Her Majesty's decree was exceedingly simple.
Support Xu Qingxiao unconditionally.
She even dispatched thirty thousand soldiers from the Divine Machine Battalion and the Qilin Army, temporarily placing them under Xu Qingxiao's command.
This was imperial favor beyond measure.
What did a sovereign care about most? Military authority, of course.
Xu Qingxiao was purging Great Wei's foreign merchants and intended to behead over three hundred of them. This was indeed excessive. Under normal circumstances, the Female Emperor would have stepped in to smooth things over.
Yet no one had expected that, this time, the Female Emperor would not intervene to mediate. Instead, she supported Xu Qingxiao unconditionally and even granted him military authority.
Just how highly did she value Xu Qingxiao?
At that moment, many of Great Wei's powerful elites suddenly realized something.
Everyone had assumed Xu Qingxiao had no backing. Even if he did, it was merely that group of dukes, and their relationship with him was hardly close. To put it bluntly, it was not solid at all.
There were no shared interests binding them together.
For minor matters, the military officials would help Xu Qingxiao. For major ones, they would weigh their options. After all, their own interests came first. Where in this world could one find a sage?
Who in the imperial court was not an old fox?
That was why they had always wondered what gave Xu Qingxiao the nerve to cause such trouble, running wild without restraint, doing whatever he pleased. He had raised hell at the Ministry of Punishment, executed a commandery prince, and now he was taking the blade to these foreign merchants.
At the very least, he had harmed many people's interests and implicated a host of other matters.
At worst, these foreign merchants represented the foreign races of various nations. This