In the blink of an eye, the end of the year had come again. Preparations for the new year were already underway throughout the Candel Empire, and Wimbledon City, the imperial capital, was naturally no exception.
As in previous years, His Majesty the Emperor announced in advance the policies benefiting the people that would be implemented throughout the empire next year, both to lift his subjects' spirits and to welcome the approaching new year.
Unlike previous years, however, among the policies announced this year, two drew particular attention beyond the customary pardons for a small number of criminals, tax reductions for selected cities in the coming year, and the opening of granaries to provide relief to refugees.
The first was that the Candel Empire had reached a formal cooperation agreement with the Xinfei Merchant Guild, which would officially enter the empire to invest beginning next March.
Under the agreement, the Xinfei Merchant Guild would first establish a Xinfei Magic Industrial Base outside Wimbledon City, containing a farmland magic machinery manufacturing plant, an engineering magic machinery manufacturing plant, a household magic machinery assembly workshop, and a large steelworks.
Although the Xinfei Merchant Guild had already invested in building two bases within the Candel Empire and opened many factories, neither base nominally belonged to it. Instead, the guild had established them in partnership with local merchant guilds through other connections, or simply used a local merchant guild as a front.
No matter how much control the Xinfei Merchant Guild exercised behind the scenes, those businesses could still nominally be considered merchant guilds of the Candel Empire.
This time, however, the newly established Xinfei Magic Industrial Base would belong entirely to the Xinfei Merchant Guild, both in name and in fact. It would be a magic industrial base founded exclusively by the guild