novelraw Chapter 463: Open New Sources, Curb Expenditure
Chapter 463: Open New Sources, Curb Expenditure
Daxia Capital.
Supreme Council Hall.
Under the dome, a heavy atmosphere hung in the air.
Nearly one third of the seats stood empty.
Those familiar faces had fallen silent forever on the scorched borderlands.
Or they were still struggling at the scarred aftermath sites.
The surviving higher-ups wore exhaustion etched into their faces.
Their gazes fixed on the rows of cold numbers on the central screen:
Military casualties 41% (the army is entirely composed of Awakened individuals).
Ocean Realm and calamity-level elites killed in action 32%.Industrial capacity set back 35 years, main agricultural regions polluted/destroyed 30%, strategic reserves consumed 75%.
Fifteen border fortresses destroyed, front-line control lines withdrawn an average of 65 kilometers.
“Forty-one…”
A senior military official’s voice was hoarse: “A full four-point-one-tenths of our Awakened troops… that was Daxia’s sinew, the backbone of our future!”
The army is entirely made up of Awakened individuals.
That meant the nation’s military foundation and its future potential were both grievously wounded.
The Three Elders, seated in the lord’s position, looked markedly older.
He slowly spoke: “We… defended our homeland, but losing thirty-three percent of our high-end combat power… Daxia has been grievously drained, its sinews snapped.”
The heavy atmosphere did not ease.
The senior official in charge of finance and domestic affairs immediately dropped another bomb capable of triggering social collapse.
“The economic hole is larger than the battlefield breach!”
His face had gone ashen as he pulled up new data, the cliff-like fall on the screen shocking to behold:
“Special wartime requisitions drained 95% of capital from the wealthy. Although this sustained the war machine, it has utterly bled the market dry.
The direct consequence is… a nationwide wave of mass closures due to business bankruptcies and broken funding chains, expected to eliminate over 40% of total employment!
Tens of millions are about to lose their livelihoods!
And that does not count the massive population of retiring and disabled soldiers needing resettlement!
No jobs means no food, no hope!
We just held off the Mist externally, but internal social unrest now threatens the gates!”
“Jobs!”
Another senior official shouted: “This is deadlier than any material shortage! We must find a solution immediately, or the blood spilled by soldiers at the front will be in vain!”
The Three Elders suddenly raised his head: “In extraordinary times, there is no longer room for procedures! The state must become the final dam to stop this flood of unemployment!
Organize all retirees, disabled soldiers, and large numbers of eligible unemployed youth into construction brigades to repair border defenses, clear city ruins, rebuild transport arteries, and other massive engineering projects.
Implement labor-for-relief.
Distribute basic rations and living supplies, prioritize survival, and exchange labor for order.
Establish a Strategic Resource Recovery Corporation, controlled directly by the state, forming professional exploration and engineering teams to penetrate former battlezones and Mist-invaded areas, systematically recovering all usable resources.
Recovered materials will be centrally allocated for the most critical reconstruction efforts, while creating vast numbers of field and processing jobs.
For enterprises that survived the war and actively cooperate with state policies, grant the maximum feasible tax relief.
Restore at least the most basic living supply chains as quickly as possible.
Support Awakened cooperatives, encourage and guide capable retired Awakened to form cooperative groups to take on tasks that civilian forces cannot handle, such as regional patrols, small-scale engineering tackles, and resource collection in dangerous environments.
The state will provide official certification, task commissions, and necessary resource support.
Help them leverage their strengths to resettle themselves.”
The Three Elders’ gaze shifted to the finance chief: “Where will the money come from? Squeeze it out if we must!
Completely halt all nonessential government spending.
All civil servants, including the elders present, will face steep salary reductions until the national economy climbs out of the trough.
All resources must be prioritized for military pensions, basic subsistence, and core reconstruction projects.
Tell every citizen.
The Council stands with them, sharing food and labor, bearing hardship together!”
The meeting concluded under a mingled atmosphere of repression and urgency.
Every policy weighed like a mountain.
They determined whether this nation, which had just clawed itself up from mountains of corpses and seas of blood, could stand firm on the ruins.
The road to reconstruction begins with survival.
And the battle for survival was only now being waged in the Council Hall.
All policies condensed into four words: open new sources, curb expenditure.
…
The war was over, but the gunpowder haze had not fully lifted from Daxia’s sky; it had transformed into a heavy pall that pressed on the hearts of every survivor.
For ordinary people, the end of war was not the end of suffering, but the start of a different struggle.
Once-homes were now nothing but broken walls and crumbling eaves.
Tens of millions were forced from their lands, becoming rootless drifters.
They carried the last of their belongings, wrapped in tattered blankets, hobbling across the scorched earth, eyes vacant.
Temporary refugee camps were overcrowded.
Children’s faces no longer held innocent joy, only fear beyond their years.
Elders leaned on battered packs, staring toward their hometowns while silently weeping, unsure if they would ever see that familiar land again in their lifetimes.
Almost every family was shrouded in the grief of lost loved ones.
White cloth hung at doorways, makeshift memorial tablets quietly installed, stifled sobs in the deep of night became the norm for many households.
A mother clutched the last family letter her son sent before he died, rubbing it over and over.
A wife who could no longer wait for her husband to return had to raise young children alone, her trauma turning her hair white overnight.
The seat at once-lively dining tables sat empty; reunion holidays became the hardest moments, the gaping, unforgettable loss an ache that would never heal.
Wartime requisitions and the destructive pillaging of capital led to mass factory closures and shopfronts shuttered.
Skilled technicians, company clerks, small shop owners… countless people lost their livelihoods overnight.
On streets and alleys, ragged people squatted in corners with dull eyes, or rifled through rubble in vain for anything to trade for a scrap of food.
Once-respectable middle-class families now had to lay down pride for a meager filling biscuit and join the long queues for relief.
Currency plunged in value, savings vanished, survival became a daily battle demanding every ounce of effort.
In despair, theft and robbery began to breed, further fueling social unrest.
War behaved like an invisible beast, not only devouring lives at the front but chewing up peace and hope at the rear.
Ordinary people used their flesh and life savings to support this war of national defense, and what war left them was shattered rivers and mountains, broken families, and a haze that made the future unreadable.
The road to rebuild the homeland was destined to be long and arduous.
…