Chapter 59 Aftermath

This time, it should be safe and settled, right? Yu Lian raised his hand to look up at the sky, confirming that those three points of light had indeed stopped advancing.

According to information from his past life, the Tolun Incident was actually a rogue operation by a group of hot-headed young officers from the Kaitian Iron Claw Youth League, which had never been approved by the Kaitian Kingdom's high command.

Of course, on the timeline of his past life, the frantic actions of these young officers actually managed to bite off a massive chunk of meat from the Commonwealth's colonies. Instead, it forced the Kaitian Kingdom, which had already been restless and eager for action, to finally make up its mind, thus forming a crucial link in the subsequent chain of historical events...

Fortunately, history really had changed for the better.

Ina did not take off her rangefinder-style goggles. She was still looking at Yu Lian with a face full of anticipation, hoping that the latter would once again order her to open fire. She felt that firing just one shot was simply not enough, and she was currently unsatisfied and craving more.

The future greatest sniper in the entire galaxy expressed that operating heavy artillery was indeed much more fun than firing a rifle. With just a single shot earlier, she had set the enemy ship ablaze, and with another three to five shots, she was even confident she would sink it.

"Stop messing around. The enemy isn't actually stupid. If you fire another one, their neutron bomb will really come crashing down. A radius of hundreds of miles will be cleared of all living things." Yu Lian happily poured cold water on her enthusiasm. He felt that taking advantage of a future celebrity while she was still a half-baked rookie and teasing her relentlessly felt absolutely fantastic.

The only thing that can counter a warship is still a warship. This was the truth of this world.

Oh, excluding those cheaters who could casually pluck black holes with their bare hands and ignite stars.

To put it bluntly, the current situation all boiled down to who was crazier. On this point, Yu Lian actually had quite a bit of confidence in his senior sister.

Sure enough, a few minutes later, Senior Sister Eleanor cut the communication, revealed a joyful smile, and made an OK gesture in Yu Lian's direction. Everyone on the position started cheering one after another.

"How boring. Aren't the Kaitian people the legendary unyielding warrior race? I thought they could hold out for a few more minutes." Ina curled her lips, expressing immense dissatisfaction. Her hand on the trigger released and tightened again; it seemed she genuinely wanted to land another shot.

"The Kaitian people are bellicose but not skilled in warfare, ferocious yet lacking in elasticity. They claim to be unyielding, but when facing imperial nobles, they are remarkably submissive! To put it bluntly, they are the epitome of bullying the weak and fearing the strong." Yu Lian commented thus, yet he couldn't help but want to smile.

Even with a race like this, couldn't the decadent Earthlings and Commonwealth do nothing about them?

Three Kaitian destroyers, dragging their battle-scarred hulls and overflowing resentment, thus began their retreat.

They didn't actually go far; they merely left the orbit of New Yumen Star, yet they still lingered within the star system for a full day, until the garrison's reinforcement fleet arrived, whereupon they finally slinked away completely.

Of course, that was a story for later.

The subsequent period was filled with rather tedious administrative and routine work.

There were over two hundred thousand piled-up mountain-like remains of the Sand People on the battlefield, along with the weapons they left behind. Just cleaning these up took the Governor's Mansion nearly a month. The former was relatively easy to deal with, but the crucial issue was the latter—following the end of the battle, quite a few bold citizens also secretly slipped out of the city. Some of them just wanted to scavenge to supplement their household income, some wanted to snag the status of a "militiaman," and some were mischievous kids hoping to pick up warheads on the battlefield. More troublesome still were those ulterior-motived criminal gangs, anti-social groups, and even self-defense organizations of citizens not recognized by the authorities.

With a mere 3,000 or so garrison troops, it was utterly impossible to monitor the movements of 70,000 citizens. Consequently, no one knew how many firearms and weapons flowed into Tolun and even the entire New Yumen. In the years that followed, the law and order of this colony remained in a state of continuous deterioration... Of course, it hadn't been particularly good before anyway.

Next came the status confirmation and rescue operations for various settlements outside Tolun.

Aside from Councilor Jiang Yudong's group, there were also several batches of refugees who had headed toward Tolun but ended up blocked outside the city by the Sand People's massive army. They weren't as lucky as to run right into Yu Lian and his group. Quite a few refugees crashed headfirst into the Sand People's encirclement and suffered heavy casualties; it was said that over four thousand citizens died in this catastrophe. All of the above were heard by the garrison soldiers from hundreds of citizens rescued from the Sand People's camp, and most of these poor souls had already been tortured beyond recognition.

The soldiers consequently began a frenzied retaliation, shooting or even burying alive over one hundred thousand Sand People prisoners of war over the subsequent three days, adding substantially to the mountain-like piles of corpses.

As for the garrison side, aside from Yu Lian's Post No. 12, there were quite a few other outposts attacked outside the city, and several were completely wiped out. Naturally, some died at the hands of the Sand People, but there were also cases where entire units went missing, including the outpost buildings completely collapsing and being buried by landslides.

Hearing this news, Yu Lian was so angered he trembled and almost cried, feeling that the demonic aura in all this was simply too strong. Right there on the transport craft returning to the city, he seriously reported the matter to Eleanor.

"Mm, I've heard about it too. For a planet like this to actually harbor creatures like that, it's completely unscientific!"

"They aren't ordinary creatures, but rather biological weapons with a clear system and complete organization, so they might not necessarily be products of this planet... Of course, you could also understand them as another type of civilization."

"Civilization?" Eleanor looked at Yu Lian in surprise, feeling a bit unable to keep up with his train of thought.

"Yes, all things as one! Hive mind! Absolute will, the swarm is the will!" Seeing his senior sister's gaze grow even more bewildered, Yu Lian sighed helplessly, thinking to himself that not only had their technological tree veered off course, but their cultural tree had as well—without Grandmaster Heinlein, did they not even have the concept of the Zerg?

"…At the very least, I can be certain they are definitely not naturally evolved organisms!" Yu Lian could only reply this way.

"In other words, a biological army? Similar to the Titan war beasts tamed by the Empire?"

Much more terrifying than those! Even a Mountain King Hercules wouldn't be able to withstand tens or hundreds of millions of Zerglings swarming forward and tearing it apart! How many Mountain King Hercules are there in the entire Empire? But by Yu Lian's era, the Queen wouldn't even blink an eye if she threw out a hundred million Zerglings as cannon fodder.

"So, you think those... well, let's just call them the swarm according to your description, do you think the appearance of that swarm has anything to do with this Sand People siege?" Eleanor asked.

The Tolun Incident in his past life did not feature the appearance of a swarm, so Yu Lian did not have a ready-made answer.

However, after pondering for a moment, he still replied: "The goblins we captured are employees of the Compass Chamber of Commerce. As you know, this is actually a broker of arms and mercenary services registered in a permanent neutral country, and standing behind them are likely major figures from the Alliance or the Empire. They are equally likely to be the behind-the-scenes supporters of the Sand People's siege this time. Even more likely, they are the controllers of the swarm. Ah, yes! Taking advantage of the Sand People's rebellion to turn the entire colony upside down while testing the combat effectiveness of biological weapons makes total sense!"

The more Yu Lian thought about it, the more he felt the possibility was high. If they found the mastermind behind the Sand People siege, would they also find the true creators of the swarm? This was a secret he hadn't even unraveled in his past life.

"You mean the Sand People's supporters aren't the Kaitian Kingdom?"

"If those Kaitian big cats didn't have the Empire's tacit approval, they wouldn't dare to make a move on New Yumen. Furthermore, they don't have the capability to quietly deliver hundreds of thousands of firearms, blades, and hundreds of tanks without a sound."

"Hah, could it be the Imperial Royal Merchant Fleets with universal pan-galactic tax exemption, or the Alliance's Poseidon Fleet? Come to think of it, those three Kaitian destroyers probably passed through the star gate under the guise of escorting the Imperial Royal Fleet." Eleanor sneered: "Oh my, whatever happened to the Human Destiny Community?"

"Senior sister, so what if we are human? Aren't both the Alliance and the Empire human as well? Three out of the four Galactic Wars were provoked by them beating each other up. As for the potential the Commonwealth and Earthlings have erupted with since their independence, both the Empire and the Alliance see it clearly—well, even though they've gotten a bit decadent over the past few decades—as for the interests of the New World, they would rather leave them in the hands of stubborn and submissive big cats like the Kaitian than ever hand them over to an uncontrollable third party."

"Troubled times indeed, Yuli! Once this matter is over, hurry back. Prepare your graduation thesis, get a good grade, and coupled with your combat record from this mission, I believe you should have no problem graduating. Then, give serious consideration to your future. I actually hope you can stay, Yuli. War is bound to break out; perhaps not now, but it definitely will." The senior sister patted Yu Lian's shoulder and then naturally straightened his collar for him: "However, our previous agreement still holds. If you aren't willing to stay in the military, I will help you find a good job at White-Wing Anglo."

"…I, I will consider it seriously."

Actually, Yu Lian hadn't truly given serious thought to his future life path and direction. He knew the destiny of the Commonwealth to come, as well as the reality of this country being hopelessly terminally ill, and he really didn't want to go down with it.

Conversely, if he entered a transnational super-star-level security enterprise like White-Wing Anglo, he could step by step work his way up into the middle and upper management or even to the Alliance headquarters, and then find a way to immigrate his uncle's entire family to the Alliance. Although the entire galaxy would later turn into a chaotic mess with one calamity-level disaster emerging after another, the Alliance's domestic star sector had never suffered too heavy an impact.

Once his uncle's family was settled, he could continue to explore those mysteries of later generations that he had never unraveled. Traversing the stars, singing songs with a sword in hand, imbued with chivalry and wild drunkenness—wasn't this precisely the lifestyle he pursued?

The only unsatisfactory thing was that with his current cultivator star ring, whether he chose the "Balance" or "Eternity" path, his future prospects seemed capped at the very peak of the seventh ring!

Should he set another small goal for himself? Complete this path?

...Yet, could he really leave everything behind and just walk away? Yu Lian looked at his senior sister's profile, as flawless as jade carving, his emotions complex.

"Yuli, I know you often look at your senior sister with infatuation, but that's as far as it goes. Before I make up my mind, I won't do anything to wrong Fina." The senior sister's eyes seemed to flash with a hint of warm moisture, half-smiling.

Yu Lian shivered slightly, and another young girl's smiling figure surfaced in his mind.

"I will report this situation regarding the swarm to the garrison headquarters and the General Staff. However, whether they will take it seriously is beyond me." She paused, and then added: "Also, tsk, the identity of that Chuck Brown-Thread has already been checked. He is truly a vassal of the King of Tamil, a third-class knight-baron of the Empire, and indeed, a psion."

"Troubled times indeed..." The senior sister toyed with her little braid, once again wearing an annoyed expression.

"Senior sister, if you had known beforehand, would you still not have made a move?"

"How could that be! Whatever comes, comes!" Eleanor scoffed: "Leaving aside a mere lowest-ranking minor imperial noble, even if the King of Tamil himself came down here, I'd beat him up just the same!"

I believe the first half of that sentence, but the second half somehow felt a bit like putting up a bold front when terrified.

While they were talking, the airship had already landed at the airport. The senior sister took the lead in opening the cabin door to prepare to leave, saying: "Alright, regardless of everything else, we won. Let's change our mood today; I'll treat you to charcoal-roasted marmots..."

Just how deep is your grudge against marmots? Yu Lian was just about to make a sarcastic remark when he heard the senior sister directly spit out: "Hey, this guy actually came! If I'd known, I wouldn't have let him out."

He saw the short and fat Governor Yamadera walking over with a face full of anger and a menacing momentum, looking at a glance like a giant sphere rolling over.