Part Two: The Ancient Era: The Struggle of Roads

[Overview of the Era] Modern historians usually refer to the long period between the basic formation of the Stargate network and the outbreak of all-out turmoil at the end of ancient times as the era of road wars. This title does not come from the unified naming of people at that time. Terms such as "highway dispute" and "node crisis" are common in Hengguang Realm literature. Some archives in Qingqiong Realm call it the "Gate Power Chaos Period", while Weien Bookstore mostly uses the more neutral expression "Stargate Order Split Period". It was not until the 32nd Era that compilers of general history gradually adopted the term "road struggle" as a summary. The so-called road war does not mean that all worlds are at war around the same road, nor does it mean that the peace of the Stargate Era suddenly ended. In fact, during this period, the Stargate network was still expanding, trade was still growing, exchanges between schools continued, and many ordinary people left their hometowns for the first time through Stargate to study, do business, move, or find new paths in distant places. If we only look at the Gate-City account books, Chamber of Commerce tax books, and Academy rosters, it seems that the Stargate Era is still in its prime. But it was under this prosperity that the deepest contradictions of the Stargate order began to emerge. After the birth of the First Stargate, Hengguang values ​​continued to spread with the Stargate charter, Gate-City system, quarantine ethics, returnee protection, alien residence laws and node public archives. It makes more and more civilizations begin to accept a concept: roads cannot only belong to the strongest, and Stargate cannot be just a tool for the strong to conquer the weak. Weak civilizations, edge worlds, residents between places, outsiders, returnees, and ordinary travelers should all have positions in the Stargate order that can be recorded, appealed, and protected. This idea did not immediately transform the universe, nor did it eliminate oppression and plunder. But it makes oppression no longer just a local internal matter, and makes massacres no longer necessarily disappear from local archives. It makes it possible for the enslaved, the deported, the overtaxed, and the forcibly recruited as high-risk door workers to use the Stargate network to carry their experiences to distant places for the first time. For many civilizations, this is progress; for others, it is a threat. Stargate changed the relationship between internal power and external gaze in many worlds. Before the Stargate Era, strong players often only had to face local weak players. The local sect can block the mountain gate, the local royal family can monopolize the bloodline, the local chamber of commerce can control the mineral veins, and the local priest can decide whether foreign races are recognized as the same kind. As long as there is no outside way, oppression can be interpreted as tradition, order, destiny, ancestral law, or the entitlement of the stronger. After Stargate is opened, roads bring outside eyes into the local area and local pain flows to the outside. Hengguang value does not necessarily bring an army, but it does bring records; it does not necessarily bring sanctions immediately, but it brings doubts; it does not necessarily liberate the weak immediately, but it allows the weak to have a language that can be understood by other worlds for the first time. Therefore, the essence of the road battle is not a battle over the Stargate project, but a battle over the meaning of Stargate. Is Stargate a public road or the private property of the powerful? Should Gate-City protect passers-by, or serve node rulers? Is Stargate Calendar public time, or is it a tool for the central world to manage the peripheral world? Should the Stargate Law restrain the strong, or only ordinary beings? Are edge stars, drifting places, dream rooms, weak realms and non-mainstream life forms the subjects of order or the appendages of the road? These problems already existed in the early days of the Stargate Era, but the First Stargate was too bright at that time, and many contradictions were covered up by the prosperity. In the era of road battles, with the expansion of the Stargate network, the contradictions can no longer be ignored.

[The formation of node hegemony] After the Stargate network expanded, the first to gain huge advantages was the central Gate-City. Early nodes such as Heluo Gate-City, BeiyuanGate-City, Tiyang Outer Port, Weien Outer Gate Area, Shideng Node, Luojia Baichao Gate Port, and Usa West Bank Mining Gate Area have quickly become key positions in the Stargate network with their stable gates, mature archives, strong university palaces, chamber of commerce warehousing, and relatively complete quarantine systems. They not only connect roads, but also determine the flow of goods, data levels, traffic risks, language translation, accident liability and dispute adjudication. In the early days of Stargate Era, this kind of centralization was necessary. The Stargate project is dangerous and complex. The edge world lacks experience in gate maintenance, and many channels require technical support from mature nodes. Without the central Gate-City’s school hours, records, quarantine and gate guards, it would have been difficult to maintain the early Stargate network. But over time, the central advantage gradually transformed into power. Those who master the gate maintenance technology can decide whether a branch line continues to be open; those who master the risk level assessment can increase or reduce the cost of passage to a certain world; those who master the translation library and archives can decide whether the complaints of certain fringe civilizations can be understood by the mainstream world; those who master the warehousing and passage quotas can decide which goods, which chambers of commerce, and which ethnic groups can enter the network. As a result, a new kind of inequality appeared in the Stargate network. It no longer relies entirely on the military, royal power or clan power in the traditional sense, but on the road itself. Whoever occupies the nodes can influence far away; whoever controls the records can shape the truth; whoever owns the school time and charter can make his own order look more like public order. Modern historians usually refer to this phenomenon as node hegemony. Nodal hegemony does not necessarily manifest as open tyranny. Many Gate-Cities still abide by the Stargate charter and still have quarantine areas, translation offices, compensation offices and nodal courts. The problem is that although the system seems public, the power of interpretation is often in the hands of the central world. If the marginalized world wants to access the network, they must accept the central format; if the marginalized groups want to appeal, they must use the central language; if the residents of the world want to prove their rights, they must first let the archivists from the stars and worlds recognize that their recording methods are valid. This means that the road dispute did not appear as a war at first, but as a struggle for documents, passes, translations, tax rates, danger levels and identity registration. In the 327th year of the Stargate Calendar, three small nodes in Jammo Land jointly submitted a complaint to Heluo Gate-City, accusing the West Bank Chamber of Commerce in Ursa of long-term increases in the Heluo Mineral Sands Tolls in the name of "maintaining unstable branch lines" and forcing local miners to undertake the cleanup of gate pollution. The complaint was preserved in the Heluo archives, but the trial took twenty-six years. The final ruling only required the Chamber of Commerce to reduce part of the fees and did not pursue the previous labor issue. Later folk documents of Jamadhi referred to this incident as the "Twenty-Six Years' Door", which means that the road exists, but it has not been opened for the weak. In Stargate Calendar 351, the Pharaoh Star Workshop Federation filed another protest, arguing that the central Gate-City imposed excessive inspection fees on Stargate components output from edge workshops, making it difficult for edge workshops to enter the main supply system. Minutes of the meeting kept by Weien Bookstore show that some central engineers believed the move was a necessary safety measure, while some fringe representatives pointed out that safety standards were being used as a tool of economic exclusion. This matter did not reach a unified conclusion in the end, but it made "whether technical regulations will become the language of the new aristocracy" an important issue of debate in the academy at that time. These disputes may seem trivial, but they herald fundamental changes in the Stargate Era: in the era of long journeys, the most important issue was whether we could reach distant places; in the early stages of the Stargate Era, the most important issue was whether roads could be established; in the era of road disputes, the most important issue became who has the right to define the roads after they are established.

[Private and Military Gates] Compared with node hegemony, a more direct threat to the public nature of Stargate is the emergence of private and military gates. The so-called private gate refers to the Stargate structure that is not fully incorporated into the public Stargate charter and is privately controlled by sects, chambers of commerce, royal families, extraordinary families, or local governments. The so-called military gate is a Stargate established for the purpose of military passage, rapid delivery, blockade, encirclement or occupation of nodes. Neither was considered illegal from the start. In the early stages of Stargate network expansion, many branch lines were funded and built by local forces. For safety reasons, some mining areas, border worlds, dangerous areas and special areas do need to restrict public access. Hengguang Realm's early bylaws did not object to special-purpose doors, but required them to be registered, undergo regular inspections, and be held accountable in the event of an accident. The problem is that many forces only accept Stargate's convenience but reject Stargate's public responsibilities. The most common reason for private doors is to protect local resources and order. The sect claimed that outsiders would pollute the holy land, the royal family claimed that Stargate involved national security, the Chamber of Commerce claimed that self-built gates were private property, and the Chaofan family claimed that the gates were maintained by ancestral secrets and should not be subject to external review. These reasons are not without merit. Stargate may indeed bring disease, smuggling, espionage, off-site contamination and regulatory incidents. But in many cases, the security rationale morphed into a monopoly excuse. In the 412th year of the Stargate Calendar, the three sects in the southern part of Qingqiong Realm regained control of the area around Yanhui Road and established a semi-stable private gate based on the old short boundary road. The three southern sects claim that the gate is only used to collect medicinal materials from other places and prevent the leakage of regular diseases, and is not open to the public. However, Beiyuan Academy later discovered that the private company had been selling passes to specific chambers of commerce for a long time and used unknown residents as high-risk sampling labor. The relevant files are called "The Case of the Wild Goose Returning", which is a representative incident of private disputes in the early days of the road war era. The emergence of military gates is even more dangerous. Stargate was originally used for connection, but connection itself also means delivery. As long as a door can be opened stably, armies, weapons, talismans, war beasts, puppets, pollutants, and blockade equipment can all enter distant places through it. In the early days of the Stargate Era, public regulations had strict restrictions on armed passage. But in edge nodes, private portals, and unstable spurs, these limitations are often bypassed. From the 479th to 486th year of the Stargate Calendar, an edge node conflict broke out between Suting Realm and Seranga Star. The conflict originated from a dispute between the two places over the mining rights of a small inter-surface resource area. Initially, the two sides only complained against each other in the nodal court. Later, an armed team from Sutingjie entered the supply depot outside Serangya through an unregistered gate, killing seventy-three people. Seranga Star then sealed off all Suting Chamber of Commerce warehouses and detained more than 300 outsiders. The matter was eventually mediated by Heluo and Weien, but the mutual trust between the two parties was completely broken. The Suting-Selanga conflict was not a large-scale war, but it made many civilizations realize that once the Stargate is separated from the public charter, it will quickly turn from a road into a weapon.