At eighteen hundred hours on the evening of the 8th, just as the Three Moons first rose, Landen's territory finally completed the full transfer of funds with the Imperial Finance Department. Landen watched Gordon Campbell leave the Temple of Wealth with considerable helplessness.
"Is it really that terrible for me to spend money on a furnace?" Watching Gordon leave with a sour face, Landen asked Ben Kaul in some confusion, "Is he unhappy that I bought a furnace, or unhappy that I have money? Haven't I been doing everything I can to meet the demands of the empire's various departments?"
As the Legend with the deepest understanding of the Gallop Plains, Ben Kaul not only knew the Imperial Capital's attitude toward Landen, but could also understand what Landen was doing now.
In Ben's view, the Imperial Capital's attention toward the Gallop Plains was founded on the premise of making the Gallop Plains, Night-Kirin City, and the Gallop Family vassals of the Tower of Purity. Their starting point in everything was to bind Gallop and the Imperial Capital deeply together. Landen's starting point, however, was rooted in the borderland environment of the Gallop Plains; his goal was to let the cities and subjects within his territory develop.
If one looked at it from a perspective of a hundred years, there was no contradiction between Landen and the Tower of Purity. A prosperous Night-Kirin City and Gallop Plains would only better support the Tower of Purity's decisions. Yet the upper ranks of the Tower of Purity and the Imperial Capital were currently staring only at the vacant positions in Night-Kirin City and the little bit of subsidy from the Gallop Fund. They were clearly existences who had lived for over a thousand years, yet they could not set their sights a little