Start with acting, and you'll achieve immortality!

"Brother Li, if you can't come up with ten taels of silver for the iron today, this shop will have to be sold to the Bai family!"

The leader, a man with a knife, kicked away a piece of scrap metal and glanced sideways at Li Da.

"What would the Bai family want with this broken furnace? Are they going to switch to blacksmithing?"

Li Ping, with his hands tucked into his sleeves, strolled in from outside the crowd.

The burly man snorted coldly.

"Who are you, a mere clerk, to interfere in the affairs of the Bai family?"

"Last night, Manager Bai climbed over my wall, and now you're here smashing my brother's shop. Is the Bai family really that idle?"

Li Ping walked up to Li Da and nudged the blushing Li Da back.

The big man's expression changed slightly. Manager Bai's nighttime wall-climbing was a highly secretive matter. Since this kid knew about it and showed no fear, could it be that he really had something to rely on?

"Walk!"

The burly man spat on the ground and left with his men.

Li Ping patted his elder brother on the shoulder, offered a few words of comfort, and then returned to the county government office alone.

Now, all the old, accumulated documents in this office are under his jurisdiction.

He avoided the onlookers and stepped into the side storeroom where money and grain were stored.

The warehouse reeked of musty grain, and thousands of yellowed blanks were piled up in the corner.

Li Ping casually flipped through this year's money and grain records, raising an eyebrow slightly.

The amount is clearly stated: the official granary of Xiyun County should hold 87,000 shi of grain.

But as he passed by the large round granaries behind them, although they were sealed tightly with yellow mud, the smell emanating from the cracks was stale and musty.

Some of the silos even had blackened grain husks showing through.

This number is clearly incorrect.

He picked up an iron skewer, twirled it in his hand, and walked towards the most secluded wooden building.

Beneath the wooden building, a hunched old man was dozing off, leaning against an empty grain sack, clutching an old pipe.

The old man, dressed in rags and with his white hair a tangled mess, was none other than Zhou Bo, the granary clerk who had managed the official granary for thirty years.

Li Ping walked over and kicked the empty bag next to him.

"Uncle Zhou, how is the quality of this year's grain that has been stored?"

The old man shuddered, opened his cloudy eyes, and seeing that it was the new clerk Li, he quickly put on a fawning smile.

"Lord Li, this year's grains are all excellent, very plump."

"Good grains?"

Li Ping squatted down, pulled out a grain of rice husk stuck in the seam of his shoe, crushed it, and blew it away.

"To me, what's leaking out of this warehouse looks like moldy chaff from three years ago."

Uncle Zhou's face turned slightly pale, and he nearly dropped his pipe.

"You jest, sir. This is a sacred place; how dare a lowly person speak such nonsense?"

Li Ping took out a small flask of sorghum liquor from his sleeve and waved it in front of the old man's nose.

"My sister-in-law's steamed cured pork smells delicious. Uncle Zhou, if you're free, come over for a drink later."

"If there is any mishap in the official granary, I'm afraid Uncle Zhou's old bones won't be able to bear the blame for the falling grain husks."

Uncle Zhou stared at the sorghum liquor, his Adam's apple bobbing.

He had worked in this county government office his entire life and knew all too well that after Hu Guan's downfall, the county was about to undergo a major upheaval.

Although the young man before me is young, he was a classmate of Inspector Ren, and his methods are unpredictable.

"Master Li,"

Zhou Bo lowered his body and leaned closer, trembling.

"This official granary has actually been empty for five years."

"Oh? How come it's empty?"

"Most of the new grain collected each year was transported to the mountains to be exchanged for silver."

"What remained in the granary was not grain, but sand mixed with years of moldy chaff."

"Every year, the higher-ups use the next year's tax revenue to fill this hole, and as a result, the amount gets bigger every year."

"This year, County Magistrate Hu got into trouble, and the roads in the mountains are cut off. I'm afraid we won't be able to pay the county's quota for the autumn taxes this year."

Li Ping took the wine, comforted the old man for a few moments, and then turned and went back to the duty room.

He closed the door and pulled out Hu Guan's privately kept pornographic book from under the bed.

A comparison with the government's grain storage records reveals all the shady dealings.

The official records state: "In the thirteenth year of the Qianyuan era, three thousand shi of grain were lost due to rain and flooding."

Hu Guan's private record states: "In the same month, three thousand shi of grain were transported to Chenjiazhuang, and twenty grains of spirit cinnabar were obtained, which were then handed over to the county magistrate."

This is not simply embezzlement.

Chen Rang traded the life-saving food of all the mortals in Xiyun County for the spiritual sand he needed for cultivation.

The immortality of cultivators is indeed achieved by simmering the bones and flesh of mortals.

Li Ping copied down these pages of figures, omitting the key names and whereabouts, leaving only the mysteriously disappeared loss of three thousand shi (a unit of dry measure).

He carefully hid the private register again, then, holding the copied paper, slowly walked towards the back office.

Chen Rang was arranging several pots of medicinal herbs in the courtyard when he saw Li Ping enter and stopped scissors in his hand.

"Zizhi, how is your work in the document room going?"

"Thanks to the adults, I'm relatively relaxed."

Li Ping presented the paper with both hands.

"However, when I was checking the losses from the year before last, I discovered something strange."

"The year before last, floods caused a loss of three thousand bushels of grain."

"But I checked the meteorological records, and Xiyun County clearly experienced a severe drought the year before last. How could there have been flooding?"

Chen Rang paused, his hand holding the scissors still, his expression gradually turning cold.

He looked at Li Ping, all the gentleness in his eyes vanishing, replaced by a coldness.

"Zizhi, some amounts, if examined too closely, can easily strain your eyes."

Li Ping bowed, a harmless smile on his face.

"The adults are right."

"This junior is only concerned that the county may discover any discrepancies during the audit, so I have come to in advance to ask, sir, how this memorial should be written appropriately?"

Chen Rang stared at Li Ping, remaining silent for a long time.

The small piece of paper trembled gently in the wind, and the vermilion numbers "three thousand shi" on it looked exactly like dripping blood.