Lan Qingyou didn't answer directly.
Instead, she asked again about the issue she cared about most.
"Street fighting" meant "trouble."
And "my own way" meant "efficiency."
She needed the client to make a choice.
Not someone's guess or a decision passed down secondhand.
"If we go with street fighting, how much destruction can you guarantee?"
The Old Emperor asked with concern.
After all, this was the Imperial Capital.
It was the face of the entire Sima Empire.
If it was razed to the ground, it would surely cause some unrest.
And if someone with an agenda spread rumors about it,
they might even shake the foundations of the empire.
What was more, so many foreign envoys were watching.
They had to consider the empire's image abroad!
Uh... no, that wasn't right...
Forget razing it to the ground.
Even if only half of it was damaged, people would still come out and criticize them.
To put it plainly,
the Sima Empire was made up of individual families.
The Sima Family and the Aurelius Family were the two largest.
So the Sima Family alone couldn't call all the shots in the empire.
If the other families saw an opportunity, they wouldn't just spread rumors behind the scenes.
For their own interests and power,
they'd even be willing to betray their country.
There had been two such incidents in the empire's history.
In one, several northern merchant families smuggled weapons, grain, and other restricted goods to the Highland Barbarians for their own profit.
That allowed the Highland Barbarians to grow stronger, and they eventually invaded the empire's northern frontier.
The irony was that those families were wiped out by the barbarians before the empire could even punish them.
In the other incident, several southern maritime trade families colluded with a few small nations