Throughout the history of the Sains Continent, the Mages' Guild had wielded such influence that every merchant guild on the continent, even the Chimera Chamber of Commerce, had eagerly sought to become one of its designated partners, as this brought countless advantages.
If a merchant guild was directly branded by the Mages' Guild as deceitful and deserving of suspicion, as the Xinfei Merchant Guild had been, the fate awaiting it was usually destruction.
After all, the Mages' Guild enjoyed tremendous prestige among most people on the Sains Continent, and they tended to trust its judgments.
Once the Mages' Guild called a merchant guild deceitful, that guild had already lost its credibility in the eyes of the vast majority.
For a merchant guild, credibility was its most basic foundation. Losing it was tantamount to receiving a death sentence.
This time, however, events unfolded completely differently.
After the Mages' Guild Headquarters publicly declared the Xinfei Merchant Guild unwelcome, not only did all the mages working there remain unaffected, but sales of its products were likewise unaffected.
The announcement from the Mages' Guild Headquarters seemed to have done no more than give the Xinfei Merchant Guild a tickle. It sparked heated discussion but had no tangible impact.
On the contrary, both the Lampari Kingdom Mages' Guild Branch and the branches in several other countries in the continent's southwestern corner simultaneously expressed support for the Xinfei Merchant Guild. They all publicly declared that it had been highly supportive of the Mages' Guild's work and had provided tremendous help to the low-rank mages in their countries.
These branches' reactions caught people completely off guard, because their actions amounted to openly opposing the Mages' Guild Headquarters.
There had been instances in the Sains Continent's history when a country's Mages' Guild branch opposed a decision made by