two potential star systems on the outer edge of the system.

When Sun Wu received the order, his flagship was approaching the third planet in the B-2 star system at high speed.

After reading the encrypted instructions, he looked up at the live feed transmitted by the orbital probe known as "Skullbreaker".

The probe’s optical sensors are capturing detailed images of the planet’s atmosphere below, with the outlines of settlements gradually emerging on the screen, and the network of town lights stretching from the coast inland, denser than previously estimated.

It looks like a lot of people will have to be killed this time. If he could, Sun Tzu really wouldn't want to do this, as people are a precious resource.

With a soft sigh, Sun Wu swiped his finger along the edge of the holographic interface, bringing up the fleet formation status panel. The energy readings of the 230 Great Wall-class battleships were arranged in a neat array on the screen, all stable above their cruising power and fully charged.

"Reduce speed to 60% of standard cruising speed, maintain current position, and aim main guns at the fleet ahead."

"Send five Banshee fighter jets, carrying high-resolution detection equipment, to infiltrate the low orbit of the third planet and locate the planet's space defense system nodes. Do not disturb the surface; only confirm the location."

The images transmitted back by the probe became clearer and clearer, and the scale and layout of those surface settlements began to show a regularity that made Sun Wu frown slightly.

This enemy seems to be quite formidable; they are organized, disciplined, and technologically advanced. It looks like it's going to be a tough battle.

When Zhao Zheng returned to the bridge from the strategic conference room, the holographic star map on the dome had already been updated.

The pale blue map of the empire had expanded slightly outward from the day before. The B-2 star system was marked as "conquered," and the surfaces of the eight planets were covered with a dense layer of orange data dots, marking the progress of the ongoing post-war assessment and resource registration.

Sun Tzu's expeditionary force completed the complete sweep of the planet in less than forty-eight hours, without encountering any significant resistance in the process.

According to his brief battle report, the human garrison at the settlement surrendered completely six hours after the fleet's orbital bombardment began, and their Old Night Age remnant government was dissolved at the same time. Then, officials from the Great Qin quickly came in to make contact.

Sun Tzu only provided casualty figures and post-war assessments, not even bothering to mention the details of the battle itself; he overestimated the enemy.

After all, a bunch of fat, multi-generational "maggots" had already corrupted these places. At first, Sun Tzu thought it would cost him some money, but he didn't expect that after just one round of artillery fire, they surrendered directly.

Zhao Zheng didn't care about that; what really concerned him was the set of population statistics that were sent back along with the battle report.

This is the most important resource right now; Zhao Zheng is desperately short of manpower.

He has plenty of resources, but he's worried about the manpower. The Starry Sky Battlefield is so vast, how can he fight these battles without a population?

The planet's population is far larger than initially estimated. The registration system had already recorded biometric information for more than 280 billion valid individuals when uploading the first round of data, and it continues to increase at a rate of tens of millions per hour.

At this rate, the conservative estimate is that it could exceed 300 billion, and Zhao Zheng can now say that he lacks nothing.

As long as they pass his standard assessment, his heirs and "good brothers" can be so numerous that they can use sheer numbers to conquer every battlefield on their path.

Even more surprisingly, the planet's surface still contains a large number of old technological facilities left over from the era of conflict. Although most of them are in a semi-paralyzed state due to their age and lack of maintenance, some of them were restored to basic functions after a brief inspection by the engineering team of the Qin Empire.

Those facilities include nine standard-sized heavy industrial foundries, three complete atmospheric circulation systems, and a magnetic levitation orbital network infrastructure covering 60 percent of the planet's habitable areas.

These things might be considered civilian-grade facilities by the standards of human empires, but for the current Qin Empire, the addition of these nine heavy industrial foundries means that the production capacity of various warships and armor components can be nearly doubled.

After all, the Qin Empire was not short of resources.

“Your Majesty, we have taken over the maintenance of nine foundries, but several of them are highly dependent on a specific type of electronic component… and our current supply chain does not yet include a production line for this component.”

Kongming walked in at this moment, stood beside Zhao Zheng, and held a new electronic data board in his hand.

"Furthermore, some of the material specifications in the maintenance drawings for those magnetic levitation track networks do not conform to the standards of Qiankun Star. If a large-scale repair is required, it will take at least three weeks to build two new supporting production lines."

Zhao Zheng did not respond immediately. He watched as the marked planet in the B-2 star field slowly rotated on the holographic star map, and the edge of a continent on the equator appeared in the star map projection as a gray-brown patch unique to the cities left over from the old night era.

"Prioritize the repair of the foundry and the atmospheric circulation system. Put the maglev track network on hold for now. What we need most right now is production capacity and industrial facilities that can be put into use immediately."

"Also, tell Sun Wu that he can decide how to deal with those remnants of the old night era."

"Incorporate those who should be incorporated and purge those who should be purged. Don't drag it out for too long. If there are people who are willing to cooperate, then directly absorb them into the grassroots administrative system and the military. There are plenty of such people, so there is no need to waste time."

Kongming nodded.

"Your Majesty, there is one more thing."

"General Wei Qing's expeditionary force has reached the outer edge of the D-7 star system. The situation there is different from that of B-2. Detection data shows that there is an Orc Empire on the third planet of the D-7 system... that is on a completely different scale from the Orcish we encountered before."

Another green-skinned car? How come these things are so common?!

"Explain in detail."

"Remote sensing data shows that the surface of D-7-3 is covered by a large area of ​​industrialization, with a vegetation coverage of less than 5 percent. The rest is all slag, scrap iron ore, and welded structures that look like some kind of green-skinned military facility."

"The density of thermal signals detected from Earth's orbit far exceeds that of the green-skinned nest in the Yulin Galaxy. Preliminary estimates suggest that the green-skinned population is in the hundreds of billions."

"Hundreds of billions!?"

"Yes."

"General Wei Qing believed that it was a large empire jointly ruled by multiple green-skinned warlords, and that there were signals in the central region that appeared to be at the level of orc warboss."

"Moreover, they already have a space fleet and orbital defense network of a certain scale, which is completely different from the scale of the Rift Nest in the Yulin Galaxy. At present, the D-7 Galaxy should be completely covered by the Greenskins. We are still investigating the latest situation."

Zhao Zheng fell silent for a moment. Wait, were there really so many green-skinned creatures around his Great Qin Empire? Or were they some kind of mysterious conspirators raising them again?