The whole thing is like a weird card game with some cards revealed, many hidden but all players wearing a mask and bluffing.

Lets decode how it unfolded

The plan is basically :

Hengtang has a disaster and grain is in shortage. Relief grain has been embezzled by corrupt officals and also looted by bandits. So scarcity has driven the prices high. Yan Rui has been worsening the sitution by collecting grain, checking military supplies and driving grain prices even higher.

Now in porridge distribution scene it shows whatever grain has been collected is also possibly getting over, but further collection will drive price even higher.

Yan Rui sees this as oppurtunity. As more grain they collect, less grain in market, more grain in their control, and further inflation. Wei asks where money will come to buy the grains...Yan Rui says they'll use the imperial relief funds. Basically use govt money, buy grain at high price, maintain a relief facade and then when prices are even high sell the grain (they bought with govt money) back to govt and pocket the difference...

And opponents hidden cards

Ep 12 : lord xie and lord wei discuss to put on a show together and in the end do away with Yan Rui

Ep 13: Lord wei : Master San, long time no see

Bandit : lord wei, got any good business for us again?

Lord Wei : I heard you previously looted some govt grain, which you are unable to sell. Now there is a golden oppurtunity. Next month imperial court is collecting grain. Master San, you have the grain, Lord Xie and I, have official channels for selling it. When the time comes, you'll only need a few of your men, to pose as grain merchants and sell the grains separately. Once the deal is done and the money is split, we'll have more wealtht han we can spend our entire lifetime. But there is one thing, once the deal is done, you need to kill someone for us.

Bandit : thats routine business, whats so hard about it.

Lord wei: lord xie , what do you think about this.

Lord Xie : secrecy is the key to success ...you have this whole bunch of vicious criminals. Once things spiral out of control, we'll all be doomed. I'm sorry I cannot participate in this. Same old rules - i saw nothing, i know nothing.

Lord wei : you have already entered the game, how can you back out now.

Interpretation : So Lord Wei wants to bring back the looted grain into maket and sell it along with genuine businessmen.

So basically, it’s like this:

There is a disaster and grain shortage in Hengtang. The main sources of grain are local businessmen, government granaries, and relief grain. But government and relief grain have been embezzled, so demand is higher than supply and prices are already high.

Yan Rui worsens the situation further. He collects grain and forces the corrupt officials to hand over their embezzled grain, but distributes very little of it. This creates even greater scarcity, so prices keep rising.

Now Yan Rui wants to target the looted grain. He sets up an apparent scheme with Lord Wei: they will buy grain from businessmen at the already high prices using government money, then sell it back to the government at an even higher price. That way, they have both the grain and the money. And since Yan Rui is the imperial officer overseeing everything, Wei believes he can essentially manipulate the system and fool the imperial court. And eventually do away with Yan Rui.

Wei, driven by greed, then brings the bandits into the scheme and gets them to release their stolen grain. So the looted grain starts coming back into circulation.

And then Yan Rui flips the game. On the day of grain collection, he opens the granaries and distributes the grain freely. All that illegally hoarded and looted grain is suddenly back in the market, but instead of being sold at inflated prices, it is being given away.

With the supply suddenly increasing, grain prices fall—and entire corrupt officials are left with nothing.

Vix:

Thank you so much for this! Although I understood up to a certain point this was so helpful in making sense of the whole thing. Sometimes the characters talk in such circles it drives me low-key insane. But the way they handled the bandit invasion does not make sense to me... They waited until the bandits killed so many people to retaliate. Does it not counter their earlier mission of serving people? I understand that they did not have enough troops without the Marquis, but if they knew this would happen I feel like some of those people could have been saved.

Even I am disappointed with the handling of bandit situation...when the whole plan was to protect the people of Hengtang, letting bandits plunder the village is an overlooked part of the plot...what's the point of grains now that all people are dead? And Marquis showing up that late doesn't make sense..he retired from politics and held on to military power precisely for this, even his beloved son was out fighting...this didn't make sense ...

Usually further episodes answer the questions that arise on previous episodes..hopefully they explain this as story unfolds

Vix:

Exactly what I was thinking! Even in that earlier case where that Gao person had died and Zhengjun had been accused, I did not understand how that gave Yan Rui evidence against Wei with how that concluded? To me it looked like it went nowhere.. Clearly the writers have given thought to some parts of the plot like how Qingyuan gets into the household and slowly starts taking revenge and the whole grain plotline but the rest seems very haphazard. Still I'm seated for the romance ;)

While Zhengjun is in prison Wei comes to ask him to confess, also Wei sends people to kill Zhengjun. This person is chased across the town and Shen Che catches him...but is he alive or dead is still something unknown...previously it was shown that peasant Yan Rui "killed" was actually alive, so if the person they caught is alive they can trace it to the people who sent him