The next morning, in a conference room in the Akademiya's House of Daena.
On Inazuma's side, Yucheng, Kokomi, and Ayaka attended together as the chief envoy and his two deputies, while Sumeru was represented by the Great Sage and two Sages, making an exact match.
Besides them, Yucheng also spotted a familiar, iconic figure from Sumeru at the meeting: a scribe named Alhaitham, who was responsible for keeping a written record of the entire meeting.
Before arriving in Sumeru, the Inazuma delegation had already been put through its paces in Liyue and Mondstadt and knew the procedures for diplomatic negotiations inside out. This time, however, the atmosphere of the diplomatic negotiations with the Akademiya was oppressive in the extreme.
Although diplomatic agreements were never smoothly signed on the first attempt, the first diplomatic talks between Inazuma and Sumeru went exceptionally poorly, with Sumeru putting forward many unreasonable demands.
The tariffs Inazuman merchant ships would have to pay Sumeru merely to enter and leave Port Ormos were considerably higher than those agreed upon with Liyue and Mondstadt combined, while the tariffs Sumeru's merchant ships would have to pay Inazuma were pitifully low. The Inazuma delegation could see no sincerity whatsoever in Sumeru's desire to cooperate.
Beyond that, there were excessive demands such as providing the Akademiya with sword-forging techniques and uploading authentic historical records of Inazuma to the Akasha.
Most importantly, Azar, the Great Sage in charge of negotiations for the Akademiya, maintained a lofty, condescending attitude throughout, saying that Sumeru was a nation that revered wisdom and had no interest in commercial cooperation to exchange goods.
What interested them were the fruits of human wisdom, but across all of Inazuma, apart from a handful of techniques with some renown in Teyvat, the Akademiya saw nothing worth its attention.
Besides, Inazuma