727: Chapter 727 Conscription

On the city square of Planet Laila, a habitable planet in the Lipugong Supercluster, the crowds were bustling. Holographic billboards played promotional videos of the Supercluster's scenery on a loop, and the sound of chatter rose and fell in the streets and alleys.

"Hey! Have you heard? Our Lipugong Supercluster is suddenly going to establish an Independent Military Region, and they've already started recruiting locals to enlist!"

A young male citizen dressed in casual workwear leaned into the crowd and spoke in a low, mysterious voice, his tone unable to hide his excitement.

As soon as he finished speaking, the surrounding area instantly erupted into a commotion.

"Enlisting in the army? In our Lipugong Galaxy? For real? I have to go try!"

"I've wanted to join the army for a long time, but I heard before that assignments were all randomly allocated. If the place you were assigned to was too far from home, you might not come back once in decades. This is great!"

"Exactly! Before, there was no such luck as a local military region; now, joining the army won't mean leaving home!"

The discussions on the street grew more and more heated, and many Imperial Citizens stopped to join the fervent conversation, their eyes full of expectation and excitement.

In the Xili Empire, most citizens live stable and prosperous lives, with no need to struggle for food and clothing, but over time, they always feel a lack of goals and direction.

Joining the army has always been a life path chosen by many Imperial Citizens.

It offers stable benefits and promotion opportunities while allowing them to guard the Empire's borders and realize their own value.

In the past, recruitment quotas for the Lipugong Supercluster were extremely low. Even if there were any, people would be assigned to units far from their homeland; after all, the entire Lipugong Supercluster only had those two Border Defense Divisions, and they weren't short on people.

For many, this was a difficult choice to make.

Even with a vacation system, if the Base and home were far apart, even the longest vacation might not be enough time for the round trip, as interstellar travel alone would take quite a while.

Because of this, many citizens with the desire to enlist eventually gave up on the idea due to concerns about being "too far from home."

But now, an Independent Military Region is about to be established within the Lipugong Supercluster, and the scope of the first expansion directly covers the entire Supercluster. All recruitment, training, and stationing of new recruits will take place within the local Star Domain.

This undoubtedly broke the long-standing concerns of Lipugong's citizens.

Enlisting locally and being stationed locally meant they could fulfill their wish to protect their country while also being able to accompany their families often; traveling between home and the Base would also be extremely convenient.

As expected, after the recruitment announcement for the military region was released through all channels, including interstellar government channels, planetary holographic broadcasts, and community notification terminals,

In just two or three days, the major recruitment stations in the Lipugong Supercluster were packed to the point of being impassable. The temporarily designated military region recruitment reception area was even more crowded, with no end in sight, filled with local citizens who had come to sign up with dreams of joining the army.

When he first learned of this grand occasion, Li Yang's heart was full of joy, and he even breathed a great sigh of relief.

He had originally worried that citizens in the border Supercluster would have low interest in enlisting, making it hard to fill the gap of over a hundred million Soldiers needed for the Hundred-Division Expansion. Now it seemed those concerns were completely redundant.

As long as this batch of applicants was screened and the various levels of officers dispatched by the military department arrived, the Hundred-Division Establishment could easily be filled. The core problem of the military region's expansion was about to be solved.

But this joy didn't last long. Li Yang gradually began to worry, and in the end, he was even filled with distress.

At first, he only thought that having enough applicants was a good thing, but he hadn't calculated how massive the population Base of the Lipugong Supercluster was.

According to the military region's plan, the full strength of the hundred divisions was only over a hundred million people. Furthermore, nearly ten percent of that had to be set aside for various levels of officers, command cadres, and logistical technical positions. The number of ordinary Soldiers truly needed was only about eighty to ninety million.

But the Lipugong Supercluster governs an unknown number of habitable planets. A single ordinary habitable planet has a permanent population of hundreds of millions or even billions. The total population of the entire Supercluster reached astronomical figures that were difficult to count accurately.

The good news of local enlistment and nearby stationing mobilized the enthusiasm of almost all citizens who met the basic conditions. The number of applicants exploded geometrically, far exceeding Li Yang's expectations.

To screen for suitable personnel, Li Yang had to repeatedly raise the recruitment selection threshold, from initial basic age and identity verification to physical indicators and mental state audits. The conditions were raised again and again, but the number of applicants remained unimaginably high, with no sign of decreasing.

The reason was that under the prosperous life of the Xili Empire, it was simply too easy for ordinary citizens to meet the recruitment standards.

Worried about hidden physical ailments or not meeting medical requirements? The Empire's mature medical technology could completely solve this. One only needed to go to a planetary public hospital, where various targeted therapies and cell repair methods could bring the body to its optimal state in just a few days, making it easy to pass the physical exam.

Some felt their physical fitness was weak and they wouldn't meet the standards? Basic Physical Enhancement Potions available everywhere on the market were affordable. After injection, they could quickly improve one's Physique, strength, and endurance. Even ordinary people who usually neglected exercise could instantly meet the Soldier fitness standards and transform into qualified candidates.

This nearly threshold-free way of meeting standards made the physical and fitness requirements Li Yang raised feel like mere formalities, and the number of applicants remained consistently high.