Inside the Imperial Palace, little empress Dongfang Xiao curiously brought up this question to Cheng Gujian during his daily audience.
To be fair, she had spent a long time secluded deep within the palace. With a young ruler and suspicious ministers, she might not have held much real power. Under such circumstances, aside from occasionally showing her face as a figurehead, she did not take many matters to heart.
Yet now she had taken the initiative to ask about it. That alone showed just how widely the matter of the Sea God Stone had spread.
"...How did Your Majesty learn of this?"
Cheng Gujian reacted much the same way. Rather than explaining immediately, he asked this first.
"The lady officials around me were talking about it. I happened to overhear them..."
Dongfang Xiao pursed her lips and urged him in a mutter, "Hurry up and tell me what happened."
"Yes."
Only then did Cheng Gujian nod and explain the matter of the Sea God Stone in detail.
"...The first to propose purchasing Sea God Stones was the Trade Station opened by Xu Shi. Later, other merchant houses began following suit."
He summed it up this way. "At present, practically the entire main city is actively involved."
"I see."
The little empress nodded thoughtfully. "So Envoy Xu was the one who started it... Why did he do that? Can you figure it out?"
"Hmm..."
Grand Duke Gu Jian paused.
As the royal family's de facto ruler in a sense, he naturally knew more about this matter. Yet after all these days, he still had not completely understood Xu Shi's intentions.
After defeating the Sea God and obtaining a large quantity of Sea God Stones, he had naturally sent people to study them at once.
However, the results had not been very