Galaxy Domination Guide

Bai Zhongqi swiftly flipped open his computer. Ever since the air battle erupted over San Francisco, he had no mood to open the game. He had played this game for a long time, and although it was niche, he had never felt anything different. He never imagined that the warships that appeared in the game, along with his unique Empire Emblem, would actually appear in reality. Moreover, the fleet bearing the Empire Emblem was about to destroy the Earth at any moment.

"Could there be anything more ridiculous than this?" Bai Zhongqi was completely disheveled.

As he opened the game, he also searched online for information about it. Previously, Bai Zhongqi, who did not like to interact much when playing strategy games and preferred to explore the gameplay on his own, particularly disliked playing sandbox games like this, following someone else's method would boke almost no interest. Today, as warships that should only be in the game were parked in Earth's orbit and had just destroyed who knows how many of American launched nuclear weapons, Bai Zhongqi frantically searched for any related information.

To his despair, Bai Zhongqi found nothing. He could not even find the web page where he originally downloaded the game. The contents displayed in the search engines were all unrelated, with similar keywords but not the game Bai Zhongqi wanted to find.

The game opened, but the login screen was different than usual. A background image that Bai Zhongqi had never seen before, in the center, displayed several words—"Updating." Below it, a progress bar was slowly advancing.

Seeing this, Bai Zhongqi had a feeling that it indeed was so. He had never seen the game update before, and now, just as the mysterious alien fleet appeared, the game was updating; this was problematic from any perspective.

After a torturous wait, the game logged in again, and the entire game's interface had fundamentally changed. The background image of the main menu had become far more sophisticated, featuring a majestic and powerful warship engaged in interstellar travel, and behind it was a blue planet. Bai Zhongqi was stunned; the warship looked exactly like the large warship model revealed by the XH company, and the blue planet, although the contours of the land were not very clear, was very likely Earth itself, the home of humanity.

Bai Zhongqi tinkered with the game, only to find that there was no option to start a new game on the main interface, only to load past saved games. And there was only one game save remaining, which was the one where he had created the Iridium Star United Empire. These changes made Bai Zhongqi increasingly certain that the fleet appearing on the outskirts of Earth was very likely the same fleet he had lost in the game not long ago. Somehow, the fleet from the game had crossed over into his own world.

The craziest ideas were now running through Bai Zhongqi's mind; perhaps the mysterious alien fleet really did come from the game, and he could control this fleet to avert a cataclysmic disaster for Earth.

However, after Bai Zhongqi loaded the save, it seemed that the game was still the same. The vast United Empire was still operating in an orderly manner, and from time to time, he, as the Imperial Chancellor, would receive notifications requiring his attention, including the successful development of new technologies, financial deficits or surpluses on certain Administrative Stars of the Empire. He could control countless Empire warships, mobilize millions of bionic humans and artificial soldiers, but let alone controlling the fleet that seemed lost from the game, Bai Zhongqi could not even find any information related to this fleet in the game. He kept flipping through his game logs, finding the message about the disappearance of the R19 reconnaissance fleet. He reviewed every notification about the construction of each warship and the information related to forming the fleet, but these were of no use.

Bai Zhongqi studied every command in the game, didn't overlook anything, whether it was saving, loading, setting volume, or screen brightness, and after exiting the game save, he looked for something potentially useful in the main menu. Still, Bai Zhongqi found nothing. Defying disbelief, Bai Zhongqi even went directly to the game's root directory to look for clues after exiting the game. Upon opening the root directory folder, Bai Zhongqi was completely baffled. The root directory shown in the game was empty, not even containing an EXE program file. Bai Zhongqi confirmed repeatedly that it wasn't that the files were hidden, but that there was simply nothing in the folder. The folder properties showed a size of 0.00K...

This was simply impossible!

The hope that had just emerged was shattered at this moment. Bai Zhongqi once again questioned whether his speculations were correct, but all the indirect evidence pointed out that the lost R19 fleet was indeed that mysterious fleet threatening Earth. It consisted of a battleship cruiser, a heavy cruiser, two light escort ships, and a colonial base ship. Although the reconnaissance ship had not appeared in news images, in theory, this spacecraft should be secretly carrying out reconnaissance missions, and it would be normal not to see it.

"As the Imperial Chancellor, could I really be destroyed on Earth by a fleet of my own that doesn't even rank?" Bai Zhongqi was filled with despair. This was clearly the Golden Finger treatment of novel protagonists, but he found himself unable to wield this Golden Finger, instead becoming the target of its destruction.

No one on Earth understood the Iridium Star Fleet's operations better than Bai Zhongqi. Being an exploration fleet and even carrying a colonial ship implied that upon finding a habitable planet, especially one as defenseless as Earth, the fleet would surely initiate colonization warfare. If lucky, Bai Zhongqi might survive this colonization war and become one of the "natives" assimilated by the R19 Fleet. If unlucky, Bai Zhongqi would likely become just another casualty of the war.