I Am The Swarm

Chapter 416: Garrisoned

Luo Wen had gone through a complex emotional journey regarding the Daqi prisoners of war.

In the early days, after the Swarm had taken custody of the prisoners from the Riken, Luo Wen had worked tirelessly to re

This patience emboldened the Koya Alliance. Convinced their criticisms were effective, they became increasingly brazen in their actions.

Luo Wen could not fathom the Koya Alliance’s concept of “face,” but from his perspective, their behavior was utterly disgraceful.

Fortunately, a turning point soon arrived. A few years later, the Ji fleet returned, this time with even more ships. Over 100 massive vessels, each over 4,000 meters long, slowly approached the Riken homeworld’s starport.

The Koya Alliance’s warships, which had been occupying the prime docking positions, hastily vacated the area. Compared to the Ji’s grand and orderly fleet, their colorful and motley assortment of ships resembled a group of clowns.

This fleet had come from the Ji’s nearest garrison point, a term used by the Ji to describe entire star systems they occupied beyond their official borders.

Each garrison point encompassed at least one star system and hosted not only fleets but also a significant number of researchers. These garrison points allowed the Ji to engage more quickly with surrounding civilizations and to utilize local resources for specialized research. The Ji maintained nearly 200 such garrison points throughout their Confederation territory.

With such vast territories and personnel reserves, the Ji were able to assemble a specialized research team at a moment’s notice and dispatch them to the Riken. These researchers had come to recreate the experimental data for the Longevity Serum using Ji-standard methods.

Back at the Ji’s main base, an even larger contingent of researchers eagerly awaited this data. The Ji’s interest in the Longevity Plants exceeded even Luo Wen’s expectations—they could not even wait for the two previous transport ships to return with their cargo.

As a result, the Riken found themselves busy once again, deploying substantial manpower to handle the logistics of hosting the Ji researchers. Whether intentional or not, the Koya Alliance found themselves increasingly ignored, and the years-long discussion meetings came to a halt.

The moment the Ji ships arrived, the Koya Alliance realized their plan to obtain official data from the Riken had failed. But this didn’t deter them from lingering, as they had recently established contact with the Riken black market, which offered precisely what they were looking for—at a surprisingly reasonable price.

Though the process involved a series of twists and turns, the outcome was ultimately favorable. From the Koya Alliance’s perspective, this was a fortunate and delightful turn of events.

And from Luo Wen’s perspective? He couldn’t agree more.