What are the benefits of fighting for the Empire as part of the Star Realm Army?
For the Rage Owl Star Alliance Government, there are no direct benefits.
But for Gu Hang, that may not be the case.
He originally did not wish to personally take on the role of legion commander of the Rage Bear Legion, preferring to have Yan Fangxu do it while he stayed behind the scenes, which was a better option.
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However, now that he had assumed this position, he resolved to accept it and sought to make the most of the situation by looking for any potential value and opportunities that he could exploit.
And there were indeed such opportunities.
First was prestige, an indirect commodity, but a valuable one. He wasn’t a lone wolf. As a politician and leader of a faction, silently accumulating wealth and slowly developing was not the only strategy.
Certainly, aspects like technological advancement and the development of the planet’s industrial capacity did not need to be publicized; they were akin to inner cultivation.
But now, as Rage Owl Star gradually moved towards the Star Sea and engaged in interstellar exchanges, the importance of ‘prestige,’ an intangible asset, should not be underestimated.
For instance, Gu Hang’s demonstration of A-level Spiritual Energy user capabilities was an enhancement of his personal prestige.
And this kind of thing, prestige, could be monetized, albeit with certain methods and abilities.
He was already capitalizing on it.
The forthcoming establishment of the Psychic Cultivator’s Association branch on Rage Owl Star was one such way to cash in.
This branch would receive funding from the headquarters of the Tianma Cultivators Association; it could access precious materials for training Spiritual Energy users; Gu Hang would have an official excuse to train Spiritual Energy users and could issue legal licenses to them.
All these were crucial.
The funding amount didn’t matter—any money is good money—and the most important thing was the issuing of legal licenses. Without a license, Spiritual Energy users trained on Rage Owl Star would be fine operating on their home planet. But as Rage Owl Star stabilized and society became relatively stable, it was bound to take to the interstellar stage.
Then, given the Empire’s controlling policy towards Spiritual Energy users, lacking legal identity could easily lead to issues outside of their home star.
From now on, this would no longer be a concern.
Moreover, apart from matters related to Spiritual Energy, Gu Hang’s recent surge in fame brought another significant benefit.
Through the Gu Commercial Firm, he found many investors and signed several investment contracts.
The planet’s industrial capacity did not require foreign investment. The Alliance’s economic system focused more on planned economics, with money and market functions playing a supporting role, so attracting a large influx of foreign investors for development wasn’t necessary.
However, trade was indispensable. The Alliance had ample production capacity, and a significant portion of that capacity had no outlet for consumption. Even if all output went towards paying taxes, the excess Tax Currency couldn’t just sit idle; there had to be trade and order fulfillment to translate the extra capability into income.
And although the Alliance could be self-sustaining with its rich production capacity, it still required input from outside sources. As production expanded, the demand for raw materials would inevitably increase.
Mining, logging, farming… these activities would, of course, be developed on Rage Owl Star, but it was prudent to plan ahead. Establishing a trade route for resource input was also advantageous.
With the backing of the Gu Commercial Firm, Gu Hang wasn’t worried about lacking channels for interstellar trade. But there was a huge problem: what about the Starport?
Rage Owl Star did have a starport, but it was too small. Accommodating several hundred thousand members of the mobile Star Realm Army required several days. In the context of large-scale interstellar trade, it was utterly insufficient for exchanges involving tens of millions, even billions of Tax Currency worth of goods— the starport simply didn’t have the capacity.
And currently, the largest vessel that could dock at Rage Owl Star’s starport was at the Escort Ship level. The ‘Giant Belly’ Transport Ship, a popular choice for interstellar trade, couldn’t dock there at all.
Gu Hang had a complete set of blueprints for constructing a large starport and faced no technological bottlenecks. Below the starport in Skaaro City, which had a population of 500,000 residents, the area had transformed from a barren land into the largest city in Xiongya Province in less than a year. Almost all of these half a million people had come to construct the starport; even if they weren’t directly involved in construction, they were at least transporting materials, supporting personnel and logistics, managing the ground operations, or working in medical care and law enforcement…
Of course, the core focus out of this plethora of associated jobs was still the construction of the starport.
However, despite the large workforce dedicated to the task, the construction progress of the starport was painfully slow.
When Gu Hang spoke about this with his mother, she stared at him with disbelief for quite a while.
“What do you think a starport is? You’ve only started building for less than a year! Those massive starports you’ve seen on other planets, didn’t all of them take decades, even a century of use and expansion, to slowly become what they are now? Don’t expect to get rich overnight!”
But Gu Hang did want to get rich overnight.
So what was the solution to accelerate construction?
Seeking external investment.
The current construction method of the Alliance involved firing orbital spacecraft in fits and starts, carrying only a small portion of parts produced on the ground, or one or two construction machines, into space at a time. Then workers, encumbered by space suits that greatly hindered their movements, had to perform space operations.