Xi Qingyue walked over to the unconscious youths, lifted them off the torture devices, and laid them down on the ground, but she did not wake them up.
She examined their injuries. Although they were seriously wounded, ordinary doctors in the city could treat them, so she did not go out of her way to save them.
Xi Weilan, on the other hand, put away her pistol, ran over to the magistrate’s son, and crouched down. She rummaged through his clothes as if searching for something.
“Hey, why isn’t it here?” Xi Weilan searched for quite a while without finding even a single copper coin.
Seeing this, Xi Qingyue stepped forward, grabbed her by the back of her collar, and pulled her aside. “Lan’er, leave these people to your Big Sister. You go look inside the house instead.”
Hearing this, Xi Weilan scurried into the room with small, quick steps.
Watching her run off, Xi Qingyue suddenly wondered: had she succeeded or failed in raising this child?
The kid could strip silver off a corpse without flinching, and yet she hadn’t even noticed the huge bloody hole on the corpse’s forehead?
Shaking her head, Xi Qingyue crouched down, dug out the bullets, and then felt through all the bodies for their money and valuables.
Soon after, Xi Weilan came running out happily, clutching a small box.
“Big Sister, I found this! There’s so many banknotes inside!”
Xi Qingyue took the box she handed over and opened it to find a stack of banknotes—each worth one hundred taels, hundreds of them in total—along with several large fifty-tael gold ingots. There was also a handful of gold beans, clearly meant for tipping.
She closed the box and smiled. “Great job, Lan’er. All of this is yours. Big Sister will keep it safe for you for now, and you can spend it however you like later, all right?”
Xi Weilan’s eyes nearly turned into slits from smiling so wide. “Okay, Big Sister! Next time we buy good food, I’ll pay for it.”
Xi Qingyue put away the little box. She also walked around the rooms and collected several valuable items, such as tables, chairs, and scroll paintings.
Even the mattresses and bedding were gathered up. Although she didn’t like using other people’s old things and wouldn’t use them herself, she planned to toss them onto the main road at night for passersby to pick up. The refugees sleeping in the wilderness wouldn’t mind; they would make a soft bed on the grass.
Afterwards, she took Xi Weilan to the county office’s treasury and cleaned it out completely.
Having emptied the treasury, she used her earth-element ability to find the magistrate’s secret chamber, where she collected over ten thousand taels of gold and tens of thousands of pounds of grain.
Of course, she didn’t kill everyone in the county office. The situation in Mirror City differed from Beam City. In Beam City, the officials and bandits were corrupt to the bone, but in Mirror City, only part of the staff was evil.
She executed all those who had followed the magistrate and his son. As for the servants responsible for cleaning and chores, she only knocked them unconscious.
She and Xi Weilan made a full round of the county office, listening to people’s conversations. Those deserving death were killed, and those worth keeping were spared.
In the end, she left behind one capable clerk to manage the office.
After finishing, she carried Xi Weilan out of the county office and, using her wind-element ability, struck the drum hanging in front of the office.
It was not yet fully dark, and the sound of the drum resounded through the air, reaching the ears of many residents. They thought someone was beating the drum to file a complaint, and they all rushed toward the county office.
Watching the commotion was always a favorite pastime for the townspeople. Before long, a large crowd had gathered in front of the office.
Xi Qingyue held Xi Weilan and mixed in with the crowd. When she saw enough people had arrived, she secretly used her ability to open the county office’s main doors.
With a creaking sound, the doors swung open. The first thing the townspeople saw were two corpses lying inside the doorway, and the smell of blood washed over them.
“Dead... dead people!”
“Something’s happened! A big incident at the county office!”
Some sharp-eyed residents noticed more corpses lying further inside the building, not just those at the entrance.
For a moment, the crowd was stunned, and many people backed away in fear.
But the bold ones came forward—mostly the relatives of the captured youths, worried about their children’s safety. They rushed to the front.
“Something must have happened in there! Let’s get in and see!”
Someone shouted, and soon a flood of people rushed inside.
As they saw more and more corpses, the townspeople turned pale with fright. However, a few felt joy in their hearts. When they spotted the magistrate’s son’s body, some almost burst out laughing, quickly covering their mouths.
“My son! Oh, my son! You left so miserably!”
A sudden wailing cry caught everyone’s attention. A woman was throwing herself over a youth covered in blood, sobbing uncontrollably. That was her son, who had been captured earlier that day.
“Stop crying—he’s not dead yet! Take him home and find a doctor,” urged an older woman beside her.
The mother lifted her head and halted her tears. The kind older woman gestured for her to check his breath.
She quickly reached out and felt for his breathing. Then she let out a huge sigh of relief. Seeing her son drenched in blood on the ground and the dead officials around, she had immediately assumed he was dead. But he was still alive! Heaven had shown mercy.
She thanked the older woman. “Thank you, auntie, for reminding me.”
Other warm-hearted townspeople helped carry the youths out. Meanwhile, the rest continued searching the county office for survivors.
Seeing the bloodstained torture devices, the crowd couldn’t help but curse. “What a bunch of heartless monsters! Using such cruel tools on innocent people of Mirror City!”
“Exactly! Those boys were tortured unconscious. At least none of them died.”
One woman pointed at the magistrate’s son’s corpse and cursed, “In my opinion, he got what he deserved! People like him should have died long ago!”
The moment she finished speaking, many voices chimed in agreement. “That’s right. Wonder who did this. Are there any surviving officers in the office?”
As the crowd speculated, a sudden cry came from a room nearby. “This is strange! There’s not a single chair left in this office!”
“Not just that—I checked the sleeping quarters, and even the beds are gone. Besides these walls, there’s nothing left!”
Curious townspeople rushed toward the rooms and confirmed it: indeed, only the walls remained.
The servants they found alive had just been woken up. Learning of what happened at the county office, they were badly shaken and pale.
They were grateful to have survived but worried about their fate. When they spotted a box full of their own indentured contracts, it was as if they had been given new life. They quickly found their contracts and tucked them safely away.
The clerk, meanwhile, had been awakened and felt as if the sky was falling.
He only remembered a blow to the back of his neck, then blackness. Now he woke up to find the magistrate dead, the deputy dead, the sheriff dead—so many officials dead. He was now the highest-ranking officer in the office.
Naturally timid, the news caused him to faint again with a blank look in his eyes.
Xi Qingyue had already slipped away with her younger sister as soon as the county yamen opened for business, and there was no need for them to stay involved any longer.
The two of them ducked into a deserted alley, slipped into their space to wash up, and changed into a fresh set of clothes before emerging again. This time, they drove a mule cart out of the alley.
Xi Qingyue and her sister guided the mule cart back to the shop that sold lamb soup. They had arranged to pick up the prepared soup that evening, and the timing was just right.
The shopkeeper was quite taken aback when he saw that the two children had actually driven a cart to come. He smiled and walked over to greet them.
“Young customers, the weather’s too hot—this soup won’t keep long once you take it home,” he said.
Xi Qingyue nodded with a smile. “Don’t worry, Shopkeeper. We understand.”
With that, she pulled two large buckets from the back of the cart and handed them over.
The shopkeeper poured all the finished lamb soup into the buckets they had provided and offered to help lift them into the cart, but Xi Qingyue refused. He watched in surprise as she effortlessly picked up a bucket in each hand and placed them inside the cart.
Even after the mule cart had rattled a good distance away, the shopkeeper still stood there, dazed. “Strange,” he muttered to himself, “where did those two children come from?”
Then, remembering the drumbeats he had heard earlier—who would be beating the drum to lodge a complaint at this hour?—he promptly closed up his shop and hurried off to see what the commotion was about.
