Horrifying! And yet, if the alternative was suffering the same kind of distortion of the soul that Sims and Tonner have...especially at the hands of something as viscerally disgusting as the power that fills that meat grinder...is Shen Qingqiu so sure he wouldn't have done the same? Desperate times, et cetera.

"Well, I suppose congratulations are in order," he says delicately. "Hopefully that's enough to forgive my earlier faux pas..."