Chapter 195: Undercurrents

Their decision was evidently within Dark Moon’s expectations. His smile made Wu Qingsong increasingly uneasy, but since they had decided to cooperate with Dark Moon, he quickly pushed aside his discomfort.

“The current situation is quite delicate,” Dark Moon said. 

It was the same room and the same people, but this time, only Wu Qingsong and Ram were present from their side. 

“You might not realize what you’ve done, but Mr. Tagraedi, I want to tell you that you may have inadvertently created a great opportunity.”

He detailed the current situation to Wu Qingsong. In just a few days, tensions between the Grand Duchy of Sentalus and the Grand Duchy of Yagata had escalated significantly. Powerful elves had returned to their territories to maintain control, and in the Imperial Capital, relations between the two factions had further deteriorated.

“I don’t understand,” Wu Qingsong had to admit.

The two people he killed shouldn’t have been very important. The half-elf who tried to ambush them might have had a slightly higher status, but he was definitely not a key figure in the family. To be honest, Wu Qingsong had even killed the acknowledged illegitimate son of Marquis Osaga, and he never imagined that killing those two would cause such a stir.

However, this was a secret known to very few. Although Dark Moon surely had spies in Orgrimmar, they evidently didn’t know about this.

“Their conflict has been brewing for a long time. You just happened to disrupt the balance,” Dark Moon explained.

Seeing their confused expressions, he began to briefly outline the current situation.

In simple terms, the Elven Empire was not a monolith but rather comprised of various political factions.

The royal family was naturally the most powerful among them, once wielding the greatest power and legitimacy. However, with the deaths of two legendary mages over the past century, the upper echelon of the royal family had become noticeably weaker than the Imperial Council. This led the royal family to subtly exacerbate the differences within the council to secure the monarchy’s stability.

Within the council, there existed multiple factions: the reformists represented by Sentalus, the conservatives represented by Yagata, and the laissez-faire faction represented by Feget. The surface-level disagreement was about whether to use half-elves as tools for the sparsely populated elves to rule the empire. But in reality, the root of the contention lay in the distribution of power and interests.

The reformists were mostly elves who acquired their territories through wars of expansion in the past few hundred years. They might not be the most powerful elves, but they were certainly the most ambitious. 

This gave them a strong desire to control everything and a fervent wish to secure a place in the Imperial Council. Their lands were usually far from the political and economic center of the empire, having been conquered relatively recently. As such, these regions were relatively unstable and required more reliable means of governance, greater support, and favorable policies from the empire.

On the other hand, the conservatives were typically the elves who gained their high status long ago.

They tended to be more powerful but also older and instinctively resistant to any change. They wished to keep the empire’s power firmly in their hands. Their territories had often been under their control for centuries, forming stable hierarchies and relationships. The people had already accepted, or rather resigned themselves to, elven rule, allowing the conservatives to govern with relatively gentle methods. Since their territories were closer to the Imperial Capital, they could resolve any sudden issues more quickly.

The laissez-faire faction mostly consisted of elves without much ambition or political agenda.

They were primarily based in the east and naturally leaned toward the conservatives. However, they derived their benefits through commercial means rather than exploiting their territories. They relied on the newly established territories for profits and raw materials, so they usually adopted a neutral stance, trying to maintain a balance between the reformists and conservatives.

The reformists had a very weak voice in the Imperial Council, but they controlled nearly half of the empire’s lands and held the majority among the lower-ranking elves. As these territories continued to develop, their demand for a greater voice in the council grew louder. With the backing and inclination of the royal family, they had gradually become evenly matched with the conservatives.

Sentalus was once a staunch conservative, but their family clearly had extraordinary ambition and foresight. When the royal family’s power declined, they quickly declared their stance and became the leaders of the reformists. This move rapidly garnered them extensive support within the empire and made them allies of the royal family. In recent years, they have become increasingly aggressive. 

Just a month ago, Daan Sentalus, the second-in-command of the Sentalus family, openly advocated for the Imperial Council to create more seats and include more members. This was something the conservatives absolutely couldn’t accept.

“So?”

“The tension between the two factions is about to erupt,” Dark Moon sighed, shaking his head gently. “We’ve been looking for a suitable point of entry, but you managed to get there first.”

“All this over the deaths of two half-elves? Is it really that serious?” Wu Qingsong couldn’t understand.

“The incident itself isn’t particularly severe. The crux lies in the timing, location, and nature of the event,” Dark Moon said. “To the Yagata people, the severity of this incident is due to the fact that Sentalus agents were conducting espionage in Yagata City. They even believe that the people killed were elite troops sent by Sentalus, making it a serious violation of sovereignty. Both sides have already had several heated debates in the Imperial Council. Because the evidence is clear, the situation looks very unfavorable for Sentalus. One of my sources even told me that there’s suspicion this was a trap deliberately set by the Yagata people. The aim was to lure Sentalus into making a mistake, then use this to put them on the defensive in public opinion, damaging their reputation and disrupting their proposals.”

This was simply…

Wu Qingsong shook his head repeatedly. Clearly, he wasn’t cut out for this kind of intrigue. Fighting was more his style.

“So, what do you mean?” Ram asked.

“We can’t let this opportunity slip by,” Dark Moon Yue said. “Once such an opportunity is missed, who knows when the next one will come? We need to escalate the situation and intensify the conflict between them.”

“We need to kill some real elven nobles,” he looked at Wu Qingsong. “And they must be high-ranking nobles involved in this matter.”

Wu Qingsong’s brow furrowed slightly. He already knew what Dark Moon planned to do.