Chapter 197: It's About Time

"Lord Shen might as well take a look; all the evidence of what the Feng Family has done over these years is right here!"

After unfastening his outer garment and tearing off his inner lining to toss it over, Li Zehai's inner lining was caught in Shen Yu's hand.

Only by examining the inner lining closely did Shen Yu notice the dense, tiny characters upon it.

The handwriting was extremely small, almost indistinguishable to the naked eye; these characters were hidden within the stitches, making them difficult for an ordinary person to discern.

If not for his Super Perception, he might have needed a magnifying tool to make them out clearly.

If this micro-carving craftsmanship merely made him marvel, then the various matters recorded upon it left him feeling shocked.

"Is everything written here true?"

"Does Lord Shen think I would lie to you? The matters above can be verified with a single check; they are absolutely not fake!"

"Indeed, they are certainly not fake. How dare the Feng Family be so bold!" A flash of killing intent passed through his eyes; in Shen Yu's impression, the Anzhou City Feng Family was a top-tier prestigious clan.

Moreover, the Feng Family was the largest medical family in Xichuan, on par with the Xichuan Hua Family. The Xichuan Feng Family and the Xichuan Hua Family were collectively known as the Xichuan Medicine and Poison Families.

In terms of overall strength, the Hua Family held the upper hand because they possessed countless experts, and their techniques in poison and Mechanism and hidden weapons were peerless, making people pale at the mere mention of them.

Although the Feng Family's strength was slightly weaker, their reputation was not low at all, and perhaps even greater. This was because the Feng Family's medicine was renowned, and they introduced new products almost every year.

Although the efficacy might be slightly inferior to the medicinal pills produced by sects like Medicine King Valley, they had the advantage of being mass-producible and lower in price.

The medicine prepared by sects like Medicine King Valley had exceptionally strong effects, but the unit price was too high, far beyond what an ordinary family could afford. For those with low unit prices, the efficacy might be somewhat unsatisfactory.

The reason the Feng Family was world-renowned was that their medicine was not only cheap but also quite effective, almost monopolizing nearly half of the market in the entire Imperial Court.

It could be said that the Feng Family passed down both medicine and martial arts, saving countless people every year and being revered by others.

Previously, whether in the intelligence reports of the Black-Clad Guard or in rumors within the jianghu, the Feng Family was always a charitable and benevolent hereditary family.

As a top-tier wealthy clan, they had always been humble and polite, never acting superior even toward the most ordinary people.

In their daily lives, they gave medicine to the poor and helped those in distress. As for the Feng Family's land rent and house rent, they were also among the lowest in Xichuan.

It could be said that in the reputation inside and outside Xichuan, the Feng Family was considered excellent; such an existence was truly rare.

Shen Yu had just felt that Li Zehai's encounter should merely be the fault of one person in the Feng Family, and one could not generalize.

After all, the entire Feng Family was very large; even with strict family discipline, it was understandable to occasionally have one or two playboy descendants.

But now it seemed that if everything written here was true, then the Feng Family had disguised themselves too well over these years.

According to the evidence Li Zehai brought out, most of the Feng Family's medicine was not their own, but had been forcibly seized over the years by killing people to steal their prescriptions.

The Feng Family's eyes and ears were everywhere; whenever an effective secret recipe or folk remedy appeared anywhere, they would try every possible means to obtain it.

The most common method was to manufacture accidents and then kill everyone to silence them—killing the entire family—so that these medicines would remain unknown to outsiders, and then they would rebrand these prescriptions as their own.

Besides this, they even used people to test medicine; the number of those who died from medicine testing every year was countless. Just the number Li Zehai had found was no less than a thousand, and those not found were beyond counting.

It could be said that the massive wealth of gold and silver the Feng Family obtained from their daily medicine sales was all piled up on countless white bones.

Besides this, they even turned living people into controllable Living Dead; the entire process was extremely painful.

These specially processed Living Dead had no consciousness and no emotions; they only knew how to obey orders and kill, making them the best weapons and Huwe.

Of course, the things the Feng Family did did not stop there; other things like using poison to control mountain bandits to rob and plunder were just child's play.

The most insane part was that the Feng Family not only made medicine but also made poison. They were single-mindedly trying to replace the Hua Family's position and dominate the entire Xichuan.

In terms of Mechanism and hidden weapons, they were far behind, but in terms of making and using poison, they could certainly give it a try.

For this reason, the Feng Family invested a large amount of manpower and resources every year, and after the poison was made, they usually used people to test it.

They used not only jianghu experts but also ordinary commoners. According to Li Zehai's evidence, there was a period before when a plague suddenly broke out in Xichuan, and usually, an entire village would die without a single survivor.

And that was the Feng Family testing poison, only it was cleverly covered up in the end. Because the physicians sent by the government to investigate were also people from the Feng Family.

Later, the plague disappeared, and these matters were left unsettled, with no one mentioning them again.

A Governor like He Yuan did not care about these matters at all; let alone the plague disappearing, even if it hadn't, as long as it didn't fall on his side, he would absolutely not be anxious.

On the surface, the Feng Family looked down on people like He Yuan, but in reality, they wished he would be Governor for a few more years; such a person was easy to fool.

He Yuan and his ilk spent their days eating, drinking, and playing, acting like tyrants, making Xichuan a mess with refugees everywhere and corpses littering the fields.

In this way, their Feng Family didn't have to be restrained when testing medicine and poison, and they didn't have to fear being found out.

It is quite possible that the Feng Family was fanning the flames behind Xichuan being this chaotic.

It can be said that the Feng Family's daily conduct was simply outrageous.

Holding the inner lining in his hand, Shen Yu said indifferently, "If your evidence is all true, then the Feng Family must be destroyed!"

"Thank you, Lord, cough, cough!" Fresh blood was already flowing from his mouth; clearly, Li Zehai had reached his limit, but he was completely indifferent to it.

"Since the Lord has agreed to my conditions, then I will tell the Lord my discovery!"

"Lord Shen, the Feng Family has a Second Master; I wonder if Lord Shen knows of him?"

"Are you suspecting him?" Coming to Xichuan to serve as Governor, Shen Yu naturally had to understand the famous and influential forces in Xichuan, and the Feng Family was, of course, included in the intelligence.

The generation of the Feng Family Patriarch was full of talent. As for the commonly mentioned Feng Family Second Master, he was the younger brother of the Feng Family Patriarch, though they were born of different mothers—a son of a concubine.

The reason the Feng Family Second Master was called Second Master was not because he was very capable, but because he was too useless.

Not only did he lack the strength to truss a chicken, but he also didn't like reading; it could be said he was good for nothing in both literature and martial arts, as useless as one could be.

Originally, this Feng Family Second Master should have been lackluster in front of the experts of this generation.

But it just so happened that his brothers and sisters were all successful, and only he was a good-for-nothing, so naturally, he was remembered.

The worthless Second Master Feng, the unlearned Second Master Feng, the incompetent Second Master Feng—these were all rumors about him from outsiders.

It could be said that the more glorious the other members of the Feng Family were, the more pathetic and despised he was.

"Yes, I not only suspect that he is the person behind us, but I also suspect that he, like me, wants to destroy the Feng Family!"

Supporting his body, Li Zehai said slowly, "I have investigated the Feng Family in secret for so long, but only this Second Master Feng has remained unfathomable. I once inadvertently saw a few small actions of his!"

"These few small actions were very similar to that Master I once saw; at the time, I already had my suspicions."

"And later, this Master gave orders to my Xinghai Gang several times to do things, and one of the people who benefited in the end was always this seemingly lucky Second Master Feng."

"Although they looked completely unconnected, this is precisely what indicates the problem. Luck cannot be good every single time, and this good luck was brought about by my Xinghai Gang!"

"Afterwards, I secretly investigated the Feng Family, and many things were revealed inadvertently by this Second Master Feng; everything is just too coincidental!"

"When so many coincidences come together, they are no longer coincidences!" Narrowing his eyes slightly, Li Zehai remained confident in his judgment; he believed his judgment was not wrong.

This Second Master of the Feng Family is the person behind him!

"For such a long time, the reason the Feng Family has never made a move against me is, firstly, they think I haven't discovered anything core to their Feng Family at all, and secondly, they are confident that no one dares to touch their Feng Family."

"Even if someone wanted to, it would be difficult to shake them with the meager evidence I have in my hands."

"But they don't know that their most core secret has been discovered by me. And all of this was secretly guided by this Second Master Feng!"

"Moreover, it is impossible for this Second Master Feng to let my Xinghai Gang have any trouble; after all, we are the sharpest blade in his hands!"

"So he must be secretly helping me erase the traces of my investigation, which also precisely explains why the Feng Family has never made a move against me!"

"Therefore, I am fifty percent certain that he is the one behind my Xinghai Gang!"