What did the Mages' Guild Headquarters want?
As the saying went, all the world's bustle was for profit, and all its striving was for gain.
When Great Mage Ferguson had last come on behalf of the Mages' Guild, his behavior had been fairly normal. He had merely conveyed the headquarters' wish for the Xinfei Merchant Guild to help address the livelihoods of low-rank mages, and had been reasonably polite overall.
This time, however, he had suddenly adopted a stance of making things difficult for Xu Yi and the Xinfei Merchant Guild. Clearly, he had something else in mind.
After touring the Magic Industry College under construction, Xu Yi had deliberately kept Great Mage Ferguson waiting for several days before hinting that the Xinfei Merchant Guild was willing to pay a certain price to gain the Mages' Guild Headquarters' recognition.
Great Mage Ferguson's attitude had changed instantly, and he had presented Xu Yi with a cooperation proposal deliberated on and approved by the Parliament of the Mages' Guild Headquarters.
This proposal appeared to go a step further than Xu Yi's earlier one. Specifically, the Mages' Guild Headquarters would first recognize the Xinfei Merchant Guild as its partner merchant guild, after which their primary area of cooperation would be finding placements for low-rank mages.
That was much the same as the cooperation they had discussed before. The difference lay in what followed.
In this proposal, the Mages' Guild argued that, since the Xinfei Merchant Guild had addressed low-rank mages' livelihoods through industries related to manufacturing magic machinery, the headquarters needed to study and understand the magic industry sector led by the Xinfei Merchant Guild in order to safeguard those mages' interests.
On the surface, the reasoning sounded thoroughly high-minded. In reality, however, it required the Xinfei Merchant Guild to share all its