After transmigrating into the book, I helped my mother reconcile with her divorced husband.

He grew up in a human trafficking organization and thrived in it by his teens. Human traffickers rarely live long. They're either arrested by the authorities, replaced by their subordinates, or beaten to death by their victims.

At sixteen, relying on his intelligence and ruthlessness, he rose to the top position in the capital's human trafficking organization. He held the position for seven days, then relinquished it to someone else.

Lu Zhiyuan stretched her limbs: "You don't want to stay in that organization."

“Yes, I don’t want to stay in that organization. I hate everything about it.” Duke Rui pounded the ground. “Only by sitting in that position, only by becoming the leader of that organization, can I escape from there. To become the leader, you have to do enough bad things. I turned myself into the person I hate most, into a devil who preys on children and women.”

Duke Rui looked at his hands.

“I thought I could be free once I left that place, but no, I had nightmares all night long. I would dream that I was being kidnapped or that I was kidnapping people. What’s even more terrifying is that all the children who were kidnapped were me.”

"This shows that there is still a kind-hearted person inside you."

"Kindness? Can kindness put food on the table?" Duke Rui laughed, tears streaming down his face. "I thought I could start a new life after leaving that place, but all I know how to do is kidnap, cheat, and sell people. I can't endure the hardship of manual labor. I can't read many characters to be a clerk. I'm not good at anything except dealing with people, and I'm used to doing business without capital, so I feel like I'm losing money on anything else. I can only be a scoundrel, a half-human slave trader."

Duke Rui looked at the Crown Prince and said, "I, He Ruiming, speak the truth. I admit to the bad things I've done, but I have never lied to the Crown Prince. My title of Duke Rui was not obtained through deception."

The young prince was lured away by the beggar.

Born and raised in the palace, he was accustomed to fine clothes and sumptuous meals, so he was curious to see a beggar in tattered clothes, carrying a broken bowl. He followed the beggar toward the east gate, where he was spotted by a slave trader. If he hadn't intervened in time, the young prince would have been kidnapped by the slave trader.

He's not from the palace, so how could anyone recognize him as the Crown Prince just from his back and clothes? Besides, he was only wearing ordinary silk and satin.

They've abducted children from wealthy families before. In just fifteen minutes, they could transform a child. Even if they met in the capital, no one would recognize him as the Crown Prince. He rescued him purely because his back view was strikingly similar to the young, helpless version of himself in his dreams.

He couldn't save himself in the dream, so he saved the prince outside the dream.

He is not a good person, but the fact that he saved the Crown Prince is true. He deserves the title of the Crown Prince's benefactor and the Emperor and Empress's reward.

Just as Lu Zhiyuan predicted, the Swiss public confessed to the Human Tooth Organization's involvement; they were also connected to the slave market in the capital. The slave market had two owners, one openly and one covertly. The openly owned one was unaware of the covert one, while the covert one knew the openly owned one. In short, the openly owned one was being used by the covert one.

"The slave market is King Qi's property. Could the one he's secretly referring to be King Yong'an?"

"King Qi?" Duke Rui scoffed. "He's just a pawn in King Yong'an's hands."

"From what you're saying, Prince Yong'an is the one being made public." Feeling a bit cold, Lu Zhiyuan paced back and forth in the cell, her hands tucked into her sleeves. "Do you know who's hiding behind Prince Yong'an?"

"I don't know." Duke Rui scratched his back and put his hands on his knees. "I'm just a pawn, a small pawn. I'm not worthy to know those things."

The prince asked, "Then what else do you know?"

Duke Rui scratched the back of his hand: "The children in the sedan chair were an accident, but if you really think about it, it has something to do with Your Highness the Crown Prince."

Lu Zhiyuan stopped in her tracks: "The news of the Crown Princess's assassination has reached the Duke of Rui's mansion. Everyone knows how the Crown Prince treats me. If anything happens to me, whether I live or die, the Crown Prince will come. The assassin has nothing to do with you, but it is related to the person behind you. You are afraid that the Crown Prince will trace it back to you."

Duke Rui smiled, a bitter smile.

"Unfortunately, man proposes, God disposes. The Crown Prince did not come to me because of the Crown Princess's assassination attempt, but instead came to me because of Old Man Xu's matter."

“It has nothing to do with God; it’s the work of your Duke’s steward.” Lu Zhiyuan walked up to Duke Rui: “If your steward hadn’t gone to the government office and used your name to get the magistrate to seize land for you, His Highness wouldn’t have come after you. Do you know that they went at the worst possible time, disturbing the imperial physician’s treatment of me and almost costing me my life?”

The Crown Princess's life is half the Crown Prince's life; no wonder he was so angry, willing to expose his whereabouts to have his Duke's mansion demolished. But he didn't let the steward do those things. He instructed everyone in the mansion to keep a low profile and avoid going out if possible… Steward! He needs to see the steward! He can't die in prison without knowing why.

Someone wants to harm him!

The Crown Prince gave Zuo Yi a wink, and within half an hour, the steward was brought over. Faced with the Duke of Rui's questioning, the steward looked bewildered and simply said that this was the Duke's order.

It wasn't until Lu Zhiyuan asked him whether the Duke had given the order personally or if it had been relayed by someone else that he realized the seriousness of the matter and hurriedly replied, "It was Aunt Li who relayed the order, saying that the Duke was busy and that I must handle this matter properly."

"Li Niang?" Duke Rui asked in confusion, "She never cares about these things."

The steward was extremely anxious and hurriedly defended himself: "It's because Consort Li never cares about these things that I didn't think anything of it. I thought that after having the young master, Consort Li had finally come to her senses and wanted to live a good life with you, Duke, so I rushed to take care of it. I didn't expect that Old Man Xu had someone on his estate, and a noble one at that, so I accidentally dragged the Duke's mansion into this mess."

Before he could finish speaking, a yamen runner hurriedly reported that Consort Li from the Duke's mansion had strangled the child to death.

Duke Rui's eyes rolled back, and he collapsed to the ground. The steward rushed forward, calling his name several times before Duke Rui finally awoke, murmuring, "The child...that's my child with Li Niang!"

Lu Zhiyuan turned to look at the yamen runner and asked, "Why did Aunt Li strangle her own child? Was she worried that the Duke's mansion's affairs would involve the child, or was there some other reason?"

The bailiff looked at Duke Rui and said clearly, word by word, "Aunt Li said that it was an illegitimate child that should not have been born."

Duke Rui laughed, his expression maniacal: "It's all fake! I thought she accepted me, accepted the child, but I never imagined... she was just waiting for the right opportunity. She's taking revenge on me! She's using that child to get revenge on me!"

"Shouldn't she take revenge on you?" Lu Zhiyuan said calmly, "Only a few people who are not in their right mind would fall in love with their enemy, such as that Miss Li. Li Niang just made a choice that a normal person would make. The child is innocent, he just shouldn't have come into this world."