84: Chapter 84: Let's discuss acquisition plans for hostile assets.

That pair of eyes seemed to hide countless complex schemes and precise calculations, yet offered no intention of giving her an answer.

Levi withdrew his hand and picked up the cup of lukewarm black tea on the table, as if the signing that had just determined the future direction of the empire was merely an ordinary afternoon tea gathering.

His nonchalant attitude caused Ella's resolve, which she had just mustered, to deflate instantly like a pricked balloon.

She felt as if she had exerted all her strength only to punch into cotton, leaving her feeling indescribably stifled.

Surplus value?

What value could a defeated political rival possibly have, other than being dragged to the marketplace for execution to serve as a warning to others?

"Your Highness seems confused by my proposal." Levi set down his teacup. Without answering directly, he gave a slight nod to Sylvie behind him.

Sylvie understood immediately. She pulled a huge, intricately drawn piece of parchment from another thick leather scroll tube she was carrying and spread it out on the only large conference table in the room with a "whoosh."

Ella's gaze was drawn to it.

It was neither a map nor an architectural blueprint.

What met her eyes was an incredibly complex network structure diagram.

At the very center of the diagram was the Griffin emblem belonging to the Victor family, drawn in bright red ink, fierce and striking.

With this emblem as the core, dozens of black lines of varying thickness radiated outward, like a giant spider web.

At the end of each line was a box, labeled with a name and the corresponding insignia.

Ella recognized several of them at a glance— "Raging Wave Shipping," "Anvil Mining," "Ruby Alchemy Workshop"... These were all renowned industries within the empire, the cornerstones supporting the glory and wealth of various noble families.

And at this moment, they were all tightly connected to the central Griffin emblem, like prey captured by spider silk.

Some connecting lines were solid, representing direct control; some were dashed, representing secret shareholding proxies or debt relationships; others were marked in different colored inks, indicating their different roles in the entire commercial network—raw material supply, finished product sales, capital circulation...

Levi walked over to the diagram and placed his slender finger on the central Griffin emblem.

His nails were trimmed clean and neat, forming a sharp contrast with the complex, intertwined commercial network on the paper.

"Your Highness, where do you think Victor's power comes from?" he asked. His voice was calm but carried the guiding tone of a mentor in a classroom. "Is it the Emperor's trust? The support of his parliamentary colleagues? Or the divine halo bestowed upon him by the Church?"

Ella frowned. Weren't all of these the source?

"No." Levi's finger traced along the thickest black line, slowly sliding toward the "Raging Wave Shipping" box. "These are all just appearances, castles built on sand. His true foundation of power is this."

His fingertip tapped lightly on the words "Raging Wave Shipping," making a "tap-tap" sound.

"It is these industries he controls, and the vast commercial empire formed by them. It provides Victor with a constant stream of money, allowing him to bribe officials, raise private armies, fund those wavering parliamentarians, and even influence the procurement prices of military rations. This is the true foundation of his power mansion. We drove him from the position of Speaker, which was merely tearing off the roof of the mansion. As long as the foundation remains, he can make a comeback at any time, or even put up a puppet to continue being our enemy."

Levi's tone was without a ripple, as if he were stating a simple law of physics.

Yet to Ella's ears, it was no less than an intellectual earthquake.

She had received the highest aristocratic education since childhood, studying political intrigue, history, theology, and etiquette. She understood how to consolidate alliances through marriage, how to dismantle opponents through enfeeblement, and how to seize land and population through a just war.

But she had never thought that one could use this method... a way so pure, so cold, and so commercial, to dismantle a political rival.

"Therefore, the first step to draining his surplus value is to conduct a legal, public, and—to the point where everyone would have nothing to say and might even applaud us—hostile takeover of his core assets."

"Hostile takeover?" Ella repeated the unfamiliar term, feeling that every word exuded the stench of money and the cold aura of metal.

"I still think we should immediately start investigating the 'Grey Hand'." She voiced her misgivings, her tone carrying a hint of stubbornness. "That is the real threat; Victor is merely their pawn. To catch the bandits, one must first catch the ringleader. As long as we can find the trail of the 'Grey Hand'..."

"Your Highness, war requires money, and revenge also requires money. Investigating a secret organization where even you only have faint clues requires astronomical amounts of money and resources." Levi interrupted her, turned around, and looked at her with sharp eyes. "And right now, the largest sum of money is lying at our enemy's feet. Why shouldn't we take it? Besides, don't you think that breaking Victor's industries into pieces, turning him from one of the richest people in the empire into a penniless debtor—isn't that process itself a wonderful form of revenge?"

Ella was momentarily speechless.

She had to admit that the scene Levi painted made her heart, which burned with the flames of revenge, feel a strange sense of pleasure.

Levi saw the change in her expression and knew his persuasion had worked.

He took another document from Sylvie and handed it to Ella.

"This is a task, and it is the first step of our cooperation."

Ella took the document. There were no complex clauses, only a few lines of text, yet she felt its heavy weight.

"Use your status as a princess to enter the Royal Archives. I need you to pull all tax records, property transfer agreements, commercial litigation files, and all related magical contract archives from the past thirty years for the Victor family and all the enterprises directly controlled by him on the map. You don't need to understand the complex content; you just need to copy them all and bring them to me."

"This is..."

"Due diligence." Levi answered with a term she didn't understand. "A step that must be completed before any acquisition war. We must circle over his commercial empire like a flock of the greediest vultures, finding every rotting wound, even if it is only as small as a needle eye. Then, we will strike from there and tear his flesh off, piece by piece."

Ella gripped the mission document, her knuckles slightly white.

She felt that she was being dragged by Levi into a brand-new, cruel, yet fatally tempting battlefield.

On this battlefield, swords were legal clauses, armor was commercial rules, and every charge was accompanied by the crisp clinking of gold coins.

She left the secret room with complex feelings; a sense of displeasure at being used and an excitement at being part of some grand plan intertwined in her heart.

Two days later, Ella did not disappoint.

When she appeared before Levi again, although she looked tired, her eyes were exceptionally bright.

The intelligence she brought back pierced precisely at the throat of Victor's commercial empire.

"Raging Wave Shipping." Ella placed a thick stack of magical rubbings on the table, pointing straight to the core. "Ten years ago, in order to monopolize shipping on the lower reaches of the Raging Wave River, the Victor family annexed the fleet of Baron Philip, who was quite powerful at the time. This is the share transfer agreement for that transaction. I consulted the royal mage advisor, and they discovered that the 'Permanent Enchantment Seal' used to ensure the contract remained permanently effective had an extremely tiny flaw. It is said that the court mage responsible for the Enchantment had drunk too much the day before the ceremony."

She paused, a cold sneer appearing on her face: "This flaw is so tiny that it would never be discovered in normal magical testing, nor would it affect the daily validity of the agreement. When Victor's power was at its zenith, no one would have dared to challenge him with such trifles. But now... it is a fatal loophole in the law that can be attacked."

A look of approval appeared on Levi's face.

He picked up the rubbing of the agreement and examined the flawed seal carefully, as if admiring a rare treasure.

"Well done, Your Highness. We have found our breakthrough point." He did not hesitate at all and immediately turned to Sylvie. "Sylvie, initiate Plan B-7. Through those offshore chambers of commerce we registered in the Storm Islands, contact the descendants of Baron Philip. I remember that the intelligence department's records show he has a grandson who is currently working as a dealer in a casino in the Southern District of the Imperial Capital and is drowning in debt."

Sylvie nodded, tore a page from her notebook, and quickly jotted down the instructions. Her eyes flashed with the excitement characteristic of a professional lawyer spotting prey: "Understood, my Lord. We will provide him with comprehensive legal and financial assistance, including paying off all his debts and assembling the empire's top legal team for him. The complaint can be submitted to the Imperial Commercial Arbitration Tribunal as early as tomorrow afternoon."

"Very good, proceed with that." Levi's instructions were clear and decisive. "The core requirement of the lawsuit is to re-adjudicate the legality of that share transfer from ten years ago."

Victor, who was "on vacation" in his castle in his own territory, received a subpoena from the Imperial Capital three days later.

He was sitting in front of a warm fireplace, tasting fine red wine produced in the Southern County. When he heard the butler's report, he didn't even open his eyes.

"The brat from the Philip family? He actually dares to show his face?" Victor sneered and swirled the wine in his glass. "A gambler who couldn't even keep his Baron title wants to come and split my family property? How truly fanciful."

He felt it was like a fly buzzing in his ear; although annoying, it could be swatted dead with a single palm.

"Send someone to the Imperial Capital to deliver a gift to Chief Justice Klemens of the Commercial Arbitration Tribunal and have him dismiss this boring case. Tell him it's from me; don't let such trash waste the court's valuable time." He ordered casually, not taking the matter to heart at all.

Klemens was promoted by him single-handedly; there was no way the other party would not give him face for such a small matter.

However, a week later, the news the butler brought back caused Victor to frown for the first time.

The gift he had sent was returned unopened.

Brought back with it was a personal letter from Chief Justice Klemens.

The wording of the letter was extremely respectful, full of deference to him as the former Grand Speaker, but the content was as hard as a slab of iron.

In the letter, Klemens stated that he fully understood the feelings of Lord Victor, but the plaintiff's side in this case was backed by a "Joint Statement on Maintaining the Independence of Commercial Arbitration and the Sacred Principle of Contracts," signed by over a dozen major imperial nobles.

This included Duke Dupont, Marquis Valois, and a host of other powerful figures in parliament.

The letter included a copy of the statement. Looking at the long list of familiar names and family emblems, Victor's hand holding the wine glass trembled slightly for the first time.

These people... yesterday they were still bowing and scraping to him in parliament, and today they handed the knife to his enemy!

He smashed his wine glass against the fireplace violently. The crimson wine evaporated with a "hiss" against the hot stone wall, leaving a dark, dull stain.

An ominous premonition coiled around his heart like a cold viper for the first time.

Before he could make any further reaction, a new wave was already sweeping toward him from a place he had never expected.

In the major taverns and theaters of the Imperial Capital, a tragic play titled "The Orphan of Raging Wave River" was spreading at an astonishing speed.

The play told the tragic story of a loyal and brave baron who was swindled and plundered by an insidious and cunning powerful official, eventually leading to the ruin of his family, leaving only a grandson struggling to survive at the bottom of society.

The plot of the play was adapted to be extremely inflammatory. Although it didn't name names, anyone with a discerning eye could see that the so-called "powerful official" was a thinly veiled reference to the Grand Speaker Victor, who had just "taken sick leave."

Victor's reputation was rotting and stinking in the streets and alleys of the Imperial Capital at a speed visible to the naked eye.

Immediately following this, a heavier blow arrived.

The Commercial Arbitration Tribunal issued a temporary injunction on the grounds that "the case involves major assets, and to prevent asset transfer," freezing some of the core assets of Raging Wave Shipping and placing its accounts under supervision.

When the news spread, merchants who had business dealings with Raging Wave Shipping were immediately panicked, and the banks holding its commercial bills were the first to come knocking, demanding payment.

A run on the company erupted instantly, and Raging Wave Shipping's stock price in the capital market plummeted in response.

Victor stood on the highest tower of his castle, gazing in the direction of the Imperial Capital. The cold autumn wind blew, making his gorgeous silk robe flap loudly.

For the first time, he felt a strange kind of attack that did not belong to swords or political intrigue.

This attack was invisible and intangible, without bloodshed, yet it was chilling to the bone.

It did not attack your body, but precisely attacked your purse, dismantled your credit, and destroyed the commercial foundation upon which you relied to survive.

He finally realized that the border kid named Levi was not engaging in an aristocratic duel with him at all.

This was a war. A war he had never seen before and could not understand at all. And this was merely the beginning.