Lina frowned as she stared at Jules, anxiously tapping the floor inlaid with golden threads with the tip of her foot and glancing at Little Gwen from time to time.
She was beginning to regret bringing Little Gwen to Rhine.
Jules had never intended to negotiate with them properly!
After leaving the small town, the two had wasted no more time and headed straight for Rhine.
Yet even their cursory observations had left them faintly alarmed.
Factories, schools—Little Gwen said these were the foundations of an industrial system. Lina did not understand much of it, but she knew that if Little Gwen had not lied to her, then the entire Empire seemed to have laid new foundations.
Factories were one thing; even once built, most lacked enough workers. But the schools were truly packed to the brim.
It was not as though Lina had never seen Church schools. They endlessly taught Church doctrine, and all they produced were fanatical believers. She had always looked down on them.
But these schools seemed genuinely different.
Lina had obtained some school textbooks without much effort. After showing them to Little Gwen, the girl said with a complicated expression, "They're very similar to the Holy Scripture of Empire Truth."
Lina had never seen whatever Empire Truth's Holy Scripture was, but when she opened those books and flipped through thirty pages without finding a single Church prayer, she vaguely sensed that the Empire was about to undergo a great upheaval.
Little Gwen had thought even further. She had faintly sensed that something was wrong—this series of seemingly absurd actions by the Empire all appeared, in the end, to point in the same direction.
After Empress Isabella was assassinated, the Empire had effectively fallen under the control of the Candlelight Society. Beatrice had nominally become the