Seeing that line of words, it was as though the terrifying scroll of it had already unrolled before Zhao Chen's eyes.
One T4 Hell-Angel-class Heavy Interstellar Missile Ship was fitted with 360,000-odd interstellar missiles. And what, then, if in time there were 10 of them, or 30, or more still!
Only think of that scene — to call it the last day of the stars would be no exaggeration.
And after this surge of excitement, Zhao Chen was obliged to throw a basin of cold water over himself.
The T4 Hell-Angel-class Heavy Interstellar Missile Ship cost 50 billion star coins the ship.
Which price drew level outright with the terrifying build cost of the T4 Fallen-Angel-class Super-Heavy Carrier Starship.
And that was only a part of it. There was another factor of still greater weight: the build cost of those 360,000-odd interstellar missiles came to 25 billion star coins!
Zhao Chen put both hands to his head.
25 billion star coins!
That figure ran a full hundred times higher than a single T3 Judicator-class Heavy Interstellar Missile Ship!
Indeed the firepower this one ship alone put out came to as much as the whole month's combat consumption of the first stage of Chu Changhe's civil war!
To call this warship a gold-devouring behemoth was to insult the warship.
This was no longer devouring; this was driving a shredder straight across Zhao Chen's resources.
"Heh, heh, heh. And here I'd been thinking that with five resource star regions opened up, and an output of 500 billion star coins a month, I had enough to live out my days as a man of means. And it turns out that figure won't even cover the cost of one squad — 30 T4 Hell-Angel-class Heavy Interstellar Missile Ships — putting out a single round of fire." Zhao Chen sat there murmuring it to himself with a bitter smile.
"Commander-in-Chief?"
Just then Chu Xuan's voice came from beside him, calling.
Zhao Chen moved his arm aside and looked at the Chu Xuan next to him.
She was watching him with a strange sort of look; for to Chu Xuan's eyes the Commander-in-Chief's mood a moment ago had been very strange indeed — one instant delighted past all bearing, the next talking away to himself.
"Ah…" Zhao Chen came back to himself and reined his feelings in at once. "Chu Xuan — is it about the Stellar Alliance's Qian family? Has the material been gathered?"
Chu Xuan gave no further thought to the shifts in the Commander-in-Chief's mood; she laid a file of the material she'd gathered down in front of him.
"This is what we've gathered on this Qian family so far. The Qian family is very well known in the Stellar Alliance — one might even call them one of the great crocodiles of the trade. But their family's name is not a good one. The interstellar trade the Qian family chiefly deals in is the trade in slaves. They don't merely sell slaves outward; they work those slaves themselves as well. They've built, for instance, the most famous 'gold-melting den' in the whole Stellar Alliance, where any man's wants whatever can be met. Forcing women slaves to sell their bodies; setting men slaves to fight duels of every kind in the beast-pits; and services besides that pass all imagining. Beyond that they have several factories and mines under them, and those too are worked wholly by slaves. Other interstellar traders will use slaves as well, it's true — but the Qian family's death rate among slaves is the highest of any! They'll even have their own interstellar fleets take on the guise of interstellar pirates and raid planets, turning those planets' inhabitants into their slaves outright. And sometimes they'll raid some of the weaker interstellar traders of the Stellar Alliance too. Conduct of that sort has made the Qian family enemies without number inside the Stellar Alliance. But the Qian family leans on close relations with the Holy Radiance Empire, so no one has truly dared to move against them, and the Qian family has gone on lording it over everyone to this day. My grandfather spoke of this Qian family back then as well. He said this Qian family were no interstellar traders at all — just a pack of bastards in sheep's clothing." So Chu Xuan set out the substance of the intelligence.
Zhao Chen was going through the detailed material in it too, and there were even records in image and video among it, every one of them telling over the Qian family's evils.
Zhao Chen could not keep his brows from knitting. He had never held himself to be any sort of good man, nor would he go about doing good works out of some great swelling of charity.
But seeing the evils the Qian family had done, there was strong revulsion in him all the same. He had, after all, been in this world less than five years; and on account of that fine world he had lived in before he crossed over, his own humanity had not been altogether lost yet.
"Since they're a family of that sort, then when I make my move I needn't stand on courtesy either," Zhao Chen said mildly.
Before this, Zhao Chen had been thinking that carrying off another man's betrothed was, in sober truth, a bit wanting in morals. But as things looked now—
what he was doing was ridding the people of a scourge.
Qian family… if blame must fall somewhere, blame the System for picking you out for the task it handed down.
"Eh?" Chu Xuan heard the Commander-in-Chief muttering something softly again, but did not catch it.
"Chu Xuan, we're going to revise our plan. Tell Xue Xiaoxiao that this time we're going with her to the Stellar Alliance. As for the fighting in the Grey Moon Star Region, that's given over wholly into Shen Bing's charge. And the Owl Dragon System is given over wholly into Chitong's." This change of plan, coming from nowhere, astonished Chu Xuan greatly.
And most of all — Zhao Chen actually meant, at a time like this, to leave the Owl Dragon System and go to the Stellar Alliance!
"Lord Commander-in-Chief, your travelling carries too great a weight of consequence. It can't be settled so lightly as that — and the more so when the place you mean to go is the Stellar Alliance. That region lies very far from our Owl Dragon System. If… and I say if, Qin Xiaotian were to discover your movements and set an assassination in motion against you— the consequences of that we could not bear!" Chu Xuan said gravely.
Zhao Chen looked at Chu Xuan without the least disturbance in his face. "Don't forget we have the T4 Lucent-class Interstellar Jump Ships. If anything at all should happen— we can pull ourselves out at any moment, and a fleet can come to our support at any moment. I've worked it out. The Stellar Alliance lies within the T4 Lucent-class Interstellar Jump Ship's jump range."
Seeing that Chu Xuan meant to argue him out of it still—
Zhao Chen went on to lay out the plan that had only just come to him: the one stone that brought down two birds.
"My going to the Stellar Alliance this time is, on the one hand, because I have business of my own to see to. And on the other hand it's for the state of things in the Starlight Empire as it now stands. Just as you said before, our attacking the Grey Moon Star Region is to make an opening for Qin Xiaotian. But what if Qin Xiaotian keeps to his shell and won't come out at all? Everyone knows by now that the one Qin Xiaotian goes in dread of is me — is my Owl Dragon Legion. So I'll simply give him a strong dose of medicine when the time comes. Tell him this: I, Zhao Chen, am not in the Owl Dragon System now. I'm in the Stellar Alliance! And I'll not believe that Qin Xiaotian can hold himself back!"
Chu Xuan was brought up short. Zhao Chen's reasoning did indeed hold together.
But there was great risk in it too.
"I… I need to talk this over with Secretary-Officer Lilith and the others! A matter as weighty as this—!" There was something near to panic in Chu Xuan.
And now the look in Zhao Chen's eyes turned cold and hard. "Chu Xuan, you've been with our Owl Dragon Legion only a short while, so there are some things you don't yet understand. Most of the time I am a hands-off master, true enough. But once I have made a decision— there is no one who can gainsay it. Because the Owl Dragon Legion's surname is Zhao."