Hu Lai instantly became alert and looked at Xie Chengze with a wary look, "Master! Using family members to threaten others is what a villain does!"

Xie Chengze was stunned for a moment, then looked at Hu Lai with a subtle look.

I don't know who it is, but in the original book he likes to threaten people with their families.

Knowing what kind of person he is, Hu Lai said righteously, "I am indeed a villain, but you are a master. You must not use such vulgar and lowly means."

"Your Excellency is a benevolent and charitable person." Hu Lai boasted in a serious manner, "You are a role model for people all over the world to emulate."

"Flattery doesn't work on me." Xie Chengze speechlessly pushed away the flattering face that came towards him, and then whispered in his ear, "Then I'll lend you my wife, and then..."

After a devilish whisper, Hu Lai looked up at Xie Chengze in shock, confirming that he was not joking.

"Sir..." Hu Lai reached out and touched his mustache, "You are so bad."

Xie Chengze also reached out and touched his non-existent beard, agreeing, "I think so too. I'm a bad guy."

Sometimes he felt a bit like an evil missionary leader.

As the caravan carriage gradually approached Jizhou, Wuhen Wuzhi also caught up.

"There was a huge uproar in the palace." Wu Ji told Xie Chengze what happened that day.

After Emperor Jian's funeral that day, he and Wuhen were sent by Shen Yuan to Taiji Hall to look for Xie Chengze, and then they met the secret guards set up by the prince. The two sides fought, and when they arrived at the cabinet of Taiji Hall, they only saw the unconscious guards and the empty room.

When Xie Jinyu learned that the person was missing, he angrily went to Shen Yuan to demand the person back. He almost turned the palace upside down, ordered the city to be closed, and sent the imperial guards to check house to house under the pretext of "arresting escaped death row prisoners", causing quite a commotion.

Wuhen returned to Chenghuan Palace without a trace. The next day, he received the letter from a retainer who had returned from outside the capital, and rushed to Jizhou without stopping.

"The prince sent people to follow us secretly, but they have been dealt with." Wuhen followed.

"Then..." Xie Chengze hesitated to speak.

"Don't worry, sir. We didn't kill anyone." Wu Ji smiled and said, "They were all knocked unconscious. We were very well behaved."

Xie Chengze nodded then. They were all workers who had no choice but to do this, so there was no need to kill them.

He told them the next plan, "We will go to Zhuolu County, pick up Zhu Xiaobiao, and then go to Pingcheng."

Before the palace coup, Xie Chengze sent Zhu Xiaobiao and his concubines back to Zhulu County. As for Jing Ze, Bian Yangchun and others, they were staying in the Shen family. They had previously fled Beijing with the Shen family and have now returned to Beijing, waiting for the results of the palace examination to come out.

Speaking of Zhulu County, Wuji pulled out a letter from his shirt, "Before leaving Beijing, Wuhen and I went to the post station to take a look, and there was a letter from you."

Most of the letters sent to Xie Chengze from other places involve confidential information. In order to prevent leakage, these letters will not be sent to the palace. Instead, Wuhen and Wuji will go to the post station every three days to confirm whether there are any letters delivered.

They will be away from the capital for more than a few months this time, so Wuhenwuji naturally has to clean up the mess and let the insider at the post station contact the Shen Mansion, and Shen Yuan will arrange someone to take over.

Xie Chengze opened the letter and found that it was sent from Zhulu County. After seeing the content inside, his face instantly darkened and his emotions became unpredictable.

A pair of beautiful dark eyes contained a rare seriousness. He stared at the words on the letter and knocked on the wooden edge of the car window with his fingertips, sometimes lightly and sometimes heavily. After a long time, he turned around and wanted to ask Shen Yuan some questions, but found that there was no figure of that person in the huge carriage.

For a moment, I felt a little empty inside, and a faint sense of insecurity spread.

The only person who knew about his past life and could tell him the details was Shen Yuan.

Xie Chengze suppressed the empty feeling in his heart and handed the letter in his hand to Hu Lai.

Hu Lai glanced away quickly and then touched his chin. He was not sure what Xie Chengze meant.

The letter said, "Recently, many carriages have frequently entered and exited the back door of the county government office. Among the gentry, a kind of exquisite aromatherapy has become popular."

The handwriting on the letter was crooked, as if it was newly learned, and it smelled like rouge if you smelled it carefully.

Hu Lai asked in detail, "Sir, are you interested in this top-quality aromatherapy? And do you suspect that this aromatherapy may have come from the county government? Do you think the county government is using aromatherapy to make money? And do you plan to go to the county government to make more money?"

He had inquired and found out that Zhu Xiaobiao was originally the son of the magistrate of Zhuolu County, and had helped His Highness make a considerable sum of money to purchase disaster relief grain to aid Yizhou.

This trip to Pingcheng would probably cost a lot of money, and going to Zhuolu County to score a second goal would be like the style of the Second Prince.

Xie Chengze glanced at him and said nothing. Just when Hu Lai was thinking again, he suddenly said calmly, "You know, Xiao Biao was drugged by his stepmother at home. The drug is addictive. Once you quit, you will be worse off than death."

Hu Lai was shocked. He had traveled far and wide, so how could he not have heard of this kind of addictive drug? But he did not expect that Zhu Xiaobiao had suffered such a pain and even got rid of this addiction.

But what does this have to do with this letter...

"Sir, do you suspect that County Magistrate Zhu is using this drug to make incense to control the gentry of Zhuolu County?" Hu Lai frowned and said, "But this drug is obviously harmful, why would those gentry be willing to use it all the time? The word 'rise' here is a bit clever, it makes it sound like this incense is a good thing."

Xie Chengze lifted the car curtain with a restrained expression, looking at the Jizhou city in the distance, and said in a thin but meaningful voice, "Perhaps, this medicine has been improved to make people addicted to the beauty and unable to stop."

He thought secretly that the long line he had casually let out when passing by here a year ago actually caught a fat fish.

I just don’t know, who is this fish?

-

After entering the city, Xie Chengze did not go to Zhu Xiaobiao's temporary residence. Instead, he wore plain clothes and a veiled hat, walked into an alley in a low-key manner, and knocked on the door of a simple courtyard.

The person who opened the door was a young woman. If Zhu Xiaobiao were here, he would definitely recognize her as one of the concubines who had not gone to Yizhou with him.

This person's name is Fang Qian. In the original novel, she was the leader of the dancers performing at the Qionglin Banquet and one of the masterminds of the assassination that she and Jing Ze had planned for six years.

Before leaving Zhuolu County, Zhu Xiaobiao's concubines were divided into two groups. One group was the concubines who stepped forward and followed Zhu Xiaobiao to Yizhou, and the other group was protected by the prince's guards and left the county government office, temporarily staying in Zhulu County waiting for Zhu Xiaobiao to return.

On the night when he was conspiring with Zhu Xiaobiao, Xie Chengze found Fang Qian in advance and gave her a task.

"The poppies planted in the backyard of the county government office are something that can harm Jian'an and the people. You stay in Zhuolu County and keep an eye on the county government office. If there are strangers coming in and out of the county government office one day, or if the rich people in Zhuolu County suddenly want something that needs to be burned before it can be used, send a letter to the post station in the capital immediately."

Originally, when Xie Chengze, who had a strong anti-drug awareness, discovered poppies and corn poppies planted in the backyard of the county government office, he wanted to destroy all the flowers. But after thinking carefully, he felt that doing so would be too conspicuous. If someone with ulterior motives noticed it, they would most likely plant them somewhere else.

It is better to keep it under your nose to prevent the other party from using it to do evil in the future.

Maybe, that is to say, what if, what if, someone has ulterior motives and uses these things to make addictive opium in an attempt to shake the foundation of Jian'an...

So Xie Chengze only laid this line just in case, but he actually thought that this kind of thing would not happen, after all, there was no such plot in the original novel.

Who would have thought that the blind cat would really catch a dead mouse.