The public auction had drawn countless eyes and ultimately brought dozens of merchant guilds, large and small, from across the Lampari Kingdom to Bunta City. In truth, however, it had been nothing more than a performance Xu Yi staged in cooperation with the royal family.
The Xinfei Merchant Guild certainly could not produce the staggering sum of two million gold coins. And just as everyone had suspected, it had absolutely no standing to apply to the Chimera Chamber of Commerce for an enormous loan of five million gold coins.
That five-million-gold-coin loan had actually been arranged by His Majesty the King, using the Xinfei Merchant Guild's name.
The two million gold coins spent at the auction for the first mine had naturally flowed back into His Majesty the King's hands. Together with the remaining three million gold coins, which had never been spent, they were then returned directly to the Chimera Chamber of Commerce.
Once the accounts for the auction were settled, Xu Yi and the Xinfei Merchant Guild had not spent a single coin. His Majesty the King had paid only the negligible interest on that short-term loan of five million gold coins-a mere twenty thousand gold coins.
Compared with the 2.3 million gold coins earned from selling the second mine, that was hardly worth mentioning.
Of course, according to the contract between Xu Yi and His Majesty the King, the Xinfei Merchant Guild should originally have received two mines. Although this maneuver had ensured that one of them still ended up in the guild's hands, the other had been won at auction by the Falkor Merchant Guild.
However, Servini and Xu Yi had already accounted for this in their plan.
Naturally, it would have been ideal if Xu Yi could buy the second mine at a suitable price.