Chapter 51: Own Thoughts
Xia Fan froze. Li's words suddenly surfaced in his mind.
"Surely you don't think the Bureau of Military Affairs exists solely to deal with evil anomalies, do you?"
"Hahahahaha—" Wang Renzhi clutched his stomach and laughed. "Xia, do you even realize you're already an eighth-rank official? Are there more ordinary people in this world, or more officials? Are ordinary people more important, or officials? If we had to save anyone who ran into trouble, could you possibly keep up with it all?"
"But I clearly encountered Bureau of Military Affairs sorcerers who actively eliminated Evil Spirits before..."
"Do you think they went out for free?" Wang Renzhi spread his hands. "Think carefully. Can those common folk tell the difference between an Evil Spirit and their own wild imaginings? Without a threshold, everyone would only run themselves ragged, only to discover in the end that what needed dealing with was a snake sprawled on the rafters, or a wild cat hiding by the foot of the bed! Besides, are a few dozen taels of silver really expensive compared to a life? At the very least, it makes them think things through before asking the Bureau of Military Affairs for help, instead of treating delusion as reality!"
"What if someone can't even come up with those few dozen taels?" Xia Fan frowned.
"Then let them die. People die every day in this world—of illness, hunger, exhaustion, hardship, poverty. One more person dying at the hands of an Evil Spirit makes no difference. What exactly are you thinking? Didn't you join the Bureau of Military Affairs for money, to stand head and shoulders above others? If you truly wanted to help those people, you could travel the world and become the 'Daoist Master Xia' people talk about!"
"Enough." Master