Empire Conquest
Chapter 401 - 397 The Start of Assimilation

Chapter 401: Chapter 397 The Start of Assimilation

The enthronement ceremony was very grand, but it was mainly symbolic.

The Saiyi Imperial Kingdom had already been defeated and disarmed. Tens of millions of Saiyi people eagerly awaited the Empire’s aid. Whether it was enthroning Emperor Xia or dethroning him, it only added slightly more trouble such as needing to deploy more troops to suppress potential riots.

Regardless, in the hearts of the Saiyi people, Emperor Xia was the spokesperson of the Heavenly God and the supreme ruler of the Saiyi Imperial Kingdom.

Dethroning Emperor Xia or even annihilating the Saiyi Imperial Family were not difficult tasks, but suppressing the potential riots was an arduous and thankless job.

According to predictions made by the Sixth Bureau and other intelligence agencies, forcibly deposing Emperor Xia and the Saiyi Imperial Family would definitely trigger nationwide unrest and riots. Even with sufficient troops deployed, it would take at least half a year and the sacrifice of tens of thousands of officers and soldiers to stabilize the situation in the Saiyi Imperial Kingdom.

Six months of unrest would lead to the deaths of 5 to 10 million civilians, most of whom would die from starvation and disease.

Moreover, the 70 million Saiyi people were not useless.

Historically, Saiyi people had played a significant role in the Empire’s foreign expansion, not just as supporters, but often as the vanguard.

One thing was clear: Saiyi people were especially capable of enduring hardships.

Initially, after the capture of the North Ma Islands, the environment was so harsh and the natives so unwelcoming—some large islands even had cannibal tribes—that the Empire’s colonizers were unwilling to go there, and so the Saiyi people took the lead.

Afterward, within less than twenty years, the hardworking Saiyi people had cleared the land on several major islands and established extensive plantations.

Before the outbreak of the last great war, quinine and natural rubber produced in the North Ma Islands accounted for 40% of the Empire’s imports.

The same was true for the islands around the Flame Sea.

Later, even when they reached the Fan Flame Ocean and the Xuan Continent, the Saiyi people were still at the forefront, going to places the Empire’s colonizers were reluctant to cultivate.

Additionally, many Saiyi people worked dirty and exhausting low-end jobs in the Empire’s territories.

For example, the most perilous sections of the two highways extending from the southwest and northwest up to the Wuji Plateau were constructed by engineering teams from the Saiyi Imperial Kingdom. Although there were no precise statistics, at least thousands of Saiyi laborers’ bones were buried along the Southwest Highway, many without even preserving their skeletons.

According to records from one tunnel collapse accident, about a thousand Saiyi laborers were buried alive.

Even decades later, remains of Saiyi laborers were still being discovered near the highway.

Indeed, this was a major reason why the Saiyi Imperial Kingdom harbored deep resentment towards the Liangxia Empire.

Despite their strenuous efforts and considerable sacrifices, the Saiyi Imperial Kingdom often didn’t even have the chance to benefit; instead, they frequently ranked behind the Gaoju Kingdom, which was lazy and only skilled in flattery, such as the tariffs the Empire imposed on Saiyi goods being continuously twice that of other client states.

It was no surprise that the Saiyi people bore resentment over the decades.

During the last great war, when they declared war on the Empire, one major reason given by the Saiyi Imperial Kingdom was the ruthless exploitation by the Empire.

Of course, all these were now matters of history.

After a full cycle, it wasn’t that the Saiyi Imperial Kingdom’s resistance would lead to change.

After the enthronement of Emperor Xia, it was the representatives of both governments, the Prime Minister of the Saiyi Imperial Kingdom, Niu Man, and the Imperial Chief Minister’s envoy who signed the alliance and cooperation agreements.

The key was actually the cooperation agreement.

Although many were only frameworks without detailed arrangements, there was one exception, related to labor.

Within three months, before the Spring Festival, the Saiyi Imperial Kingdom would send 500,000 laborers to the Empire.

Since they were dispatched by the government, the Empire would only provide the necessary working conditions and basic life support for the Saiyi laborers, which could also be considered survival support.

To put it bluntly, they only had to worry about food, clothing, and shelter, and they did not pay any remuneration.

Remuneration?

Seek it from the Saiyi government.

According to the agreement signed later, the Empire calculated the wages of the Saiyi laborers based on the prevailing minimum labor standards of the time and used them to offset war reparations.

Furthermore, the Empire would provide the Saiyi Imperial Kingdom with 50,000 immigration slots after the two-year labor contracts expired.

However, they only had residential rights, without any political privileges.

Yes, this was the very famous "Ten-for-One Rule."

This rule continued until after the great war ended, meaning that for every ten laborers sent by the Saiyi Imperial Kingdom, they would receive one immigration slot to the Liangxia Empire.

In the initial few years, nearly all these immigration slots fell into the hands of the elite and nobility of the Saiyi Imperial Kingdom, some of which were even sold on the black market. It wasn’t until the last two years that, with the intervention of the Imperial Authority, there were regulated operations, and the laborers were assigned slots via a drawing of lots.

According to incomplete statistics, during the entire period of the great war, the Saiyi Imperial Kingdom acquired a total of about 3 million immigration slots.

This means, during the period of the great war, the Saiyi Imperial Kingdom sent 30 million instances of labor to the Empire!

In reality, during the great war, the total number of Saiyi laborers exported ranged between 12 and 15 million.

To immigrate to the Empire, over two-thirds of the Saiyi laborers signed two labor contracts, some even three!

These 3 million immigration slots cost about 1.2 million Saiyi laborers their lives.

During the great war, especially in the first four years, Saiyi laborers were sent to the most challenging locations.

For instance, of the first batch of 500,000 Saiyi laborers who came to the Liangxia Empire, approximately 300,000 went to the Northwest, while the other 200,000 were sent to the Southwest.

The sole task of these Saiyi laborers was to construct roads and railways.

In the Northwest Battlefield, essentially wherever the Imperial Army advanced, the massive force of Saiyi laborers would build roads there and were responsible for keeping the railways and roads accessible.

In the rainforests of the Toe Peninsula, Saiyi laborers carved roads through mountains, built bridges over water, and incidentally filled many swamps and cultivated huge tracts of farmland.

At least 150,000 of these 500,000 Saiyi laborers rest in unknown cemeteries near the construction sites.

However, this also meant that their wives did not have to remarry, their children could grow up, and their parents would not suffer from hunger or cold.

If they were lucky, their relatives might even have a chance to obtain permanent residency in the heavenly-like Empire.

A few months ago, the West Saiyi Regime began recruiting laborers for work in the Empire, and within a few days, 3 million people had registered.

After careful selection, the initial list of 500,000 laborers was finalized.

To be honest, the survival rate for those working in the Empire was much higher than for those sent to the front line.

At least at the time, joining the National Self-Defense Force as an ordinary soldier and then heading to the front line in the central region of the main island was basically a one-way trip.

Previously, since there had not been a war initiated against the Luosha Empire and operations on the Toe Peninsula hadn’t started yet, the Imperial Authority had no plans to recruit Saiyi laborers.

As the war broke out in full scale, especially with a large number of projects in the Northwest and Southwest needing to be completed urgently, just the construction of roads required a large workforce, which led to labor recruitment being put on the agenda, resulting in the cooperation agreement to officially recruit laborers from the Saiyi Imperial Kingdom.

To be honest, this was also the beginning of the gradual assimilation of the Saiyi Imperial Kingdom.

As tens of millions of Saiyi people came to the Liangxia Empire to work and witnessed the prosperity and strength of the Liangxia Empire, when 3 million Saiyi people immigrated to the Liangxia Empire, lived a stable and prosperous life, and began using Liangxia Characters again, could the Saiyi Imperial Kingdom, even with an Emperor Xia who had knelt and pledged allegiance, remain independent?

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