Although Li Mingze didn't want to raise the butcher's knife against the citizens of the empire under his command, he didn't feel anything about the three people who experimented with civilization.

By the time the Empire's three hive motherships arrived in these three river systems, the outcome of the war was already sealed.

After each hive mothership is upgraded with space folding technology, the 100 trillion Vespa drones carried on board can be said to "cover the sky and the sun".

All hostile facilities in the swarm's path have disappeared, and the three experimental civilizations that have just unified the river system are the opponents of the imperial swarm.

As soon as the two sides met each other, the swarming swarm directly swallowed the fleets of these three civilizations.

After tens of minutes, except for the swarms flying in the sky, the former fleet was gone, and all the materials on these battleships were turned into materials used by the mothership to replenish the lost Vespa fighters.

In less than a month, the fleets of these three experimental civilizations were all wiped out, and all the buildings in the orbit of these civilizations had been devoured by the swarms.

Now the people of these three experimental civilizations can only shrink on the surface of the planet and dare not rise to the top.

Any spacecraft that dares to break through the atmosphere will end up being swallowed by a swarm of bees.

And after taking control of all the planets of the three experimental civilizations, the empire immediately began to experiment on these experimental civilizations.

According to calculations, if you want to bring technology back to normal, you can only shrink the population.

And there is more than one way to reduce the population, and it is one way to slaughter the excess population.

Sending the surplus population into a dormant bin is another matter, but of course whether this method will work depends on the results of the experiment.

The third method is somewhere in between, which is to slaughter all the people and lift their souls out and store them in specific containers.

The Empire began to apply these three methods to each of these three experimental civilizations.

Ten years have passed.

The first experimental civilization, that is, the civilization that was depopulated by the most primitive and brutal method of slaughter, succeeded in returning scientific and technological research and development to normal after the population was depopulated.

And the second experimental civilization, the original method of dormant and sealing the excess population, Li Mingze did not think that it would be successful.

But unexpectedly, this method actually worked, and after more than half of the population was dormant and frozen, the scientific and technological research and development of this civilization also returned to normal!

Not to mention the third experiment, which also returned to the normal pace of scientific and technological development.

At this time, the conclusion of the experiment came out, that is, as long as the daily activity of the population is kept below 10 trillion, then the civilization will not be slowed down the speed of scientific and technological development.

The surplus population can be completely sealed in the dormant warehouse, so that the empire can be restored without killing them.

But Li Mingze knew that in this way, it was no different from killing these people.

After all, he didn't know when these people would wake up again.

As long as the population of the empire is limited to ten trillion, then these excess populations may never have a chance to wake up again in this life after hibernation.

In this case, they are tantamount to being "killed".

Therefore, Li Mingze fell into a new entanglement, that is, how to choose the people who were frozen in ice, and how to persuade these people to make them willing to be frozen in ice.

It is indeed feasible to forcibly freeze it, but Li Mingze can't get over the hurdle in his heart.

What's more, this is easy to cause dissatisfaction within the empire and seriously affect his prestige!

"Your Majesty, things may take a little turn." Tianyi suddenly said comfortingly.

"Oh? What turnaround? Li Mingze asked puzzledly.

"Your Majesty, have you forgotten the existence of the virtual world, these people can enter the virtual world for the rest of their lives after being frozen in ice!"

"In this way, these people are just a different place, but they can experience a life that they could not have before, and they can even achieve a certain sense of eternal life!" Tianyi looked into Li Mingze's eyes and explained.

That's right, once the body goes dormant and the consciousness enters the virtual world, then it means that these people's bodies will stop metabolizing, and it is possible for their bodies to exist for thousands, tens of thousands, or even hundreds of thousands of years.

And as long as their bodies don't die, their consciousness can run in the virtual world forever, and they don't have to fear death or hunger!

These people can do many things in the virtual world that were once impossible, and they can choose what kind of world and what era they live in.

These people are able to choose to be born in the world of magic, or they can allow themselves to be born on Earth in the eighties.

In the world of "illusion", any place that people can think of can be created.

Such conditions can still attract many people to enter the dormant chamber and freeze it completely.

After all, the empire now has less than eight trillion people working in the true sense of the word.

Excluding scientists and technicians, the rest are the elderly, children, and citizens who have nothing to do and play games at home.

These citizens can't create any value for the empire anyway, so it's better to let them go into complete hibernation, and in the virtual world they have everything they want!

"No, I think it's still necessary for me to tell my citizens the truth, they have the right to know the truth, and they have the right to choose their own lives!" Li Mingze shook his head slightly, rejecting Tianyi's plan to fool people into entering the virtual world.

If when he first came to the Empire, he would still regard these Imperial citizens as NPCs in the game, now he sees that these Imperial citizens are already living people!

"Your Majesty, as you wish!" Tianyi nodded and disappeared.

The next day, Li Mingze made an important speech to the whole empire on television.

"Dear citizens of the Empire!"

"The Empire is now caught in the confines of this cosmic rule."

"As the population of the Empire has exploded, the pace of technological research and development in our Empire has gradually slowed.... In the end, I touched the ceiling of known science! ”

"If we don't reduce the population, then our empire's technology will stagnate until a more powerful civilization emerges to wipe us out..."

"We .......," Li Mingze's face appeared on the screens of all the devices of the empire through holograms with a serious expression.

The citizens of the empire also learned about the current situation of the empire through this national speech.

"In order for the empire to continue to grow, we have decided to put the empire back on the right track by dormant a part of the population!" Li Mingze slowly said his plan.