No matter if you are a human or an immortal, you can still farm for me after traveling through time!

Suddenly, a storm arose overnight.

A murder in the dark of night not only caught everyone by surprise, but also made Hong Yu feel an unprecedented sense of crisis, and he was extremely worried about the situation that he had finally controlled.

Your Majesty appointed him as the magistrate of Shandan County, and he was already shouldering a heavy mission. Lord Zuo Pushe also entrusted him with sorting out the three forces of mountain bandits, Hu merchants and the county government, and finding out who was using the mountain bandits as an excuse to harm Miss Lu.

The county government is not innocent.

The reason why the Hu merchants were able to occupy this place and grow stronger, and why repeated efforts to suppress the bandits were always ineffective and ended in failure, was closely related to the county government's protection and inaction.

Now there is the issue of the Hu merchants’ strike which needs to be resolved as soon as possible!

Before Hong Yu's carriage reached the street, he heard a shout from behind the carriage: "Sir! Sir, please stay!"

Qu Ning was walking behind the car. He turned around and looked at the person chasing him in surprise, and asked in confusion: "Li Sanlang, what do you want?"

Hong Yu opened the car window and said, "Sanlang, what happened?"

Li Sanlang ran to the car carefully and said, "Sir, someone was killed in our family last night."

what! !

Li Erlang asked his brother to bring the key. When he opened the door and was about to question the Ma family why they were so ungrateful, a strong smell of blood suddenly rushed into his nose.

"Don't come in! Sanlang, the master hasn't gone far yet, stop him quickly!"

Li Sanlang, who was walking at the end, also smelled the blood. Upon hearing his brother's order, he immediately turned around and chased after Lord Hong who had just left.

Behind the door is the backyard, where three members of the Ma family live in a row of back rooms. Usually, when the door is opened, little Ma will run out of the house. If little Ma is not there, old woman Ma, who rarely goes out, will also ask inside the house. But now, there is deathly silence, without any human figure or smoke coming out of the burning kang.

Li Erlang walked into the backyard cautiously, walked around the messy footprints in the yard, and slowly approached the room where the Ma family was temporarily staying.

The door was ajar, and Li Erlang called out through the door: "Old Man Ma? Little Ma?"

No one in the house answered.

Li Erlang pushed the door open with force, and the door panel hit the wall with a "bang", and the cold smell of blood instantly hit his face.

There were no partitions in the room, and everything inside could be seen at a glance.

The fire in the kang went out at some point, and everything in the room was so cold that it was almost freezing.

Two bodies, one large and one small, lay crooked on the ground. They were Old Man Ma and Little Ma. Both of them had blood holes punched in their heads. The blood on their heads had already solidified, and the blood on the ground had already frozen into ice.

Li Erlang hurried forward to check on the two men. He put his fingers on their necks and after a while he actually felt a barely perceptible pulse under their cold skin!

Miraculously, these two are still alive!!

With their chests barely rising and their breathing weak, the two men were hanging by a thread.

"Silang and Yulang, you two go along the main road and call the doctor!"

The two children who were standing at the garden gate and had not come in heard Li Erlang's call, and immediately ran away, skillfully walking along the street to the nearest clinic to ask for a doctor.

It was this shout that made Li Erlang notice movement on the kang in the corner!

As soon as he entered the room, his attention was immediately drawn to the two people on the ground, and he didn't even notice that there was another person curled up on the kang.

Li Erlang approached cautiously. The person on the kang was curled up in a quilt, sobbing.

"Maa-nai?"

The person under the quilt shrank and tried hard to squeeze into the corner.

Li Erlang reached out and tore off the quilt that was wrapped around the man.

It was indeed Old Lady Ma.

I thought she had escaped, but I didn't expect that Li Erlang underestimated the brutality of the thief.

There was blood all over Old Lady Ma's mouth, and she spat out blood as soon as she opened her mouth.

The blind old woman Ma had her tongue cut off and could no longer speak.

Li Erlang didn't care about the old woman Ma on the kang. He quickly carried the dying grandfather and grandson to the kang, heated it to make the room warmer, and then tore off strips of cloth to wrap around their wounds. Otherwise, the two would have frozen to death before the doctor arrived.

At this time, Hong Yu returned to the house again and happened to meet Li Silang and Li Yu running towards the house with an elderly doctor. Behind the three of them was a little medicine boy carrying a medicine box.

Hong Yu turned slightly to let the old doctor walk in front.

It was during this moment of passing by that Hong Yu looked at the child named Li Yu calmly.

Her watery eyes seemed larger than those of normal people, and the emotions she revealed seemed to be more than those of others. Now she was so anxious that tears were welling up in her eyes, and she kept urging the doctor to go faster.

The staggering old doctor and the little medicine boy carrying a heavy medicine box were running as fast as they could, and they all hurried to the backyard.

No one expected that there would be two cases overnight.

What an amazing coincidence.

The officers were guarding the door and no outsiders were allowed to enter.

When Hong Yu entered the room where the crime occurred, the old doctor and the little medicine boy had already begun treating the injured, but the two people lying on the bed were so badly injured that it was unclear whether they could be saved.

Li Erlang stood aside with his hands behind his back, looking serious. He had looked inside the room and from the furnishings inside, it was not difficult to guess the identity of the murderer.

"Erlang, how did you find out they were murdered?" After looking around the room, Hong Yu asked Li Erlang about how he discovered the case.

Li Erlang described in detail what he had discovered in the morning. After hearing this, Hong Yu immediately ordered his subordinate Qu Ning to take people to the garden to check.

"Do you have any suspicions?"

"Yes." Li Erlang turned and looked at the three people from the Ma family lying on the kang. At this time, the doctor was about to check the wound in the mouth of Old Mrs. Ma, but the old woman was seriously frightened and could not see the situation in the room, so she refused to let the doctor treat her no matter what.

"I suspect that the person who hurt people is Mr. Ma's adopted son."

When the old woman Ma on the kang heard the key words, she trembled like a sieve, struggled and vomited blood.

"Grandma Ma, now Old Man Ma and Little Ma are seriously injured. I don't know if they can wake up. If you want to avenge them, you should cooperate with the treatment."

After hearing this, Mrs. Ma calmed down and seemed to be thinking. Then she pointed to her eyes and mouth, made a "write" gesture, and spread out her hands.

Li Erlang: "It doesn't matter if you can't see, speak or read, as long as you can hear. Just shake your head and nod when I ask you."

Old Mrs. Ma insisted on refusing the doctor's treatment and pointed at Li Erlang and asked him to question him first.

Li Erlang looked at Hong Yu, and Hong Yu raised his hand to signal him to continue.

"Grandma Ma, let me ask you, was it your adopted son who hurt the person?"

Old lady Ma shook her head.

"So... is he using his status as your adopted son to get close to you and using that as an excuse to get close to this house?"

Old lady Ma nodded.

"Do you know his identity?"

No.

Since we don’t know, the information left at the dental clinic is likely to be false.

"Did you ever see him while you were on duty here?"

No.

He was not a former servant of this house, but came after the tax collector moved out.

Li Erlang asked a few more questions, and now Hong Yu understood what had happened.

After Zhou Lanjian was transferred to Jiangnan, he took a group of his men with him, including the original owner of this house. Before the tax officer left, he handed the house over to the broker to sell, on the condition that the servants left behind could not be sold. The person who agreed to the conditions to buy the house must be kind, and it was expected that the three Ma family members would be left behind. As long as the three Ma family members were there, that person could find an excuse to approach the house at any time.

It is most difficult to distinguish the true and the false when they are mixed together. In this way, the thief using a fake identity took advantage of the three people from the Ma family and kept monitoring the house. For some reason, the thief had to take the risk to enter the house when Li Erlang left.

What Li Erlang couldn't understand was that he had been away for half a year when he went to Jiangnan. During that time, the man had countless opportunities to sneak into the house quietly. Why did he wait until he came back before taking action? What was the reason that forced him to do this?

"You mean, the previous owner of this house was a tax collector under Lord Zhou?" Hong Yu pondered, as if he had thought of something: "Erlang, did you do anything in the garden after you came back?"

This woke Li Erlang up. Because of an idea that Ji Qingyue was thinking about, he spent a whole day cleaning up the garden, which alerted the thieves.

This means that thieves care a lot about gardens.

Because Ji Qingyue did not allow the three members of the Ma family to enter the front yard and the garden, the thieves could not find out what they did every day. Before, Xiao Ma had always been particularly concerned about their plan to renovate the house. He either asked about the purpose of buying bricks or inquired about tiles. I didn't take it seriously at the time, but now I suddenly realized that he had ulterior motives.

The thief didn't know that those bricks and tiles were for Ji Qingyue to build a new house. When he saw that they bought so many building materials, he thought they were going to remodel the house. The thief was already alert at that time, but later when Li Erlang was tidying up the garden, he completely lost his patience and decided to find an opportunity to risk breaking in.

Unexpectedly, something so coincidental happened that night.

What's in the garden?

Li Erlang looked at Hong Yu, and Hong Yu also sorted out his thoughts and motioned Li Erlang to go out with him.

Mrs. Ma said that she would not see a doctor until the two of them were safe. Li Erlang saw her like this and said nothing more. He turned around and followed Hong Yu out.

Wherever Li Erlang went, his three brothers followed him. Seeing this, Hong Yu said nothing. He came to the garden and looked at the desolate scenery. He asked, "Have you heard about the Hu merchants' strike recently?"

"Yes, the Hu merchants went on strike in order to force you to compromise." Anyone with a discerning eye could see that.

"That's right." Hong Yu sneered, "The reason why the Hu merchants are so powerful is that they are supported by the county government." The people who were harmed by the Hu merchants had no way to seek justice, which only encouraged the arrogance of the Hu merchants.

It took nearly two months just to sort out the account books of the Hu merchants. The original intention was to use the loopholes found during the audit as an excuse to rectify the Hu merchants' association. Unexpectedly, the account books submitted by the Hu merchants matched the tax items of the county government. In addition to paying taxes, the Hu merchants also paid various fees: bridge construction fees, road repair fees, well digging fees, horse purchase fees...

Build here today and repair there tomorrow, and the money added up is more than enough to build another mountain.

He is neither blind nor stupid.

The accounts are kept in order, but the work is done smartly.

These items recorded in the account book can be found after asking. Building a small wooden bridge costs 1,000 taels, tamping a section of dirt road costs 5,000 taels, digging five wells costs 10,000 taels, and buying ten horses costs 100,000 taels...

There are countless outrageous things, but it is hard to tell whether they are right or wrong.

County Magistrate Zhou Lanjian and County Assistant Magistrate Wu Shaohai were certainly not innocent. He questioned Wu Shaohai, and at first their County Assistant Assistant Magistrate was still quibbling. When he slapped the account book on Wu Shaohai's face, Wu Shaohai hesitantly explained: "Sir, I don't know how much Lord Zhou got, or who else got it. Lord Zhou never said..."

This kind of thing happens a lot in official circles.

Wu Shaohai didn't say anything because he didn't have any definite evidence.

Those who have been in the officialdom for a long time are all shrewd people. Holding each other's handles is a means to stabilize social relationships. As long as there are financial transactions, an account will be kept, which is nothing more than a secret account.

He had been looking for this secret account book for a long time, and even sent people to Jiangnan to investigate. Unexpectedly, Zhou Lanjian played a risky move: the darkest place is under the lamp.

He bet that there must be something important hidden in the garden.

"Qu Ning!" Hong Yu called his men and asked him what he found in the garden.

"Your Excellency, I'm afraid I need to confirm with Master Li to understand the details." Because Master Li had just tidied up the garden, there were many fresh traces, so it was difficult to tell which were the traces left by the thieves.

So Li Erlang personally took Hong Yu to point out the footprints left by the thieves.

"He didn't do anything?" At such a critical moment and with such a rare opportunity, he didn't take away the things hidden here?

Don't want to or can't?

One subjective and the other objective.

Li Erlang already had the answer. He pointed to the pond and said, "I'm afraid what you want is in this water."

That’s right! It’s not that the thief didn’t want to take it, but that he couldn’t take it!

In such weather, the water in the pool had already frozen solid. Although the water was not deep, it was at least two feet thick. After being frozen for so long, the ice on the surface of the water was about four or five inches thick. It was okay for people to walk, but it would be very difficult to break it open.

Hong Yu immediately ordered to chisel the ice to search for the item!

Professional ice cutters used ice axes to break the ice surface, then used saws to cut the ice layer, took out ice cubes one by one, and piled them on the open space in the garden. A team of people scooped out the water in the pool with buckets, and finally went into the pool to search.

After searching the entire bottom of the pond and finding nothing in the soil, Hong Yu ordered his men to dig three feet deep into the ground, not only to find what he wanted but also to find it as soon as possible!

The officers searched without stopping, and on the third day, the digging officers finally dug up something unusual, a bag wrapped in wax oilcloth.

"Sir! I found it!"

Li Erlang couldn't help sweating as he looked at the messy garden. If he couldn't find it, the pond would be dug through. Ji Qingyue would be so angry that he would die when he saw it.

Because there was always someone in the house, Ji Qingyue couldn't come out, so he could only stay in the painting and pretend that he hadn't come back yet.

Now we have finally found it, and the bottom of the pool has been dug one foot deeper.

Hong Yu took the thing handed over by the officer and was overjoyed after checking it. It seemed to be what he wanted!

He couldn't wait to go back to the county government office to check: "In order to find this thing, I have no choice but to mess up Ji Langjun's garden like this. Le Fei will watch them restore the bottom of the pond to its original state. I hope Erlang will convey my apologies to Ji Langjun on my behalf."

Li Erlang felt satisfied and did not ask any more questions. He watched the county magistrate leave with the things he had found.

Fortunately, they found the things, but unfortunately, the little horse and the old man Ma could not be saved and stopped breathing the next day. When the old woman Ma found out, she did not cry, but found Li Erlang and asked him to find someone to send them home. She wanted to take her husband and grandson back and bury them in the land of her hometown.

Li Erlang didn't say anything after hearing this. He asked Hong Yu to introduce two people, paid a little more for the fare, and rented a carriage to take the three generations of grandparents and grandchildren away.

The backyard was completely empty, so Li Erlang decided to seal it off and never open it again. He also warned himself to be extra careful when buying a house in the future, not to do unnecessary good deeds, not to be greedy for small profits, and to avoid things like today from happening again.

The pool was restored to its original state. After the outsiders left, Ji Qingyue could finally come out of the painting. Looking at the sloppy garden, he was speechless for a moment. How could a good house hide stolen goods?

Now, less than seven days away from the New Year, the county is not filled with joy, but is becoming increasingly turbulent. The impact of the Hu merchants' strike seems to have finally become unstoppable, arousing more and more dissatisfaction. The Hu people who have no work gather together to make trouble all day long, not only harassing normal shops, but also blocking the caravans from entering and leaving the city gates. People are complaining and talking endlessly. For this reason, the academy had to start the winter vacation early to prevent students from getting into trouble on their way to and from school.

After the chaos that night, not only did the perpetrators disappear, but the guards also disappeared.

Although Li Erlang did not say it explicitly, Li Yu had already guessed that this matter was related to him. He stayed at home during the day and dared not go out. He was depressed and tossed and turned at night and could not sleep. Ji Qingyue, who knew some of the inside story, felt helpless but unable to comfort him. He could only make him some delicious food to cheer him up.

Just when everyone thought that this year would be another year of turmoil, Father Li arrived with his entire family!

A donkey cart was full of people, and everyone was wearing thick cotton robes, so they were not cold at all.

As soon as Li Erlang opened the door, he saw his family. He was so happy that he didn't know what to do and quickly led them in.

It was the first time for Grandma Li and her friends to visit Ji Qingyue's new house. It was so big! The doors, tiles, and bricks were all new!

"Grandma, why are you here at this time? This morning we were hoping that dad would come pick us up earlier!"

When the family was happy, Father Li talked about the reason for going to the county at this time.

The county magistrate is going to try the case between Fengzu Trading Company and Hushang Chamber of Commerce! !

The police came down yesterday with an order that the Lord would open the court to try the case, and Father Li, as the party involved and the main representative, had to come forward.

Even if Uncle Li came alone, it would be better for everyone to come together since they still need to buy New Year's goods.

Ji Qingyue was very happy that he could use up the stock, so he quickly took out baskets of vegetables and said that he could eat as much as he wanted, and there were many rooms in the house so they could all fit in.