"Is the Meledas family still refusing to let our people into the Doslaige Grand Hotel to arrest those nobles from the Northland?" A fat, round-faced man asked a thin, tall middle-aged man standing respectfully beside him, all while leisurely cutting into a thick steak with an exquisite silver knife and fork.
"Yes, Lord Chairman." The middle-aged man bowed slightly and replied, "Marquis Meledas says that anyone who checks into their family's hotel is their honored guest. Whoever tries to cause trouble for their guests within the Meledas family's hotel is declaring himself their enemy — and they won't hesitate to fight a family war over it. The Meledas family will fight to the bitter end. Moreover, they've sent Great Swordmaster Mak to the Doslaige Grand Hotel to hold the fort, along with three hundred family guards."
The fat, round-faced man enjoying his steak was none other than Bejishanluo, Marquis and Chairman of the Allied Council, who also served as president of the Luoshanji Commerce — currently the eighth-ranked merchant guild in the Commercial Alliance.
For years, the Luoshanji Commerce had maintained a tight grip on the production and sale of ale throughout the Commercial Alliance's sphere of influence. After the Glass War, soaring grain prices drove the cost of ale up three- or fourfold. Not only had the Luoshanji Commerce made a fortune, but they had seized the opportunity to enter the
As Bejishanluo's personal attendant, the thin, tall middle-aged man understood his president's thinking perfectly. The plan was to exploit the two-year window in which the Forde Commerce — which controlled the Commercial Alliance's grain market — was being hammered by rising grain prices and disrupted trade routes, to establish a foothold in the Morant City grain market and compete with the Forde Commerce head-to-head, or at the very least, seize half the grain market.
Bards had always sung high praise of the Mana Hill Plains, where Morant City was located, calling it a bountiful land flowing with honey. But they forgot that no matter how fertile the plains, they could never grow enough food to feed two million people. The Commercial Alliance had more than just the million-strong Morant City — there were seven other cities with populations of four to five hundred thousand, as well as nearly a hundred towns and farms spread across the Mana Hill Plains. Most importantly, what was grown on the Mana Hill Plains was not necessarily food crops, but rather a wide variety of cash crops worth more than grain.
The Forde Commerce controlled the Mana Hill Plains. They held absolute authority over the purchase and sale of both food crops and cash crops grown by the farmers there. Without their permission, the farmers of Mana Hill could not sell their produce to any other merchant. Under the Forde Commerce's coordinated arrangements, every field on the Mana Hill Plains was planted according to their specifications — naturally, they grew the more economically valuable crops and premium foodstuffs, such as the Mana Hill rice beloved by the people of Morant City. In addition, the Forde Commerce had to purchase vast quantities of various grains from other nations each year to feed the common people of the Commercial Alliance.
But aside from the Mana Hill Plains, the Commercial Alliance also had the Kristo Hills. Compared to the Mana Hill Plains, the Kristo Hills were barren and desolate. The only crops farmers there could grow were wheat, potatoes, and other coarse grains. The Forde Commercial Alliance had no interest in cultivating such low-value crops, so the Luoshanji Commerce had moved in to fill the vacuum, seizing control of the Kristo Hills' coarse grain supply for the production and sale of ale.
The drinkers of the Commercial Alliance probably assumed that all the ale they consumed was made from Kristo Hills' coarse grain, but that wasn't the case at all. The Luoshanji Commerce also imported grain from surrounding nations — only they imported aged grain, wheat that had been sitting in granaries for years, on the verge of mold or already molding. This grain was practically worthless; sometimes an entire warehouse holding hundreds of thousands of catties would cost only twenty or thirty gold Fordes. It was with this grain that the Luoshanji Commerce brewed their ale.
The Glass War had caught the Forde Commerce completely off guard. They simply didn't have that much grain in reserve, which sent food prices throughout the Commercial Alliance skyrocketing. The severing of trade routes by surrounding nations only made matters worse — grain, as a strategic commodity, was now strictly prohibited from trade. The Forde Commerce had money but couldn't buy grain, or if they managed to purchase some, they couldn't transport it into the Commercial Alliance.
The Luoshanji Commerce, on the other hand, was in an entirely different position. The coarse grains and moldy wheat they needed were practically worthless, and just before the Glass War concluded, they had completed a massive deal, transporting nearly three million bushels of coarse grain and wheat to Morant City. Fearing that half the shipment — the moldy wheat — would be discovered during inspection, the Luoshanji Commerce even hired a smuggling fleet to slip past the Hidden Gold Bay's Invincible Fleet's checks. With this batch of grain on top of their existing warehouse reserves, Chairman Beji Shanluo decided to seize this heaven-sent opportunity to capture the mid-to-low-end grain market of Morant City. As for the high-end grain market, he would leave that to the Forde Commercial Alliance, so as not to provoke a powerful counterattack.
Although Chairman Beji Shanluo was ambitious, he was a shrewd man. He had no desire to replace any one of the Big Seven. For years he had carefully maintained the scale of his commerce, never daring to overstep the line — after all, the fates of all those rising commercial powers that had tried to become one of the Big Seven over the years had taught him a harsh lesson. As Speaker of the Alliance Parliament, he had always refrained from opposing the policies set by the Big Seven. He might not have been blindly obedient, but at the very least he played by the rules, giving the Big Seven no reason to oust him from his position.
But the Commercial Alliance's implementation of the Noble Title System this time had shown Chairman Beji Shanluo a golden opportunity to ascend to the highest commercial council. If he couldn't replace one of the Big Seven, then he could demand an expansion of the Supreme Commercial Council. Even the Grand Duke of the Luolum Duchy had earned a seat on the Supreme Commercial Council by pledging allegiance to the Commercial Alliance — so why couldn't he? Especially now that his Luoshanji Commerce had landed such a superb opportunity, why not push himself a step further?
Overlooking the common people of Morant City's lower and middle classes had been a grave, fatal mistake on the Forde Commerce's part. Without enough grain to suppress the soaring food prices, the Forde Commerce had already drawn countless complaints and criticism from the populace. For the Luoshanji Commerce, which held a massive stockpile of coarse grain, this was a perfect opportunity to rise and seize control of Morant City.
Moreover, with all the Big Seven having left Morant City to consolidate their respective commercial territories, the Alliance Parliament had become the city's supreme governing body. As its Speaker, Chairman Beji Shanluo's plan was straightforward: on one hand, he would use his commerce's coarse grain to win the hearts of Morant City's common folk and build himself an enormous reputation; on the other, he would exploit the deeply rooted xenophobia among the city's populace and their intense dissatisfaction with the severed trade routes to surrounding nations, issuing declarations of a hardline foreign policy stance and earning widespread support and praise.
Once these two objectives were achieved, at next month's Alliance Parliament session, Chairman Beji Shanluo would instruct his allies to propose the establishment of an Alliance Legion. He was confident it would gain the support of the numerous second- and third-tier commerce representatives in the parliament — the severed trade routes had already pushed these commerces to the brink of ruin, most of them reduced to sitting idle and eating through their reserves. When backed into a corner like that, one might as well gamble everything on a desperate bid.
As for the citizen representatives, faced with the Morant City commoners whose xenophobia had been whipped into a frenzy, they wouldn't dare voice any opposition. The establishment of an Alliance Legion — what Chairman Beji Shanluo valued wasn't whether it would actually be used to wage war against other nations, but rather that this legion would be the first standing army placed directly under the Alliance Parliament's command. In other words, it would be a legion under his personal authority as Speaker.
With this legion in hand, combined with his immense prestige among Morant City's common folk, even when the Big Seven returned, they would have no way of dealing with him or his Luoshanji Commerce. All he would need to do then was propose the expansion of the Supreme Commercial Council, and his ascension as one of the Nine Great Powers would follow naturally. That was exactly what Chairman Beji Shanluo intended.
However, there had been a minor complication this time. His worthless little brat had actually dared to publicly harass several noble ladies from out of town on Triumph Avenue, the most bustling commercial street in Morant City, and had gotten his leg broken for it. Several of his accompanying guards had also been killed or injured. From a purely rational standpoint, Chairman Beji Shanluo knew his little delinquent had brought it upon himself — did the fool really think that just because his father was Speaker of the Alliance Parliament, he could cover the sky with one hand? If news of this got out, the Commercial Alliance would lose tremendous face, and Morant City's reputation among the continent's nobility would be utterly ruined. The Big Seven would absolutely not spare his little spawn...
Fortunately, the Big Seven were absent, and the Commercial Alliance had cut off relations with surrounding nations. No foreign nobles were currently staying in Morant City, so the incident wouldn't spread. Besides, the targets were just a handful of bumpkin nobles from the Northland — clearly people who had never seen the wider world. One only needed to look at their female companions: the moment they set foot in luxury and fashion stores, they went on a wild shopping spree, behaving exactly like newly rich parvenus.
Chairman Beji Shanluo had already received a detailed account of the entire confrontation. He knew that his precious son had brought the beating upon himself by leering at and groping at the women in the other party's entourage. The whole thing had happened in broad daylight — many people along that commercial avenue had witnessed it, and quite a few shop owners had expressed their displeasure, since the incident had caused those rare noble customers to cut short their shopping trips, enraging merchants who had been eagerly awaiting their patronage.
They were nothing more than a few bumpkin nobles from the Iberian Kingdom in the Northland. No matter how much money they had, could they possibly rival his Luoshanji Commerce? The Iberian Kingdom was in such a pathetic state now that it couldn't even do anything when its own king was captured by the Andinak Kingdom and killed. This had been reported in the Morant Daily — everyone assumed the
Chairman Beji Shanluo entertained this contemptuous thought. He had already made thorough arrangements regarding the matter. First, he ordered money to be paid out to compensate the merchants along Triumph Avenue — in other words, to buy their silence. Next, he dispatched people to twist the narrative and spread propaganda: it was those nobles from the Northland who had been terrorizing and bullying merchants in Morant City, while his own son had courageously stepped forward to stop their atrocities, only to be beaten severely and have a leg broken, with many of his bodyguards killed or wounded.
It didn't matter whether the truth reached the commoners or the powerful — so long as the xenophobia and resentment toward the wealthy among the populace could be whipped up, that was enough. For years, the common folk of Morant City had harbored a sense of superiority, looking down on outsiders who came to make a living. Especially after the Glass War the year before last and last year's annexation of most of the former Redelis Kingdom's territory — which had vaulted the Commercial Alliance into becoming the largest nation on the Galentea Continent by territory — the people of Morant City had developed a peculiar, unearned pride in believing they hailed from the mightiest country under heaven.
The several hundred territorial nobles the Alliance had enfeoffed after those two wars as war rewards had sent Morant City's commoners into an absolute frenzy. There they were, gnawing on potatoes while daydreaming of battlefield glory and rising to noble status — which was precisely why they harbored such fierce anger toward the neighboring nations that had severed trade routes. They pinned every hardship they suffered — soaring grain prices, lost jobs, mounting household expenses — squarely on those countries. This was the single greatest reason Chairman Beji Shanluo's hardline declaration to form an Alliance Legion and march against those surrounding nations had won such widespread approval and support.
And if that declaration could become reality, then the same logic applied — how could the lie about his precious son acting heroically ever become reality without silencing those Northland nobles for good?
He carved off a piece of steak and shoved it into his mouth, chewing for a good while before swallowing it down. His corpulent face wore an expression of placid calm. Chairman Beji Shanluo gently set down his knife and fork, picked up a white napkin, and dabbed at his mouth. "The Millardas family has always controlled the inn industry within the Commercial Alliance. Their family trading house may be small, but they're still considered among the standout second-tier merchant guilds, and they have deep roots — they maintain good relationships with many power players within the Alliance. We'll give their family a bit of face. Just keep those Northland nobles surrounded so they can't escape, and that's enough. Don't encroach on the territory of the Dostleg Grand Inn."
"Yes, Chairman." The middle-aged man asked deferentially, "However, whether the Millardas family will actually appreciate us giving them face is another matter entirely. And won't others think we're afraid of them? After all, compared to our Luoshanji Commerce, the Millardas family's strength is far inferior—"
Chairman Beji Shanluo flicked his napkin onto the table and let out a sinister chuckle. "We give the Millardas family face by not entering the Dostleg Grand Inn to make arrests — but that doesn't mean we can't put them on notice. Didn't the Millardas family send their Mike Great Swordmaster over there? He's only a first-rank Great Swordmaster. We'll send Great Swordmaster Tang Homa — second-rank against first-rank — to keep the pressure on them. On top of that, send another five hundred guild guards. Let's see who has more men, heh heh..."
One area where the Luoshanji Commerce far surpassed other second-tier merchant guilds was its armed forces. They maintained three Great Swordmasters in their service — one second-rank and two first-rank. Because they hadn't sent their guild's Great Swordmasters to fight in the Glass War, none had been lost. Now, compared to several of the Seven Giants who had suffered heavy casualties in their rankings, the Luoshanji Commerce's armed strength was nearly on par with theirs. This was one of the key pillars Chairman Beji Shanluo relied on in his bid to expand the Commercial Alliance's supreme council seats.
"Also, send more people to incite the commoners to lay siege to the Dostleg Grand Inn. Anyone who goes can collect five jin of coarse grain from our guild's grain shops each day. I want to see how long the Millardas family can hold out once the Dostleg Grand Inn is surrounded by a mob of commoners. The moment any carriage from the inn tries to leave its grounds, have those commoners inspect it — claim it's to prevent those foreign nobles from fleeing. If the inn's carriages refuse inspection, don't let them pass. I'd very much like to see whether the Millardas family has the guts to lay a hand on those commoners..."
"Chairman, that's a brilliant stratagem indeed." The middle-aged man chimed in obsequiously. "I'd wager the Millardas family wouldn't dare lift a finger against the commoners."
"Hahaha, I think so too. If they dare strike, they'll be cutting themselves off from the commoners of Morant City forever..." Chairman Beji Shanluo burst into hearty laughter as well. "Then let's sit back and watch — will the Millardas family buckle under the pressure of the mob and voluntarily evict those few Northland nobles, or will those Northland nobles burn through all their gold coins on lodging and end up thrown out by the Dostleg Grand Inn? There's no rush. We've got all the time in the world to play around with these country bumpkins from the North..."
"Chairman, I'm certain that after this affair, your prestige in Morant City will be absolutely..." The middle-aged man thrust out his thumb. "I'll go carry out your orders at once, sir. Please rest easy and wait for good news."
……(To be continued.)