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

Before the thug could speak, they heard the man muttering to himself.

"Asking is pointless; he's long dead. The current magistrate is a candidate and knows nothing about what happened back then."

The thug glared at him. "Did I tell you to speak? I'm asking you."

Still not satisfied with just that, she kicked the man. Not hard, just to make a show; if he actually killed him, she wouldn't let him off the hook.

"The former magistrate of Tianhe County was surnamed Ma, named Ma Zhonghe, a thin old man. Just as he said, he was no good. Ma Zhonghe was transferred to Tianhe County as magistrate when he was thirty years old. When he arrived, he had no carriage, no attendants, and brought no luggage. He rode a donkey and carried a faded little bundle on his back, which contained a few old clothes. Anyone who saw him would think he was an honest and upright official. In less than half a year, his true colors were revealed. He imposed exorbitant taxes and oppressed the people, making the entire Tianhe County suffer in silence."

The thugs were filled with hatred at the mere mention of Magistrate Ma.

"I'm from Tianhe County. My family was driven to the brink of starvation by this corrupt official. He didn't have a good end either. He took a fancy to his daughter-in-law, but couldn't take her by force, so he found all sorts of reasons to make his son divorce her. Not only that, he went to her family home to put pressure on them, forcing them to send their daughter to a nunnery. Under the guise of repairing the nunnery, this old bastard arranged for many of the nuns to live in a rural villa, and then he took the opportunity to seize one of their daughters, who was his former daughter-in-law."

Han Ting said coldly, "You went through all this trouble just to steal your own daughter-in-law?"

"It's not like this is the first time he's done this." The thug spat. "That dog of a magistrate is inhuman. Long before this happened, he snatched his eldest son's concubine, forcing his eldest son to strangle himself with his belt because he was too ashamed to face anyone. Speaking of which, his youngest son was born to that concubine. He was also his youngest son."

Her beautiful eyebrows were furrowed into a ball.

He had found many storybooks for Liu Ying, but none of the messy stories in them were as chaotic as the county magistrate's family affairs.

Are there really such shameless people in the world?

"How did Magistrate Ma die?"

"He was killed by that concubine, his youngest son, and the daughter-in-law he had taken as his concubine." The thug's eyes lit up as he spoke. "It wasn't pre-arranged! First, the concubine put arsenic in his food, in small amounts multiple times, trying to slowly poison him. Then, his youngest son tampered with his carriage, trying to kill him without him noticing. Finally, his daughter-in-law, whom he had taken as his concubine, stabbed him with a dagger. He died a gruesome death; the poison took effect just as the carriage wheel broke down. He and his daughter-in-law were sitting in the carriage when the wheel broke, and the dagger in her hand struck him precisely..."

"heart?"

"His lungs were pierced, but it wasn't fatal on the first hit. He was carried back to the county office and stayed up all night before finally dying."

"Where are the concubine, the youngest son, and his daughter-in-law?"

"It's alright, everyone's fine," the thug said. "The daughter-in-law said the dagger was for peeling fruit. She was peeling an apple for the old man in the carriage when it suddenly overturned. Caught off guard, she accidentally stabbed him with the dagger. The fact that he didn't die proves her innocence. She said she's willing to atone for her sins and spend her life as a Buddhist monk after he dies, performing rituals for him. But that's just a pretense; she really wants Buddha to send him to the deepest hell."

"The arsenic matter should be investigated. Doesn't the county government have a coroner? If it did, they would definitely suspect the cause of Magistrate Ma's death. Suspecting the cause of death would lead to a report, a report would lead to a thorough investigation, and a thorough investigation would leave no one uninvolved."

“There are coroners, and coroners have to listen to the magistrate.” The thug said coldly, “The magistrate is dying. Before a new magistrate is appointed from above, the one in charge is that concubine. There aren’t many coroners who have principles and are not afraid of power. Even if they know the truth, they won’t say it to protect themselves.”

The arsenic was bought by a servant in the mansion; the concubine said it was bought to poison rats. As for why the magistrate was poisoned, that remains unknown. The carriage had been used by the mansion for many years; it's possible that the wheels were worn out from wind and sun.

After Magistrate Ma died, his concubines organized the funeral in the mansion. In ordinary families, the body would be kept in state for three days, and from the time of death to the time of burial, it would take about seven days. Magistrate Ma died quickly and was buried quickly; from the time of his death to the time of burial, it only took one day.

"Without a coroner's examination and without an investigation from higher authorities, how did you find out the truth about Magistrate Ma's death?"

The thug rubbed his nose, speaking as if it were commonplace: "After the new magistrate arrived, Magistrate Ma's family had to move out of the county office. Besides his first wife, Magistrate Ma had many concubines and mistresses, who had given birth to twenty or thirty children. When Magistrate Ma died, his eldest child was already forty. When the tree falls, the monkeys scatter. After dividing the family property, the concubines and mistresses each took their own children and went their separate ways. The masters left, and the servants left too. The stories about the mansion spread everywhere, like a storybook. That's when the truth about Magistrate Ma's death came out."

When a person dies, it's like a lamp going out. No one cared about the truth behind Magistrate Ma's death. Instead, his affair with his daughter-in-law became the talk of the town. Of course, mainly because he was a bad person, both the coroner and the common people felt that he deserved to die, and no one spoke up for him.

As a native of Tianhe County, the thugs also knew about the granary situation.

During years of famine, when the people had no food to eat, the county government not only failed to open its granaries to distribute grain, but instead sold it at exorbitant prices. The thug's family were farmers, and his father had said that the government didn't have that much grain to sell.

The common people had no say in the affairs of the officials, nor did they know where the officials' grain came from. All they knew was that Magistrate Ma had made a fortune by taking advantage of the famine. When a commoner reported him, he was arrested, thrown into jail, and severely beaten.

It seems that the grain that Magistrate Ma sold came from the granary.

At first, he would replenish the granary with some new grain, the quality of which was similar to the requisitioned military rations. Seeing that no one paid attention, he became bolder and began to substitute inferior grain. The bolder he became, the worse the grain in the granary became, eventually resulting in the state the man saw.

Han Ting tapped the chair rhythmically: "Where did you transport the grain to? Has the higher-ups investigated that grain? After all, its quality is far inferior to military rations."

"We only know that the place is not in Beiliang, but we don't know exactly where it is."

The man told Han Ting that their route was planned; once they left Beiliang, someone would lead the way, and they would travel along rarely traveled paths. Not only were these paths remote, but they were also at night, making it impossible to see anything clearly. The group receiving the grain were masked and didn't utter a single word from beginning to end.

The more secretive the matter, the less likely it is to leave anyone alive. On the return journey, the man became more cautious and hid in the woods under the pretext of taking a break. By the time the leader realized he was trying to escape and ordered his men to give chase, he had already run quite far.

He fell into a pit, but by a twist of fate, he survived.

If Han Ting's men hadn't found him, he would have forgotten all those things long ago.