Today, the Imperial Court was filled with joy.
Because the westerners had come to negotiate peace!
They were willing to lift the blockade, pay reparations to the Great Cheng Dynasty, and even cede territory, handing several Southern Great Islands over to the Great Cheng Dynasty.
Their sole demand was to join forces in annihilating the Bright Light Army.
The Imperial Court was to stop supplying them with weapons.
"This is obviously the enemy's trickery," the Minister of War said without hesitation. "Once they kill our dog, they'll come for us."
"Exactly. We won't fall for it unless they lift the blockade first."
"That's right. Those bastards have already driven six of my family's shops out of business."
"Same here. They have to compensate us."
As the Chief Assistant Minister looked over the peace proposal, he recalled a memorial submitted by a certain provincial graduate years ago.
The man had written that Great Cheng would not perish at the hands of the westerners, but at the hands of the Bright Light Society.
Looking again at the westerners' peace proposal, it indeed mentioned the dangers posed by the Bright Light Society.
The World Belongs to Everyone, The Great Harmony of the World—those sounded like doctrines from ancient times, yet they had somehow found a way to make them real.
That way was to use the industrialization brought by the westerners to develop large-scale industry. And with large-scale industry came the possibility of achieving Great Harmony.
Then... then there would be no place left for them.
The honorable gentlemen of the Imperial Court would all be swept away.
Those councilors and tycoons would have nowhere to stand either.
Yet with the intellect that had earned him top honors in all three levels of the imperial examinations, he could naturally see that there were