The uproar over his polite refusal of the marriage alliance was like a stone cast into a still lake. After sending a few ripples across the surface, everything seemed to return to calm. Prince Longshi made no further moves, as though tacitly accepting Neji's delay on the grounds of his injuries. Huangyu Palace sent no further invitations either, as if Huiyao's goodwill had merely been an ordinary gesture of courtesy.
But Neji knew that beneath the surface, the undercurrents had never ceased. He needed to find new leverage as soon as possible and expand his channels of information and potential allies.
Senjumaru promptly delivered a new list.
The list detailed visitors and potential contacts who had recently shown some degree of interest in Amaterasu Palace through various channels and whose identities and backgrounds were relatively "clean." One name in particular caught Neji's attention.
Ōtsutsuki Workshop.
It was not a person's name, but a title—or rather, a faction label. It represented a relatively unusual and small group within the clan: the Research Faction.
Most members of the Research Faction were scholarly nobles obsessed with technology, the nature of energy, and the principles of creation. Their combat strength might not have been exceptional, but they often possessed profound expertise in their respective fields and held many secret pieces of knowledge and technologies unknown to others. They generally remained detached from the struggles between radical and conservative factions, focusing instead on their own "research," interested only in new knowledge, rare materials, or unique energy phenomena.
Ōtsutsuki Workshop was a highly respected "duke"-level figure within the Research Faction. He was not famous for his combat strength, but for his outstanding achievements in biological structures, energy circuit integration, and the analysis of ancient relics. Several large research workshops operated under his command, and he had