The City Lord's Mansion of Zero Wing City stood at the very center of the city like a towering mountain, hemmed in on all sides by tall walls. The mansion itself was protected by a magic formation—beyond entering through the main gate, outsiders had no way of getting inside at all.
The NPCs standing guard at the mansion's entrance were all Level 150 Tier 2 guards, further bolstered by a magic formation. No matter how many players showed up, they would all die.
Shi Feng had barely stepped into the mansion's first-floor hall with You Lan when they saw the entire hall packed with NPC merchants—easily several hundred of them.
You Lan froze at the sight as she walked inside.
Though she didn't know much about NPC merchants, she understood that they were similar to the wandering merchants found in small towns—only far more reliable. They wouldn't come and go unpredictably; instead, they could provide players with a steady supply of rare goods.
A typical small town would be fortunate to have twenty or thirty wandering merchants at most. Even in the towns where Underworld had focused its development, there were only around forty-odd wandering merchants at present.
Yet here, there were several hundred in plain sight…
What You Lan didn't realize was that the number of NPC merchants had already dwindled considerably. The one-star NPC merchants had long since been turned away by Shui Se Qiangwei, and only two-star and three-star NPC merchants remained in the hall.
"Guild Leader, you're finally here." Shui Se Qiangwei spotted Shi Feng walking in and let out a sigh of relief. "If you hadn't shown up soon, those two three-star NPC merchants were going to leave."
"What are their conditions for moving in?" Shi Feng asked directly.
Any NPC merchant wanting to set up shop in a guild city came with their own requirements. It wasn't something a player could simply agree to on a whim—they had to be able to actually meet the demands.
"One of them wants a full tax exemption and a shop on the same street as the City Lord's Mansion. The other requires a large warehouse, plus a shop on that same street," Shui Se Qiangwei explained.
"That's a steep price." Shi Feng frowned slightly.
The City Lord's Mansion was the absolute heart of the city, with extremely limited land. NPC merchants' shops generally took up a considerable footprint, and any land sold to an NPC merchant could never be reclaimed—meaning that plot of land would be permanently lost without earning a single copper in return.
As for the full tax exemption, that was the monthly fee these NPC merchants were supposed to pay, scaled according to the shop's rank. Taxes were one of a city's primary revenue streams.
The warehouse went without saying. Constructing even a small warehouse cost at least three thousand gold, and a large one started at ten thousand. The warehouse itself wasn't the issue—it was the enormous footprint it required. And a warehouse couldn't be placed too far from the shops, either, which was a massive waste of prime land.
There was no denying that both three-star NPC merchants were asking for an outrageous deal.
"Is there no room for negotiation?" Shi Feng looked at Shui Se Qiangwei.
In the Divine Realm, the higher an NPC's status, the greater their intelligence. The conditions an NPC merchant proposed weren't necessarily set in stone.
"I've tried everything. These two NPC merchants are locked onto their demands," Shui Se Qiangwei said with evident frustration. She had said everything she could, but the pair were adamant and couldn't be swayed.
"Would you mind letting me try?" You Lan spoke up softly from the side.
"You?" Shui Se Qiangwei glanced at the cloaked figure of You Lan. The woman had looked familiar before, but upon closer inspection, the realization of who she was hit Shui Se Qiangwei like a thunderbolt. Curiosity flooded her voice. "Aren't you the trade manager for Underworld? What are you doing here?"
She had some impression of You Lan—a definite powerhouse among women who had managed Yi Xiao Qing Cheng's trading firm to a position just behind the Candlelight Trading Firm, all while maintaining impressive personal combat strength.
"I invited her here. You Lan is now a member of our guild," Shi Feng explained.
Hearing this, the corner of Shui Se Qiangwei's mouth twitched. She stared at Shi Feng in disbelief.
Who was You Lan?
As far as she knew, the woman was on the verge of being promoted to Underworld's upper echelon. And Underworld—the organization lurking in the shadows—was no ordinary force. In terms of both strength and potential, it far surpassed typical first-rate guilds. Backed by abundant funding, it was only a matter of time before they cultivated enough top-tier experts to become a bona fide transcendent guild.
And this future transcendent guild executive had abandoned all of that to come to Zero Wing Guild—a guild besieged on all sides.