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

After taking in Aji, the clinic became much better off.

This young man is a genuine person!

I arrived before dawn to sweep the floor, boil water, and dry the medicine...

They can do anything.

Yang Hu taught him to recognize Chinese medicine and distinguish between genuine and counterfeit products.

He memorizes quickly; after a few days, he could identify dozens of commonly used medicines by touch with his eyes closed.

The first time, he mistakenly prescribed Pinellia ternata instead of Arisaema heterophyllum.

Yang Hu didn't scold him either.

Instead, I put the two herbs together and explained to him the difference in their stems and smells.

Aji watched for a while, blushed, and remembered it.

So he never made a mistake again.

Qin Ying would come over to take a look from time to time. She had helped Liu Ye identify some herbs in the village, and now she could still say a word or two about them.

Watching the young man earnestly studying medicine, he said casually: "If the army had a few more doctors who love to think things through, so many people wouldn't have died, would they?"

Yang Hu glanced at her but ignored her.

She was thinking about the border region.

Lu Rou was in charge of accounting, while Lu Yan was in charge of dispensing medicine in the back room.

With Aji's help, we were able to get started.

When Yang Hu sees a doctor, he won't be flustered or overwhelmed.

The freed-up time was spent on other things.

In the weekly journal.

These days, he goes to see doctors, runs his clinic, and tries to curry favor with all sorts of people, meeting and talking with everyone he meets.

However, these clues are not enough to form a complete picture.

He needs to find a way to figure all these things out.

South of the city.

Just right.

That noon, I made up an excuse and went to the south of the city.

In the south of the city, unlike in the east, there was a narrow street where gambling dens, pawnshops, and porters were mixed together, and people from all walks of life came and went.

Yang Hu was dressed in coarse cloth, so he didn't stand out when mixed in with the others.

Scarface's den was located in an inconspicuous little courtyard behind the porters' quarters.

Upon hearing that Dr. Yang had arrived, Scarface personally came out to greet him.

The scar on his dark face, when stretched into a slit, even seemed to exude a certain warmth.

"Dr. Yang, what brings you here for this stinky foot carrier?"

"It's a small matter I'd like to ask Scarface about."

Yang Hu didn't beat around the bush.

The two men sat in the back courtyard, and Scarface dismissed the rest of the men.

Yang Hu then said, "I've kept the diary that Scarface mentioned in front of me in mind."

"Could Scarface tell me more about the grain store that heads north at night?"

Scarface blinked.

"You're quite concerned!"

He snorted. "What? You've gotten into a fight with them?"

"Not really, it's just that the grain store didn't feel clean."

"My wife and kids live here. It's better to check things out in the city firsthand, just to put my mind at ease."

This statement is both true and false.

Scarface believed it.

A seasoned veteran who's spent his whole life in the south of the city understands the importance of thorough investigation. For an outsider doctor with a beautiful wife, to survive here, he definitely needs to see through the tigers around him.

"You know Zhou Ji's goods are shipped north," Scarface lowered his voice, "but what you don't know is that lately, that road to the north has been rather unsafe."

"What's wrong with things?"

"A band of bandits has emerged," Scarface said. "They're based in the rocky hills north of the city, specializing in highway robbery. In the past month, they've already robbed three or four passing caravans. The caravan companies in the city are all too afraid to take on jobs north of here."

Yang Hu's heart skipped a beat.

Bandit raids were common occurrences on the border. But the bandits appeared and occupied a territory that happened to be on the road that Zhou Ji used to transport goods northward.

"Zhou Ji's car," he said casually, "also takes that route?"

"Let's go." Scarface chuckled. "But here's the strange thing. Most other caravans get robbed once they cross the rocky hills. Only Zhou's caravan has made trip after trip without ever having an accident."

Yang Hu's hand, which was holding the teacup, stopped.

While other people's goods were robbed, Zhou Ji's car remained unharmed.

This was no ordinary bandit.

"Scarface means..."

"I didn't mean anything by it." Scarface waved his hand, but his hawk-like eyes gleamed with a sharp light. "I'm just a bouncer; these things aren't my business. I'm telling you this because you saved my brother's life. Make sure your women don't leave that road to the north."

Yang Hu thanked him.

But in my heart, I had already quietly connected these lines.

Zhou Ji's grain was transported north at night. On the northern road, a band of bandits appeared, robbing other families but sparing Zhou Ji's.

These are hardly bandits.

Someone had a group of people working on that road. Robbing other people's goods was to cut off their hopes of heading north; protecting Zhou Ji's car was to ensure that their illicit cargo could be safely delivered across the border.

It goes without saying who it's for.

By the time I got home, it was already dark.

Yang Hu relayed Scarface's words to Qin Ying and Liu Ye.

Liu Ye's eyes lit up when she heard the words "Luan Shi Gang".

"I know that area well," she said. "I used to go hunting in the mountains with my brother years ago, and we often went that way. I know the terrain like the back of my hand. How about I go and scout it out?"

This is exactly what Yang Hu meant.

His face was recognizable in the city, but Qin Ying was a "dead man" and couldn't show her face. Only Liu Ye was a stranger, yet she possessed the skill to track and hide in the mountains. This scout was the only one suitable.

"Be careful," Yang Hu cautioned. "Just watch, don't do anything."

Liu Ye agreed and left the city before dawn the next day.

Yang Hu waited at home for a day and a night.

On the afternoon of the third day, Liu Ye returned. She was covered in dust, but her eyes were sharper than when she left.

"I spotted them." He sat down and took a sip of water. "Those guys were lurking on the rocky hill. I was hiding on a high hillside, watching a Zhou Ji car. As soon as the car left the hill, a whistle blew from the mountain. Not only did they not rob it, they watched it from a distance all the way until it left the hill, and then they left."

She paused for a moment.

"Those guys on the cart are the same as the group on the ridge. They're trained fighters too, all with weapons on their waists. The bundles they used to tie up the goods," her voice turned cold. "The same barbarians who killed my father back then!"

The room fell silent.

Yang Huzi looked at Qin Ying.

As Qin Ying sat under the lamplight, an even colder aura emanated from between her usually icy eyebrows.

"To be able to maintain a group of people along a single official road, blocking others while protecting their own, sending boxes of military supplies and rations out of the pass time and again." Each word, spoken slowly and deliberately, chilled the heart. "If there's even one checkpoint, checkpoint, or patrolling officer along the way that prevents communication, this business won't be able to continue for even a day!"

She raised her face.

"The person supporting this isn't just one person's grain depot or a quartermaster. They're treating the entire official road like their own backyard," she trailed off, not finishing her sentence. "The person supporting them..."

But Yang Huzi understood what that meant.

The Duke of Zhenguo's family, the military report that wrote about her martyrdom, the ambush that no one has mentioned to this day—the further you trace that line, the more likely it is to shake up half the court.

"There's no rush." ​​Yang Huzi grabbed her clenched hand. "The thread is in your hand. Take it one piece at a time, and you'll eventually get to the end."

Qin Ying looked up at her.

The slight chill under the lamp gradually thinned. She didn't speak, only nodded gently, and the hand that was tightly clenched in her palm loosened.

It was late at night.

Yang Huzi sat alone.

Weekly journal. Military supplies. That gang of "bandits" at Luanshigang. And that deepest finger, the one that treats an official road like its own backyard.

These are like an outstretched net; the more he touches a node on the net, the clearer the arm becomes.

This time, however, the exposed arm did not belong to a sneaky manager in the city, nor to a cart of grain covered with tarpaulin, but to a group of desperate criminals who dared to openly rob caravans day and night.

This group of people has the support of the barbarians from beyond the border and is fed the provisions and weapons left to them by the border troops. If we want to find that arm, sooner or later we will run into them head-on.

The people over there at Luanshigang are an unavoidable obstacle.

But what he was looking for was never the few people guarding the road, nor the hands and feet guarding the road. He was looking for the hand behind that arm.

That hand is at the very end of this road.