The young general scoffed:

"Many people sold their children just to buy a few pounds of charcoal. Some even followed suit and became bandits, robbing villages and reselling charcoal and grain at high prices. Countless people outside the city have died or been injured. How can you easily gloss over this with just a few words?"

The young general also investigated Liang Hai's instigation of other merchants to inflate coal prices, and lightly imposed a punishment:

"The Liang family's charcoal workshop was confiscated. Most of the charcoal inside was taken to the market and sold at a low price. The money was used to buy grain and distribute porridge for free outside the city."

The remaining half of the charcoal, after the migrants from outside the city registered their names, could be purchased in batches of ten catties each, at five copper coins per catty.

"He Laowu and Liang Hai shall each be given fifty strokes of the cane and sentenced to three months of repairing the city wall. All male members of the He family and the workshop manager shall each be given thirty strokes of the cane as a warning to others."

He Laowu's vision went black. Without the charcoal workshop, he couldn't sell charcoal. Where would he get the money to go to the casino to make back his losses?

He didn't even need to look back; he knew that his father and uncle wished they could kill him with their own hands.

On what grounds?

Do they dare say they have a clear conscience?

And that bastard Zhixing... We're both charcoal sellers, so why was he able to escape the city unscathed?

Old He, filled with malice, suddenly grabbed the chair leg under the young general's buttocks.

Before he could be kicked away, he shouted, "Sir, I'm reporting that Zhixing and his gang are bandits. Who knows where they got all that charcoal? And..."

"And my leg was broken by that band of mountain bandits when we were passing through the deep mountains. They also stole our only silver! I saw it with my own eyes. It was Zhixing and his henchmen who did it!"

"If our silver hadn't been stolen, leaving us starving, why would I have risked raising the price of charcoal to make money! It's all Zhixing's fault, it's all those bandits' fault!"

Mountain bandits?

The young general's eyes flickered slightly.