You An was still seething, and he was no longer as courteous toward the three enemies as before. He said to Li Chen, "Burning them outright would let them off too easily. Why not turn them into Human Puppets too?"
Li Chen said, "I don't have that kind of ability."
You An said, "You have the Soul-Stabilizing Nails and Corpse-Nourishing Pills now, anyway. Even if you don't know how yet, you can stockpile them first."
Li Chen said, "Forget it. Once you start the process of refining Human Puppets, you have to keep consuming all kinds of resources. I don't have enough money or expertise to divide my attention that way."
"Then we really are letting them off too easily," You An said with a spit.
Before long, the two burned the unwanted things in a great blaze, then packed up everything that remained and took it away.
They had fattened themselves up in one fell swoop this time, reaping a tremendous windfall, yet their spirits did not improve. Only five days later, after burying Old Hou deep in the mountains more than a thousand li east of Maple Grove Market, did they finally begin to move past the incident.
They discovered a small lake nearby, with a valley beside it. The valley was quiet and secluded, a good place to recuperate for a while, so they stopped, planning to build a hut and live there while they watched how things developed.
For now, it was inconvenient to return to anywhere populated. Although the two of them were not particularly conspicuous, and they believed the Zuo Household could not have left enough means on Zuo Hao to make tracking them easy, they still felt that only a cautious hand could keep a ship sailing for ten thousand years.
"Brother,