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

Gu An eventually arrived at Hanging Platform, but everything had changed; all traces of the past had been erased. He inquired in the nearby villages, but no one recognized him as the General Gu of yesteryear.

He had heard rumors about the missing military rations, which he considered utter nonsense, but he had no evidence. As the chief transport officer, he didn't even know what had actually happened.

During that time, he was like a headless fly, wanting to find out the truth of what happened back then, but not knowing where to begin. With the case unclear, and seriously injured and disfigured, he had no way to prove that he was Gu An, and dared not prove that he was Gu An.

A dignified general could only eke out a living as a vagrant.

Another year passed, and he met Gu Cheng.

Lu Zhiyuan narrowed her eyes: "Gu Cheng? Is that your confidant?"

Gu An nodded: "He grew a beard and became a businessman, but I still recognized him at a glance. I thought he had escaped death like me, that he was trapped in the fog like me, hiding his identity and not daring to tell others his true identity. When I found him, I thought it was a reunion of brothers and I cried tears of joy. I never expected him to stab me in the back."

Lu Yun, who was standing to the side, was stunned.

The plot is so familiar.

Fearing they wouldn't believe him, Gu An lifted his clothes to show them. There was a very obvious scar on his abdomen, from a dagger.

“I understand how Young Master Lu feels, because I was also stabbed by my brother. The dagger was a coming-of-age gift I gave him, with my own hand-carved name on it. One strike, with all my strength, the blade went deep into the handle. I didn’t even realize it, my face still bearing the smile of a long-awaited reunion.”

Gu An didn't hate Gu Cheng; she only hated herself for being blind and not seeing him clearly sooner.

Gu Cheng said he had long disliked Gu An. He was clearly a good-for-nothing, yet he became a general. They were both members of the Gu family, and Gu An's talent and effort were clearly superior, yet he could only be someone else's servant.

He grabbed Gu An by the neck and told him that he had orchestrated the loss of the military rations. He wanted more than just the rations and Gu An's life; he wanted the entire Gu family.

He wanted the Gu family, who looked down on him, to perish along with Gu An.

Inside the inn, Gu Cheng stood, while the other lay down. Gu Cheng looked down upon him, and the other was like an ant waiting to be trampled. He hadn't expected to live; this was the second time. If he were Gu Cheng, he wouldn't have given him another chance to survive.

He just wants to know the truth.

Gu Cheng squatted down, pulled out the dagger stuck in his abdomen, and patted his face with the bloodied dagger.

Gu Cheng said he tampered with the porridge, and that he killed the soldiers transporting the grain, one by one, with great satisfaction. He also said he staged the scene, but he wasn't alone; he was accompanied by a coroner, a descendant of a former dynasty general—otherwise, how could he have made the scene so convincing? He said he transported the grain, but he couldn't disclose where it was taken.

When Gu An mentioned the cave, Gu Cheng smiled wryly.

He didn't say, which proves that the cave holds more secrets than just a place where they disposed of the body and covered up the evidence.

There are many places to dump corpses. There is a ghost village near the hanging platform. They could have easily transported the corpses to the ghost village. There was no need to make a big fuss and transport them all the way to that cave.

As for that batch of grain, if it had been sold to an enemy country, one could have simply told a dying man. Gu Cheng didn't, which means he didn't collude with the enemy.

He was clever; he stayed in Beiliang because he was a descendant of the Gu family. Betraying Beiliang made him a villain; the enemy state might tolerate him for a while, but not forever. How long they tolerated him depended on his value, which was related to his surname.

If he had any sense at all, he wouldn't have done something like colluding with the enemy and betraying his country.

Lu Zhiyuan rubbed her temples: "So many years have passed, General Gu should have found some clues by now."

"Something was gained, but not much."

Lu Yun interjected, "How did General Gu escape? If I were Gu Cheng, I would never let the general live. Unless, what the general said just now was a lie, a story he made up to deceive us."

"Fire, fire." Gu An said, "Gu Cheng really didn't want me to live, but I was still on guard. When we bumped into each other on the street, I wasn't sure if he was the same Gu Cheng I knew. I touched the bodies of the soldiers who followed me, and they all had wounds. If Gu Cheng, like me, escaped from the cave, why didn't he have any marks on his body?"

Lu Yun stood up: "General Gu, don't you think your words are contradictory? You said earlier that you didn't expect it and were stabbed in the back by Gu Cheng when you were completely unprepared. Now you say that you were prepared and had taken precautions. General, which of your words are true and which are false?"

Gu An blushed, looking somewhat embarrassed: "I'm telling the truth! On one hand, I really had no defenses against Gu Cheng. He's from my own clan, someone I watched grow up, and he joined the army with me. I treat him like my own younger brother. On the other hand, it's my soldier's instinct that tells me this is unusual and might be related to Gu Cheng. Reason made me more cautious, but emotion made me trust Gu Cheng, believing that he, like me, had escaped death. I know it's contradictory, but that's the truth."

Lu Zhiyuan couldn't help but say, "I believe General Gu. Human emotions are indeed complex, especially when faced with such a complex situation."

A hint of excitement flickered in Gu An's eyes. This was the first time in all these years that someone had believed in him so much.

"Before meeting Gu Cheng, I was a beggar in the city. With my ghostly face and mediocre skills, I carved out my own territory among the beggars. Some of the brothers who follow me now came from that time. Before meeting Gu Cheng, I was a little uneasy, so I instructed my beggar brothers that if I did not call them up in three quarters of an hour, they should create the illusion of a fire at the inn."

Don't underestimate those beggars in the city; they are all very capable.

In a life-or-death situation, they set fire to the inn's entrance, claiming that a wanted criminal was inside. Before Gu Cheng could react, he scrambled out of the inn.

The beggar brothers were quick; the moment he stepped out, they helped him up and draped a coat over his shoulders—a woman's embroidered jacket. Using the thick smoke in the stairwell, they escaped safely.

The dagger was stuck in his abdomen, not in a fatal spot, and he was able to stop the bleeding in time and survive.

Lu Zhiyuan is right; he has never given up on finding out the truth all these years. He suspects that they transported the bodies to the cave to feed the snakes, using the snakes' ability to eat people to retrieve something they wanted from the cave.

"what?"

“A kind of medicine, a medicine that can make people live forever.” Gu An touched his nose: “I know what you are investigating, and I know what you suspect. There are indeed people in the mountains, quite a few. Among them are soldiers, thieves, officials, and eunuchs, and every one of them is after that medicine.”

Gu An lowered his voice: "The real culprit behind the missing military rations case, the mastermind behind the Ganzhou case, is the royal family, the Grand Uncle."

Grand Uncle?

Lu Zhiyuan had lived in the capital for a long time and in the palace for seven years, and had never heard of a grand uncle in Northern Liang.