The grain merchants looked at one another.

As the saying goes, there's no such thing as an honest merchant. Nobody who'd piled up a fortune in the tens of thousands of strings was a fool. Stick fur on any of these men and he'd outsmart a monkey.

Ning Chen made it sound nice: entirely voluntary, nobody forced. But then he'd added that even if they didn't donate, he'd remember them and look after them accordingly... And what kind of looking after that would be was anybody's guess.

That was a threat, plain as day.

Shameless!

Utterly shameless!

It was the first time they'd ever heard anyone make a threat sound so pleasant.

The grain merchants were fuming inside.

They'd come to report a crime, their grain hadn't been found, and now they had to donate a pile of supplies on top of it.

Scholars, farmers, artisans, merchants: merchants ranked last.

Who didn't want their sons to have a career in office someday?

But Ning Chen would be the chief examiner at the next examination, and he'd had all their names written down... Whether their children could ever have careers in office was now up to him.

The quicker-witted among them were already muttering to themselves: their grain had been stolen last night, and the court's grain had just happened to arrive last night too. Could the two be connected?

Ning Chen said, "Gentlemen, whether Qingzhou gets through this disaster depends on your generosity... This prince thanks you on behalf of the people of Qingzhou."

The Ning'an Army had already gone into action and surrounded the grain merchants.

Then they began taking down names, determined not to miss a single one.

The grain merchants cursed Ning Chen for a shameless bastard in their hearts, but they didn't dare show it.

The Prince Who Holds the Realm of the Great Xuan, whose name made the world tremble. They couldn't afford to cross him. They wouldn't dare.

Back inside, Ning Chen went straight to Liang Anzhi's study.

Liang Anzhi and Ji Leshan had been broken out the night before.

Ning Chen had proclamations…