As soon as Liu Qingping left, Huangmei sprang out and said coldly, "Your methods have really gone downhill. Mu plainly wants to stir up a major case, and you can't even go with the flow? You could've used the opportunity to wipe out the likes of Xie Hua in one fell swoop, turning Anlu City God's Mansion into a blank sheet of paper—perfect for you to paint on."
Xu Yi said, "Who says a blank sheet is easy to paint on? It's such a huge canvas; working on it would be exhausting, and I can't be bothered. Besides, you think cleaning house would really leave a blank sheet? It'd only stir up trouble and give those bigwigs an opening to meddle in Anlu. After all, with so many positions suddenly vacant, they'd fight tooth and nail over them. I can't be bothered with that mess."
Huangmei paused, then said, "You have a point. As the saying goes, it's better to make use of a man's faults than his merits. You have these men's weaknesses in your grasp, so they'll be easy to control. That's certainly better than replacing them with another batch of slick officials."
As he spoke, he paced to the doorway and gazed into the distance. "The likes of Xie Hua are easy to deal with. The real problem is that Liu fellow. He's a huge headache. With men like him, go easy and they never learn; go hard and they hold a grudge, bent on revenge. The hardest people in the world to deal with are these second-generation heirs. They don't have their elders' cunning, yet they can trade on their elders' prestige. When virtue doesn't match position, disaster is sure to follow."
Xu Yi smiled calmly. "Trouble isn't scary. You just have to get rid of