The support Xu Yi had promised the Rulson Kingdom could hardly stop at words alone.
One week after his meeting with Duke Boris, the Xinfei Merchant Guild and the Rulson Kingdom issued a joint public statement announcing that the kingdom had formally sold two iron mines and four Magic Crystal Mines in its northeastern territory to the Xinfei Merchant Guild.
At first glance, there seemed to be nothing special about this announcement. With the Xinfei Merchant Guild's financial resources, buying a few mines was no problem at all.
Moreover, the Xinfei Merchant Guild had been acquiring mineral resources all over the Sains Continent at a frantic pace over the past few years. According to incomplete statistics, it now controlled more than three hundred iron mines, openly or otherwise, and could even be considered the merchant guild with the most iron mines and other mineral resources on the Sains Continent.
But another statement released by the Xinfei Merchant Guild at the same time revealed the true significance behind the announcement.
In this statement, the Xinfei Merchant Guild declared that, to ensure more effective development of these mines, it would dispatch a detachment of the Xinfei Merchant Guild Guard Corps to the six mines to work with the Rulson Kingdom's local law enforcement and military forces to ensure their security.
To support this detachment, the Xinfei Merchant Guild would also establish a base at a central location among the six mines.
Taken on its own, this piece of news might not have seemed particularly remarkable.
But anyone who took out a map and examined it closely would discover that the Xinfei Merchant Guild's planned base lay less than fifty kilometers from the Rulson Kingdom's former border with the Norton Duchy.
Since the Norton Duchy had now been incorporated into the Candel Empire,