At that same moment, Cornelia was still seated at the other end of the long table, with the "Star Wars" proposal Lin Cuo had brought beside her.
For one fleeting instant, she had indeed considered whether she should simply detain the man before her.
Lin Cuo was the core of the Great Han Regent Government, the political linchpin behind unifying the Northwest, purging the military districts, and integrating India and Area 11. He was inside territory controlled by the Empire, accompanied by only two interpreters. A single order to extend a medical examination by a few days would deprive Great Han's entire space challenge of its chief driving force before it even began.
The thought lingered only briefly before Cornelia herself suppressed it.
She was a princess of Britannia, a theater commander who had received the strictest education at the Imperial Military Academy. If an enemy regent walked into her headquarters and openly proposed a competitive challenge involving imperial supremacy, resolving it through detention, assassination, or a so-called accident would not be victory.
It would be admitting that the Empire could not beat him head-on.
She would rather personally shatter Great Han's armies in war than arrange an accident for an injured sixteen-year-old boy from behind a conference table. Sneak attacks, ambushes, and murder to eliminate formidable enemies were methods only the weak relied on.
Besides, someone like Lin Cuo, whose mouth was full of twisted logic, who had no sense of boundaries, and who could openly comment on a princess's legs at their very first official meeting, simply was not worth the trouble of plotting against.
I could never like someone like that, and Euphemia certainly couldn't either.
That judgment settled in Cornelia's mind as firmly as an order already stamped with the royal seal.
She raised her eyes