As soon as news of the Xinfei Merchant Guild's mass layoffs spread, it shocked everyone in the neighboring countries.
Although it was perfectly normal for a merchant guild to dismiss employees it no longer needed, firing more than eighteen thousand employees in one go, as the Xinfei Merchant Guild had done, was utterly unprecedented.
Many people's first reaction to the news was that the Xinfei Merchant Guild was finished.
Under normal circumstances, a merchant guild would only resort to mass layoffs like these when it was in decline.
When business was growing, a merchant guild would instead keep recruiting large numbers of employees to support its continued expansion.
Yet until then, the Xinfei Merchant Guild had been continuously recruiting workers publicly.
Even half a month earlier, it had been using every available channel in the Stantin Duchy and several surrounding countries to recruit workers. Why, then, had it suddenly dismissed so many employees at once?
Was it solely because of the strike that had broken out at the Xinfei Merchant Guild?
If it had fired so many employees merely for participating in a strike, wasn't that far too harsh?
For a time, the strike and mass layoffs at the Xinfei Merchant Guild sparked fierce debate throughout the surrounding countries. Nearly every day, the major newspapers published articles discussing the events and reporting on subsequent developments.
The Xinfei Merchant Guild had already been, without exception, the most closely watched merchant guild in these countries. With these two incidents occurring one after another, it became an even greater focus of everyone's attention.
Different people, however, focused on different things.
Most ordinary people were simply watching the drama unfold, while those who did business with the Xinfei Merchant Guild were more concerned about how these two incidents would affect it.
Those who had