After the Xinfei Merchant Guild and the Candel Empire issued their joint statement, the Sains Continent, which had shown signs of unrest over the Qidanlu Town incident and the White Meng Mine incident, finally returned to peace.
On the surface, the Candel Empire had once again chosen to back down in the face of the Xinfei Merchant Guild's aggressive stance.
This was little different from the Candel Empire's attitude toward the Xinfei Merchant Guild over the previous twelve years, or from the attitudes of the other countries on the Sains Continent during that same period.
Now that the two incidents were over, the situation on the Sains Continent appeared unchanged. The Xinfei Merchant Guild remained dominant, while the other countries continued obediently devoting themselves to developing their own magic industry sectors. Nothing seemed to have changed.
Yet to those paying close attention, things were different after all.
First, and most importantly, the Continental Peace Treaty had disappeared. In its place was the Military Magic Machinery Proliferation Restriction Treaty, newly signed by the Two Great Empires and several other countries.
This treaty included more than half the countries on the Sains Continent, including the Two Great Empires, but... the Xinfei Merchant Guild was not among its signatories!
Twelve years earlier, after the Two Great Empires had been all but crushed by the Xinfei Merchant Guild, every country on the Sains Continent had realized that it was virtually impossible to oppose the guild's military might, which far exceeded anything they had imagined. Thus, for those twelve years, all the countries on the continent had coexisted peacefully under the Xinfei Merchant Guild's restraint, giving the Sains Continent an exceptionally rare decade and more of peace.
When the original Continental Peace Treaty expired two years earlier, almost everyone had believed that the Xinfei Merchant