Seeing the item, a rolled parchment, being offered and having an idea as to its identity, Luna did not dare act carelessly any longer.

The natural smile on her exquisite face grew stiffer and strained. With a tone, lower than before, she asked, "May this lowly merchant ask what this item is, Sir Wuzhi?"

"It's the 'Right to Trade,'" Wuzhi casually replied.

"I see," Luna nodded her head. "And why is Sir Wuzhi offering me this?"

"As payment for your services, of course."

At that reply, Luna no longer held the smile on her face. Her eyes turned sharp and her tone became cold. In an even, emotionless voice, she spoke. "Please stop joking around, Sir Wuzhi. I dare not accept such an extravagant payment lightly. Certainly not in exchange for some lesser 'rabbit-hunting tools.'"

Wuzhi simply shook his head. He held his ever-present smile on his shadowy face as he explained. "Lady Merchant misunderstands. Wuzhi is offering this 'Right to Trade' only in part towards the payment of the rabbit-hunting tools. The rest of it is leverage towards another transaction."

Without waiting for the raven-haired beauty to ask her query, the young scholar continued. "I hope that Lady Merchant can accept this small payment of mine in exchange for an information embargo on the war that is being waged by the empire."

"War? What war?" asked Luna, sounding surprised and clueless.

"Why, the war against Ferdinand Sinna de Auberville, of course!" Wuzhi exclaimed in reply. "It is for the very same war for which Lady Merchant sold her wares as fuel, this very morning."

With a single reply, Wuzhi causally unveiled the mask of innocence worn by Luna.

Knowing that keeping up the appearance of being clueless would no longer serve any purpose, Luna reverted to her natural, smiling state, and said, "Sir Wuzhi wants me to promise not to sell any information regarding the empire's siege of New Hope Port City to the other factions, in exchange for the 'Right to Trade.' Correct?"

"Correct," Wuzhi nodded his head, taking another sip of his tea.

Luna paused in thought. With her head lowered and eyes hidden, she began to calculate the profits and losses that she would sustain from this transaction.

After a few minutes of silence, she rubbed her forehead and hesitantly spoke. "Sir Wuzhi drives a hard bargain."

"How so?" asked Wuzhi.

Heaving a tired sigh, she explained, "On one hand, by selling this information to the other factions, I can accrue at least three carriage's worth of gold and silver. In exchange, your empire will be signed to damnation."

Shrugging her shoulders casually, she continued. "On the other hand, by 'not' selling this gilded information and keeping it to myself, I will gain a dark horse with an unknown future whose growth and development will be fuelled by my coin and my coin alone. I will potentially gain an empire's worth of profits should everything proceed on a silken path."

"In the end, the question boils down to this; to turn my investment in now and gain a large amount of money, or to wait and watch my investment potentially grow to an extent beyond my wildest dreams?"

An expression of annoyance and tiredness appeared on the raven-haired beauty's immaculate face as she furiously rubbed her forehead.

After hearing her explanation, Wuzhi nodded his head and agreed. "It certainly is a hard bargain." He then waited.

Of course, neither of them explicitly stated the bribe offered by Wuzhi; the document for the 'Right to Trade.'

While any decent merchant would have chosen instant returns over a potential future return, the bribe caused Luna to hesitate. In the end, it boiled down to how big Luna's dreams were; how great her ambitions stood.

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And it sufficed to say, Luna's ambitions were so great, that it was beyond the comprehension of a regular person! As such, only one answer was worthy of such an ambitious merchant.

"I, Luna Roseland, owner of Roseland's Shipping and Trading Company, hereby swear upon the heavens that I shall not sell. nor leak, any information regarding the empire's upcoming conquests to any party; foreign or local; friend or foe."

"I vow, starting this instant, to keep all related information to myself and only to myself. Should I fail to uphold this vow, I ask to be struck and burned under the fury of the heavens!"

At her proclamation, the air within the room and the space outside trembled as the heavens oversaw and guaranteed her vow.

After seeing that everything went according to the script, Wuzhi silently heaved a sigh of relief. With Luna's vow of disinvolvement from the matter, the young scholar finally shed the heaviest burden weighing on his back.

According to his painstaking calculations, the biggest variable, over which he neither had control nor initiative, of his scheme was precisely this beautiful female merchant. She was his strategy's sole weak point and flaw.

For reasons unclear, Wuzhi had always felt a vague sense of threat from the young woman. She gave him a feeling which was not too dissimilar to what he felt from his teacher; a warning for him to not be causally involved with this woman.

Not one to carelessly set aside his feelings, Wuzhi treated her with the greatest respect and highest caution that he could humanely muster. In his mind, she was an entity whose threat, as an opponent, was similar to that posed by his teacher.

And that was why, Wuzhi offered such a ridiculous bribe, all for her disinvolvement from the stage set by his scheme. Some might call him wasteful or overly careful, however, Wuzhi knew that being careful never hurt. It was better to not have a fire at all than to be burned by it.

One treated the other like a snake, and the other treated the former like fire. Both were as cautious as they could be against their opponent. As for whether they would be bitten or burnt, Luna and Wuzhi were equally unsure.

However, neither of them was fully afraid of the other. And this fearlessness, in turn, caused both to harbour schemes against each other.

Shaking their hands and speaking their thanks, both parties later parted. Wuzhi walked away with a promise of disinvolvement from his scheme, while Luna walked away with a valuable document that no amount of money could buy.

Their secret meeting ended and the duo returned to their respective lives.

---

Night came and went, and with it, a new dawn arrived. A party of one hundred people, led by Alexandros, left on their exodus towards New Hope Port City.

Publicly, their departure was masked under the purpose of negotiation; their party was tasked with negotiating with the younger brother of the Duke of Auberville, to exchange for the previous emperor's body. With four months having passed since the previous emperor's death, it was unknown whether his body existed at all!

Still, a purpose was a purpose. And their purpose was to act as a distraction.

A distraction for the thirty thousand soldiers, hidden in between the shadows, to lay siege to the port city. Such a scheme, had it not been for their acquisition of the revolutionary weapons of war, would have been unthinkable in the past!

Rodriguez was a fine strategist; for he understood how to disguise the false with truth, and the truth with false.

By negotiating for a righteous cause –retrieval of the empire's old liege's body— and being denied this negotiation by the other party –for the reason of not possessing the body in the first place— Rodriguez had manufactured for himself, a just reason to wage war!

'We want to retrieve our previous monarch's body but you deny us this!? Very well then! We shall wage on you, a war, and retrieve it ourselves!!'

As for keeping the city after the war? Well, that could be written off as 'compensation' for denying us our rightful cause.

It seemed almost childish and silly when it was written like that. However, war waged by men was often that childish and silly. Man did not need a reason to inflict brutality upon his peers, for such reason was part of his very existence.

War for Cause? War for Profits? War for Religion? Such words were nothing but disguises. When stripped down of all their embellishments to reveal their core truth, the reasons were always the same.

'I wage war to steal, to pillage, and to r*pe; to take all that is yours and make it mine; to destroy your temples, dismantle your ideologies, dismember your people, and to conquer your selves.'

'War was waged because it was the oldest tradition of man. It was hardcoded into his very essence, inscribed into his soul, and etched into his consciousness.'

While he contemplated on such thoughts, two weeks whizzed by, and Alexandros arrived at the doorstep of New Hope Port City. And there, he, who had arrived with a hundred of his men, was met with closed doors and armed guards.

As he watched with confusion from within the carriage, a general, standing atop of the ramparts surrounding the port city, raised his voice and warned for all to hear.

"Dregs of the False Emperor, scurry back into whatever hole from which you crawled out from, for if not, you will be met violence heralded by the sounds of thunder and flashes of lightning!"

Not only did the enemy refuse to engage in negotiation, they even seemed prepared to face a siege!

The forces of the empire, having expected to meet a dirt wall, were confronted by an iron plate. The face of General Arlo, who was the commander of this operation and was hidden within the negotiation party, paled.

The boy emperor, Alexandros Centinni the Twelfth, had his face blacken like the bottom of a pot.