Chapter 26, Long-term Planning

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Nothing out of the ordinary happened on the way back to camp.

The Governor, for some reason, kept a grim face the whole time, making him unapproachable.

Gu Hang's aide, Zhang Chao, was already waiting outside the Governor's Camp. He had received advance notice from Gu Hang and had arranged for the camp to receive the supplies.

Since Gu Hang was desperately short of manpower, he was also intentionally training Zhang Chao. The kid didn't seem cut out for soldiering, but he appeared to be quite capable of handling clerical and administrative work.

No choice though, as there weren't many literate people under Gu Hang's command, and he had no better candidates.

Moreover, Zhang Chao was doing quite a good job.

They hadn't had time to build a big enough warehouse, but they had cleared out some prefab houses for storing supplies. Items that didn't require shelter from the elements were simply piled up on open ground, covered with large tarps—enough for temporary storage.

After that, Zhang Chao busied himself with inventorying the supplies and arranging their distribution, including deciding how much to send over to the Abandoned Cave Society.

He was reliable enough, so Gu Hang felt reassured and his expression brightened slightly.

As for the frustration of coming up empty in the previous two couplets, that had almost entirely dissipated by now.

Technology lotteries always required grace points to draw from. The odds just lay there, and if you didn't hit, there was nothing to be done about it—just hope for better luck next time.

Retreating to his own room, Gu Hang took out paper and pen and began to plan for the upcoming events.

He didn't plan to instantly materialize the G9 Gun Family Black Box obtained from this round of the technology lottery. Based on his experience with the alloy steel black box, these two items would also be quite large and couldn't be put away once materialized.

Zhang Chao was already arranging for people to dig bunkers. Gu Hang intended to set up a core secret base within the camp, to serve as the future 'research' center, requiring strict confidentiality.

It was best to keep items like the black box out of public view as much as possible.

The technology lottery was a minor detour. The key was what to do next.

The supplies extorted from Revival City had alleviated the shortage of goods in the camp, especially the scarcity of food. He couldn't achieve self-sufficiency in food within his territory just yet. The Mantan River Valley Manor could indeed produce grains, but a bountiful harvest wouldn't be possible until autumn, a few months away.

For the time being, they could get by on these supplies.

The prerequisite was that the population he had to feed would not expand further.

But that was impossible.

Gu Hang's next goal was to expand the population.

The alloy plastic steel industrial line needed to grow, the G9 Gun Family's production line also needed workers, construction work needed workers, and in the future other technologies might be drawn to establish other production lines—all requiring more people.

Where would these people come from?

That was an easy question to answer.

Despite being a wasteland planet with a sparse population, especially compared to Nest Capital Worlds with populations easily topping hundreds of billions, people on Rage Owl Star were incredibly cheap.

The wandering Survivor Tribes, the destitute living hand-to-mouth around Revival City... these were Gu Hang's sources for population intake.

But he couldn't just take anyone in.

With people coming in, Gu Hang also had to provide jobs and consumer goods like food.

To put it plainly, he had to be able to afford them and allow them to add greater value.

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This required more materials, and greater production capacity.

In practical terms, the first step he had to take was to sell the currently most important and future key output—alloy plastic steel.

Only by making successful sales could he talk about expanding production.

Thinking thus, Gu Hang's gaze once again fell upon Revival City.

It wasn't that he insisted on fleecing a single sheep; primarily, it was so close and his identity was so suitable that it made fleecing exceptionally convenient.

Besides, he had long regarded Revival City as something in the bag. What's yours is mine; what's the harm in borrowing it first?

After all, he was definitely going to take control of that city eventually.

He only had two years, and it was impossible for him to cultivate a white field from scratch and grow enough economic and material wealth to pay the taxes of an entire planet in two years.

Starting anew outside was fundamentally another attempt at a different approach to gain control of the entire planet.

To completely control Revival City, he could not just barge into the city and engage in a political struggle with the local big shots—that would be a dead end. But if he had his own force to rely on before taking over Revival City and even the administrative power of the whole Alliance Government, that would be a different situation entirely.

In the near future, when he was ready to take charge, there would certainly be a time when he could be confident in purging the entire power hierarchy of the city up and down, enabling the entire city's forces to truly serve him.

Such power could not rely solely on the "Quintet's" deterrence from the sky. Mutual destruction meant ruin for himself as well, and the council members of Revival City were also aware of this fact.

"Nuclear deterrence" alone was not effective; Gu Hang requested a hundred tons of materials and they provided them. If Gu Hang wanted to conduct a major purge, if he wanted their lives, then they would brace themselves against orbital bombardment and fight to the death against Gu Hang—it was a matter of life or death for all.

He needed a real usable, conventional force to support the things he wanted to do.

"Still have to expand the army," Gu Hang concluded.

Expanding was easy.

Picking two hundred people from the slaves brought down from the Starship. One hundred would use the remaining G7 'Assaulters,' and the other one hundred could make do with local mixed-brand guns for the time being. With a systematic approach and a bit of grace spent, together with the one hundred people from the Abandoned Cave Company, another light infantry battalion was formed.

Gu Hang delegated the work of recruiting new soldiers from those three thousand servants to Yan Fangxu.

Captain Yan was numbed.

He knew that his Governor would once again demonstrate that sort of training which could produce a regular army in a few days that would normally take one to two years to train.

He genuinely couldn't fathom it and eventually could only assume that it was simply the Governor's capability. His lord was a military training genius.

This explanation might seem far-fetched, but he could not think of any other.

Of course, even though he knew that under the Governor's command, even the worst sources of soldiers could become decent within a few days, he still conscientiously picked the best two hundred from those three thousand servants when selecting the soldiers.

After distributing the equipment and weapons, Gu Hang casually spent 2 points of grace in the [Soldier Token] to get a package deal for the training of these soldiers, and then he didn't pay much more attention to it, only making a token appearance each day.

It wasn't long before new information emerged.

[2nd Infantry Battalion: light infantry, overall rating—, non-upgradable]

[Number: 300 men]

[Equipment: T5, Training: T5, Experience: -]

The commander of this troop was Perbov from the Abandoned Cave Society, who had been promoted to battalion commander.