[X] Go along with Meizhen, you should probably convince her not to go overboard, and she could use backup besides
I am very, very uncomfortable with the number of people who are totally fine with ignoring Ling Qi's discomfort at what Meizhen might do and the fact that we know she (and the Bai generally) are known to go totally overboard.
Quite apart from the known problems of adopting a scorched earth policy to enemies (like having someone with nothing left to lose who is probably stronger than us coming at us with his bound 'contractees', alienating potential allies etc) there is also the issue that friends don't let friends mutilate people at 14. Yan Renshu is certainly a bag of dicks, but other people, like the people he enslaved, have far far more reason to be pissed at him than we are.
Ultimately we started the fight with him by stealing from him at the behest of the moon. I'm glad we did and I have no remorse over doing it and freeing those people, but we started the fight and his retaliation, whilst inconvinent and extremely painful (with the chance to be even more so) did not involve actual crippling. Ling Qi is rightly very wary at the attitude of 'its ok to cripple someone because your connected enough to get away with it and they aren't connected enough to do anything about it' both because 'there but for the grace of god go I'* and because she's had personal experience with the kind of awful things that sort of attitude leads to, in the crippling of Suyin.
The fact we'd be doing it to a 'bad guy' does not actually make it ok to barge into someone's house and mutilate them, even if they've been horrible. Hell that sort of toxic atmosphere, where one 'mistake' as a commoner trying to claw your way up and you're really, really screwed is probably a contributing factor in why things like those contracts can seem attractive. Because when a moderately connected noble can screw you over on a whim and mutilate you with the excuse of 'they were fighting back' despite being buried on the floor underneath 4 people and being as threatening as a mouse on helium social taboos start to look pretty insignificant.
And again. Ling Qi resolved to start being a good friend. And good friends don't let their friends mutilate someone at 14 when there are other, better alternatives, like dragging him to Cai and getting turtle boy to keep him essentially permenatnly imprisoned. If he doen't have to political power to make an issue of him being maimed he won't have the friends to get him out of being turned into a statue indefinetely.
*Yes Yan Renshu is a worse person than Ling Qi. But Ling Qi is a commoner with 'dishonourable' thief habits and very very very tasty loot who was lucky enough to get enough political clout that beating her up in a massive group and crippling her isn't a viable option anymore.
