"It's clear," Meng Yao says, and steps back. 

He readies a spell in the back of his mind. There are always... unforeseen circumstances. He can arrange for a group to be seventy-five percent people he wants dead, but not a hundred percent, not as long as he's Shanghai's minion. If Mingjue goes first-- which he has such a dreadful tendency to do, even though Meng Yao loves him, even though Meng Yao wants him to be alive-- then Meng Yao will have to be quick with a spell that melts the mal. 

Of course, in some ways this is good. It allays suspicion. Meng Yao is the hero who saves Shanghaiers from mals no one else would have gotten, after all. 

Meng Yao is careful to ensure that the survival rate around him is about the ninetieth percentile of survival rates around any minion. He just very simply has to be better at surviving than anyone else. He always has been.

Meng Yao doesn't feel guilty. It's their fault, isn't it, for choosing to make their survival dependent on someone they called the son of a whore. And every enclaver who dies is one less bit of competition for Shanghai in the graduation hall, one fewer person who might offer an alliance better than Lan Xichen's.