Chapter Summaries

Xu Yi discussed the Lampari Kingdom’s finances and the merchant guilds’ opposition to Earl Stark, then watched the Xinfei Merchant Guild’s weapons devastate an attack by over five thousand beastmen. The surviving beastmen fled, leaving Xu Yi to regret that he could not pursue them with warhorses.

• Xu Yi argued that spreading Bunta City’s magic industry could improve the Lampari Kingdom’s finances, and President Cruz and President Reilsa acknowledged their inability to challenge Earl Stark politically.
• Xu Yi concluded that President Reilsa’s Rexton Merchant Guild and most Bunta City guilds opposed Earl Stark because his policies had harmed commerce.
• The Magic-Powered Stone Throwers and Magic Repeating Crossbows decimated the beastmen before fewer than a thousand wounded attackers reached the defensive perimeter.
• The four merchant guilds’ guards charged the survivors and routed them in close combat, while the stone throwers struck the fleeing beastmen.
• Xu Yi watched the remaining beastmen escape and regretted that he could not equip his guards with warhorses to pursue them.

The four merchant guilds won a lopsided battle against the Beastmen, securing their plans to build a base in the Black Rice Wasteland. Xu Yi then inspected the guild’s mining and smelting operations and considered how its military success could strengthen Servini’s position.

• The four guilds’ stone throwers, repeating crossbows, and superior equipment helped them defeat more than five thousand Beastmen with almost no casualties, though Xu Yi regretted that some enemies had reached close quarters.
• Xu Yi explained that the operation was meant to crush Beastman resistance and protect the guilds’ investments, while he still hoped cooperation would ultimately bring peace.
• As the four guilds began building a base, the cooperating Beastman tribes sent workers to help, inspired by the improved life of the Worrel Werewolf Tribe.
• Xu Yi inspected the mine near the Worrel Werewolf Tribe and found it operating normally, but the Nonferrous Metals Smelting Factory still faced technical obstacles.
• Xu Yi remained confident in the guild’s long-term investments and believed the Military Department’s victory in the Murto Mountain Ranges could make it receptive to further support for Servini.

Lampari the Thirteenth reviewed reports on the Northern Garrison’s costly victory at the Murto Mountain Ranges, Bunta City’s harvest, and the Xinfei Merchant Guild while searching for a way to ease the kingdom’s financial troubles. Servini asked him to support Xu Yi’s proposal to make the kingdom prosperous, then requested free trade rights for the Xinfei Merchant Guild, and he refused outright.

• Lampari the Thirteenth read the Military Department’s report showing that the Northern Garrison needed over forty thousand gold coins a month to hold the Murto Mountain Ranges.
• Lampari the Thirteenth studied the Agriculture Bureau’s praise of Earl Stark and a confidential report about the Xinfei Merchant Guild as he considered the kingdom’s problems.
• Servini brought Lampari the Thirteenth Xu Yi’s proposal, and she said she believed it had better than a fifty-fifty chance of succeeding.
• Lampari the Thirteenth said Xu Yi’s plan to turn to the Stantin Duchy could solve the kingdom’s grain problem, while Servini urged him to support broader change.
• Servini asked Lampari the Thirteenth to grant the Xinfei Merchant Guild free trade rights, and he sharply refused.

After losing their jobs and struggling to afford Yaqi’s marriage to Leia, Afalia's Father decided to move his family to the Stantin Duchy for work with the Xinfei Merchant Guild and the Cantona Chamber of Commerce. Yaqi learned that Leia’s father was also considering the move, while Leia wanted to stay with Yaqi.

• Afalia's Father’s family saw their income fall after Bunta City’s new city lord’s policies caused factories to close or relocate, leaving three of his five children without work.
• Afalia's Father urged Yaqi to find a better-paying job so he could afford the house and Xinfei household machinery Leia’s parents required before marriage.
• Afalia's Father proposed that he, Yaqi, and Yaqi’s mother move to the Stantin Duchy, where the Xinfei Merchant Guild and the Cantona Chamber of Commerce were recruiting farmers and workers.
• Yaqi worried that moving would separate him from Leia, but Afalia's Father revealed that Leia’s father had also decided to go to the Stantin Duchy.
• Afalia's Father told Yaqi that Leia wanted to stay with him, and Yaqi realized his father had teased him about giving her up.

Earl Stark discovered that the Xinfei Merchant Guild’s free trade rights, combined with its move to Falling Rain Valley, had sharply reduced Bunta City’s tax revenue. As he tried to find ways to repair the damage caused by his policies, he came across a document that caught his attention.

• Earl Stark continued working late to manage Bunta City and conceal problems with its inflated harvest figures.
• The Commerce Office granted free trade rights to the Xinfei Merchant Guild and several other merchant guilds, directing taxes on foreign trade to the Kingdom Treasury.
• Earl Stark learned that the Xinfei Merchant Guild’s tax payments to Bunta City had fallen after it moved most of its operations to Falling Rain Valley.
• Earl Stark’s advisers estimated that the Xinfei Merchant Guild’s departure and the other guilds’ free trade rights would cost Bunta City at least half its monthly tax revenue.
• Earl Stark sought ways to restore Bunta City’s income, then noticed an official document and narrowed his eyes.

Earl Stark grew alarmed that farmers were leaving Bunta City to work Xinfei Merchant Guild land in the Stantin Duchy, so Xu Yi visited him to explain the plan and proposed a bet. The chapter ended before Xu Yi revealed the request he would make if he won.

• Earl Stark realized nearly a hundred farmers had applied to leave Bunta City and rejected the latest application.
• Chekhov told Earl Stark that Xu Yi had requested a late-night audience.
• Xu Yi explained that Xinfei Merchant Guild planned to recruit two thousand Bunta City farmers to cultivate its hundred thousand hectares in the Stantin Duchy.
• Earl Stark insisted two thousand people could not cultivate that much land, and Xu Yi proposed betting that they could produce two hundred thousand tonnes of rice annually.
• Xu Yi offered to return the farmers and pay compensation if he lost, and asked Earl Stark to grant him a request if he won.

Xu Yi secured Earl Stark’s agreement to let the Xinfei Merchant Guild recruit up to two thousand farming households from Bunta City and reviewed the guild’s plans in the Stantin Duchy and Black Rice Wasteland. On his way to the guild’s Product Service Center, he found an unconscious young woman and carried her to Falling Star Manor.

• Xu Yi reflected on his wager with Earl Stark, which would promote mechanized farming in Bunta City while allowing the guild to recruit up to two thousand farming households.
• Xu Yi planned to hurry the settlers to the Stantin Duchy to reclaim one hundred thousand hectares and noted the guild’s promising iron and magic crystal mines there.
• Xu Yi considered the growing factory base and recruitment efforts in the Black Rice Wasteland, which he believed could bring the region under human influence.
• Xu Yi thought about Count Samo, Sewell City, and Princess Caroline before heading to the Xinfei Merchant Guild’s Product Service Center.
• Xu Yi found a young woman unconscious beside an alley, picked her up, and flew toward Falling Star Manor.

Xu Yi sheltered Teresa Ika at Falling Star Manor and offered help if she chose to explain her troubles. After returning to Falling Rain Valley, he met Freeman, who asked whether the Ireland United Merchant Guild could produce magic fans.

• Xu Yi met Teresa Ika at breakfast and learned that she had not yet explained what trouble she faced.
• Xu Yi told Vivian to let Teresa recover at Falling Star Manor and secretly give her a hundred gold coins when she left.
• Xu Yi visited the Xinfei Merchant Guild's Product Service Center in Bunta City, then returned to the bustling Falling Rain Valley.
• Freeman invited Xu Yi to lunch and asked whether the Ireland United Merchant Guild could produce magic fans.

Freeman asked Xu Yi to support the Ireland United Merchant Guild’s plan to make Magic Fans, and Xu Yi agreed to transfer its magic-array technology at a reduced price. After hearing about the Kingdom Parliament’s objections to employing orcs, Xu Yi suggested that Stille form a multi-race opera troupe to introduce them to Anvilmar’s influential residents.

• Freeman told Xu Yi that the Ireland United Merchant Guild had decided to try manufacturing Magic Fans and wanted to buy only the magic-array technology.
• Xu Yi offered to transfer the technology for ten thousand gold coins and told Freeman the guild must develop the other aspects independently.
• Freeman asked Xu Yi to help recruit magicians, and Xu Yi suggested seeking graduates from Baron Rector Magic Academy.
• Stille told Xu Yi that the Kingdom Parliament had approved her labor-permit agency for dwarves and elves but objected to employing orcs.
• Xu Yi proposed that Stille form an opera troupe featuring human, elven, dwarven, and orc performers, and Stille showed interest.

Swain Wellen visited the Xinfei Merchant Guild’s reclamation project and brutally whipped a local worker he caught slacking, until Cantona intervened. Cantona had the injured man taken for treatment and continued supervising the land, while reflecting that the Stantin Duchy’s local farmers were far less productive than the workers from Bunta City.

• Swain Wellen surveyed the hundred-thousand-hectare wasteland leased to the Xinfei Merchant Guild and looked forward to the rent, harvest share, factories, and roads it would bring.
• Swain Wellen whipped a local worker for slacking as the farmers from Bunta City watched without intervening.
• Cantona arrived and persuaded Swain Wellen that the workers were Xinfei Merchant Guild employees, then sent two men to carry the unconscious worker away for treatment.
• Swain Wellen asked Cantona when the land would be ready, and Cantona estimated reclamation would finish in under a month, allowing sowing early the following year.
• Cantona recalled that Bunta City farmers worked longer and reclaimed five to seven mu a day, while local Stantin Duchy farmers managed at most one mu.

Cantona dealt with Patriarch Wellen’s request to buy farmland magic machinery and inspected the port being built along the leased land. The chapter ended when a subordinate reported that Cantona’s workers were fighting the local farmers.

• Cantona reflected on the wages and land revenues Patriarch Wellen took from the five thousand workers while protecting a farmer who had become skilled at operating the machinery.
• Patriarch Wellen asked to buy a thousand units of each type of farmland magic machinery, and Cantona told him Xu Yi would arrive in a few days.
• Cantona visited the port under construction and discussed Xu Yi’s plans and the project’s uncertain profitability with Supervisor Riley.
• Cantona invited Riley for drinks, but Riley declined because a shipment of construction materials was arriving.
• A subordinate rushed to Cantona and reported that Cantona’s people were fighting the local farmers.

Xu Yi addressed a violent clash between Bunta City farmers and locally hired Stantin Duchy farmers at the Xinfei farm, suspecting Patriarch Wellen had provoked it to pressure the guild. He assigned Cantona and Supervisor Riley to manage the workers and planned to negotiate with Patriarch Wellen.

• Xu Yi learned that a clash between more than three hundred Bunta City farmers and over five hundred local farmers had injured hundreds and halted work at the farm.
• Cantona argued that the local farmers were lazy and underpaid relative to the Bunta City farmers, while Xu Yi said both groups had grounds for dissatisfaction.
• Xu Yi suspected Patriarch Wellen had stirred up the local farmers to advance his demands, but cautioned against damaging their working relationship without evidence.
• Xu Yi tasked Cantona and Supervisor Riley with calming the Bunta City farmers, while ordering that the local farmers be publicly punished and moved to basic infrastructure work.
• Xu Yi told Cantona that the guild would privately reassure its own farmers, then left to make a deal with Patriarch Wellen.

Xu Yi negotiated with Patriarch Wellen over the Xinfei Merchant Guild’s factories, rubber procurement, and local labor disputes, then proposed improvements to attract more investors. Wellen balked at funding the costly plan, so Xu Yi offered to have the guild pay in exchange for a special privilege.

• Xu Yi told Patriarch Wellen that the Rubber Processing Factory would need elven workers and asked him to arrange rubber collection at twenty gold coins per ton.
• Patriarch Wellen eagerly agreed to collect as much rubber as possible after calculating the substantial income the Xinfei Merchant Guild could bring him.
• Xu Yi asked Wellen to calm local farm workers after clashes with workers from the Lampari Kingdom and warned that continued trouble could drive the guild away.
• Xu Yi told Wellen that other Bunta City merchant guilds were interested in investing and proposed improvements to transportation and other conditions on Wellen’s estate.
• Wellen objected when Xu Yi estimated the improvements would cost two million gold coins, so Xu Yi offered to pay if Wellen granted the guild a special privilege.

Xu Yi and President Cruz discussed investing in the Stantin Duchy, expanding road construction, and the delayed Magic Locomotive. After arranging plans for roads and passenger service, Xu Yi left Wellen City to meet Anise, Delier, and Stasha for talks between the Night Song and Moon Shadow Tribes.

• President Cruz questioned Xu Yi's decision to spend two million gold coins on improvements in the Stantin Duchy, and Xu Yi said he did not intend to leave.
• President Cruz described the local workers' slow progress, so he planned to recruit workers from Bunta City and nearby cities for expanding road construction.
• Xu Yi and President Cruz discussed the Magic Locomotive, which remained under development despite a reported research breakthrough.
• Xu Yi and President Cruz planned more than three hundred kilometers of roads in the northern Stantin Duchy and a passenger route between Bunta City and Wellen City.
• Xu Yi left Wellen City and met Anise, Delier, and Stasha, who were preparing to help arrange cooperation between the Night Song and Moon Shadow Tribes.

Xu Yi negotiated with Elder Lysania Shadow Song to establish a rubber-processing factory for the Moon Shadow Tribe, with the Xinfei Merchant Guild covering the initial costs while the elves controlled operations. Elder Lysania agreed to trust Xu Yi personally and offered him an elven form of compensation that might rapidly increase his magical power.

• Xu Yi waited while Anise and Delier negotiated with Elder Lysania Shadow Song about establishing a rubber-processing factory for the Moon Shadow Tribe.
• Xu Yi explained that the Xinfei Merchant Guild would retain nominal ownership, fund the factory, provide orders, and help the elves develop rubber-processing technology.
• Elder Lysania agreed to the arrangement but said she trusted Xu Yi alone, and he promised to personally oversee future cooperation.
• Elder Lysania asked why Elder Elusia had not helped Xu Yi rapidly increase his magical power, then said there was another way besides the Moon Goddess's Blessing.
• Elder Lysania rejected Xu Yi's offer to treat the factory costs as an investment and announced she would personally compensate him in the elven way.

The five great mages of the Lampari Kingdom discussed the surge in low-rank mages taking certification exams, which they traced to new jobs in the magic machinery industry. Their debate about human and elven magic ended with Camilla revealing that studying magic arrays at the Xinfei Merchant Guild had greatly improved her own abilities.

• The five great mages reviewed the certification exams and noticed that many more low-rank mages, including older ones, had registered.
• Great Mage Eisenka explained that magic machinery merchant guilds were hiring mages to draw arrays and using certification ranks to judge applicants.
• Great Mage Truchi criticized mages for pursuing paid work, but Eisenka argued that they needed income to live and study.
• The great mages discussed Xu Yi’s work and the relative merits of human and elven magic, until President Allen pointed out that Xu Yi had invented magic machinery before any great mage had.
• Great Mage Eisenka admitted that Xu Yi was a genius, and President Allen worried that mages might prioritize industry over magical study.
• Great Mage Camilla said her magic had improved rapidly through array research at the Xinfei Merchant Guild and that she now had the strength of a level-four great mage.

Great Mage Camilla told the other Great Mages that studying the Xinfei Merchant Guild’s magic arrays had helped her advance a rank, prompting a discussion of magic research and patent protections. After the group settled on a provisional plan for overseeing mage examinations, President Allen asked Camilla to stay, and his first words left her frozen.

• President Allen and the other Great Mages congratulated Great Mage Camilla on advancing a rank and asked how studying magic arrays had helped her improve.
• Great Mage Camilla explained that the machinery’s low-level arrays demanded precise, complex research, while Great Mage Torres admitted he had underestimated them.
• Great Mage Camilla and the other Great Mages discussed how the Patent Law Bill had encouraged mages to publish discoveries and advanced magical research.
• President Allen and the four Great Mages agreed provisionally to rotate two Great Mages through examination oversight alongside him if candidate numbers remained high.
• After the other Great Mages left, President Allen asked Great Mage Camilla to stay, and she froze when he began speaking.

Great Mage Camilla discussed official cooperation between the Mages' Guild and the Xinfei Merchant Guild with President Allen, who also proposed a private factory partnership for his son, Anko. As she left, Camilla reflected on how magic machinery could give low-rank mages livelihoods and reshape their future, then spotted Alex outside the Mages' Guild.

• President Allen proposed that the Mages' Guild help place its members in magic machinery research, and Great Mage Camilla agreed to discuss the plan with Xu Yi.
• President Allen asked Camilla to pass along Anko's proposal to open a Xinfei-brand factory near Anvilmar City, and she agreed to relay it without promising Xu Yi would accept.
• Camilla concluded that the Mages' Guild's official cooperation could help struggling low-rank mages find work, while President Allen's private proposal sought personal advantage.
• Camilla left the Mages' Guild reflecting on the impact of magic machinery and noticed Alex as she was about to board her carriage.

Alex sold Xinfei Merchant Guild research notes to a middleman to pay off his debts, but the notes reached President Allen, who intended to use them to develop independent technology. Allen left the young mages to study the stolen information at a new workshop site south of Anvilmar City.

• Alex traded a thin notebook of research notes to a middle-aged man for two thousand gold coins, then handed over a much thicker notebook as well.
• The middle-aged man copied Alex's notes and took them to President Allen, who paid him three thousand gold coins for the information.
• President Allen brought the copied notebook to a construction site south of Anvilmar City, where workers were building workshops resembling those of the Xinfei Merchant Guild.
• President Allen instructed a young mage to study the Xinfei secrets and develop their own technology rather than depend on Xu Yi.
• President Allen compared Xu Yi's confidence with the abilities of his own mages and envied Great Mage Camilla for having Stille.

After receiving the Moon Goddess Baptism, Xu Yi discovered that his magical perception and growth had improved, though he still prioritized building a magic industry system. On his return to Bunta City, he reflected on his investments in the Stantin Duchy and the expanding prospects of the merchant guilds.

• Xu Yi explained that he was testing whether he could sense and match the frequencies of surrounding magic elements, a skill associated with Great Mages.
• Xu Yi recalled that the Moon Goddess Baptism had made his perception sharper, meditation more effective, and spellcasting faster, potentially bringing his path to becoming a Great Mage forward to age thirty-five.
• Xu Yi described finalizing mine development and a road-building agreement in the Stantin Duchy, while paying the Grand Duke and ministers nearly a million gold coins in unrecorded investments and gifts.
• President Cruz complained about Xu Yi investing in the Stantin Duchy and praised the Black Rice Wasteland's beastmen as capable, inexpensive workers.
• Xu Yi argued that higher wages in Bunta City had expanded the market and increased merchant guild profits, while the Amli Merchant Guild grew into a multinational construction company taking on housing projects.