What had happened in the Candel Empire's Southern Waters, thousands of kilometers away, had little effect on the Stantin Duchy or the Xinfei Merchant Guild.
Recently, the most closely watched issue in the Stantin Duchy, and even in several neighboring countries, was a bill under deliberation in the Stantin Duchy Congress.
The bill had been proposed by Xinfei Merchant Guild President Xu Yi in his capacity as an ordinary member of Congress.
Given Xu Yi's unparalleled influence in the Stantin Duchy, any proposal of his should have passed easily. Yet this one had taken a full two months just to reach the final deliberation stage, and a public vote by members of Congress would still be required to determine whether it would take effect.
The proposal had faced such difficulty because its contents were simply too shocking.
It actually called for the abolition of slavery!
When Xu Yi first put forward the proposal, everyone thought he had gone completely mad.
Slavery had existed on the continent since the elves began ruling over it thousands of years ago. By now, its history stretched back more than ten thousand years.
Over those ten thousand years, no matter how the continent changed, slavery had remained unchanged. During the more than two thousand years surrounding the Race War, it had even reached its peak across the continent.
Before the Race War, the elves had treated nearly every other race as slaves. Afterward, humans had taken their place, capturing members of other races in a frenzy to use as slaves.
Humans also enslaved vast numbers of their own kind.
For everyone on the Sains Continent, the existence of slaves had long been an accepted part of everyday life. No one thought there was anything wrong with it.
Now Xu Yi had suddenly stepped forward and