Freya thought in silence for quite a while, then sighed softly and shook her head.
"That's impossible. Never mind that the Xinfei Merchant Guild is only a merchant guild right now-even if you ruled a great empire spanning the entire continent, Dad, you couldn't make everyone behave and stop them from harboring ulterior motives."
"That's why there's no point in sticking with something meaningless. I've forced this continent to develop steadily for ten years, and in that time, I've essentially achieved my goal: greatly improving the lives of the people here."
Freya nodded slowly, her gaze filled with admiration as she looked at Xu Yi.
If there was one person the ordinary people of the Sains Continent ought to be most grateful to, it was not any leader of their respective countries. It was Xu Yi.
The new farming methods pioneered by the Xinfei Merchant Guild had brought a tremendous increase in crop yields across the Sains Continent, freeing the vast majority of its countries from the famines that had plagued them in the past.
In the last ten years alone, the population of the Sains Continent had multiplied, and the reason for that was as simple as having enough food to eat.
At the same time, the entirely new magic industry system introduced by the Xinfei Merchant Guild had allowed countless people to find suitable jobs, earn substantial wages, and use that money to further improve their lives.
The various kinds of household magic machinery developed by the Xinfei Merchant Guild had also made people's once monotonous, meager lives increasingly rich and colorful.
People no longer had to spend every day desperately struggling to survive, nor were they confined to endless toil in the fields, bent over the soil beneath the open sky. In their free time, they could