I bring bad luck to my husband, you bring bad luck to your wife.

After seeing Uncle Chen off, Yang Tongchuan returned to the house and opened the purse.

It turned out to be a fifty-tael silver note.

broken,

Yang Tongchuan was startled. Normally, such inquiries would cost at most ten or twenty taels of silver.

Now that Uncle Chen has just thrown out fifty taels, there must be something shady going on in this warehouse.

Yang Tongchuan had something on his mind and couldn't sleep well, so he got up early the next day.

"Why so early? Why don't you sleep a little longer?" Xiangxi was a light sleeper, and he woke up as soon as Yang Tongchuan moved.

"There's a lot going on at the yamen these days, so I'll head over early and won't be home for breakfast. Tell your mother." Yang Tongchuan coaxed Xiangxi to sleep a little longer while it was cool.

"Okay." After saying that, Xiangxi fell asleep again.

Xiangxi no longer needs to get up to help Yang Tongchuan get dressed.

Yang Tongchuan was willing to spoil Xiangxi.

Those hands, once dry and calloused from hard work, no longer need to do any rough work.

On his way to the yamen, Yang Tongchuan bought a lot of food.

They went straight to the interrogation cell; all the people arrested from the dock last night were locked up there.

The gatekeeper was dozing off.

"Brother? Get up, time for breakfast." Yang Tongchuan laid out a table of food, the aroma instantly whetting our appetites.

"Oh, Brother Yang is here. He even brought food, thank you so much." The interrogator was familiar with Yang Tongchuan and, being younger than him, politely addressed him as Brother Yang.

"It's been a whole night, how's the interrogation going?" Yang Tongchuan asked casually.

"We tortured them once, but didn't get anything useful out of them. These people don't seem to be pretending to be confused; they probably really don't know about the fake painting." The prison guard pointed casually, and Yang Tongchuan looked at the several people in the cell covered in blood. Among them were a few people that Uncle Chen had specifically asked to take care of last night.

"Did they search the warehouse?"

"Officer Wang already led men to search the place yesterday." The interrogator looked around to make sure no one else was watching, then leaned close to Yang Tongchuan's ear and whispered.

"Last night when I was on night duty, I saw Constable Wang pull a cart full of things back from the dock warehouse and take it home to our county magistrate."

"What is it?"

"I dared not look, I just felt it was quite heavy, and the tire tracks were particularly deep." The jailer took a bite of the flatbread and swallowed it with his tea.

The two chatted about other things for a few more minutes.

Seeing that the time was right, Yang Tongchuan took the opportunity to put fifteen taels of silver into the jailer's hand.

"This is the foreman at the dock, treating the brothers to drinks. Since he doesn't seem to have much to do with these workers, I hope you brothers will go easy on him and stop torturing him."

"Alright, alright, my brother Yang said so, it'll definitely work." The jailer put the money into his pocket.

This kind of thing is all too common in prison.

Or rather, the jailer had already guessed what Yang Tongchuan was there for from the moment he ran to the dungeon early in the morning.

As the two were talking, someone came to call Yang Tongchuan from outside.

"What is it?"

"Brother Yang, is Chief Constable Wang calling for you?"

"Coming right away."

Yang Tongchuan left the prison and went to Constable Wang's place.

It turned out that after failing to find any useful information at the dock yesterday, Constable Wang changed his approach and summoned all the vendors near the dock this morning.

Although Xiang Qiang had moved away from the dock before the incident, the case was special, and Xiang Qiang was on the list of those summoned.

"Don't overthink it. It's just a formality with your brother-in-law. It's nothing serious." Chief Constable Wang showed Yang Tongchuan the list of people to be interrogated.

"Officer Wang is acting according to the rules, and my brother-in-law should cooperate. I have no objection," Yang Tongchuan said with a smile.

"Your wife is heavily pregnant now, I'm afraid I'll scare her and you'll blame me," Officer Wang joked.

"No, no, he's a sensible person."

"Alright, all the vendors will be here soon. Don't go out today. Take some people and go through them to see if you can find any useful information. I'm going to take a nap. I'm exhausted these past two days."

"Okay, I'll take care of it right away."

Yang Tongchuan came out of the house, looked at the list in his hand, found a colleague and tidied up several large rooms, planning to ask questions separately later.

Xiang Qiang was a little nervous when he was taken to the yamen, thinking that he had gotten into trouble.

Fortunately, seeing Yang Tongchuan in front of him, he was no longer afraid.

After asking a few questions as usual, Yang Tongchuan and his men released Xiang Qiang.

After a full day of interrogation, Yang Tongchuan actually managed to find something.

There was a middleman at the dock who specialized in buying defective goods.

On the surface, he sets up a tea stall at the dock every day to sell tea.

In reality, he mainly makes money by collecting leftover stock and defective products.

During dockworks, he would accept any tea leaves that had been accidentally soaked in water, cloths that had been stained, and anything else that was worthless and defective.

During the interrogation, Yang Tongchuan noticed that this person's eyes darted around and he trembled when he spoke, so he knew that there was something wrong with him.

They handed him over to the jailer.

After a night, they successfully extracted the contents from his mouth.

On the last night of every month, the middleman would go to that haystack to take things.

Once you take it, someone will come to pick it up the next day.

The people who came to collect the items were different each time, and they didn't give him money; they always bartered.

Sometimes we would leave him some fine furs, and sometimes some jewelry.

Last time he went to the haystack to get something, but he didn't get it. The next day he told the person who came to get the thing about it.

After thinking for a moment, the person who took the item told him that he didn't need to go there anymore, and left him a nice agate bracelet before leaving.

He had never met Zhao Tongsheng before, nor did he know that he had gotten involved in such a forgery case.

"Why are all the contacts single-line?" The more they investigated the case, the more complicated it became, and Chief Constable Wang was at his wit's end.

"To be able to set up such a large operation, we might have stumbled upon a major case this time." After hearing his subordinate's report, Chief Constable Wang hurriedly went to discuss the matter with the county magistrate.

Not long after, the state government sent people to take over the case and prepared to take Zhao Tongsheng and the middleman away.

They also investigated all the scholars in the county who were known by name. They found a few suspicious ones and arrested them for interrogation.

During that period, people in the county were filled with anxiety.

Yang Tongchuan lived in the yamen day and night, waiting for the orders of these people from the prefecture.

In such situations, ordinary people can only say that they don't seek merit, but only to avoid mistakes.

Fortunately, even after all the suspects were taken away, the higher-ups didn't make things difficult for the officers who had done the work; they even gave them a few words of verbal praise.

Yang Tongchuan didn't hear about the case again until six months later.

It was simply that the people from the prefecture government followed this lead and dismantled a gang that was selling counterfeit goods and deceiving people in Kyoto.

The officials involved in the case were all commended.

Those honors, however, had nothing to do with a mere constable in this small county town.

Yang Tongchuan didn't care about any of that. He wasn't some kind of detective; he was just someone who got paid and had a job.

Now he is more concerned about how to take good care of his lover so that the child can be born safely.

Oh, and what kind of shady stuff is in that warehouse?

Yang Tongchuan guessed that it was either smuggled goods or contraband, and it was all related to money.

It's better to avoid trouble. The county magistrate's path to wealth is not something a nobody like him can stop.