To say that Xu Yi trusted Salandur Clay completely would, of course, have been a joke.
After all, five years ago, this man had attacked the Xinfei Merchant Guild's Main Base alongside Levin Hasoko. Although all he had done was fight Archmage Camilla before withdrawing on his own after sensing Levin Hasoko's unexpected death, without causing the Xinfei Merchant Guild any major damage, everyone else undoubtedly saw him as the guild's enemy.
Faced with such a powerful enemy at the archmage tier, failing to stay vigilant against another attack was already incomprehensible. Yet Xu Yi had actually agreed to his request to join the Xinfei Merchant Guild Magic Research Institute. To everyone in the guild, from top to bottom, he had simply lost his mind.
Xu Yi did not entirely believe that Archmage Clay would devote himself wholeheartedly to working for the Xinfei Merchant Guild as Archmage Camilla did.
He, too, thought that Archmage Clay might do exactly what so many people feared: infiltrate the Xinfei Merchant Guild to obtain a wealth of important technical information on magic machinery, then turn around and use it against the guild.
Yet after considering the matter, Xu Yi had still agreed.
In Xu Yi's view, recruiting Archmage Clay into the Xinfei Merchant Guild certainly carried various hidden dangers, and might even result in the leak of much of the guild's advanced technical information. But there were ways to prevent those risks, and even if they did materialize, they could be kept within acceptable limits.
Compared with the benefits Archmage Clay would bring by joining and working for the Xinfei Merchant Guild, the potential losses from those risks were much smaller.
As for what benefits Archmage Clay would bring?
First, although the Xinfei Merchant Guild already had Archmage Camilla, everyone believed that she only