Gu Moran sneered inwardly.
The system had already rewarded him with medical knowledge, and the Eye of Detection further corroborated this.
Absolutely foolproof.
The lobby was deathly silent.
The color drained completely from Zhao Wuxu's face; he finally realized how foolish he had been.
Gan Lingmu's fingers gripped the fabric of his thigh, forcing himself to remain calm.
The scheme has been exposed!
This Prince Yi is truly wicked!
Fortunately, he didn't show up directly; the person was hired from out of state at a high price, so the trail couldn't be traced back to him.
As long as you distance yourself from the situation, at most you've been misled.
He was about to back away.
" The Great Yan Law, Volume Three." Gu Moran's voice didn't stop. He walked to the desk and looked at Si Renyou at the head of the table.
"False accusation is a serious crime. If it involves the defense of the city or the spread of disease, the sentence should be immediate execution and the extermination of three generations of the offender's family."
Upon hearing the words "extermination of three generations," the woman let out a piercing cry.
The guards outside the hall exchanged glances and took a half-step back.
"My lord! Your Highness! It has nothing to do with me!"
The woman scrambled towards Gu Moran's feet, but before she could even touch the edge of the cloak, Xue Huan stepped on her shoulder and pinned her firmly to the ground.
"He's a stranger!" the woman screamed frantically, her eyes almost bulging out.
"Three days ago, my husband got beaten to death while fighting with some hooligans over territory. I was worried about not having enough money for a coffin when a man with a strange accent came to my door and gave me fifty taels of silver!"
He said that as long as I insisted that the man had contracted a disease and died after receiving something from the Yellow Vests, he would give me another hundred taels of silver!
The silver is still buried under my rice jar! Please, sir, have mercy!
All cards have been revealed.
The crowd of onlookers, who had been huddled around the door crack to watch the spectacle, all gasped in shock and huddled back together, no one daring to peek inside anymore.
Gu Moran withdrew his gaze from the woman, slowly turned his head, and looked at Gan Lingmu and Zhao Wuxu.
"Outsider." Gu Moran rolled those three words on the tip of her tongue, a hint of faint mockery in them.
"The wind outside Yi Prefecture City is quite strong, and now there's a stranger here, and this woman, she even knows to drag along some of Yi Prefecture's most philanthropic people to back her up."
"Mr. Gan, why don't you guess how long it will take me to capture that man?"
At this moment, Gan Lingmu looked like a fool in Gu Moran's eyes.
Once the Eye of Detection is opened, all beings are equal.
Gan Lingmu's mind went blank.
Oh no! I should have hired assassins!
He couldn't afford to offend that person, and he certainly wouldn't dare to silence him!
Gu Moran didn't want to investigate the outsider at the moment; he just needed a pretext, a hand that could reach into the pockets of the powerful families of Yi Prefecture.
Cast a long line to catch a big fish!
Si Renyou opened his eyes at this moment and coughed heavily.
"Manager Gan, Young Master Zhao."
Si Renyou spoke slowly and deliberately, "You two are both prominent figures in Yi Prefecture. Your foolish act of trusting a treacherous commoner and being deceived almost caused chaos in the city."
"Especially Manager Gan, I heard you have a merchant's private faction? You didn't report it?"
Gan Lingmu was startled, knowing in his heart that he would have to cut his own flesh again today.
If he doesn't cut it, he won't be able to leave this governor's mansion today.
"Your Highness, Your Excellency, please understand." Gan Lingmu lifted the hem of his long robe, knelt on both knees, and bent his back in a humiliating arc.
"This humble subject... this humble subject was also thrown into disarray by this shrew's cries, fearing that the plague would destroy Yi Prefecture, and in a moment of panic, lost his composure."
As Zhao Wuxu watched Gan Lingmu kneel down, his legs trembled, and he too knelt down with a thud, not daring to lift his head.
Gu Moran looked at Gan Lingmu's kneeling back.
"Since Manager Gan is so concerned about the people of Yi Prefecture," Gu Moran's tone softened.
"The ditches and canals inside and outside Yi Prefecture City have been neglected for years, accumulating filth. Why not do this, since it's a case of misplaced good intentions?"
Gu Moran paused for a moment.
"Go back and tell the merchants you know well that each of them should donate ten thousand taels of silver to the Yi Prefecture treasury for the purpose of repairing canals and paving roads to prevent real epidemics. Consider it an act of good karma for the people of Yi Prefecture."
Ten thousand taels!
Gan Lingmu's knuckles dug into the cracks of the bluestone, and blood seeped from the edges of his fingernails—that was half a quarter's worth of clean water for the Gan Family.
Not to mention his gang members.
But he dared not hesitate.
"This humble citizen... donates." Gan Lingmu squeezed the words out from between his teeth.
An hour later, several thick stacks of silver notes fell into Fang Bi's hands from various households. Fang Bi counted them twice and nodded to Gu Moran.
"That's all." Gu Moran turned and walked towards the door, with Shen Ling'er carrying the medicine box and following behind.
As soon as I stepped out of the lobby, I heard a murmur of conversation coming from outside the door.
Some commoners whispered that the prince's methods of solving cases were probably learned from the underworld.
At dusk, in the backyard of the old prince's mansion.
The cold wind stopped, leaving a bleak, dry chill in the air.
Shen Ling'er sat at the stone table in the courtyard, with a dozen or so small white porcelain plates spread out in front of her.
The dish contained various dried grass leaves and roots.
She held a mortar and pestle in her hand, pounding it repeatedly.
The fine hairs of the mugwort leaves were ground into a fine powder, mixed with crushed chuanxiong and dried ginger, and a slightly spicy medicinal aroma slowly spread in the backyard.
After pounding a dish, she used a wooden spoon to scrape up the grayish-green fuzz, carefully put it into a small, palm-sized coarse cloth bag, and then tied the opening tightly with cotton thread.
Gu Moran with his back to her, straddling a low mahogany stool.
Place your hands on the top of the chair back.
Shen Ling'er placed the prepared medicine bag on a small iron plate and lit the bottom of it.
Then he walked behind Gu Moran and pressed the medicine bag, which was emitting faint heat, against his back through the thin inner garment.
Gu Moran's back muscles were originally very tense. The moment the medicine bag was applied, a spicy and warm sensation seeped directly into the bone crevices from the middle of his spine.
He couldn't help but let out a soft "hmm~" as he exhaled a breath of stale air, his tense shoulders slowly slumping down.
"My husband hums so beautifully, hee hee."
Shen Ling'er held the medicine bag with one hand, and with the index and middle fingers of her other hand together, she applied some force to push down along the edge of his shoulder blade.
"The governor's mansion is chilly; you've been in the main hall for half a day, and the chill seeps into your bones."
Gu Moran remained silent, letting her press down on him.
The pressure from the fingers was considerable, making him feel a little sore, yet strangely comfortable.
"The smell of that corpse in the hall today." Shen Ling'er withdrew her hand and readjusted the position of the medicine bag.
"Although the woman was making a false accusation and it wasn't the plague, I still took a look on my way back, especially in the South Market."
The sewers along the street were filled with dirty water and rotten vegetable leaves.
And those brothels, leaking everywhere on the streets.
She paused for a moment, then lowered her voice.
"It's winter now, so the smell can't dissipate. In a few months, when the temperature rises, the entire Yi Prefecture City will be a giant poisonous concoction."
"Even without anyone poisoning it, if an epidemic really breaks out, it will affect a large number of people."
Gu Moran was taken aback. Yes, how could he not have thought of that?
In this era, whether in the capital or Yi Prefecture, the concept of public health was practically nonexistent.
In wealthy households, servants would clean up night soil, dumping it in the back alley or directly pushing it outside the city to sell to farmers for compost.
Poor families would simply relieve themselves in any corner they could find.
It seems so.
The roads in Yi Prefecture not only need to be flat, but also clean.
If the streets are full of mud and excrement, it will not only be difficult to push a cart, but also a huge hazard in the summer when mosquitoes and flies breed.
A line of text appeared in Gu Moran's mind.
Build a clean and civilized city!
In that instant, he even decided on the members of the health inspection team.
Team leader: Tuoba Mang.
The members are the four young widows and three good sisters-in-law that this guy recently hooked up with.
These women all have loud voices and love to gossip.
This job is perfect for them!
[Thanks to: 45 and Rabbit for their love letters, Angel for 5 likes, Chen Qing for the update reminder, and Qianze for the milk tea and update reminder.]
And thank you everyone for your generous support!
I've been in a really bad mood these past couple of days, my mind is a complete mess. Some people complain about the lack of interaction, some complain about the slow progress, some complain about the lack of recent power increases, and even the question of whether this book has six female leads or more can cause an argument. Maybe I have a people-pleasing personality, and I'm starting to have a terrible headache. ૮₍ •́ ₃•̀₎ა.