Chapter211

After finishing everything she wanted to see on the first floor, Elara finally withdrew her gaze. While making calculations in her mind, she walked toward the staircase.

When she arrived at the staircase, a male attendant dressed more lavishly and delicately than those on the first floor was already waiting there for her.

Seeing her approach, the attendant immediately bowed with a respectful and proper smile on his face. "Miss Bai the Third, the master of the building has been waiting for you for some time in Room Heaven on the second floor. If you've finished looking around the first floor, please head upstairs."

Room Heaven on the second floor.

Back when Elara first did business with Lianyi Tower, aside from the initial transaction where she solved a problem and was invited upstairs by two noble young men, most of her later dealings were handled with Manager Yang inside Lianyi Tower.

Manager Yang was already middle-aged, treated people with warmth, but was sharp and skilled in business.

Now, the person sitting across from Elara was a young, unfamiliar man with half his face covered by a sheer veil. A pale pink flower mark was on his forehead. He wore a delicate, luxurious, semi-transparent white robe and had strikingly handsome features with an almost bewitching charm.

"Miss Bai the Third, I've heard much about you. I am Sylvan, the master of Lianyi Tower. I've been staying in another country due to some external matters, and now that I'm back, I can finally meet the legendary Miss Bai."

Sylvan looked to be about twenty-four or twenty-five years old. His skin was so pale it nearly blended with his white robe.

His features were exceptionally attractive to the point of looking almost unreal. His whole aura was very relaxed as he leaned lazily on a thick, white tiger-skin cushion, showing a casual attitude.

Elara's gaze naturally swept past the flower mark on his forehead, calmly scanning his whole body.

That flower mark was a purity seal only seen on men from the matriarchal nation. All the men from that nation Elara had met so far had such a flower mark on their foreheads.

She was a little surprised that the master of Lianyi Tower turned out to be a man from the matriarchal nation.

But her surprise wasn't from prejudice. It was because this world already had more men than women, and men from that nation held even lower status.

Under such conditions, to rise to the position of Lianyi Tower's master by personal effort alone was no easy feat.

The flower mark on Sylvan's forehead meant he hadn't married yet. To have such a position at his age, and as a man most people looked down on, he either had a powerful background or extraordinary skills.

Elara leaned toward the latter.

Sylvan was clearly very open and unbothered about his own identity.

He didn't seem to mind that others knew he was a man from the matriarchal nation. Unlike others such as Emory, he didn't show the reserved and proper behavior common among such men.

He was nearly 1.8 meters tall, slim and well-proportioned. His clothing was... revealing... with an extremely deep neckline, almost a V-shape, and beneath that deep V, his chest...

Elara wondered if she was seeing things, but it looked like there were two full curves on his chest.

The shape wasn't like a woman's soft, drooping breasts. Instead, it was firm and upright, clearly defined masculine pectorals.

But compared to an average man, his chest muscles seemed overly developed. They almost stretched out the loose neckline of his robe, forming two enticing little hills.

Elara glanced over naturally, then calmly brought her eyes back to Sylvan's smiling face. Still, a trace of doubt rose in her heart...

What was going on with his body? Emory and the other men she met from the matriarchal nation all looked quite normal. Even after Mathias's transformation, his chest didn't grow. Why was Sylvan's chest that developed?

Since Elara's gaze was very natural and she only looked at him for a second, Sylvan didn't seem to notice her confusion. Once she sat down, he waved his pale hand, and a server came forward to warm the tea. Elara also replied to him in a calm voice:

"This is indeed my first time meeting Lord Sylvan. In the past, most of my business with Lianyi Tower was handled by Manager Yang."

Sylvan smiled. His voice matched his relaxed appearance and was quite soothing. "When I'm not around, Manager Yang usually oversees the tower. He's quite capable. Over the past few months, he's already reported all the business dealings with you. I must say, your talents are truly impressive. Especially after the Crown Princess seized power and took the throne, the transformation of Plumera Capital has been astonishing. The Crown Princess became the Empress with thunderous momentum. She truly is someone favored by divine blood."

As soon as he finished speaking, Elara lifted her eyes.

Sylvan still looked at her with a smile, his expression unchanged, as if he had just commented on the weather.

But the first half of his sentence praised her identity as Miss Bai, while the second half suddenly shifted to the Crown Princess and the Empress, even calling her beloved by the divine.

Such a sharp shift in topic was no less than a full pivot.

Elara stared at Sylvan's calm, smiling face for two seconds.

Lianyi Tower had vast influence. Back when she worked to eliminate Lord Gregory and his kind, she had used spies from their network.

Though she had written to their undercover steward using the identity of Miss Bai, if Lianyi Tower hadn't figured out her real identity after all this time, that would be strange.

She hadn't spent much effort trying to hide her identity back then.

The deal she wanted to make today also required revealing her real identity to proceed.

So whether Sylvan took the initiative or not, she planned to show her true identity today.

The Bai Trading Firm was the first royal enterprise she established for Plumera. But Plumera was too small. For the Bai Trading Firm to grow, it had to move outward.

Lianyi Tower happened to be an excellent potential partner.

And to start a series of long-term, large-scale partnerships, her identity needed to be made clear.

Elara hadn't expected the master of Lianyi Tower, Sylvan, whom she was meeting for the first time, to be so direct. By the second sentence, he had already exposed her identity.

Elara gave up on hiding. In business, she actually preferred straightforward and efficient transactions.

She raised her hand and casually removed the veil that covered her face, looking directly at Sylvan, who still had a faint smile on his face.

"Lianyi Tower is certainly fast at gathering information. 'Miss Bai Third' is indeed a business identity I use. As long as nothing unexpected happens, I'll continue to use this identity. The way we did business before should continue the same way. What do you think, Tower Master Sylvan?"

Sylvan's gaze swept across her face, and his smile deepened a little. Then he stood up and gave her a deep bow, his clothes in disarray.

"Miss Bai can just call me by name. I'm not worthy of the title 'Tower Master' in front of you."

As he bent down, the robe that was already loose at the chest fell open even more, revealing a large part of his well-shaped chest.

Elara looked away and spoke in the same tone, "You're being too modest, Tower Master Sylvan. Plumera is just a recently developing third-rank small nation. Compared to Lianyi Tower, we are nothing. You're being too humble. Like I said, let's do business the same way we always have. As for identity, I'm still just Miss Bai Third."

Elara didn't say her real identity directly, but what she implied was already very clear.

Sylvan understood well. He didn't keep up the modesty act, and after finishing the bow, sat back down in the same relaxed posture. He showed no nervousness despite facing a female emperor of a nation, his smile calm as usual.

Now that the identities were laid out, it would be easier to do business.

After chatting with Sylvan for a few more moments, Elara didn't waste time and went straight to the main point of this transaction.

"This time I've come to Lianyi Tower because I want to do a few more deals with your organization."

Sylvan leaned against the thick white tiger fur, his pale face full of warmth. "Lianyi Tower has been looking forward to working with you again. We couldn't hope for more."

Elara raised her hand and pulled a few sheets of white paper from the bundle carried by the palace attendant. She spread them out on the table and asked the servant to bring ink and brush. Then she casually wrote a few words on the paper and handed it to Sylvan.

"This is the first deal I want to make with Lianyi Tower. It's called 'paper.'"

When Elara brought out the white paper and started writing, Sylvan adjusted his posture slightly. By the time she handed him the thin sheet with writing on it, he had already sat up from the tiger fur, leaning toward the table. His loose white robe slipped down even further, revealing more of his chest.

"This... is the same paper the government has been posting on the bulletin walls in Plumera City recently, right?"

Sylvan took the thin sheet, which clearly showed the writing, and his smile widened.

"To tell you the truth, what Lianyi Tower most wants to trade with you right now is precisely this 'paper.'"

As the master of Lianyi Tower, Sylvan had always needed to keep records of daily expenses and income. Just the bamboo slips used for accounting could fill another whole Lianyi Tower.

But all these important ledgers created many troubles for storing, checking, and security.

Back then, to manage all those detailed and important account records, they had to pay a high price to get a more convenient calculating method from Tiangong Pavilion.

But the algorithms of Tiangong Pavilion were not something ordinary people could use.

Lianyi Tower recruited talented people from across the continent to use those calculation methods. Now, although every tower had someone capable of using them, the important results still had to be recorded in many books.

However, bamboo slips were too heavy and inconvenient. So Lianyi Tower was forced to use animal hides or silk to record the most vital ledgers.

But both animal hides and silk were expensive. Especially using silk like bamboo slips—no matter how wealthy Lianyi Tower was, the massive yearly cost still hurt.

So finding or creating a cheaper and more efficient recording method had always been their secret goal.

But after so many years, whether it was in third-rank nations, second-rank ones, or even first-rank powerful empires, none of the recorded divine blessings had ever revealed a better way.

Even the Divine Envoy Palace, which had collected blessings from all over the continent for thousands of years, hadn't found one. So Lianyi Tower could only grit their teeth and keep using hides and silk.

Now, unexpectedly, in a small corner in the southwest of the continent, someone had created something called 'paper.'

When Sylvan introduced himself earlier, he hadn't lied. He truly hadn't been in Plumera's Lianyi Tower before. That's because the region he managed included many nations across the southwest of the continent.

Including third-rank nations with clans, every place in the southwest where a Lianyi Tower could be opened was under his jurisdiction.

He had stayed in other countries' towers before only because those places were more developed than Plumera. As the supervisor of this area, it was natural for him to be where the conditions were better.