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

"Young master, can you really protect the lives of my entire family?"

"If you don't believe me, you can ask someone else." Zuo Yi opened the door: "Our young master is very busy and doesn't have time to listen to your rambling."

“My father is the caretaker of the estate, and that estate belongs to the Marquis of Yongchang.” The man said urgently, “Shortly after the Ganzhou grain bill incident, a batch of grain was transported to my father’s estate. It arrived at night, loaded onto a whole cart, covered with a tarpaulin, and the tarpaulin was stained with blood.”

"and then?"

“They didn’t take the grain into the warehouse, but left it in the yard. The higher-ups forbade us to ask, and my father didn’t dare to ask either. He just kept cooking for those people. The grain sat on the farm for three days, and then it was taken away late one night. After those people left, my father was in charge of cleaning the yard, and that’s when he found this thing.”

The man took out a cloth bag from his pocket, opened it and saw a copper waist tag. The front of the tag was engraved with the army number and the back with the soldier's name - An Xiaohu.

"When my father found this token, it was stained with blood. Afraid of being discovered, he washed it, only to realize he should have thrown it away. But then he felt uneasy about throwing it away and hid it. He lived in constant fear for years until no one mentioned it anymore. When my father died, he gave me this token. Curious, I investigated An Xiaohu and learned he was a member of the grain transport team back then. The blood on the token indicates An Xiaohu has met with misfortune. The military grain didn't appear in the military camp but on the estate of the Marquis of Yongchang, suggesting this matter is related to the Marquis of Yongchang."

As he spoke, the man produced a property deed.

"This is a copy of the deed for that estate. Judging from the date, the estate was purchased by Marquis Yongchang before the incident. And this address—it was all for the grain. The same thing happened several times before."

Is Zhuangzi still alive?

“No, he’s gone. My father died before he died; he was burned down.” The man said, “The Marquis of Yongchang was very clever. He only bought the estate, not the land on which it was built. The estate is gone, but the land was taken back by the original owner to build a new estate. I went to see it a few days ago; it seems to have been turned into a post station.”

How much do you know about the Liu family?

“Almost everyone knows.” The man sighed. “Manager Liu is just unlucky! We all received the warnings not to sell charcoal. Unlike them, I know some inside information. For example, the Marquis of Yongchang doesn’t allow charcoal sales because he needs a large quantity of charcoal. Transporting it from elsewhere would be too conspicuous. And his men aren’t very efficient at collecting it from the surrounding prefectures. The simplest and quickest way is to gather all the existing charcoal in Ganzhou into their hands. Besides charcoal, they also need corpses—fresh, undecayed corpses.”

The man's eyes darted around.

“Young master may not know how cold Ganzhou is, but we locals do. Without charcoal, ordinary people simply cannot survive, especially the elderly and children.”

With the city snowbound, corpses needed to be disposed of nearby, and these frozen bodies were exactly what they needed. For them, it was a win-win situation.

"You knew about this and still dared to hoard charcoal?"

“People die for wealth, birds die for food. Wasn’t I blinded by greed?” The man confessed, “At first, I didn’t intend to buy so much. I just couldn’t stop once I started. When I did the math, I realized I had stockpiled 100,000 dan of charcoal. I was thinking of giving some of it to my master to show my loyalty, and using the rest to make a fortune.”

The person on the left: "It was our sudden visit that disrupted your plans."

"Yes!" The man nodded. "I have spies in the government and in the Xie family. I can't tell you who they are. I guarantee that my spies will never harm the government, the court, or the Xie family. They are cowardly and only dare to sell me some unimportant information. The information that you and your wife brought is something I guessed. After all, I am also one of them, and I know a little about what's going on there."

Zuo Yi leaned against the door: "The matter of Manager Liu hasn't been explained yet."

The man said, "He was tricked by his nemesis. The man, taking advantage of his drunkenness, deliberately provoked him to sell his charcoal. Manager Liu, still intoxicated, readily agreed, and by the time he sobered up, it was too late. The buyers weren't ordinary people; they were all arranged by his nemesis. Not much was sold, only about a hundred catties in total. Normally, a hundred catties of charcoal wouldn't affect Marquis Yongchang's plans, but the nail that sticks out gets hammered down, and Marquis Yongchang, wanting to make an example of him, dragged Manager Liu out. Manager Liu was unlucky; he saw those people's faces and was silenced."

Crown Prince: "Do you know what the Marquis of Yongchang needs so much charcoal for?"

The man hesitated for a moment: "It seems like they're making some kind of medicine."

Crown Prince: "What medicine?"

The man shook his head: "I don't know. I'm just a gofer. That's all I know."

First from the left: "Does the Marquis of Yongchang wield considerable power in Ganzhou?"

He was a personal guard of the Crown Prince, having grown up alongside him in the Eastern Palace since childhood. He knew all the imperial relatives in the capital, but he had almost never heard of this Marquis of Yongchang. Being outside the capital and unknown, he was most likely a marquis of a different surname. Such marquises often took advantage of their remote location, far from the capital, to act arrogantly and domineeringly.

The man first shook his head, then nodded.

Marquis Yongchang did wield some influence in Ganzhou, but it wasn't the kind of influence they understood. His influence was largely comprised of江湖 (jianghu, the martial arts world) forces, spanning both the legitimate and criminal worlds, a mixed bag of people.

Marquis Yongchang did not bully others with power or bribe people with wealth, but rather relied on bestowing favors without expecting anything in return. The underworld has its rules, and the legitimate world has its regulations; everyone has their own difficulties. He, however, disregarded right and wrong, good and bad, and status; he focused solely on the matter, not the person. But there was one thing…

He would absolutely not help the other party if they had committed an heinous crime.

In Ganzhou, there was a farmer who, in a fit of rage and shame, killed the entire family of the man who had wronged his wife and daughter. Instead of turning himself in, he became a bandit in the mountains, and before meeting the Marquis of Yongchang, he had already taken several lives. If it were any other marquis, he would have executed them without mercy, thus earning a good reputation. The Marquis of Yongchang, however, did not. He first investigated the murders and found that the victims were all deserving of death, but had simply not been tried by the authorities. As for the family he had killed, the son had bullied and harassed women, and the parents had not only protected him but also aided and abetted his evil deeds; their extermination was a form of karmic retribution.

The Marquis of Yongchang first arranged for a doctor to treat him, and then asked his neighbors to testify on his behalf. With the help of his confession and the petition written in blood by thousands of people, he was released after serving only two years in prison. After his release, he not only regained his original residence but also remarried and had children. To him, the Marquis of Yongchang was more than just a second parent; he would do anything for the Marquis, even risk his life for him.

All those who were recruited by the Marquis of Yongchang were like this.

Even those who run errands have received some benefits.

With a forced smile, he said, "You've taken the benefits and then betrayed your master. People like you should be silenced."