Chapter 799: Savior or Thief
"A Letter to Fellow Citizens in Disaster"
To all the citizens of the Empire who have held on in the torrent of the Warp:
When you read this astronomical message, the astral tunnels in the Spider Web and Eastern Spaces have been cleared again, and the Alliance has been reunited. But this is not the end. Under my leadership, the Alliance has a higher meaning: to save the entire empire when necessary.
The support fleet from the Alliance has set off. There may be many dangers, but we are heading to your world.
Remember - you are never forgotten.
The scarlet scar has cut off our connection with Holy Terra. We are already in the dark side of the Empire, but this does not constitute the "end state of the Empire." All administrative units must immediately stop misusing various temporary laws and are strictly prohibited from signing any illegal political or legal documents without authorization.
The majesty of the Empire will not be invalidated by the barriers of the universe, and the will of the Emperor will not fade because of the whispers of Chaos.
As the only high lord of the dark side of the empire after the disaster, on behalf of the Supreme Council of the Empire and the will of the Emperor, I declare to all humans who can hear and see this text:
The "Imperial Dark Side Control Committee" is established from today.
This committee is the highest legal authority of the Dark Side of the Empire until the disaster is over.
Existing planetary governors, sector heads, domain heads, and domain presidents automatically obtain control rights, and vacant positions are performed by those with the highest military rank.
The governments of all planets, star regions, star regions, and universes should defend their territories and national security, do their utmost to reduce losses, eliminate or contain chaos, and wait for the committee to rescue them. When the committee arrives, they should obey all the committee's instructions.
I swear in the name of the Emperor:
Anyone who indulges Chaos Worshippers will have his bloodline traced back to the third generation for purification.
Anyone who tampers with the laws of the empire as a provisional constitution will have his or her family tree permanently marked with a stigma.
Anyone who obstructs the landing of the Control Committee's special envoy will be subject to the "Regulations on Simplified Procedures for Extermination Orders" in that galaxy.
When the stars disappear, we ourselves are the moving beacons; when the hymns are silent, our heartbeats are the drums of resistance; when the codes are burned, our bones and blood are the final decrees.
Those ships that are crossing the violent starry sea will transmit the vibration of their engines along the astral veins; those navigation beacons that I calibrated with my own hands, each one is imprinted with the traces of humanity in the warp storm.
We may have to walk a long night road, but remember - all the bread crumbs passed in the darkness will eventually connect to form the Milky Way leading to dawn. When you hear the vibration of gears and poems resonating in the void, when you see blue and silver light from outside the clouds seeping into the scarlet sky, that's me saying: hold on, hold on like piercing into the eyes of chaos.
As long as I keep going, I will get there.
——High Lord of the Empire, Leader of the Alliance-Gu Hang
…
This "Letter to Fellow Countrymen in Disaster" is like throwing a big stone into a calm... uh, into a lake that was not calm to begin with.
Compared with the cautious advance of the Dark Side Expedition launched by the Alliance, Gu Hang's letter was much more radical.
His psychic power, almost instantly, connected with the communication signals continuously emitted by hundreds of thousands of worlds on the dark side of the empire.
Just like that, the "Letter to Fellow Countrymen in Disaster" instantly reached almost all the worlds on the dark side of the empire.
Everyone can see that it is unrealistic, but in the past few months, the powerful people who have the ability to send communication requests outside the planet have probably been able to see it.
If it were a normal situation, this incident would inevitably cause a huge response. Countless worlds would be connected, countless ideas would collide among them, and in the end, there would be a high probability that an anti-alliance alliance would be formed.
Who are you? Do you want to be the one in charge?
Although Gu Hang has a certain reputation within the empire and he also has strong strength, it is definitely not enough for him to be the co-leader of half the empire.
Far from it.
However, this is not a 'normal situation' at the moment.
Take the first phase target of the current alliance's dark expedition: the Magre space domain as an example. This space domain has eight star domains and more than 5,000 worlds. Most places are still isolated islands. The largest one has only 37 worlds, which are connected to the space domain government and have opened up navigation.
Even if we exclude navigation and only look at communications, the Space Domain Government has only reconnected with 136 worlds.
Compared to the entire universe, five thousand worlds, this is a very small number.
What could this possibly lead to?
Compared to the alliance that had already been integrated into a collective, those powerful people, no matter how dissatisfied they were, could not solve the problem. As long as the alliance arrived, they would be defeated one by one.
And they want to overturn Gu Hang's letter logically...it's a bit unlikely.
Putting aside the words, the core content of this letter is that Gu Hang, in the dual name of High Lord and Alliance Leader, established the so-called "Imperial Dark Side Control Committee" and declared that before the Scarlet Scar cuts off the connection between the Dark Side and Holy Terra, the Control Committee has the highest authority.
What I mean is that I am the highest authority in the dark side of the empire, and I have the final say over the entire dark side of the empire.
The Alliance fleets that were heading to various places as claimed in the letter could be understood as coming to save the world, but they could also be understood as coming to rule by force.
The essence of power is the two words "name" and "reality".
Gu Hang’s declaration seems shocking, but in fact, if you look closely, there is really no big problem in these two aspects.
In name, it must be noted that the largest and highest authority in the empire, both nominally and actually, is the Supreme Council.
What is the High Council? It is the thirteen High Lords.
And on the dark side of the empire, there is currently only one high lord, Gu Hang.
The other high lords are all isolated on Holy Terra on the other side of the Scarlet Scar.
Only the special high lord Gu Hang is on this side.
No matter how Gu Hang got the status of High Lord, and whether he really possessed the actual power of a High Lord in the past, but nominally, if there really needs to be a legitimate supreme ruler on the dark side of the empire, it can only be Gu Hang.
If we look at the strength, the Alliance not only took the lead in unifying itself in this darkness and disaster, but also had the spare capacity to take care of and rescue other worlds - even if some people understand it as invasion. Anyway, when others are in danger, they are able to rescue/expedition to the outside world, which proves their strength.
From two perspectives, Gu Hang really has the right to be the supreme ruler of the dark side, and has enough strength to achieve this goal, but others are powerless to resist.
Of course, if that were all, it would be enough, but it might not be enough.
After you have achieved fame and status, you still have to see whether what you do is truly righteous.
Otherwise, being labeled as a "tyrant" or "despotic ruler" would make it inconvenient to do things.
Since Gu Hang claimed that he wanted to be the master of the dark side of the empire, and his legitimacy came from the fact that he was the only high lord, then what he wanted to do was to save all the worlds of the dark side of the empire. Whether this sounded reasonable or not needed some discussion. After all, there were many ambitious people who used this title to stir up trouble.
So, is it really necessary to have this supreme authority?
It really does exist.
In a catastrophe, all worlds are isolated from the outside world, and endogenous disasters become more serious. If someone can stand up at this time and really restore the worlds to normal, then wouldn’t this be a great justice and rationality?
As long as Gu Hang came with this goal, no matter whether his means were persuasion, rescue, coercion, or armed invasion, the disasters faced by the worlds were real. If he could eliminate the disasters, his identity as a high lord would gain huge support in the worlds. The original ruling class would either cooperate or be washed away. It would be difficult for those with ulterior motives to come up with any name to incite the vast majority of the imperial people to resist the rule of the alliance.
Nationalism is useless. In the current environment of the empire, the concept of "nation" has long been dissolved. What can truly unite mankind is the common concept of humanity, and the "emperor" and "empire" that represent this concept.
There is some regional concept, but not much, at least not enough to use it to incite the entire world to resist a superpower.
As for the rest of the mess of equality, freedom, and fairness, they are meaningless in the context of the empire. The people simply don't believe in them, and don't even understand them.
What's more, under the Alliance's system, those planetary dignitaries whose ruling foundations and ruling classes are much more backward than the Alliance would be courting death if they competed with the Alliance in this regard.
In such an environment, there are many smart people.
Under normal circumstances, people who heard Gu Hang's presumptuous declaration would definitely jump up and oppose Gu Hang, but after thinking through all the links, they made some choices that might be completely opposite.
Some local dignitaries sent signals, praising Gu Hang as a savior, praising his actions for turning the tide, and flattering him profusely.
There was a planetary governor who continued to send distress signals in the same format as before, sending a message that the entire planet was willing to obey the Control Committee. At the same time, he was also sending a message that his own planet was facing a huge disaster and requested the Alliance Fleet to arrive as soon as possible to save their world.
Some remnants of the Star Army replaced the recruitment advertisement with Gu Hang's "Letter to Fellow Citizens in Disaster" and put up countless slogans. The meaning behind every word was "obey the instructions of the committee."
These are good things and what Gu Hang expected to see.
But there are also bad phenomena.
Those who are either stupid, ambitious, or pedantic will also send out messages that they do not recognize the Control Committee, and even make radical declarations that Gu Hang is taking advantage of the country's crisis, is the biggest traitor in a thousand years, and is a country thief.
Gu Hang silently wrote down all these worlds and sent them to the Dark Side Expedition Headquarters. There was no advice on how to deal with this list, but the commanders, generals, and commanders of the expeditionary forces would know what to do.
But this world is not black and white.
The gray in the middle is the vast majority.
There is an Imperial Navy fleet called the 'Black Steel Fleet'. They used to be pirates, but were incorporated. Now, they have unexpectedly mastered some primitive methods of interstellar navigation quickly, and not only have they returned to their old business, but they have also hijacked three communication relay stations and used Gu Hang's voice package to extort 'loyalty taxes' from several surrounding worlds. Those planets that either don't know the truth or are coerced by force are actually paying tribute to them.
There is an Imperial Chamber of Commerce that mass-produces forged committee cooperation certificates, extorts high prices, makes a fortune from the national crisis, and even sells "Gu Hang concept stocks" on the Interstellar Exchange.
There is a governor of an agricultural world who disguises a granary as a signal station, luring nearby contact persons to fall, and attacks ships...
There is even a crazy religious world that has spawned deconstruction sects. They rewrote the entire text of "The Letter to Our Fellow Citizens in Disaster" with virgin blood, claiming that it is an extension of "The Words of the Emperor". In fact, they are using all of this to compete for the interpretation of divine authority.
These gray and even black parts don’t care whether Gu Hang is a savior or a country thief. They only care about how to maximize their own interests under the current environment.
Those flashing distress signals, forged loyalty oaths, distorted religious interpretations... all seem to prove an ancient truth: even under the pressure of doomsday, there are still countless people who don't care about lofty ideals and the interests of the whole. After losing the constraints of order, the selfish and bestial part of human nature is more powerfully stimulated.
In addition to the reactions from various worlds, there are even enemies of humanity mixed in.
There were dark elves who tampered with Gu Hang's "Letter to Fellow Citizens in Disaster", claiming it to be a revised version, deceiving the defenders, and invading certain worlds.
A group of Tzeentch Chaos rebels emerged from the Scarlet Scar and sent a forged extermination order with a genuine cipher stamp to a border outpost, causing the border outpost to self-destruct its defense array in fear.
Such things happen one after another day by day.
It can be described as a riot of demons.
There were even many things that Gu Hang couldn't see clearly even in the subspace. Among his heroes, those who were good at information statistics were working overtime and were almost smoking, even busier than when they were alive, but they couldn't handle the many things happening in hundreds of thousands of worlds.
Gu Hang could only pick out the important ones to deal with.
The only way to deal with it is to deliver the correct information, give positive encouragement, and encourage each planet to persevere in the face of countless difficulties.
The "Letter to Fellow Citizens in Disaster" did cause some chaos, but these were all within Gu Hang's expectations.
It’s not that Gu Hang ignored these costs, but that even if this didn’t happen, those who took advantage of the situation, the ambitious people, and the enemies of humanity would find other ways to gain benefits.
The positive significance of this announcement outweighs the negative.
It truly gave hope to many worlds that were in trouble. And, some of the collective will that had gathered together was forging the text of the announcement into a spiritual anchor. Not much, but it definitely reduced the erosion of the warp.
That's enough.
As for the real problem, we will just have to wait for the Alliance's dark expedition to come with thunder and storm to wipe out all those evil spirits!
(End of this chapter)
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