Starting from the Planetary Governor

After receiving the 1432 points of grace this month, Gu Hang now had a total of 1440 grace points.

With these grace points, even if they were all invested in the Phoenix, he could create about seven Phoenixes in their ultimate state.

Of course, this was hardly possible in reality, considering the losses along the way.

Even if Gu Hang was optimistic, it was impossible to succeed with all seven.

Moreover, before that, suitable candidates for training had to be selected.

The selection process was actually quite straightforward.

Firstly, over the past month, Gu Hang had picked out one hundred and fifty teenagers between the ages of 16 and 18 from across the Union. Some criteria were involved, such as background, past experiences, physical condition, and an assessment of their psychological state and willpower...

In short, there was a whole array of assorted requirements.

These requirements were not just concocted by Gu Hang out of thin air, but were based on suggestions from Matins and Rizzo, who had established a scoring system from various aspects, with different weights for each item, to evaluate the one hundred and fifty people they had selected.

On this basis, these one hundred and fifty had already undergone one round of selection.

Now, with enough grace points in his hands, Gu Hang was about to start the second round and the several consecutive rounds of selection that followed.

First, all candidates were trained to the T4 level.

This cost Gu Hang seventeen grace points.

Latter, when attempting to train them all to T3, some were unable to proceed.

This was normal, indicating that some of them didn't have the potential to reach that level.

They were divided into fifteen groups to be upgraded one by one. Six groups couldn't make it, so they were divided again... Although this wasn't the most efficient method, it didn't matter; Gu Hang wasn't exactly obsessed with utmost efficiency.

In the end, nine people were eliminated, leaving the rest to be promoted to T3 level.

This cost 141 grace points.

Truth be told, this ratio was quite high, suggesting that the initial selection might have been quite good.

However, during the elevation to T2, the rate of elimination soared, and in the end, only 47 succeeded in advancing.

To promote them, Gu Hang spent 470 grace points.

Finally, Gu Hang saw that only three people were qualified to be upgraded to T1.

At this rate, Gu Hang couldn't help but exclaim that finding someone with the qualifications to become an interstellar warrior was indeed difficult.

Out of the 150 carefully selected teenagers, only three could be trained to the T1 level.

No wonder the Phoenix had three complete failures in their surgeries.

They had only selected four to five hundred teenagers for training.

Not to mention that the Phoenix didn't have enough time to train those teenagers, even if they had been given ample time, and the gene seeds remained fully active, Gu Hang was not optimistic about their chances of success.

The Phoenix didn't have any cheats and couldn't simply select the best candidates as Gu Hang had effortlessly done. They could only observe the level of those teenagers through approximately six months of training and "guess" the best three. Out of the five hundred, maybe only about ten genuinely had potential; many had "potential" that might not fully materialize during training...

No wonder mature battle groups needed an entire planet to provide recruits, and a considerable number of them would resort to brutal elimination when selecting new soldiers, even using methods such as battle royale and gladiatorial combat.

They needed a vast number of teenagers to participate in the recruitment process and undergo the most severe culling. Compared to the preciousness of gene seeds, the lives of some ordinary teenagers were negligible.

A low margin for error? Then select ten out of a hundred thousand; surviving through combat and harsh elimination pushes one to tap into their potential.

And for those whose potential remained untapped, whether they died or got eliminated, the interstellar warriors felt no pity.

Regardless of whether the methods the interstellar warriors used to select recruits were advanced or backward and brutal, they were certainly not as effective as having a cheat.

Gu Hang hadn't expected that his "Soldier Card" system would come in handy like this.

Although the success rate of surgery for those at T2 was actually not bad, Gu Hang had no intention of squandering resources on them.

Rather than that, he preferred to give the precious, one-hundred-point gene seeds to the three most exceptional individuals.

Gu Hang upgraded all three youngsters to the T1 level.

This cost him 300 grace points, Enjoy exclusive chapters from empire

Then, Gu Hang spent another 300 grace points to exchange for three gene seeds.

All the preparatory work was thus completed, and what was left was the surgery itself.

The entire process, if also including the training for the special military role of "Political Commissar," ended up costing a total of 1369 grace points.

Gu Hang's grace point balance had once again fallen to double digits.

It looked like a lot, but when averaged out, each candidate for interstellar warrior cost over four hundred grace points, which was double what had been anticipated.

But the account shouldn't be settled like this.

First off, not a single one of those precious, exceptionally talented young people died during the selection process.

Furthermore, even the eliminated ones each had their uses.

Even the nine youngsters who didn't make it to T3, whom Gu Hang couldn't be bothered to train as political commissars, were simply sent to regular boot camps.