True, Xu Yi might genuinely have had no desire for absolute power. Perhaps, just as he had said, he only hoped to change the lives of everyone on the continent through the magic industry sector. Perhaps he really had no intention of replacing the Two Great Empires. Perhaps...
But these were, at most, guesses other people had made based on his actions. No one dared be certain that this was truly what he intended, much less that he would always think this way.
What if his thinking suddenly changed one day and he decided to seek greater power? Who could stop him then?
As the emperor of the Candel Empire, he naturally could not pin all his hopes on Xu Yi's personal wishes. He much preferred to keep control in his own hands.
So whether Xu Yi wanted to do what everyone feared was not important. What mattered was whether he had the ability to do it.
As long as he had that ability, others-especially people at the pinnacle of power, like the Candel Emperor-could never feel at ease.
Yet there was nothing they could do about that.
After ten years of development, the Xinfei Merchant Guild had grown many times stronger than it had been a decade earlier. The Xinfei Merchant Guild Guard Corps alone had expanded to more than a hundred thousand personnel, including seventeen naval fleets and thirteen Mana Airship fleets.
With military magic machinery whose exact capabilities no one knew, but which was unquestionably the most advanced available, the Xinfei Merchant Guild Guard Corps could still utterly crush the forces of any other country on the continent.
So no matter how uneasy the Candel Emperor felt, he could do nothing about the Xinfei Merchant Guild or Xu Yi for the time being.
The Candel Empire's current