Chapter 213, Heretic Demon Hunter_2
It is said that the upgraded version, the true Star Realm Main Battle Tank [Lion King Tank], requires a crew of twenty-one, much larger than the Lion Tank, and its firepower, even more exaggerated.
Although the Lion Tank is fierce, its production is also very difficult. Black Box can only produce four per month; the tank factories that have been built can only turn out four per month as well.
It takes two months to replenish the tanks needed for a composite brigade.
Infrastructure construction is being heavily promoted in the three central provinces, and with the help of superconductive power grids, basic construction machinery, and construction engineering machinery, the overall speed of construction has soared dramatically.
The spring plowing in Beiqing Valley Province has almost finished, and according to Jason Morgan's report, it looks very successful so far. The new agricultural machinery has been of great help. It is estimated that by the end of the year, not only will the projected production plans be met, but there may also be a substantial surplus.
...
Although there have been so many changes, these are all driven by Gu Hang and the Alliance Government; these changes are within the expected scope, they are what he wanted to see, and there aren't any particular surprises.
Moreover, the monthly Grace Point income from various places is also gradually improving with the implementation of the production plan.
The income for the recent month has already reached 2,104 points.
And for the recent three months, the income totaled up to 5,988 points.
This number even made him feel a bit surreal.
Back when he was very poor, the monthly Grace Points would only be a few dozen or hundred, and he mostly relied on making money through wars; now, just the fixed monthly income is already so high.
The over eighteen thousand Grace Points he had before were reduced to just over five hundred after setting up a bunch of things and a 1,000 tier technology prize pool with a ten-draw.
But now, all together, he once again has over six thousand.
Gu Hang spent three thousand to find ten new Star Realm warriors and added over five hundred elite soldiers to the special warfare brigade.
He considered the remaining Grace Points and decided to bring two previously unlocked new buildings into being.
[National Church] and [Court of Justice].
These two buildings appeared as new items in his construction list after the incident involving [The Great Impure One: Ge Wajia] ended.
However, Gu Hang didn't prioritize them too highly; the eighteen thousand Grace Points he had previously planned to use didn't allocate anything for these two items.
Now, with Grace Points in hand again, he could consider them.
Mainly because it wasn't a good option to draw more technology cards. On one hand, the thousand-point tier technology cards were heavily drawn last time, and having air force was considered a fairly decent outcome.
Drawing more now would not be cost-effective, as a few empty draws would be too damaging; on the other hand, even without the air force, if he did draw them, the Alliance currently lacked the ability to assimilate more high-level technology.
Since Grace Points wouldn't grow by keeping them, Gu Hang simply spent them to see how much these two new buildings could help.
[National Church: When you have built a church with the Imperial State Religion as its faith and put it into operation, you can exchange this option to designate a particular church. It increases the determination of the faith within the coverage area of the church, reduces various types of corruption, and slightly increases the probability of finding activatable religious talents.
It can train a new troop type: Military Priest. Exchange value: 1,500 Grace.]
[Court of Justice: When you have established an organization dedicated to eradicating evil with the faith of the Imperial State Religion, you can designate its headquarters building as the Court of Justice. It improves the efficiency of all law enforcers affiliated with the Court of Justice in eradicating designated types of evil targets. It can train a new troop type: Demon Hunter.
Exchange price: 1,500 Grace.]
[After constructing the Court of Justice, you must select a specific target for eradication. There are three options: Demons, aliens, heretics.]
...
The construction of the church is a bit of a loss for Gu Hang.
It may be because of the social awareness he had before the transmigration; he never thought religion was that important.
But in reality, he might have been overlooking this aspect all along.
As a planet that had experienced apocalypse once before, Religion's presence on Rage Owl Star is not particularly strong. But, generally speaking, almost everyone has heard of the Imperial State Religion, remembers some of its doctrines, and even certain customs have developed from religious traditions left over from the past.
When Rage Owl Star people encounter certain things, they like to exclaim "Divine Emperor above" to express surprise, anger, or joy... just as people in Gu Hang's previous life would say "Oh my God."
However, regarding whether he should strengthen the construction of religion, Gu Hang still has his reservations.
As for the new troop type of Military Priest, he glanced over those and didn't pay much attention to them either.
The price, grade, just like a regiment political commissar, and even their functions overlapped greatly in many areas. One emphasized loyalty, the other faith, both inspirited morale and enforced discipline, just with different methods and forms.
So there was no significant need for them.
Among the many specific effects of the "Church," the only one he relatively valued was the reduction of corruption.
Moreover, since the construction of the Court of Justice behind it required a church as a prerequisite, he built one somewhat reluctantly.
The selected location was Weixing City.
In truth, if there was any place that needed it, it would certainly be Beiqing Valley Province. Although the problems in the Green Valley Region had been resolved, building an edifice to suppress corruption still seemed more reliable if one wasn't at ease.
But the coverage area of a church was limited, and Beiqing Valley Region was vast with a sparse population. After establishing many farms, the population became particularly dispersed, reducing the value of building large churches significantly.
In contrast, Weixing City was bound to become the core, most populous city of the entire Alliance. In fact, Weixing City's population had recently continued to absorb people, reaching a scale of two million.
With more people, the difficulty of management was bound to increase.
Gu Hang did not wish for Weixing City of the future to resemble the lower strata of some Nest Capital worlds he remembered, where heresy and cults proliferated everywhere.
Building a church to suppress corruption was meaningful after all.
Then there was the "Court of Justice," which was quite interesting.
Currently, the Alliance did indeed lack a spy agency.
And establishing a Court of Justice was a good opportunity.
Among the three categories to choose from, demons need not be mentioned further, and aliens were mainly meant to combat non-human interstellar species. But Gu Hang would not have much use for that.
It was the "heresy" option that was the most interesting.
Heresy referred to human traitors. Essentially, these were people who did not believe in the Lord of Humanity, but the term could be broadened. Those who believed in The Emperor, yet believed in an incorrect manner, could also be labeled as heretics.
So since it dealt with human enemies, it became quite interesting.
If one day, Gu Hang had to go to war with Blackbird Heavy Industries, situated on the other side of the planet in the westernmost part of the continent, what did he need?
Aside from full-scale hard power in military and economics, political aspects could not be neglected.
Blackbird was not a local power, and they had the support of the Fatches Family behind them; if Gu Hang made his move, he had to consider this influence.
If there were Judges able to gather some evidence that could determine Blackbird Heavy Industries as heretical, wouldn't that make it "justifiable"?
This was called creating a pretext.
On the other hand, Gu Hang's understanding of the far west of the continent was limited. He indeed needed a team to go there and see what the situation was really like.
So, he first instructed the Alliance's Chief Justice, Lambert Hodgson, to establish an organization for the Court of Justice and recruited two teams.
Next, he added the building's function, selecting it as the Heresy Court of Justice.
Subsequently, the two teams that had been recruited were all trained as "Heretic Demon Hunters."
One team was dispatched to the west, carrying out the task of "investigating the heresy situation in the Western Desert and the western regions of the continent," which in effect was intelligence gathering.
The other team operated secretly within the various domains of the Alliance's homeland, with the task of "investigating the internal heresy situation of the Alliance," essentially undertaking anti-corruption work.
Within the Alliance system, corruption equated to heresy, no question about it.