There was no such thing as good people receiving good rewards. Here, all lives were equally humble, and death could come at any moment.
Among the six clerks, He Qing had been the most composed. Though she was not old, she was more patient and resilient than most.
Even at the very end, she had never urged Li Guanqi. Only her mental defenses had collapsed on their own.
What a pity. Her final fate had been a gruesome death, her limbs torn apart as she soaked in Bloody Water.
Li Guanqi braced one hand against the wall and lowered his eyes to the pile of Shredded Meat on the floor. Thirty-seven steel needles still hung from the wall, each bearing fresh Blood Droplets. They were almost exactly as he had guessed.
They were called steel needles, but they resembled weapons designed to strangle living people. Their interiors were threaded; once inserted into a human body, they would grind bone and flesh to pieces. Any struggle would only widen the wounds over a large area.
Whether or not he caught the ghost was not actually the most important thing to Li Guanqi.
At the end of the day, he still held onto a sliver of unrealistic hope—perhaps not all six of his clerks were dead. If he was fast enough, he might be able to save one or two of them...
After all, Wang Xian, He Qing, and the others were in their current predicament partly because of his inadequate arrangements.
What exactly this ghost was capable of remained unclear, but its basic framework had already been revealed.
It would give Li Guanqi chances to save people. Those chances were difficult to seize, but they existed nonetheless. He Qing was the first; there would be a second, then a third.
Yao