County Magistrate Zhou stood there, his face extremely grim. He had considered countless ways to get rid of the new magistrate or prevent him from interfering in his affairs with the bandits.

Only in this way can his interests be guaranteed to continue.

But today's incident made him realize that this new county magistrate seemed to be playing the same tricks as him.

Not only did they fail to remove Magistrate Zhu, but they also failed to make him back down.

Not only did he involve the Immortal Execution Order in the bandit incident, but he also resorted to the same tactics used by Magistrate Zhou.

This left Magistrate Zhou at a loss for what to do.

He even suspected that the ten bandits might have been recruited by Zhu Yunwen himself.

Thinking of this, Magistrate Zhou quickly returned to the county office and found the registrar, telling him about the matter.

Afterwards, the somewhat elderly registrar looked at County Magistrate Zhou and said with a complicated expression:

"So, according to you, this Magistrate Zhu isn't here to deal with the bandits at all. He's a bandit himself! What are we going to do? He's stolen our business. Does that mean we'll lose our source of income?"

County Magistrate Zhou frowned. He really hadn't expected Zhu Yunwen to pull this trick on him, which caught him completely off guard.

Now Zhu Yunwen has made them neither enemies nor friends, but colleagues.

Originally, Magistrate Zhou thought that Zhu Yunwen had come to deal with him on behalf of justice, but he didn't expect him to play the double agent.

After remaining silent for a long time, Magistrate Zhou finally spoke:

"What else can we do? Now he's playing these tricks on us, taking our path and leaving us with nowhere to go."

The only solution is for each of us to do our own thing: he'll find his bandits to cooperate with and make his money, and we'll find our own bandits to make our money.

The registrar frowned and said:

"Wouldn't we be too blatant? Our Black Cloud County already received a lot of attention from the imperial court because of the large number of bandits. Now that there are twice as many bandits, I'm afraid the imperial court won't just sit idly by."

Magistrate Zhou sighed. How could he not understand the reasoning behind this? But he didn't know what to do.

After thinking for a moment, he simply said:

"Take it one step at a time, observe the situation, and continue to wait and see."

The registrar thought to himself, "Isn't this obvious? Do I need you to say it?"

Meanwhile, Zhu Yunwen actually applied to the higher authorities for a sum of money to be allocated for the suppression of the bandits, based on the bandit incident.

Soon the matter escalated, and the people all knew that a new and even more powerful group of bandits had appeared south of the city. There were only ten of them, but they had caused chaos in Heiyun County, forcing the county magistrate to apply for funds from higher authorities to suppress the bandits.

The people were used to banditry, but the fact that just ten bandits were so powerful this time shocked them.

You know, back then, there would have been at least one or two hundred bandits or mountain thieves.

I've never seen anything like it. Ten bandits could cause such a big commotion. The key point is that the county government brought three hundred soldiers, yet they still couldn't deal with ten bandits.

Therefore, the people became increasingly dissatisfied with the county government.

This matter quickly reached the ears of the Axe Gang in the north.

In a mountain stronghold to the north, the Axe Gang was entrenched. Although it was called the Axe Gang, the name was not important to them.

Because from beginning to end, the bandits and mountain thieves in Black Cloud County have always been the same group of people. It's just that every time the original county magistrate wiped them out, he would say that they had been wiped out.

In reality, they simply went back and changed their names, then returned to cause trouble after a while, thus creating the illusion that bandits frequently appeared in Black Cloud County.

In other words, for all this time, there has only ever been one bandit group in Heiyun County, and that is them.

However, today, the bandit leader of the Axe Gang in that mountain stronghold received a message that another group of bandits had appeared in Black Cloud County, called the Black Head Gang.

Moreover, there were only ten people who went to the village and threatened the villagers to hand over a large amount of silver within a week.

Upon hearing this news, the leader of the Axe Gang frowned and said:

"Besides my Axe Gang, what kind of Blackhead Gang has appeared? Is there anyone else in my territory who dares to steal our food?"

The man below continued, "Boss, I heard that the county government sent three hundred men to raid this Blackhead Gang today."

Upon hearing this, the leader of the Axe Gang breathed a sigh of relief and said:

"Looks like we don't even need to lift a finger; someone will take care of it for us. So, what was the outcome?"

The subordinate stammered:

"The county government has more than 300 people, but they failed to eliminate these ten bandits and mountain thieves and let them escape. The county government is preparing to apply to the higher authorities for funds to suppress these ten mountain thieves."

Gang Leader: "What? Three hundred soldiers? They didn't even take care of ten bandits? This is bad... Something terrible has happened..."