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

The sedan chair from the prefectural magistrate's residence arrived, carrying sweet words, but it was refused.

Yang Hu knew that those claws wouldn't stop.

But what comes after those claws?

Should we continue sending messages?

Or should we just turn against each other?

He had no idea what was going on.

These past few days, outwardly there has been no outward sign of trouble. But secretly, Liu Ye's eyes have remained fixed on that pawnshop in the south of the city—

There, the servant Liu delivered the cloth bundle; there, Claw hid in a secret agent within the city.

When Liu Ye returned that night, she looked unwell.

"Something's wrong." She sat down, her voice low. "Hengtong, nobody's been there all day."

Yang Hu put down the pulse pillow in his hand.

"Usually, that guy who sells gray coarse cloth would carry a load of secondhand goods to the west of the city every few days," Liu Ye said. "But these past two days, there's been no movement. The pawnshop was running perfectly fine, but the people inside seem to have shrunk their heads, and they've even stopped talking."

"It's broken," Yang Hu said.

"It's broken?"

"That claw cut its own thread." He tapped his finger on the table. "It felt like someone was watching it, so it simply removed the hidden stake and turned it into an ordinary pawnshop, so no one could see through its scheme."

Liu Ye frowned.

"If we take the stake, won't the line be cut off? All that monitoring we did for nothing, right?"

"It wasn't a waste of time," Yang Hu said. "The fact that it put in the effort to remove the stakes means we were watching the right direction. If it wasn't afraid, it wouldn't have moved them."

But he knew that this was too lenient.

The claws got scared and tried to cover their pot.

There are many ways to cover a pot, removing the stake is the lightest, and there is an even more ruthless one.

The next day, an even more ruthless method emerged.

Scarface went over there personally, entered their backyard house, and looked solemn.

"That servant boy you were keeping an eye on, Liu the Registrar, fell into the river and drowned last night," he said in a low voice.

The room was so quiet you could hear a pin drop.

"Drowned?"

"The moat south of the city," Scarface said, "They say he drank too much last night and accidentally fell into the water, but they pulled him out this morning."

Yang Huzi's eyebrows furrowed immediately.

That servant was the one in Liu Zhubu's household who was specifically responsible for delivering cloth bags to Hengtong; he was the first person to come into contact with things on this road.

Remove the stakes, and the object is broken.

To silence them, to cut off their lives.

"He fell into the river." His voice was also deep. "A guy who has handed me the cloth bag countless times and knows too much, actually got drunk at this great time and fell into the water himself."

"What a coincidence." Qin Ying stood by the window, wiping her dagger in her hand, her voice somewhat cold. "It's so coincidental that it seems like someone arranged it on purpose."

"Silence him," he said. "That claw was afraid of this servant's mouth. Removing the stake wasn't enough; it might as well throw the whole thing, mouth and all, into the river."

Scarface turned pale.

"How...how could such a life just be gone like that?"

"In its eyes, the life of a servant is no different from the life of removing a stake," Yang Hu said slowly. "The military supplies can be smoothed over, and the living can be made to look like martyrs. Drowning a servant who delivers a cloth bag is too easy for it."

Everyone in the room fell silent.

Liu Ye thought of that pawnshop, that servant who handed her the cloth bag, and a chill ran down her spine.

She had fought against barbarian bandits, engaging them in bayonet combat in the mountains. This ruthless cunning—the ability to silently submerge someone and do it cleanly and efficiently—is a different kind of ruthlessness in dealing with people, yet it sends chills down your spine.

"Remove the stake and silence the witnesses," Yang Hu said. "It dropped both hands at once and cut the line directly. If you follow the pawnshop down, you can't find anything else."

"Then...then this case shouldn't end here?" Liu Ye asked anxiously.

"Cutting off one end doesn't mean cutting off the entire net," Yang Hu shook his head.

He stood up and slowly paced around the room.

"They panicked when they were removing the stakes to cover their tracks, and panic creates loopholes," he said. "Think about it, that gray-cloth-wearing shop assistant would carry a load of cloth to the prefectural governor's office in the west of the city every three to five days. Along the way, there were tea stalls, inns, and street thugs guarding the city gates; surely some of them would recognize that shop assistant carrying the load?"

Qin Ying looked up:

"You mean, even though the stakes are gone, the road is still there!"

"Exactly," Yang Hu said. "We can't trace it all the way from the pawnshop. Let's find another route. We won't be checking the goods or the postmarks, but rather finding out who saw the gray-cloth deliveryman heading towards the Prefectural Magistrate's Mansion along that road. Let's trace back that route of cloth delivery bit by bit. Even if we don't reach the Prefectural Magistrate's Mansion, it's enough to prove that the road definitely leads there."

It will take some effort again. There are vendors carrying loads all over the city, and finding this person again from the fragmented memory left by the willow leaf in the crowd will be more difficult than before.

But this is the last way to reconnect after the connection is lost.

"Take it slow," Yang Hu said. "They think the line is cut off because they removed the stakes to cover their tracks, but we're going to start from where it was broken and reconnect it."

He turned to look at Liu Ye and gave her detailed instructions.

"Don't chase him from Hengtong's side. That pawnshop just closed down, and they're keeping a close watch on him now. Getting too close will only alert him," he said. "You should start from the side of the Prefectural Governor's residence and search backwards. First, find the section of road near the Prefectural Governor's residence. There's always a tea stall at the corner of the alley where the gray-clothed porter carrying his load passes before he delivers his goods to the Prefectural Governor's residence. There will be someone guarding the door and others sitting idly in the corner. Find one of the gossipy ones, give him some money, buy a cup of tea, and ask him, 'Has a gray-clothed porter carrying loads been passing by here frequently lately?'"

Willow Leaf's eyes lit up:

"We'll find our way through each tea stall and alleyway, one by one," she said. "We'll trace the route for delivering cloth back from the entrance of the Prefectural Magistrate's Mansion."

"Okay." Yang Hu nodded. "Just ask one question: 'Have you seen it?' Don't miss a single word. If you find it, write it down; if not, go to another place. Sharpening your axe won't delay your work!"

"Yes," Liu Ye replied earnestly.

After closing the clinic that evening, the family sat around the table.

Lu Yan helped him organize a pile of medicinal herbs on the table, and frowned slightly upon hearing this.

She herself came from a Duke's mansion, and she had witnessed firsthand how murder was done without bloodshed and human life was worthless in such a despicable government office.

"Young master," she said softly, "I drowned a servant boy with my bare hands. If I can drown a servant boy, then I can..."

She couldn't bring herself to say it.

But everyone understands.

The servant was killed to silence him, and everyone else was silenced. The deeper this lead is investigated, the more dangerous it becomes for those who are following it.

"I know." Yang Hu picked up a cup of tea. "That's why we need to be extra careful with this. Liu Ye, just observe from afar, don't take any action. I've also instructed Scarface's informants to just gather information and not make any moves."

He looked out the window.

"A servant boy who threw away a cloth bag died in the river, and few people in the city would give him a second glance. But this one life precisely illustrates that what he was carrying was even more shady than we imagined."

Qin Ying tightened her grip on the knife.

"Back then, in my case," she said in a low voice, "there were far more than just a servant boy who died on the road."

She lowered her head, and her originally fierce eyes dimmed slightly.

Over the years, that hand has silenced far too many mouths in order to cover up so many lids. She dared not think about it.

"We can find it." Yang Hu looked at her, his voice low. "The more it tries to silence people, the more afraid it is. The more people die, the bigger the thing under its cover becomes. Layer by layer, we'll definitely find it."

Qin Ying looked up at her.

Under the lamplight, the relentless chill gradually dissipated.

"I'll give you that injection." Her voice was very low.

As night deepened, the smell from the medicine cabinet permeated the entire house.

Yang Hu looked out the window at the old tree that was being rustled loudly by the night wind.

Hengtong's stake was removed, and the servant who threw the cloth bag was dead. That hand felt that if it pinched just like that, the section of the wrist covered by the prefectural magistrate's mansion would never be exposed again.

But it didn't know that with each piece it cut off, Yang Hu felt it became more believable—hidden inside that lid was a shocking, deadly deal between humans and ghosts!

This city's hands are so ruthless that even a servant carrying a cloth bag can throw it into the river. The more unscrupulous it is, the more it proves its fear.

Yang Hu picked up the cup of tea, which had long since gone cold, and took a sip.

He would pick up the wire from where it broke.

When the stake was gone, he followed the delivery route and felt his way down.

He reconnected the wire from the broken spot.

This time, he tried a different approach, having Liu Ye keep an eye on the delivery route to see which house the man carrying the goods on his shoulder pole would deliver the goods wrapped in oilcloth to.