Pang Yu's hands and feet were ice-cold. Yan Liang's words poured into his ears, and his heart pounded. For a moment, he didn't know what to say.

He composed himself and asked, "How...how did you know?"

Yan Liang turned to look at him and said quietly, "Because you're stupid."

Pang Yu, who expected to be questioned, was dumbfounded.

Yan Liang pulled him over, and the two of them, arm in arm, continued walking towards the house ahead.

Yan Liang said, "Xu Yi said he was looking for Marquis Anle, Pang Yu, and after you met him, you acted the way you did. It would be strange if people didn't connect you with Marquis Anle, right?"

"And you really can't resist being tricked. You should have denied it to the death in this situation," Yan Liang admonished him. "That portrait has no resemblance to you whatsoever. If you hadn't said anything, who would have known you were the Marquis of Anle?"

Pang Yu was shocked: "Are you kidding me?!"

Yan Liang sighed: "That's why I said you're stupid."

Pang Ersha said that Yan Liang was too serious at the time, which made him not think about anything else, and he only knew that his identity had been recognized.

As they talked, the two arrived at the small, dilapidated house. Yan Liang let go of his hand and stepped onto the stone bricks to walk inside. When he reached the door, he was surprised not to hear any footsteps following him. He turned around and saw Pang Yu standing there, grinning foolishly, perfectly embodying the word "foolish."

Yan Liang couldn't bear to look at him: "...What are you laughing at?"

Pang Yu responded and walked over on the bricks, unable to resist asking him, "Will you hand me over to the authorities?"

Although he asked the question, he believed that Yan Liang would not do such a thing. If it really needed to be handed over to the government, Yan Liang could have asked him directly this afternoon. The reason for delaying the question until now was to avoid attracting attention.

Yan Liang had already turned around and opened the door. Upon hearing this, he answered without hesitation, "Of course not."

Pang Yu followed him into the house, and then, as if familiar with the place, grabbed a flint and steel and lit a fire. A wave of heat and smoke hit him in the face, and Pang Yu rubbed his eyes and said, "My bounty is so high, if you hand me over to the government, you can get a lot of money."

Yan Liang moved closer, warming his hands by the fire. After thinking for a moment, he said, "If you want me to hand you over to the authorities, I can take you there tomorrow."

"Don't!"

"If you don't want to, then don't say it. You're making me really tempted."

Pang Yu said, feeling wronged, "I'm just being strange... I'm the Marquis of Anle, and everyone says I'm wicked, oppressing the people, extorting their wealth, embezzling disaster relief grain, enriching myself, committing all sorts of evil deeds, and abducting women..."

He remembered those descriptions of him very clearly and held a grudge against them. By the end, Pang Yu was gritting his teeth, extremely angry.

Yan Liang laughed: "What did you do?"

Pang Yu denied it: "No!"

Yan Liang smiled slightly: "I believe you didn't do it."

Pang Yu's eyes welled up with tears: "Yan Liang..."

Yan Liang continued, "After all, someone as foolish as you is destined to be bullied."

Pang Yu's overwhelming emotion was completely suppressed by those words.

The two returned to their previous way of getting along, and Pang Yu was overjoyed. He rarely had a friend he could talk to, a friend who trusted him, took care of him, and was more like an older brother than a friend.

Yan Liang and Pang Yu sat around the stove, sharing cooked meat with pickled vegetables. The night wind outside was chilly, but the fire inside made the house incredibly warm. The food they ate now was worlds apart from what Pang Yu had in Bianliang, yet Pang Yu ate with great relish. He had never known that simple pickled vegetables paired with cooked meat could taste so good.

Ultimately, Pang Yu wasn't inherently bad; he was just unlucky. If he didn't do the Chenzhou incident, then someone else must have been responsible.

Pang Yu recounted to Yan Liang everything that had happened to him in Chenzhou.

Grand Tutor Pang originally intended to send his foolish son to Chenzhou for disaster relief, hoping to gain some fame in the process. However, Pang Yu was not a key figure; the one who went with him, Sun Haoqing, the Vice Minister of Revenue, was the disaster relief official directly appointed by the emperor. Pang Yu was merely there to gain fame, and accompanying him was Grand Tutor Pang's confidant, Qiu Qi.

After arriving in Chenzhou, Pang Yu stayed in the Chenzhou government office and didn't go out much. Firstly, Sun Haoqing persuaded him not to go out, and secondly, Pang Yu didn't want to go out.

“My father said that I should just do nothing, and Pang Qi said the same thing. Besides, Chenzhou is so chaotic that I can’t help if I go out, so I’ve never gone out.”

Pang Yu sullenly picked up a twig and poked at the stove, grumbling a few times as he spoke.

"I don't even know what I did..."

"And then?" Yan Liang gestured for him to continue.

"Then I stayed in that courtyard for two months, almost going crazy from boredom, so I thought I'd go out for a walk. But when I went out, a bunch of people chased after me and threw stones at me." Pang Yu was extremely aggrieved. "I really didn't do anything!"

He emphasized it again before continuing.

That day, Pang Yu went out for a walk to clear his head and was chased and beaten up. Later, he was escorted back by guards. At that time, he felt strange because a group of people were chasing him and cursing him, saying that he would die a horrible death, that his father was a treacherous minister and that he was a villain.

When they returned to the manor, Sun Haoqing told him with a worried look that the matter had been exposed and that Bao Zheng had already come to Chenzhou.

Pang Yu wondered what had been exposed; he hadn't done anything.

Sun Haoqing still looked dejected, as if he wanted to wait to die with him.

“I wanted to ask him what had happened, but Qiu Qi came to me and said that things had been exposed.”

Pang Yu still can't figure it out: "Could it be that I really did those things that angered both heaven and man?"

Yan Liang said disdainfully, "No matter how you look at it, you've been fooled."

Pang Yu pursed his lips and continued, "Later, I was knocked unconscious. It was the person I met today."

Pang Yu was puzzled by Qiu Qi and Sun Haoqing's worried faces. Just as he was about to ask, he heard someone speaking, then felt a sharp pain in the back of his neck, his vision went black, and he fainted.

The man said, "Don't waste your breath on this idiot. I'll take him away now, and you can do whatever you want with him."

"He actually called me an idiot!"

Pang Yu was indignant.

"Aren't you stupid?"

Yan Liang countered with a question.

It's no wonder they got scammed if they could stay in the yard for two months without knowing what was happening outside.

"……stupid."

Pang Yu's face was droopy.

"Then how did you escape?" Yan Liang asked the most crucial question.

“There was someone… who let me go when the driver wasn’t looking.” Pang Yu paused, then said blankly, “I don’t know that person.”

There were two people in total, one driving the car and the other guarding Pang Yu. Both of them were dressed in coarse linen clothes, disguised as ordinary people. Their faces were unremarkable, the kind of people you would forget as soon as you saw them.

Pang Yu breathed a sigh of relief after finally confiding in Yan Liang about what had been troubling him. He had been holding it in for too long, with no one to confide in. He was constantly worried about this and that, and was on the verge of getting sick from all the stress. Only after meeting Yan Liang did he feel much more at ease, and now that he had spoken about it, he felt even more relieved.

Yan Liang watched as he happily picked up another piece of meat from the bowl, thinking to himself that this child was really carefree.

Xu Yiwei probably left Pang Yu alone after stuffing him into the carriage, but neither he nor the mastermind behind it expected that one of the two people transporting Pang Yu would betray them. That's why he came to Donghua Town to find Pang Yu.

"Have you figured out how to clear your name?" Yan Liang asked him. "Now everyone is saying that you, the Marquis of Anle, are utterly wicked and have committed countless evil deeds."

“I…I’m going back to Kaifeng to find my father,” Pang Yu replied cautiously. “My father will definitely be able to clear my name.”

Yan Liang: ...That's really simple and straightforward.

He thought for a moment and said, "I'll go to Kaifeng with you."

Pang Yu was both surprised and delighted: "Really?" But as soon as he said it, he shook his head: "I can't go with you, it's too dangerous."

Yan Liang said, "Think about how you met me."

This left Pang Yu speechless. He opened his mouth, then lowered his head in frustration.

"I was planning to travel around anyway, so it's perfect that I'm going to the capital with you."

Pang Yu felt a lump in his throat. He had heard the shopkeeper mention what Yan Liang had once said, but Yan Liang's imagined journey of wandering around must have been extremely leisurely and carefree. If he were to travel with him, there was no guarantee that they wouldn't encounter people chasing after him along the way.

"Don't overthink it," Yan Liang said again. "It's better for two people than for you to travel alone. Besides, the journey is long and arduous. If you lose your life on the road, no one will know, and you'll carry that stigma for the rest of your life. You don't want that, do you?"

This made Pang Yu both grateful and somewhat guilty.

It was true that Pang Yu had a pleasant and relaxed time with Yan Liang, but he had not forgotten about returning to the capital. In the first few days after he started spending time with Yan Liang, he noticed that he had not been recognized, so he kept trying to find a way to get Yan Liang to take him back to the capital.

But before he could mention it, Yan Liang had already figured out his identity and told him that they should go together.

Seeing that Pang Yu was distracted, Yan Liang smiled slightly, slowly raised his hand, and then, with lightning speed—

He picked up the last piece of meat from the bowl.

And slowly put it in your mouth, chewing and chewing.

Swallow.

Pang Yu watched in disbelief, screaming, "Ah, ah—!!"

Yan Liang: "Hehehehehe."

After returning to the inn from the restaurant, Xu Yiwei kept thinking about the boy sitting next to the fortune teller.

After news of Anlehou's escape arrived, they split into three groups. Xu Yiwei led two people to Donghua Town, while the others went elsewhere.

We're just taking a short rest now; we'll have to find out about Marquis Anle tomorrow.

He hadn't paid much attention to the boy when he first saw him upstairs; the boy was thin and small, looking extremely pitiful, bearing no resemblance whatsoever to the obese Marquis Anle. But upon closer inspection, Xu Yiwei suddenly realized—

What if Marquis Anle loses weight?

Marquis Anle has been on the run for more than half a month. For a pampered young master who is wanted by the authorities, he must be suffering greatly, going hungry and cold.

If Marquis Anle were to lose weight, the only recognizable feature would be the beauty mark at the corner of his eye. If that beauty mark were removed, even that unique identifier would be gone.

Xu Yiwei seemed to be deep in thought.

He went downstairs to find the waiter, who happened to have his fortune told by Yan Liang two days ago, and answered the questions very quickly.

"Mr. Yan is a very good person. He is literate and can tell fortunes, but he is lame."

It seems Yan Liang has a good reputation. Xu Yiwei realized this once again and continued to ask, "I saw a young man next to him, who is he to him?"

Although the waiter found it strange that the cold-faced customer kept asking about Yan Liang, he still answered seriously, "That boy was picked up by Mr. Yan not long ago. He caught a cold, and Mr. Yan even bought medicine for him."

Did you find it?

Xu Yiwei's eyes darkened, and he asked, "What's that boy's name?"

"Yu..." The waiter couldn't quite remember, scratching his head, "Yu Yao... seems to be that name?"

Xu Yiwei had a guess in his heart, but he didn't show it on his face. He gave the waiter a tip and slowly went upstairs.

He had already made up his mind to go back to the fortune-telling stall tomorrow and ask again.

Author's Note: I'm here!!

The answer to the previous chapter has been revealed! The answer is C!

Being poor is one thing, that's definitely a problem, but what the heck is this "being sold into a brothel" thing? 23333

Is Yan Liang that kind of person? hhhh