The fifteenth day of the eighth month-the Mid-Autumn Festival.
Day had barely broken before the streets and lanes were bustling with life. The sound of gongs and drums came from a distant street:
"Boom boom clang, boom boom clang..."
Xie Jinhuan sat with Coal Ball at the mutton shop by the lane entrance, ordering three bowls of soup and three flatbreads as usual. Around him, constables run ragged with work were talking listlessly:
"First the Great Demon of Purple Emblem Mountain, then the Mad Corpse Flower and the Li Household, and now three Red-Robed Plague Gods are dead. We're only human. Even with eight legs, we couldn't keep up..."
"To hell with those plague gods. Such fearsome reputations, and they couldn't even get a message out when someone butchered them. If they'd so much as written a few words before dying, we'd at least have somewhere to start..."
Seeing that his brothers at the Yamen had nearly run their legs off put Xie Jinhuan considerably at ease.
Killing three Scarlet Qilin Guards had put quite a burden on his brothers at the Yamen, but he had had no choice.
Zhou He and the others had already been preparing to tear out the weeds by the roots. Leaving them alive would have meant endless trouble, and killing those three alone was not enough.
Han Jingchuan, the Thousand-Household Commander of the Wangjing Thousand-Household Office, had made his father a scapegoat. By now, he probably knew that the man's son was still alive.
Now that three of his subordinates had suddenly died, Han Jingchuan would become wary even if Xie Jinhuan really had not killed them. Given the Scarlet Qilin Guard's methods, they would very likely tear out the weeds by the roots to prevent future trouble. There was no telling when