The Council of Terra, also known as the Council of the High Lords of Terra, is the supreme governing body of the Human Empire, and the High Lords who make up the Council are the people who hold the supreme ruling power of the Empire. There are a total of 12 seats in the Council of High Lords, of which 9 are fixed and 3 are mobile.

The 9 fixed seats are:

Pope of the State Church, Martian Casting General, Representative of the Inquisition, Supreme Mentor of the Assassin Court, Representative of the Navigator Family, Representative of the Torch Court, Representative of the Hall of the Star, Minister of the Interior of the Empire, Minister of the Justice.

The remaining 3 mobile seats are for the Commander-in-Chief of the Astral Army, the Marshal of the Forbidden Army, the Master of the Merchant Fleet, the Marshal of the Imperial Navy, and the Prime Minister of the Empire...... and other powerful figures compete for posts.

However, under normal circumstances, one of the three mobile seats is permanently locked by the Marshal of the Forbidden Army by default, which is the political tacit agreement of the Terra Council for many years.

After the Storm Coup, all 9 of the 12 High Lords were killed, except for the Marshal of the Forbidden Army, the Master of the Merchant Fleet, and the Supreme Mentor of the Assassin Court, and no one knows exactly what happened in that chaotic political struggle, there are rumors that the Assassin Court planned the murder of the other High Lords long before the Primordial army entered the Sun Star Domain, and some people claim that they saw the shadow of the Forbidden Army in this political purge.

No matter how dark and tortuous the process may be, the result is certain, all dissidents are physically erased, and Robert Killeman is in charge.

But only Kiliman, who sat on the throne of regent, knew that his one-man dictatorship of the empire seemed to be secure, but in fact it was not, and the crisis of division was already brewing in the shadows.

The first is Mars.

In the Storm Coup, Mars was directly bombarded by a full-scale orbital bombardment from the 1st Expeditionary Fleet, the Ring of Steel fell apart, a large number of facilities were completely destroyed, and even Mars's Casting General was personally led by the Forbidden Marshal to be beheaded and replaced with the notorious Belisarius Kaul in the Mechanics as the temporary casting general.

This caused a lot of grumbling on Mars.

The Mechanics generally believe that the original Treaty of Olympus has been torn up by the Primordial, and that the independence of the Mechanics Order, which the Emperor himself has bestowed, is the best proof of this, and now the new Foundry General is the best proof of this—Kaul is a heretic, he is not a believer in the God of Machines, but a lackey of the Primordial.

The Primordials are trying to take control of Mars, which the Mechanics can't tolerate.

The Mechists are the Empire's largest and only technology supplier, and the Mekhanites control almost all of the human Empire's industrial production capacity and military-industrial complex, and it can be said that the impact of the death of the Casting General is greater than that of the other eight High Lords combined.

This is a problem that must be solved immediately, and if the Mechanic Order is not pacified as soon as possible, the human empire will soon fall apart and end up in ruin.

However, just as Kiliman was anxiously reading the original Treaty of Olympus and trying to ease the relationship between the new government of Terra and Mars, an unexpected news suddenly came:

"Kaul has successfully persuaded almost all the high-ranking sages of the Mechanic Order that Mars now supports Kaul as their casting general, and there are even voices saying that Kaul is the only candidate for a Martian casting general, and Mars will never accept anyone else to occupy this position."

What's going on? Kiriman was almost stunned by the sudden good news.

After digging deeper, the answer he got was very funny:

Kaul dug up a lot of precious Dark Age technology and ancient STC from his database, and in this way he bought all the mechanical sages of Mars to support him, many of whom had a very bad relationship with Kaul, and even called him a sworn enemy, but Kaul gave too much.

According to Killman, the most important part of Kaul's purchase of Mars is the research on the biological jump engine.

Kaul unveiled the corpse of the Aether Giant Worm to the Martian people, as well as the battle video of the Aether Giant Worm in the Otrama system performing faster-than-light jumps in the flesh, and he warmly invited all the creatures on Mars to join him in his research and solve the secret of this creature's ability to perform physical faster-than-light jumps.

As a result, many mechanical sages who do not specialize in the field of biology have also forcibly asked to join the project, otherwise they will be extremely adamantly opposed to Kaul.

No matter how strange the process was, the result was that Kaul had succeeded in securing the position of Martian Casting General, a ridiculous fact that made Killiman feel that he had overestimated the mechanics of the Order of Mechanics in the past.

- These oil guys don't have discipline at all. As soon as they heard that Kaul had good things to study here, they could even treat the shame of Mars being bombed into orbit as if it hadn't happened.

It is also thanks to Kaul's ghostly methods that Mars fully supports the construction of the Terra Stargate, believing that the Terra Stargate will be completed before the 50th year of the 40th millennium.

In the two years since the construction of the Stargate, Kiriman has focused on pacifying the political situation in Terra.

The effects of the storm coup were too bad, and the aftermath of the Northern Expedition on the Qing side needed to be quelled.

In order to hedge against the political impact of the Storm Coup, Killiman decided to announce a bombshell news to the Terra government and the people: the genetic protogenone of the Dark Angels, Ryan El Johnson, has returned.

This is old news many years ago, Ryan's return was a few years earlier than Killiman, but due to the Greenskin's siege of the Sun Domain, Terra never knew about it, and many people thought that Killiman was the first to return.

Killiman briefly sorted out the current galactic situation:

After Nurgle's death, a giant subspace storm swept across the galaxy, subspace navigation was completely paralyzed, and all the star regions and colonies of the human empire were lost, and the empire was facing a de facto great division.

However, due to the long-term voyages and efforts of the Terra Expeditionary Fleet, approximately 1/8 of the major galaxies are currently connected to the L-Gate network.

With Kadia, Badab, Otrama, Fenris, Krentarina... Once the Terra Stargate is completed, the Terra government will be able to take full control of these worlds.

And it is unprecedented, with almost no time lag in the conquest of the conquest.

Overall, the current human empire has lost about 7/8 of its galactic territory, but has gained a more connected and efficient star system, and with those node systems already connected to the stargate network as a skip version, Killiman begins to prepare an expedition to regain lost territory.

"Just call, unyielding expedition." Killiman lightly put pen to paper on the parchment and laid out the outline of the next action.

(End of chapter)