After arriving at the first town, the first thing Sun Yixie did was to send a letter.
Who was the letter for? It was for the family of the wandering merchant Yu Qing.
For reasons everyone understood, the letter was written on behalf of Sun Yixie by Huang Donglai. The gist of the content was, "I am sorry to tell you, the family of Yu Qing, that he drowned after slipping into the Shi River during a storm. 'I,' the 'nameless' writer of this letter, found this travel document in Yu Qing's luggage and learned of his name and residence. What I could do was only to convert his remaining goods into money, and to send it to you along with this travel document and the announcement of his death. Please accept my condolences and carry on."
Of course, in reality, Sun Yixie hadn't taken Yu Qing's goods, and those goods were not worth much, certainly not as much as the amount of the silver note that Sun Yixie stuffed into the envelope.
Furthermore, Yu Qing did not drown from slipping...
