In that moment,
everywhere this scene was being watched seemed to fall into a brief silence.
Some were stunned, some terrified, some overjoyed, and some even wept for joy.
Nearly every crew member on every ship of the Owl Dragon Legion saw the broadcast.
They had heard the rumors of the Emperor's death, naturally.
But in their hearts they had never wanted to believe them.
Yet as time went on and the rumors festered, the unease in their hearts had grown, little by little.
Now, at last, that unease was gone.
Many crew members and officers wept in each other's arms.
And where there were those who rejoiced, there were naturally those who were afraid.
"Quick! Quick! Quick! Order a halt to everything!" the head of a great family shouted, near frantic.
But his subordinate said, dripping with sweat: "My lord… our first wave of attacks began ten minutes ago."
At those words the head of the great family felt the sky and earth go dark.
It's over, it's over.
……
At the same time, in another place that mattered.
The Angel Race's War Angel King · the rebel flagship
The War Angel King looked, without a change of expression, at the man on the screen opposite.
And the angel officers on the bridge were all looking tensely at the War Angel King,
waiting for his next order.
"Can we be certain it is Zhao Chen himself?" the War Angel King asked the adjutant beside him.
The adjutant worked at something a while, then nodded and said: "Every piece of data has been scanned. And… by word from the people we placed inside the Owl Dragon, it can be confirmed. This is Zhao Chen himself. He… is still alive."
The War Angel King laughed, and shook his head at himself. "You always do turn up at the crucial moment."
"My lord… what do we do now?" the adjutant asked carefully.
"What do we do? Let me think it over," the War Angel King said, and rose to his feet, walking slowly toward the small room beside the bridge.
The adjutant watched the War Angel King's back, and for some reason it felt to him as though His Majesty had changed a great deal all at once.
All the fire and spirit had gone out of him.
The War Angel King went into the captain's temporary rest room beside the bridge and closed the door.
The next second, many on the bridge began to talk.
"What do we do now? Zhao Chen is actually still alive!"
"Yes, if we stand against the Owl Dragon Empire, do we have any chance at all…"
"This Zhao Chen, after all, led his Owl Dragon Legion before and never lost a battle!"
Hearing the talk on the bridge,
the adjutant frowned and barked at once: "Shut up, all of you!"
At the rebuke, they all closed their mouths.
Boom.
Suddenly!
A tremendous blast came from the captain's rest room the War Angel King had just walked into.
The explosion blew out the wall, and the shock wave threw the whole bridge into chaos.
Smoke and dust filled the whole bridge, with sparks flying.
'Alert! Explosion detected in compartment, fire in compartment; initiating fire-suppression procedure.'
The fire-suppression procedure started, and the flames, which had not been large to begin with, were soon under control.
The adjutant stared in disbelief at the small room where the explosion had happened.
The officers and soldiers on the bridge, coming back to their senses, looked at that wreckage too.
It could be seen that it had been a bomb set off from inside, and not a powerful one.
Enough to destroy what was in that small room, but not to do the bridge much harm.
——————
No one would have thought that this sudden rebellion within the Empire would end in so dramatic a way.
The Angel Race announced publicly that the former War Angel King, Wells, had betrayed the Angel Race.
The body of angel rebels who had followed the former War Angel King Wells in revolt were being dealt with.
The Holy Angel Queen Angelia, whom the former War Angel King Wells had imprisoned, had been freed.
At the same time, the rebels everywhere either surrendered or sold out their own confederates outright, protesting that they had been coerced, and so on.
An hour after the Emperor's address to the nation,
in a holographic remote conference room,
figures appeared in chair after chair, almost at the same instant.
Charlotte, Lilith, Chitong, Su Lan, Chu Xuan, Shen Bing, Xue Xiaoxiao…
The first thing each of them did on appearing there was to look at the empty seat at the head of the table.
Or rather, the seat that had stood empty for half a year.
At last, a column of light they had not seen in a long while appeared.
And a familiar man in military uniform stood before them.
"Everyone, it has been a long time." The man looked at them all and said it with a faint smile.
The feelings on the women generals' faces were all different.
Charlotte rose first and saluted. "We greet the Emperor."
The other generals rose one after another: "We greet the Emperor!"
Zhao Chen nodded slightly and motioned them all to sit, then said gravely: "I know there must be a great deal you're curious about. But our first business now is to deal with the trouble facing the Owl Dragon Empire. Once that is dealt with, we'll talk of the rest."
Having said it, Zhao Chen looked at them.
None of them spoke.
Curious as they were about the Emperor's half year of absence, in their hearts, whatever else, so long as the Emperor could stand here, that was enough!
"Lilith, you'll have a plan already, I expect?" Zhao Chen looked to Lilith.
The familiar voice sounded.
And Lilith's heart gave a jolt in spite of her.
It was just this feeling, familiar and so long missed.
In the half year past, whatever Lilith had come up against, she had handled it flawlessly, issuing order after order.
But in her heart there had always been a feeling of something missing.
But now it was different.
The empty place in her had been filled again.
After a brief moment's distraction, Lilith said at once: "As regards the Owl Dragon Empire's internal strife, things have changed enormously. I have several plans and suggestions here…"
Then Lilith began to set them out fluently,
laying out her views one by one.
In the whole conference room,
it was as though the Emperor's half year of absence had never happened at all, and everyone was exactly as they had always been.
Very soon Lilith had finished setting out all of it.
Zhao Chen, having heard it through, was well pleased; he looked at Lilith and nodded. "Lilith's thinking is sound. There is no great problem with it. First step: the open, flagrant rebels are all to be destroyed at once, and no surrender accepted. And that part is to be publicized across the whole Empire, a way of killing one to cow a hundred. Second step: for any family powers, lords and the like that declared rebellion or independence in all this, if they did no grave harm, all their property is to be confiscated without exception, and their family's offspring all banished from their home star systems. Any who defy this are to be dealt with as in the first step. Third step: for those who made no declaration of betrayal or independence, but against whom the Royal Embroidered-Uniform Guard has gathered evidence…" The corners of Zhao Chen's mouth rose slightly in a cold smile. "Write all that evidence up for me into little black books. And set them before those people. As for how they are dealt with after that, it will depend on their own attitude."
For this part reached too widely; to move against all of it at once would drag in too many, and would harm an Owl Dragon Empire that was short of deep foundations to begin with.
So this third group of powers, Zhao Chen meant to digest slowly.
But at the least, unless the families of this third group offered Zhao Chen a T7 technology, they were likely never to rise another step.
"Then that is how it will be handled." Lilith noted it down.
"And the Angel Race?" Charlotte asked the question that mattered.
The other interstellar powers were in truth all easy to deal with.
The Angel Race alone was the difficult one.
Lilith, in what she had just laid out, had also set the Angel Race aside for special handling.
Zhao Chen said quietly: "The Angel Race I will deal with myself."
Zhao Chen was very sure he could crush the Angel Race's power outright now.
But as things were for him now, he could not simply cut them all down with one stroke.
All the more since, by Lilith's account,
in this half year,
many of the Angel Race's elite talents had been taken into the Owl Dragon Empire, and because of the outstanding gifts of angel soldiers, they often took on more of the fighting.
And not only gifts for fighting, but strong abilities in every other respect as well.
Talents good at everything, one might say.
Small wonder the angels had been one of the mightiest races in this universe before.
The Angel Race was a two-edged sword; it all depended on how Zhao Chen used it.
"And there is one more thing. The Royal Embroidered-Uniform Guard has reported to me. In this rebellion, they recorded a number of informants placed from outside within our Owl Dragon." Zhao Chen narrowed his eyes.
Zhao Chen had a special ability: he could discern others' intent to kill him.
Once it had been an ability of the System's.
But now it had become an ability of Zhao Chen's own.
But even with this ability, Zhao Chen could not possibly have looked over every crew member within the Owl Dragon.
So it was inevitable that some would slip into the lower and middle ranks.
Zhao Chen knew this perfectly well.
So long as these people stirred up nothing serious, he could not be bothered with them.
But this time they had crossed the line.
"Understood. I will take charge of this matter." Charlotte spoke coldly, with killing intent in her eyes.
In truth, she hated these enemies hidden within far more than the enemy outside.
"Very well. See to what is in front of you first. I'll give you a week. I want to see the Owl Dragon Empire as it was half a year ago." Zhao Chen looked at them all with a smile.
"Yes!" they said together.
The meeting was very short.
But after its brief span, a storm of blood swept through the Owl Dragon Empire.
The whole lot of those who had leaped out before like jumping clowns were cleared away, one by one.
Families that might once have been very great were destroyed in the blink of an eye by a single Owl Dragon fleet.
Even those with armed fleets of their own were no match whatever for the Owl Dragon fleets, and served only to add a few brilliant fireworks to the proceedings.
No one would have thought it.
That this rebellion would end so feebly after so grand a beginning.
……
"Are these our children?" Zhao Chen looked at the two children in the crib beside Charlotte.
His heart could not help beating faster.
Two little babies, a boy and a girl, blinking their big bright eyes at this strange man before them in curiosity.
"Yes. The elder, our daughter, Zhao Baier. The younger, our son, Zhao Hu. The names you chose." Charlotte looked at the two children in the crib, then at Zhao Chen opposite.
At this moment her heart was happy beyond measure.
Zhao Chen reached out toward the two children in spite of himself.
But halfway there, his hand stopped.
He laughed like a fool: "I'm a father, I'm a father."
Seeing that childlike look on Zhao Chen's face, Charlotte could not keep from laughing.
The Emperor of a great empire, of all people, wearing such a look before two children.
"Once I've dealt with what's in hand, I'll come and find you. To have a good look at our children, and hold them." Zhao Chen looked lovingly at the children, and then at Charlotte.
Charlotte said with a smile: "We have waited half a year; a little while longer is no hardship. The Empire's affairs matter more right now. And… Lilith needs you very much as well."
At Charlotte's words, Zhao Chen's heart trembled.
He knew that in the half year he had been away, he had come to owe these two women too much.
He had left a great deal behind, true.
But had they not held on here all this while, even the mightiest empire would have fallen one day.
"Don't worry. All this trouble will be sorted out soon," said Zhao Chen.
Then Zhao Chen's image of light faded from the room.
The two children, seeing the image of light fade away before them,
seemed to be taken aback.
Then the boy burst out crying.
"Waaah…"
But the girl blinked her big bright eyes and tilted her head, as though puzzling over something.
Then she pointed at the place where Zhao Chen had just been, and looked at Charlotte.
Charlotte sat on the edge of the bed and picked up both children.
"That was your papa just now. Your papa will come to see you very soon. Your papa is the strongest, bravest, most wonderful papa in this whole universe." Charlotte looked at her two children.
Her eyes were full of boundless tenderness,
as though she were not the same person at all as the imperial marshal who could give the order for a massacre on the battlefield without a moment's pause.
……
Having ended the holographic link with Charlotte, Zhao Chen went to see Lilith as well.
With Lilith, the talk was chiefly of work, and of the more important developments in the Owl Dragon Empire over this half year.
Even when Zhao Chen tried to show some care for her, Lilith would only answer gently that he need not worry about her.
What mattered most now was the Empire's business.
Zhao Chen opened his eyes.
Zhao Chen's heart was full of warmth.
He had no System now.
But whatever threat he faced, he would guard everything here, and guard his family.
Zhao Chen rose to his feet.
"Your Majesty." The secretary officer beside him followed at once.
"Get me a shuttle ready," said Zhao Chen.
"Where are you going? Shall I arrange an escort?"
"This is our own Owl Dragon Star System; there's no need for an escort. I'm going to the industrial zone."