Throughout the history of the Empire, there had been incidents of great generals overestimating themselves and attempting to threaten the Imperial court. However, none of them met good ends.

Even if the Imperial Capital did compromise at the moment, they would surely find ways to look into the matter later on. This was to prevent successive generals from doing the same. Song Zining had threatened the court for Qianye, and that was a great taboo.

Qianye never attached too much importance to the trade with the Empire. No amount of riches could compare to people like Zining and Jundu.

If he had known beforehand, he would’ve tolerated the Empire and continued trading. There was no such thing as tree sap before the new world opened anyway. He could just pretend the thing did not exist.

Having guessed Qianye’s thoughts, Eunuch Liu spoke to console him.

He explained that Song Zining’s move might not be a bad thing. Everyone could see that the war in the new world had reached a critical stage. Without sufficient troops, even a celebrated genius like Song Zining would not be able to escape ultimate defeat no matter how intelligent...