Qi Shan watched helplessly as Gongshu Wu led his men away.
He clicked his tongue. "What a shame, what a shame."
Shen Tang propped her head up with one hand. Her whole body was flushed and feverish, and sticky sweat had soaked through her underclothes. At some point, a faint blush had spread across her cheeks, but the bonfire blazed so brightly that its glow masked the redness rising from beneath her skin. No one noticed anything amiss.
"What's such a shame?"
Shen Tang struggled to pull herself together, trying to clear her head.
"Those lackeys. What a shame," Qi Shan replied with a smile. "An ordinary Low-Tier Gongshi could take on two or three grown men, and their leader was even a Third-class Zanxiao. He wasn't all that strong, but he'd have made a decent little drillmaster for the troops, teaching the recruits a thing or two."
Now they'd all been killed by Gongshu Wu. What a waste.
Shen Tang rubbed her temples and said coolly, "How can a few mouths to feed compare to Gongshu Wu? They had a grudge, so if they didn't die, who would? It's no loss..."
"Fair enough. By that reckoning, it really is no loss."
When he finished, Lin Feng, seated beside Shen Tang, shivered.
From the little girl's perspective, there was something utterly eerie and frightening about the way Qi Shan said it. His eyes and brows brimmed with genuine delight, and the way he looked at Shen Tang was like an old nanny from the Chongci Courtyard, one who liked to sneak bites of food, eyeing a delicious platter of fatty meat. He didn't look like a decent person at all.
She pursed her lips and edged a little closer to Shen Tang.
A moment later, a sudden weight sank onto