A divine healer, a general, a young marquis! Who can rival them!

The snow stopped for two days, then it started snowing again.

Yang Hu cured Old Manager Liu, which caused a sensation throughout the south of the city, but he was preoccupied with another secret matter.

He had already gone through this hidden line in his mind several times. The goods from Wanjia Silk Shop were transferred to the North City Warehouse, where they were repackaged. Silk came in, and military equipment wrapped in oilcloth came out. Then, they were loaded onto fat and fast pack animals and transported north to the barbarians on the border. Ever since Liu Ye had been keeping an eye on the North City Warehouse and found out about the small courtyard on the mountain outside the city, this line, which had been running for more than half a year, suddenly seemed to have been discovered and went cold.

"The warehouse in the north of the city has been quiet for the past two days." Liu Ye returned through the snow and whispered in Yang Hu's ear while carrying firewood, "The pack animals that used to make deliveries every few days haven't left at all these past two days. The guards at the warehouse are also new faces, and they're keeping a closer eye on things than before."

Yang Hu felt a chill run down his spine.

That hand probably sensed that someone was probing its secrets!

"It's stopped!" Yang Hu whispered to Qin Ying in the backyard that night. "It used to be running around so frequently, but suddenly it stopped. It's not that it ran out of goods, but rather that it sensed something was wrong and decided to lay low and go into hiding!"

Qin Ying paused in wiping her knife: "For a money-making line to stop so easily, it means it's afraid. The more cautious it is, the more it proves that what lies beneath that line is something it can't afford to lose."

"Fear leads to leakage!" Yang Hu said.

The wire was cold, but it wasn't broken.

Yang Hu instructed Liu Ye not to keep an eye on the warehouses in the north of the city, as they were being closely monitored, and going too close would only scare away the rats. Instead, he instructed her to dress as a country maid, carrying an empty vegetable basket, and discreetly and discreetly explore the area in the north of the city: which shops were still secretly selling goods; and where strangers might be seen on the streets.

Liu Ye grew up in the mountains, and squatting and keeping watch were her specialties. This touch led to a new discovery.

Although the warehouses in the north of the city no longer used pack animals to transport goods, the Wan Family Silk Shop still occasionally sent an inconspicuous little cart to a pawnshop called "Hengfeng" in the south of the city to deliver some "dead pawned goods." The delivery to the pawnshop took about the time it takes to drink a cup of tea, and the person who came out was empty-handed.

"Why would a perfectly good silk shop throw in such worthless old goods that are already pawned?" Liu Ye didn't understand. "They send in tightly wrapped cloth bags, but the people who come out come out empty-handed."

Others thought this was a business deal, but Yang Hu sensed something amiss.

Why would a perfectly good silk shop send "dead pawned goods" to a pawnshop? They send in tightly wrapped cloth bags, but the person comes out empty-handed. Something's not right!

"We've moved the package to a different place," he said. "The old informant was discovered, so we broke it down into smaller pieces and sent it to a pawnshop. Pawnshops are a mixed bag; anyone can go there openly. Once the package is delivered, it will definitely go out of the pawnshop again and be delivered to the next pawnshop. That's what we call an informant. It's passed from one link to another, and the person delivering the package doesn't know who's receiving it. If a link is missed, no one can tell who it was."

Qin Ying had witnessed this method in the army and nodded: "The deeper it's buried, the more shameful it becomes. Would ordinary businesses engage in such shady dealings?"

"Exactly," Yang Hu said. "Using this hidden stake to separate the person delivering the goods from the person receiving them is to prevent the situation from going unnoticed if one of them is caught. This is the work of an expert, not something a corrupt petty official would do."

Yang Hu immediately instructed, "There are too many things to do in the pawnshop. If you don't keep an eye on things, you'll scare them away. Don't rush in from here to chase them. Just hide at the back door of the pawnshop and watch the bag being handed out, then deliver it to the other person's house."

Liu Ye obeyed and chose an inconspicuous corner to watch the back door of the pawnshop from afar.

This wait lasted for several days.

There was no activity for the first two days, but on the third day, a man finally appeared, dressed in clothes and carrying a shoulder pole, pretending to be a secondhand collector. Liu Ye was quite close, and followed him for a few steps, all the way to the west of the city.

This single stroke created yet another shadow of the hand protruding from the water's surface.

Every few days, a man carrying a load on a shoulder pole and dressed like a secondhand dealer would emerge from the back door of the pawnshop. This man would carry his load around half the city, and finally enter a magnificent courtyard in the west of the city, with a black and red lacquered gate, crouching lions, and servants with knives standing at the entrance.

Willow Leaf recognizes this place.

That's the Prefectural Magistrate's residence.

Liu Ye explained it very clearly: the man entered through a small back door of the prefectural governor's residence, but did not come out immediately. He waited for the time it takes to drink a cup of tea before emerging empty-handed from the small door and walking back.

"It's the Prefectural Magistrate's Office again!" Yang Hu was silent for a long while after hearing this.

From the Wan Family Silk Shop to the North City Warehouse, then to the small courtyard outside the city, and even the pawnshop's hidden agent. After wandering around in circles, those hands, hidden beneath layers of cloth, groped and fumbled, ultimately finding their way to the same place: the spot where the lion stood crouching at the entrance.

"But that's not enough!" Yang Hu didn't rush to express his opinion. "The items have already entered the Prefect's residence, but it's not necessarily the Prefect himself who will come to pick them up. Perhaps it's just a steward secretly doing some business behind the Prefect's back; perhaps the Prefect is just a scapegoat. These few undercover agents alone are not enough to form a solid piece of evidence that can pry it open."

Qin Ying wiped the knife, the coldness in her eyes hardening.

"In my case back then, all the checkpoint documents along the way were stamped and approved. It's impossible for a mere prefectural magistrate to be able to mobilize so many people and write off living people as dead. There were people above him."

"Investigate layer by layer."

Yang Hu took her hand and said, "It's the same when you see a doctor! If the root of the disease is too deep, and you just try to cut it with a knife right away, what if you don't cut accurately and disturb it?"

First, take a good feel for the pulse, then carefully trace down the inch by inch where the problem lies. Once the pulse surface is visible, insert the needle – that's true acupuncture!

Qin Ying looked at him but didn't say anything.

She had experienced cases in the military and witnessed too many wrongful deaths in the capital. In the past, she was the only one who helped her investigate this huge case. And now, only the Duke of Zhenguo's mansion, whose eyes have closed and no one speaks a word for her anymore, remains.

Now, there is a young man who doesn't have the surname Qin and has no connection with the Duke of Lu's mansion.

I'll accompany her through this perilous path, step by step!

"Liu Ye is in the west of the city today," Yang Hu reminded her. "She was glanced at by the servants in front of the Prefectural Magistrate's mansion."

From now on, I'll keep an eye on her from a distance and never let her get close! That hand could silence people on this official road, turn a living person into a dead person, and kill Liu Ye—it couldn't be easier.

"Don't let her become another one, like that servant who drowned after handing over the cloth bag!"

The night was deeper.

The snow fell.

The Zhao family's house across the street was still lit up. In the house with the lions hanging on the gate tower in front of the prefectural governor's mansion in the west of the city, there was a hand that could silence people in death row and easily turn a living person into a dead person.

Two undercurrents, one for lust, the other for life.

They all followed this road, converging on this side under the deep darkness of night.

Yang Hu stood in the corridor, gazing towards the west of the city.

That hand that treats the official road as its backyard, military supplies as its private treasury, and writes the living as the dead, no matter how deep it hides, will always have layers of tarpaulin and hidden stakes.

Slowly, slowly revealing that wrist!

He has enough patience to wait for that day to come.