Recaps

Xu Yi challenged Great Mage Camilla’s prejudice against commerce and argued that magic should improve ordinary people’s lives rather than serve mainly for warfare. He proposed a partnership to fund her Magic Tower and revealed a new invention, the Magic Soil Loosener, as a way to address her concerns.

• Xu Yi argued that merchants helped society by producing and circulating goods, while mages had long pursued powerful magic for war.
• Great Mage Camilla was shaken by Xu Yi’s criticism but admitted that some of his arguments had merit.
• Xu Yi offered to provide gold for the Magic Tower through a business partnership, but Camilla initially refused.
• Xu Yi identified Camilla’s concerns about business interfering with research and exploiting ordinary people, then claimed his proposal would avoid both problems.
• Xu Yi showed Camilla a drawing of a Magic Soil Loosener and began explaining how it would solve problems for people who needed it.

Xu Yi secured Great Mage Camilla’s cooperation and realized that magic machinery should combine magic’s unique abilities with his mechanical knowledge. As he headed to the factory to develop a better Magic Soil Loosener, he found a dense crowd gathered outside.

• Xu Yi told Stille that Great Mage Camilla had agreed to work with him, and Stille went to visit her.
• Xu Yi reflected that his partnership with Great Mage Camilla would help him overcome his inability to create the high-level array his original Magic Soil Loosener design required.
• Great Mage Camilla suggested using an earth element array, and Xu Yi realized a second-level Earth-Rending Array could power the machine more effectively than a sixth-level wind element array.
• Xu Yi recognized that combining magic with mechanical design could create machinery suited to the Sains Continent rather than merely reproduce machines from Earth.
• Xu Yi headed to the factory to begin developing the revised Magic Soil Loosener with Canby’s dwarves, but found the grounds crowded with people.

Xu Yi returned to the Xinfei factory during recruitment and learned that applicants were being tested on the assembly line. After reflecting on the applicants’ limited education, he let Heinz continue hiring in his own way and gave him discretion over ten of the hundred positions.

• Xu Yi found the factory crowded with applicants and entered with Alex’s help.
• Xu Yi told Heinz that the Magic Rice Cooker’s development was complete and trial production would begin the next day.
• Heinz explained that many applicants struggled to learn basic work and some had injured themselves operating machinery.
• Xu Yi recognized that ordinary people on the Sains Continent had far less education than workers on Earth and agreed to Heinz’s practical assessment.
• Heinz admitted that acquaintances had asked him to hire their recommended candidates, so Xu Yi let him choose ten workers while requiring all hires to perform their jobs properly.

Xu Yi visited the busy Magic Machine Tool Workshop, where President Fasak showed him a Second-Generation Variable-Speed Magic Fan bearing the Leo Merchant Guild’s emblem. Xu Yi realized the Leo Merchant Guild had made a nearly identical fan without obtaining a production line from Xinfei, and began wondering how it had copied the design.

• Xu Yi arrived at the Magic Machine Tool Workshop and found Canby explaining the Small Magic Harvester to President Fasak.
• Xu Yi and President Fasak exchanged pleasantries about their business relationship and the profits Fasak had earned from producing Second-Generation Magic Fans.
• President Fasak said he had come to ask Xu Yi for an important favor and showed him a Second-Generation Magic Fan.
• Xu Yi noticed the fan bore the Leo Merchant Guild’s lion emblem rather than Fasak’s eagle emblem.
• President Fasak identified the Leo Merchant Guild as Sartan City’s largest merchant guild, and Xu Yi wondered how it had produced a fan so similar to Xinfei’s without receiving a production line from him.

Xu Yi investigated the inferior Magic Fans made by the Fasak Merchant Guild and explained that their problems came from poor materials and workers, not merely the production process. He left President Fasak facing the need to improve both.

• President Fasak confronted Xu Yi about the Leo Merchant Guild using Magic Machine Tools to make Magic Fans, and Xu Yi said the tools had likely been copied.
• Xu Yi examined the Leo Merchant Guild's Magic Fan and identified it as a knockoff of a Xinfei Magic Fan.
• Xu Yi compared a Fasak Magic Fan with a Xinfei Magic Fan and showed President Fasak that the Fasak model started slowly, ran unevenly, and made loud noises.
• President Fasak admitted he would choose the Xinfei Magic Fan, and Xu Yi blamed the quality gap on raw materials and workers.
• Xu Yi questioned whether Fasak had ensured his subordinates treated the Xinfei technicians properly, then began explaining that iron came in different grades.

President Fasak left Bunta City satisfied after reaching a profitable cooperation agreement with Xu Yi, who refused to grant him exclusive rights to Magic Machine Tools. Examining the Leo Merchant Guild’s shoddy Magic Fan, Xu Yi saw hope that others were beginning to enter magical industry and suspected Vena, Rem, and Camiro had joined the guild in Sartan City.

• Xu Yi shared information about the Small Magic Harvester with President Fasak but refused to help the Fasak Merchant Guild establish a production line, agreeing instead to give it exclusive distribution rights in Sartan City.
• Xu Yi firmly rejected President Fasak’s request for exclusive purchasing rights to Magic Machine Tools, and the two merchant guilds reached a cooperation agreement after two days of negotiations.
• After President Fasak left, Xu Yi watched the poorly made Leo Merchant Guild Magic Fan shake and rattle on his desk.
• Xu Yi realized the Leo Merchant Guild’s Magic Fan showed that others were beginning to recognize the potential of magical industry, though he judged their imitation work no threat to Xinfei.
• Xu Yi suspected Vena had made the fan after joining the Leo Merchant Guild with Rem and Camiro, and the fan’s protective grille fell off onto his desk.

Freeman hauled his wheat to Bunta City to earn more than he would selling it in his village, where a new Xinfei Merchant Guild billboard advertised a Magic Rice Cooker. After learning about the guild’s free Big Eater Contest, he headed there for a meal.

• Freeman noticed that a new billboard showed three girls with a Magic Rice Cooker, and a passerby explained that it cooked rice without firewood or smoke.
• Freeman sold his wheat to the Maddy Merchant Guild for two gold coins, thirty-seven silver coins, and seventy-six copper coins.
• Freeman overheard people discussing the Xinfei Merchant Guild’s Big Eater Contest, where the winner would receive a Magic Rice Cooker and a membership card.
• Freeman packed away his flatbread and set off for the contest so he could eat rice for free.

Freeman joined the Xinfei Merchant Guild’s big eater contest, won a round and then the grand final by eating thirteen bowls of rice. Xu Yi met him afterward and began asking him to choose between two special rewards, starting with fifty gold coins.

• Freeman watched a round of the contest and learned that each round’s winner received a Magic Rice Cooker.
• Freeman entered the next round, quickly ate his first bowl, and won after the other contestants gave up.
• Freeman worked for the afternoon, returned at six, and won the grand final by eating thirteen bowls of rice.
• Alex brought Freeman to meet Xu Yi, who confirmed that Freeman was from Ireland Village.
• Xu Yi told Freeman he could choose between two special rewards and began by offering fifty gold coins.

Xu Yi offered Freeman a choice between fifty gold coins and an opportunity involving Xinfei’s farm machinery, then explained to Viscount Leslie that lending equipment to farmers was part of a plan to extend mechanized farming beyond noble-owned fields. The chapter ended with Xu Yi asking whether Leslie had heard of “liberating the productive forces.”

• Freeman learned he could choose fifty gold coins or an opportunity tied to Xinfei’s Small Magic Harvester and Small Magic Soil Loosener.
• Xu Yi showed Freeman a picture of the Small Magic Harvester and explained that Xinfei had mechanized wheat harvesting near Bunta City.
• Viscount Leslie questioned why Xu Yi would lend valuable machines to Freeman without charge, and Xu Yi said it supported his Farmer Support Plan.
• Xu Yi explained that nobles owned about thirty percent of Bunta City’s farmland, while farmers controlled most of the rest, and argued that farmers should also benefit from quick harvesting.
• Xu Yi assured Viscount Leslie that the plan would eventually profit Xinfei and asked whether he had heard of “liberating the productive forces.”

Xu Yi and Viscount Leslie secured noble support for the Farmer Support Plan, and the Xinfei Merchant Guild demonstrated its new small Magic Soil Loosener. The nobles rushed to claim the machine, while Sebas approached the farmers and introduced the support plan.

• Viscount Leslie accepted Xu Yi's argument that workers created more value under better conditions and pledged to support the Farmer Support Plan.
• Three days later, Viscount Leslie hosted nobles and farmers at a demonstration of the completed small Magic Soil Loosener.
• Baron Haines identified the machine’s Earthsplitter arrays and praised the skill behind their design.
• The machine’s cylinders cracked the hard ground, and its Iron Harrow churned the clods into fine, loose soil in under ten minutes.
• The nobles crowded around Xu Yi to demand their orders, while the farmers assumed they would never be able to obtain a machine.
• Sebas stopped the farmers from leaving and began telling them about the Xinfei Merchant Guild’s Farmer Support Plan.

Xu Yi met Baron Haines, who came to Bunta City at Reeves’s request to explore cooperation with the Xinfei Merchant Guild. After learning Reeves had given Xu Yi a personal card, Haines decided to spend half a month investigating Xu Yi and the guild, and Xu Yi agreed to welcome him.

• Baron Haines told Xu Yi that Reeves regretted missing an earlier chance to cooperate and wanted to discuss new products from the Xinfei Merchant Guild.
• Haines asked why Xu Yi had left mage studies to pursue magic machinery, and Xu Yi said it was a matter of personal interest.
• Xu Yi learned that Reeves had asked Haines to visit but had given him no specific cooperation plans.
• Haines and Viscount Leslie reacted with surprise when Xu Yi recalled Reeves’s personal card and its Anvilmar City address.
• Haines proposed observing Xu Yi and the guild’s factories and asking Bunta City residents about the business during his half-month stay.
• After Viscount Leslie signaled him, Xu Yi welcomed Haines’s investigation on behalf of the Xinfei Merchant Guild.

Xu Yi realized Baron Haines’s visit had exposed gaps in the workshop’s worker-safety arrangements and began addressing them, then conceived of launching a newspaper. In October, the first Bunta Daily went on sale and quickly sold out as residents read about the Xinfei Merchant Guild’s Farmer Support Plan.

• Baron Haines toured the workshops, recorded workers’ accounts of machine-related risks, and questioned Canby about the dwarves’ lives.
• Xu Yi instructed Heinz to improve worker-safety and injury arrangements, hoping Baron Haines would report the ideas to Reeves.
• Watching Baron Haines’s curiosity inspire thoughts of newspapers, Xu Yi decided to start the Bunta Daily as a way to promote the guild and advertise.
• More than ten days later, a boy began selling the first Bunta Daily on Bunta City’s streets for one silver coin per copy.
• The newspaper’s front-page story described the Farmer Support Plan, prompting residents to discuss its benefits as the copies quickly sold out.

Xu Yi and Viscount Leslie visited Count Sean Samo at the City Lord's Manor, where their conversation revealed the Count's interest in the Xinfei Merchant Guild and its inventions. The banquet ended with Xu Yi wondering whether the Count's familiarity was a friendly gesture or a warning.

• Viscount Leslie praised the Bunta Daily, and Xu Yi explained that he had made Baron Haines its editor-in-chief while keeping the newspaper's ownership under Leslie's name.
• Leslie warned Xu Yi that publishing a newspaper in Anvilmar would be difficult and urged him to make a strong impression on Count Sean Samo.
• Steward Ette escorted Xu Yi and Leslie to the dining room, where Count Samo welcomed them and recalled how Leslie's banquet had promoted Xu Yi's Magic Air Conditioner.
• Count Samo praised the Xinfei Merchant Guild's many new inventions and had a Magic Rice Cooker brought in with the dinner.
• Xu Yi wondered whether Count Samo's repeated displays of knowledge about the guild were meant as goodwill or as a warning.

Xu Yi met Count Samo to discuss the Farmer Support Plan and explain how agricultural magic machinery could increase harvests while freeing farmers for factory work. Count Samo voiced support for the Xinfei Merchant Guild but grew suspicious of Xu Yi’s push to expand rice cultivation, and the discussion ended with his accusation that the guild wanted Bunta City to switch to rice for its Magic Rice Cooker.

• Count Samo asked Xu Yi why he had requested the meeting, and Xu Yi explained the Farmer Support Plan’s goals of expanding mechanized farming and freeing farmers for other work.
• Xu Yi told Count Samo that the Leo Merchant Guild had poached some Xinfei workers by offering higher wages, and Count Samo expressed concern for the guild’s future.
• Viscount Leslie described how two Small Magic Harvesters let him harvest seven hectares in under two days with fewer than twenty slaves.
• Viscount Leslie explained that he planned to reclaim all twenty-one hectares of suitable land on his estate, while Xu Yi outlined plans for more agricultural machines and redesigned fields for rice cultivation.
• Count Samo questioned the shift from wheat to rice and accused Xu Yi of promoting rice so people would buy the Xinfei Guild’s Magic Rice Cooker.

After discovering Vivian’s talent for reproducing and designing magic machinery, Xu Yi questioned her about the drawings and learned she was bored staying home. He offered to find her something to do and asked whether she wanted to go to school.

• Xu Yi returned home late and found Vivian asleep at the table after waiting for him without eating dinner.
• Xu Yi discovered Vivian had copied his magic machinery schematics and drawn attractive designs based on them.
• Xu Yi examined Vivian’s other drawings, including portraits and landscapes, and concluded she was not an industrial spy.
• Xu Yi told Vivian not to wait hungry for him when he came home late and asked whether she had drawn the pictures.
• Vivian admitted that staying at home was a little boring, and Xu Yi asked whether she wanted to go to school.

Xu Yi gave an open lecture at Baron Rector Magic Academy, introducing the basics and potential of magical machinery to a packed hall of students. He left the students eager for more and hinted that he would return to teach again.

• Olin Zetaman and his classmates predicted that Xu Yi would give the lecture, while Olin argued with another student who challenged his knowledge of magical machinery.
• Director Hiller introduced Xu Yi to the crowded lecture hall, and the students welcomed him enthusiastically.
• Xu Yi explained how machinery worked as a tool and described magic machines such as the Magic Rice Cooker, Small Magic Harvester, and Magic Fan.
• The students grew absorbed in Xu Yi's explanation, and the lecture continued until after school ended and Hiller came to remind him for the third time.
• Xu Yi ended the lesson and promised more lectures, while Hiller worried that the students would become distracted by magical machinery.

Xu Yi visited Great Mage Camilla’s Magic Tower to advance research on agricultural and heavy magic machinery, teaching the mages there the mechanical principles behind the Magic Excavator. After explaining the design to Luti and the others, he went upstairs to meet Camilla, who offered him one piece of good news and one piece of bad news.

• Xu Yi returned to the Magic Tower to help develop magic machinery and build the mages’ engineering skills.
• Luti told Xu Yi that her team had designed the Magic Excavator’s individual magic arrays but could not combine them without conflicts.
• Xu Yi reviewed the team’s work and explained the machine’s design and underlying mechanical principles in detail.
• Xu Yi finished teaching the mages and went to the top floor to see Great Mage Camilla.
• Great Mage Camilla asked Xu Yi whether he wanted to hear the good news or the bad news first.

Xu Yi learned that the Mages' Guild had rejected his proposal to patent magic arrays, though it approved his special recommendation for next month's Qualification Certification Examination. Great Mage Camilla urged him to pursue greater magical power, but Xu Yi stayed committed to magic machinery and left puzzled by her remarks about Stille.

• Great Mage Camilla told Xu Yi that the Mages' Guild rejected his magic-array patent proposal because it violated the Guild's principles, but approved her recommendation for his examination.
• Great Mage Camilla explained that powerful mages could wield enormous influence, and Xu Yi demonstrated his mastery of Flame Burst.
• Great Mage Camilla praised Xu Yi's magical talent and urged him to focus on magic until he became an Archmage.
• Xu Yi argued that reaching Archmage status could take thirty years and said he preferred to spend his limited time researching magic machinery.
• Great Mage Camilla agreed to stop persuading Xu Yi, reminded him to keep improving his magic, and hinted that someone else might take an opportunity involving Stille.

Xu Yi watched the Xinfei Merchant Guild’s agricultural Magic Machinery transform Viscount Leslie’s farmland and discussed its limits and the guild’s shortage of skilled craftsmen with Count Samo. Count Samo revealed that the kingdom would reduce taxes on the machinery and promote it nationwide, and Xu Yi anticipated a major expansion in sales.

• Viscount Leslie used the Xinfei Merchant Guild’s Magic Machinery to level and renovate his farmland, while Count Samo praised how quickly the machines worked.
• Xu Yi explained that he hoped to build more powerful excavators but that the continent’s crude materials limited their performance.
• Xu Yi noted that orders for agricultural machinery were consuming workshop capacity needed for machine-tool research, and Count Samo said he could not find enough qualified craftsmen.
• Count Samo told Xu Yi that the Agriculture Bureau and the king had approved partial tax relief for the guild’s agricultural machinery and planned to promote it across the kingdom.
• Xu Yi realized that the tax reduction and official promotion could greatly expand the Xinfei Merchant Guild’s sales.

Xu Yi visited the dwarf tribe to inspect its alloy research and discovered a promising iron ball made by accident. Mulu revealed that he had added silverleaf grass powder to the molten iron, leaving Xu Yi eager to learn more about the alloy.

• Count Samo told Xu Yi that the King wanted lower prices for agricultural magic machines and warned him to be careful when meeting His Majesty.
• Xu Yi agreed to explain his Farmer Support Plan to the King and confirmed he would attend the Mages' Guild assessment in Anvilmar.
• Xu Yi visited Shluka's tribe, where the dwarves admitted they had not produced the requested alloy steel despite months of experiments.
• Shluka showed Xu Yi the dwarves' experimental alloys, and Xu Yi found a smooth, lightweight, hard iron ball among them.
• Mulu explained that he had accidentally added a jar of silverleaf grass powder while smelting the iron ball.

Xu Yi observed the dwarves smelting silverleaf alloy and discovered its useful properties, then asked them to research it and another durable alloy. Chief Shluka warned that recruiting too many dwarves could make human leaders suspect Xu Yi of plotting a rebellion, leaving Xu to weigh his labor needs against political risks.

• Xu Yi watched Mulu reproduce the smelting process and recorded how silverleaf grass powder transformed molten iron.
• Xu Yi tested the resulting silverleaf alloy, found it malleable and rust-resistant, and awarded Mulu twenty gold coins for discovering it.
• Xu Yi found another discarded iron ball with unusually high hardness and wear resistance and asked Shluka's tribe to research both alloys.
• Shluka explained that the tribe lacked enough workers and warned that employing large numbers of dwarves could arouse suspicion among human leaders.
• Xu Yi thanked Shluka and asked him to keep seeking dwarf workers, while Shluka remarked that dwarves in other tribes lived little better than his own people had.

Xu Yi negotiated with Chief Monto to recruit Angola Tribe dwarves for Xinfei Merchant Guild factories and materials research. The agreement secured workers and research help, leaving Xu Yi hopeful that the dwarves could develop new alloys and support his industrial plans.

• Chief Monto and two elders accepted Xu Yi's terms after seeing how the Norma Tribe's fortunes had improved.
• Monto offered to send three hundred adults to work, but Xu Yi said his guild could initially employ only around a hundred directly.
• Xu Yi proposed hiring experienced Angola Tribe dwarves to conduct materials research, and Shluka explained the work to Monto and the elders.
• Xu Yi offered five hundred gold coins for each research result that met his approval, and Monto agreed to the deal.
• Xu Yi left the negotiations pleased that he had secured more workers, research support, and closer relations with the dwarves.

Xu Yi negotiated for the Angola Tribe to send dwarf craftsmen to the Xinfei Merchant Guild and learned how human exploitation had kept the dwarves poor. He arranged for ten dwarf prospectors to survey the Lampari Kingdom, but an elf guest arrived before the chiefs could settle the payment.

• Xu Yi and Chief Monto agreed on salaries, benefits, and a research laboratory for the Angola Tribe's craftsmen.
• Chief Shluka explained that humans charged dwarves exorbitant prices for wheat while buying their ore cheaply, leaving the tribes impoverished.
• Xu Yi learned that dwarves were expert miners and prospectors, and asked Chief Monto and Chief Shluka to select five prospectors each to survey the Lampari Kingdom.
• Xu Yi promised each prospector a hundred gold coins after the survey, and the chiefs protested that the payment was too generous.
• A dwarf announced that an elf guest had arrived again.

Xu Yi met Anise, an elf seeking help for her tribe’s dwindling river, and saw a chance to build ties with the elves. He devised a solution and gave it to Chief Monto to pass along, confident it would change Anise’s view of him.

• Anise visited Chief Monto to ask for dwarf help with her tribe’s worsening water shortage, but he refused because his people were already committed to Xu Yi’s factory.
• Xu Yi stopped Anise and offered to help, but she said she did not trust humans and vanished with the Veiling Spell.
• Chief Monto explained that silt had diverted part of the river upstream from the elves’ home in the Falling Rain Forest, reducing its flow.
• Xu Yi recognized an opportunity to establish contact with the elves and drew a proposed solution to the river problem.
• Xu Yi handed his plans to Chief Monto, asking him to show them to Anise or her tribe.

Xu Yi returned to Bunta City after arranging for a hundred dwarves to join the Xinfei Merchant Guild and found its workshops working overtime to meet booming magic rice cooker and agricultural machinery orders. The Bunta City Commercial Association invited him to a banquet, and he accepted while suspecting its members had already set their sights on the guild.

• Xu Yi left the Angola Tribe after explaining upcoming materials research to Chief Shluka and Chief Monto, while Canby stayed behind to arrange the arrival of a hundred dwarves.
• Xu Yi visited the factory and saw Heinz and the workers pushing to fill a flood of magic rice cooker orders from neighboring cities, especially Karma City.
• Xu Yi urged the exhausted Heinz to rest and delegate more work to Alex, but Heinz insisted he would take care of himself.
• Heinz told Xu Yi that Bunta City's Commercial Association had invited him to a banquet, and Xu Yi accepted the invitation.
• Xu Yi read the invitation bearing the association chairman's name and wondered why its members had already taken an interest in the Xinfei Merchant Guild.