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

Under the guise of treating patients at several large houses in the west of the city, he has been increasingly recklessly traveling into the city lately.

Normally, the gates of wealthy families are rarely opened, but now they were very polite to him and pulled him into the inner courtyard to see a doctor.

When Yang Hu was treating patients, he was genuinely treating them, using the four diagnostic methods of observation, listening, questioning, and palpation, leaving no room for carelessness! But while taking the pulse, he was also silently observing every brick, tile, blade of grass, and tree in the house!

On this day, Yang Hu accepted an invitation from a very respectable mansion in the west of the city, asking him to come and treat a man named Lao Fengjun's cough.

The Wan family was quite prestigious. When they welcomed him in, they took care of the patient while also memorizing every hall, corridor, and corner of the mansion.

While examining the old lord's pulse and prescribing medicine, Yang Hu overheard the master of the Wan family speaking in hushed tones behind a screen to a man who appeared to be a steward from outside. From their conversation, the words "Prefectural Magistrate's Mansion" were mentioned several times, and the speaker's tone conveyed a mixture of flattery and indescribable fear.

Yang Hu remained expressionless, and the veins in his hands and the speed at which he wrote showed no change.

As the visiting steward left, the master of the Wan family saw him off at the gate, muttering words like "silk" and "delivery date," but his expression betrayed a deeper concern than that of a typical businessman. Taking advantage of the moment while packing his medicine chest, Yang Hu glanced at the steward's waist and noticed a darker-colored belt—not the kind worn by ordinary porters! He'd heard Scarface's men mention this type of belt before, on a shipment being sent north from outside the city.

He gradually figured out some things...

These prominent families in the west of the city have intricate connections, both overt and covert, with the Prefectural Magistrate's Mansion! During festivals, their stewards would walk around, speaking of the Prefectural Magistrate with such respect and fear, yet daring not to show the slightest disrespect... All of this could not be hidden from his eyes, honed by years spent in bed.

That evening, Scarface sent someone to tell Yang Hu to go back and check on things.

The thread he asked Scarface to keep an eye on—the pile of so-called silk that the prefectural governor's office transported out of the city every month—was, in Scarface's eyes, another layer of deception.

After leaving the city, the pile of goods wrapped in oilcloth did not head south to the silk distribution center, but instead headed north. After the porters carrying the goods arrived at an inconspicuous courtyard outside the city, they handed the goods over to other people, who then rode some packhorses north towards the border.

Yang Hu sent someone to find Liu Ye.

These past few days, Liu Ye has transformed into a country girl, carrying an empty vegetable basket, and followed the group of people changing packhorses twice. She grew up in a mountain village, and her ability to track and identify routes is something that Yang Hu's hands, which he used to treat her illness, could not do!

The first time I followed that group of people to that small courtyard outside the city, I saw them drop off their goods and leave from afar, too afraid to go any closer.

The second time, she found her way to the mound of earth behind the small courtyard, lay there for a whole afternoon, and saw with her own eyes the people in the courtyard take something out of the oilcloth, tie it up, and then tie it to the horse.

He didn't look too good when he came back.

"Those people, kidnapping goods and horses, are exactly the same as those barbarian bandits who killed my father back then!"

The main room was quiet for a while:

"besides……"

Liu Ye paused for a moment, then lowered her voice even further: "On my way back today, I felt like someone was following me. There used to be a gatekeeper at the entrance of that courtyard, but today, there were two strange men staring at passersby."

Yang Hu frowned.

Those people, who were able to secretly smuggle weapons out of the city gates, were certainly no pushovers.

Liu Ye has been checking back and forth for several days; no matter how careful she is, she will still be watched.

"You can look around from now on, but you're not allowed to go to that courtyard again," Yang Hu advised. "Those people are ruthless."

Liu Ye nodded.

Qin Ying sat under the lamp and listened until her knuckles were so tight they exposed her bones.

"The silk is fake," she said. "If it were really to be transported, with shady items hidden inside, how could a silk shop and a few porters be enough to openly display this shipment at the city gate, pass through the checkpoints, and be delivered all the way to the border? Who has the ability to manipulate the city gate checkpoints, suppress the checkpoints along the way, and provide support at the border? The money, grain, and documents of an entire prefecture... can be counted on one hand in the whole city."

She did not give her name.

It goes without saying how serious this is. When she was leading troops on a border patrol, she was ambushed and went missing. The western camp reported that she had "fought to her death." Even her grandfather, the Duke of Zhenguo, lost his life because of the same person who framed him and executed his entire family.

Over the years, she has gone from a female general commanding troops to a "ghost" who is too ashamed to even say her own surname. But everyone here knows that one end of that rope is connected to the tall prefectural governor's mansion in the city, and the other end is always connected to the outside of the pass, to the barbarians who invade every year and kill blood all over the border.

This is the same trick that the hand that wrote her as "fighting to her death" and wiped out the entire Lu family back then used!

He colluded with foreign powers, using his official position to smuggle grain and military supplies from Dacheng into the jaws of wolves beyond the Great Wall.

"That's enough for now." Yang Hu stopped Liu Ye from continuing. "If we go any further in, we'll reach the deepest part of the Prefectural Magistrate's Mansion. A few people there are actually involved in this matter, but they're just being used as a pretext. It's still unclear at the moment."

He looked at the lamps and candles.

Don't rush.

This line! The deeper you go, the more dangerous it becomes! It can silently smuggle a batch of weapons out of the city, and it can silently crush anyone who gets in its way into the mud!

Don't worry!

How could he not be anxious?

They immediately dug it all up like crazy?

This network is deeply entrenched! It occupies the entire prefectural governor's mansion and holds sway over half of the respectable people in the county. The hand behind it is hidden deeper than anyone else's!

If we rashly stab it now, not only will we fail to catch that traitorous bastard, but we'll also lose our own lives.

Investigating a case? It's like treating a patient! The problem is deep inside. If you start by stabbing someone with a knife, you either kill them or drain your own blood first.

You have to explore and investigate little by little until you surface, and then poke at its bones—one poke at a time!

Qin Ying looked up at the young man who was not yet twenty years old.

Previously, this line of events included settling scores with her entire family's blood feud!

She did it all secretly, little by little.

She had been searching for many years, but she couldn't find a single thread.

Things are different now!

Another young man surnamed Yang (not Qin) was touching her too!

Together they touched each and every mark, little by little, moving towards the direction of the hand...

Yang Hu looked out the window.

This deep courtyard in the west of the city is a bustling and noisy place for a group of respectable families during the day; but at night, a group of secret agents, covered by an oilcloth, are still slowly and steadily sending meat to the wolves beyond the pass.

The dark hand hiding deep within the prefectural governor's mansion remains as quiet and still as ever tonight!

However, as long as this line was used, every time goods were transported out of the city, it revealed more traces to Yang Hu.

On that day, he would follow these traces to find the joint of that hand, and then find the ugly face under the oilcloth and the official's body!