By this point in Great Mage Ferguson's explanation, Xu Yi had a fairly good idea of what he meant.
President Allen had indeed brought this up with him before, back when the Xinfei Merchant Guild was still in the Lampari Kingdom.
After the Xinfei Merchant Guild recruited as many as three hundred Level Three and Level Four Mages directly from the Lampari Kingdom Mages' Guild's Qualification Certification Examination venue, President Allen had approached Xu Yi privately and lavished praise on both him and the Xinfei Merchant Guild.
President Allen said that the Xinfei Merchant Guild had provided jobs for so many Low-Rank Mages, giving them not only a stable, decent income, but also the means to continue working with and studying magic.
Although making and researching magic machinery for the Xinfei Merchant Guild did not count as magic research in the truest sense, the opportunity to handle large quantities of various magical materials and personally lay out magic arrays every day was already extremely rare for these Low-Rank Mages. It gave them ample practical experience with magic and effectively improved their magical abilities.
The facts had borne this out.
After working at the Xinfei Merchant Guild for a while, mages invariably showed clear improvements in their magical abilities, and they progressed far faster than most Low-Rank Mages who had not joined the Xinfei Merchant Guild.
The Lampari Kingdom Mages' Guild kept detailed statistics on this, so it naturally understood the role the Xinfei Merchant Guild played.
Thus, although President Allen had initially disliked Xu Yi intensely, he had always maintained a supportive attitude toward the Xinfei Merchant Guild.
Later, the conflict between Anko Allen and Xu Yi was resolved, and Anko Allen even founded his own merchant guild with Xu Yi's help, turning over a new leaf. This greatly improved