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Miss Wang Qi came and went in a hurry.
After spending one night there, she boarded a spaceship and left the next day.
Traveling from Rage Owl Star to Heijian Star only required one trip through the Star Realm Tunnel. Adding the normal time for space travel, the journey took about six or seven days in total.
There was still some time before the family conference began. However, she definitely wanted to arrive earlier. She needed to erase some uncertain factors before the conference started to ensure that everything was set in stone.
After bidding farewell to his mother and three mentors, Gu Hang returned to his normal work routine.
He was waiting for the outcome of the family conference, waiting for his coronation as Family Head, waiting for the five million Tax Currency his birth mother planned to give him.
With so much money, he could buy a lot of good stuff.
Such as Interstellar Warrior Powered Armor, Terminator Armor, key components for building starports—ones you can produce, but it’s too slow, and with money, you can import them to speed up the progress.
Even, by saving up more or asking his mother for a larger sponsorship, he was even thinking of making some bigger moves.
For example, terraforming the planetary surface.
The central three provinces and the eastern three provinces, vast lands mostly wastelands, are hard to cultivate, with harsh environments, and riddled with Low Energy Storms… The Empire certainly has special technologies that can change planetary environments.
This itself is a prerequisite technology for large-scale interstellar colonization. His ultimate goal was to make the Low Energy Storms settle down.
Before the war, the greatest value of Rage Owl Star was energy extraction from the Spiritualized Gas Fields.
Now, the Low Energy Storms that ravage many parts of the planet are essentially Spiritual Energy forces leaking from the Spirit Realm Crystal Wall. Without being bound, they settle in one environment, unable to form Spiritualized Gas Fields anymore; but this energy exists, hence they become uncontrollable storms.
If it’s possible to correct the wasteland environment of Rage Owl Star, find a way to restrain and settle Spiritual Energy, and form Spiritualized Gas Fields again, the entire planet’s value will soar tremendously.
Of course, the price for this is very high. To accomplish a major transformation of the climate and environment of an entire planet, it could easily cost tens to hundreds of billions of Tax Currency.
The Empire generally is reluctant to invest significant resources to change an environment of a planet for interstellar colonization. With that amount of money, it would rather build a fleet, which might be able to snatch more than one planet from the hands of the Empire’s enemies in a war.
Of course, if there is something of particularly great value—whether it’s the value of the planet itself or the strategic value of its location—then the Empire would still invest in this area.
For this reason, the related technological capabilities still exist.
Gu Hang couldn’t afford this sum.
If he could come up with tens or hundreds of billions of Tax Currency for planetary environmental transformation, then at that point, he probably wouldn’t be lacking in income from the Spiritualized Gas Fields generated from the Low Energy Storms settling.
After all, no matter how coveted the output from the Spiritualized Gas Fields may be, the huge upfront investment required would take many years to recoup.
However, just because Gu Hang couldn’t afford this money now didn’t mean he couldn’t look for it elsewhere.
For example, the Gu Clan.
Such a great investment project, wouldn’t the Gu Family be tempted?
I, as Family Head, am tempted!
…
Before the result of the family conference held on Heijian Star arrived, Gu Hang received another piece of news.
This news came from Korolya No. 3 Planet.
The Korolya Star System had two planets. Korolya I was a mineral resource planet, but was very inhospitable, with a permanent population probably only in the millions, mainly miners and some industries serving them.
Korolya III, in the same star system, is the largest, most populous Nest Capital World in the Tianma Star Sector.
There, 41.8 billion people reside!
Honestly, Gu Hang really couldn’t imagine how a planet could accommodate more than forty billion people.
He had never personally visited Korolya III, only heard that the planet’s wilderness environment was basically gone, all barren land. The massive population was housed in about twenty ‘Nest Capitals.’
The so-called ‘Nest Capital,’ as the name implies, is a massive ‘nest.’
A human nest.
In essence, it’s a city. But compared to the cities Gu Hang had in mind, there is a huge difference.
It would often hollow out the entire underground area of a region as the bottom layer of the Nest Capital, where a large population of lower-class citizens lived; the middle layer of the Nest Capital might have some industrial value; the upper layer is mainly for administration, commerce, the homes of the powerful, important industrial zones, etc.
For the majority of the population living in the middle and lower classes, they may not see sunlight for their entire lives.
Chaos, death, disease, poverty… these things entangle the lives of the people of the Nest Capital.
Their average life expectancy might be only around forty years.
Disease, overwork, malnutrition, vendettas… these are their main causes of death.
Besides these, the most significant loss of population on Korolya III comes from… Imperial Tax.
If there is anything special about Korolya III, it is its population.
The Empire defines the annual total value of production of an Imperial person as 1 Tax Currency. Whereas a healthy, working-age living person, when used as tax, is valued at 5 Tax Currency.
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