A salt riot caused by the soaring price of salt caused his family to overturn in an instant. His home was destroyed, his loyal servant died to protect him, and his father Li Wenhan was kidnapped by the mob, and his life or death is uncertain. It completely shattered Li Chengzong's innocence and made him face the cruelty of the world. Li Chengzong followed his father's last words and asked Wang Jien, a family friend and the prefect of Yangzhou, for help, but he encountered a fatal betrayal. He discovered that in order to protect himself and embezzle the Li family's property, the prefect Wang actually pushed all the charges on his father, branding the Li family as the "culprits" who caused the unrest and made him wanted throughout the city. In a desperate situation with his family broken up and his family dead, Li Chengzong hid in a slum and made a living by "writing letters on behalf of others." He used his talents to write an anonymous post attacking Chen Yuanlong, a senior official in the Salt Transport Department, which successfully caused waves in Yangzhou officialdom and served as the beginning of revenge. In order to rescue his father who was tortured by the Wang Prefect and to completely bring down his enemy, Li Chengzong planned a series of interlocking scams. He teamed up with his family's old enemy, the Zheng family, to create a "ransacked" fake treasure cave in Yinshan outside the city, and left evidence to blame Chen Yuanlong. This scam successfully ignited Wang Jien's greed and anger, so that he did not hesitate to accuse Chen Yuanlong of treason and mobilized troops to besiege Chen Yuanlong's official office, causing civil strife in Yangzhou City where officers and soldiers fought. When the whole city fell into chaos, Li Chengzong was determined to take advantage of the chaos and personally break into the empty-guarded government prison to rescue his father.
