The No. 223 resource planet in the West Wind Sector in the Third Battle Area in the Imperium of True Human Beings had an extremely harsh environment without an atmosphere.

The West Wind Sector was a small world with a diameter of thirty billion kilometers. The star here was still in the adolescent phase soon after birth. As a result, the seven planets around the star were all seriously torn by the drastic changes of gravitational forces and could not form a dense atmosphere. So, there was not a single habitable planet.

The ever-changing gravitational and tectonic movements, as well as the material exchanges when the meteorites hit the planets, endowed quite a few satellites of the West Wind Sector with abundant rare metals and crystals.

The West Wind Sector was the remotest world in the Third Battle Area, and the No. 223 resource planet was the remotest celestial body in the West Wind Sector.

On this planet, there was an abundant reserve of “nickel-fused crystals”, which, once added to the highly-explosive cannonballs, could significantly increase the destructiveness of the cannonballs and even double the radius of destruction.

Therefore, after the Imperium took the West Wind Sector back from the Covenant Alliance, a small fleet was sent to camp on the No. 223 resource planet.

The mission of the fleet was not to defend the No. 223 resource planet in the Covenant Alliance’s possible counterattack. The base of the expedition army did not expect them to be capable of that at all.

They were only responsible for cleaning and reestablishing the mining bases that had been seriously sabotaged by the Covenant Alliance in the extremely harsh, cruel world as “engineering soldiers”.

It was exactly the mission of the ninth fleet of the Third Battle Area of the expedition army of the Imperium, also known as the “Red Nimbus Fleet”.

The Red Nimbus Fleet was a miscellaneous force from a local area. To quote the powerful nobles and lords in the capital, they were just a bunch of mobsters who were formerly bumpkins. It was a typical example of all the miscellaneous troops.

The Red Nimbus Fleet was from the Red Nimbus Sector, a world that was not conquered, or to put it nicely, “did not join the Imperium”, until five hundred years ago at the last phase of the Imperium’s grand expedition.

Because the rulers of the Red Nimbus Sector judiciously chose to surrender when faced with the overwhelming army of the Imperium from the sky, and the Red Nimbus Sector was itself a barren and resourceless world that had nothing at all other than the billions of hungry people, the Imperium generously granted the Red Nimbus Sector a great deal of autonomy, as long as the Red Nimbus Sector submitted taxes and soldiers regularly and attacked the enemy together with the Imperium at the request of His Majesty and the Council of Elders when needed.

Despite the “generosity” and “mercy”, the life for the people and even the Immortal Cultivators of the Red Nimbus Sector in the past five hundred years was still quite difficult.

The taxes of the Imperium were heavier and heavier after each day. Besides the taxes that were directly submitted to the court, the four Kurfürst families also exploited them by setting up fancy regulations including all kinds of “fees” and “special taxes”.

In the meantime, the magical equipment and the industrial products made from the assembly lines of the highly developed industrial worlds at the center of the cosmos flowed into the Red Nimbus Sector like tides, completely destroying the industrial system of the Red Nimbus Sector that was rather underdeveloped but relatively independent. The Red Nimbus Sector was bound to the downmost stream of the interest chain of the noble families, turning into an insignificant component on the assembly line.

Five hundred years ago, in spite of the underdeveloped technologies, the Red Nimbus Sector was still capable of manufacturing crystal suits, armed shuttles, and even starships. It was even possible to produce one or two simplest space jump units.

But today, while the magical equipment that was used in the Red Nimbus Sector was more delicate, glamorous, and powerful on the surface, there was no longer a single crystal suit that was the Red Nimbus Sector’s own brand. All the crystal suit factories of the Red Nimbus Sector had been purchased by the sects under the four Kurfürst families. The “outdated” assembly lines were all shattered and replaced by the brand-new ones, which were “generously donated” by the noble families.

Naturally, the central technologies of the magical equipment assembly lines were controlled in the hands of the noble families at the center of the cosmos and never to be learned by the Red Nimbus Sector.

Furthermore, those magical equipment factories could not produce a whole set of crystal suit anymore but were only able to make 5% of the components. The other 95% of the components were all shipped from the center of the cosmos and assembled on the spot.

As a result, the independent industrial system of the Red Nimbus Sector completely collapsed and lost all the bargaining chips. Their throats were choked by the noble families from the center of the cosmos, and they became the dump of foreign magical equipment as well as the resource supplier.

What was even more pathetic was that the Red Nimbus Sector did not have any resources that were abundant enough to supply the entire Imperium except for manpower.

The price of labor in the place, as a result, was suppressed to an appalling extent. According to the lords from the center of the cosmos, it was exactly because of the cheap labor force in the Red Nimbus Sector and the dutifulness of the workers that the magical equipment factories were established here. Otherwise, the lords could have set up the factories elsewhere or replaced all human workers with spiritual puppets.

They were here to feed the workers as a charity for the sake that they were all the compatriots of the Imperium!

When they were shameless enough to say those words, the cocky lords had completely forgotten that it was exactly because of a hundred years of goods dump and the following sordid tricks that the local sects and magical equipment factories were destroyed and billions of workers reduced to destitution.

However, the lords were not saying that based on nothing but speaking in the bridge of the heavy warships. Even when they landed, they would bring a whole crystal suit legion to “protect the factories”. What could the workers in the Red Nimbus Sector do?

The healthy and strong workers of the Red Nimbus Sector who worked diligently in a magical equipment factory under the banner of the four Kurfürst families, to the point of blood-vomiting and even emphysema, would still be unable to feed their families. They had to ask their wives and daughters to go overseas and “work” in the entertainment locations at the center of the cosmos established by the noble families. Such tragedies were constantly happening in the Red Nimbus Sector in the past hundreds of years.

The noble families from the center of the cosmos had even extended their hands to the agriculture of the Red Nimbus Sector. The “spiritual rice” and “spiritual wheat” that had been genetically refined, as well as the foreign crops, replaced the local rice and wheat of the Red Nimbus Sector.

Because the “spiritual rice” and “spiritual wheat” had a high yield and a good taste, and they contained abundant nutrition and heat, and because the food groups controlled by the four Kurfürst families gave high subsidies so that the workers who earned little money in the factories could only afford the food that they provided, the foreign food groups expanded very fast in the Red Nimbus Sector. In only a hundred years, they had acquired all the food groups large and small in the Red Nimbus Sector and purchased tremendous land from the farmers—exactly like what they did to the magical equipment industrial system of the Red Nimbus Sector.

While the Red Nimbus Sector had nominal “autonomy”, it was part of the Imperium after all and could not set up independent laws to prevent the conquest of the foreigners. It could only watch the foreign food groups dominate the planet.

After most of the land and seeds were controlled by the foreign food groups, they finally revealed their true intentions. Waving the law as their weapon, they secretly changed the genes of the spiritual rice and the spiritual wheat so that all the seeds could only be harvested once but could not be sowed again.

In other words, the Red Nimbus Sector lost all their own seeds of crops. If they wanted to sow them again, they had to purchase from the foreign food groups.

Even if the people of the Red Nimbus Sector wanted to develop their own seeds through secret experiments, they discovered, to their surprise, that the “alien cash crops” that the foreign groups offered them as gifts and purchased the fruits of such crops at a high price actually boasted the function of changing the elements of the soil!

After being polluted by the foreign cash crops for a hundred years, the most fertile land of the Red Nimbus Sector was only suitable for the seeds of the foreign food groups. The other seeds would only wither on a large scale, if they could sprout at all.

In the beginning, when the foreigners purchased the bitter and sour “fruits of the cash crops”, claiming that the wealthy people at the center of the cosmos liked the flavor best, the people of the Red Nimbus Sector laughed hard at the queerness of the wealthy guys.

At this moment, the people of the Red Nimbus Sector finally realized what the “bitter fruits” tasted like.

What the wealthy people at the center of the cosmos tasted was not the juice of the fruits but their blood.

But the epiphany came too late.

From industries to agriculture and to the entire training system, everything had been invaded and destroyed by the foreigners from the center of the cosmos. The whole world had fallen into their hands.

Even if the Sector Master of the Red Nimbus Sector still had the nominal “autonomy”, what was the point?

It was even worse than direct aggression, because a government had to be founded after direct aggression to administrate and secure the local people.

But right now, everything was about economics and done by civil sects. They swallowed all the benefits, and the “obligations” were still in the hands of the dumbfounded Sector Master.

The life and death of the people of the Red Nimbus Sector did not concern the center of the cosmos. It was all because the local Sector Master was too ruthless and tyrannical. When the trouble was too huge, the four Kurfürst families would throw certain leftovers as reliefs. Nothing more.

The ordinary people of the Red Nimbus Sector lived such an insecure, struggling life.

The Immortal Cultivators fared no better than the ordinary people did.

Before, when it still had an independent industrial and agricultural system, the Red Nimbus Sector needed the support of Immortal Cultivators in every field. The position of the local Immortal Cultivators was high, and they were the unquestionable dominators.

But right now, as the foreign capitals and technologies flooded over, the first to be crushed were the dignities and dreams of the local Immortal Cultivators.

Their own sects were squeezed to bankruptcy by foreign corporations, and yet they had to swallow their anger and work for them. But even if they worked dutifully for their entire lives, they would still be the bumpkins in the foreigners’ eyes. They could never enter the management of the great corporations that were almost made of the people who skydived from the center of the cosmos!

It was exactly the destiny of the Immortal Cultivators of the Red Nimbus Sector in the past five hundred years.