The Martial Unity

Soon enough, the first meeting between the Silas Clan and the Martial Union had concluded rather swiftly as the two entities managed to come to a conclusion of the spirit of the agreement.

Matriarch Nephi set out to god-knew-where to pick fights with the Hugging Hegemon and whoever else; Rui had begun endeavoring to conclude some of the final-most tasks he had left in Kandria before he was to set out for the Adventurer’s Guild.

He needed to ensure that his faction worked on establishing a team that would negotiate well for Matriarch Nephi to ensure that the value of her prophecies was not short-changed.

He also needed to wait to hear her issue her prophecy on the Divine Doctor.

He swiftly endeavored to ensure that the Silas Clan reached a stable position form within the Kandrian Empire.

That was not particularly easy to do.

A lot of people were interested in the Silas Clan.

They were not necessarily deterred by the fact that it seemed clear that the Silas Clan was to join the Martial Union as a partner and honorary member by virtue of joining their fiscal committee.

After all, this did not mean that the Silas Clan could not forge a relationship with any other entity in the Kandrian Empire.

Many Martial Artists and nations were partnered with the Kandrian Martial Union, but this did not mean that they were unable to trade in the free market.

Rui knew that now that it appeared that the Silas Clan was here to stay, the various power blocs of the Kandrian Empire were going to do their best to wring away the Silas Clan in their direction and try and forge trade relations to harness their Martial and prophetic capital. Most likely, the Silas Clan would be bombarded with delegations and invitations of all kinds very shortly.

Of course, Rui did not intend to allow this to happen.

Matriarch Nephi had already made it clear that she didn’t particularly care about engaging with the rest of the Empire to any extent. The Martial Union was powerful enough and perfect for fulfilling all their needs and desires.

Thus, in order to ensure that the Kandrian Empire would be unable to bother the Silas Clan, he employed his considerable political and economic capital to make several arrangements in this direction.

First, he had the Kandrian National Bank establish an account for the Silas Clan within an extremely rapid timeframe, to which he donated a substantial amount of his own Foundation’s wealth.

Then, he had the Ministry of Land Resources, one of the high-ranking government officials of his faction, sell an enormous patch of land in the Irvilia Forest to the Silas Clan, large enough to more than accommodate all their living, hunting, and even Martial activities.

With that, the Silas Clan owned the patch of land Rui had prepared for them.

In other words, no party could enter the land without permission from the Silas Clan. And since the Silas Clan was highly self-sufficient and insular, this essentially cut-off any opportunity for the rest of Kandria to dog the Silas Clan for their prophecy or Martial services.

He also informed the Silas Clan about this development, to which they promptly rejoiced and immediately set up a fence and a border, marking their enormous territory.

Kandria was not pleased, but there was nothing they could do. Rui had too much power.

He did not intend to allow their greed for power to cause the Silas Clan to develop a negative view of the Kandrian Empire, causing them to potentially question their decision to migrate to the Empire.

It would be the height of incompetence to fumble this priceless opportunity by driving the Silas Clan away from the Kandrian Empire.

He also passed detailed instructions to his staff about what to do in various possible circumstances regarding the Silas Clan, ensuring that even while he was gone, searching for the Divine Doctor, everything would be fine just at home.

Simultaneously, he made arrangements for a slow, eventual integration into Kandrian society. The biggest challenge was getting rid of the language barrier, which would take several years most likely.

Only once the language barrier was gone could he then ease them into modern society bit by bit.

The point of this was to serve as an anchor for the Silas Clan to ensure that the probability of them leaving the Kandrian Empire was extremely low.

The speed and ease with which Rui was able to suppress much of the Kandrian Empire from harassing the Silas Clan was a testament to how powerful his faction was. It was almost like he was close to becoming the de-facto Emperor of Kandria.

The more he wielded his enormous power, the more the upper echelons of the Kandrian Empire treated him as the effective ruler of Kandria. Every word he uttered to the world would be treated as the word of Kandria. He needed to tread extremely carefully with everything he did and said.

He deeply disliked that. It was power, but that same power shackled him.

He disliked the weight, and it would only magnify if he sat on the throne and actually took the position of Emperor.

It made him more resolved to find the Divine Doctor and make him heal his father by force if he needed to.

His mind returned to the intelligence that the Beggar Sage supplied to him as he considered the data that the man had prepared for Rui. From things like the Divine Doctor’s general travel habits and patterns in the Human Domain to, more importantly, his starting point in the Beast Domain.

This was extremely important since it eliminated more than half of the Beast Domain as plausible areas where the Divine Doctor could be since the data indicated that the Divine Doctor had entered the Beast Domain through this section of the Beast Domain intentionally.

The intentionality reduced the probability that he would wind up finding himself on the other side of the Beast Domain, though not impossible. With information from the Divine Doctor in corroboration with the Adventurer Guild and hopefully some vital tips from his grandmother, he would rapidly be able to trace the Divine Doctor’s tracks.

–