Chapter 668 --668

Chapter 668: Chapter-668

His brilliant mind pieced the terrifying puzzle together instantly. He knew, with absolute, heartbreaking certainty, that she wasn’t just being lazy to embarrass the court. She couldn’t see him. She needed him to close the distance so she wouldn’t expose her weakness to the Emperor.

The genius scholar’s expression softened into a devastatingly gentle, deeply protective smile.

"Of course, Wife," Samuel replied smoothly, his voice a warm, grounding anchor in her dark world. "Why not?"

He closed the three-meter gap in long, elegant strides. Without a single moment of hesitation, Samuel leaned down, slipped one arm beneath her knees and the other around her back, and effortlessly scooped her up against his chest. As he lifted her into a perfect, sweeping princess carry, Heena rested her head against his shoulder, finally allowing herself to let out a quiet, hidden breath of relief.

Samuel carried Heena through the sprawling, labyrinthine corridors of the Imperial Palace with effortless grace. He didn’t speak a single word, his face a perfect mask of aristocratic serenity, but his grip around her was iron-clad and fiercely protective.

​Behind them, Grandpa and Grandma Vanguard were loudly arguing about what kind of tonics and herbal soups they needed to force-feed Heena the moment they got home.

​Heena kept her face buried in the crook of Samuel’s neck, her eyes firmly shut. The agonizing spike of pain in her head had dulled to a deep, rhythmic throb, but the terrifying gray fog in her vision remained. She could smell the crisp scent of pine and expensive ink on Samuel’s robes, letting his steady heartbeat ground her as they finally stepped out of the palace gates and into the waiting Vanguard carriage.

The rhythmic, swaying motion of the grand Vanguard carriage was the only sound in the tense silence. Heena had kept her eyes firmly closed since Samuel had carried her out of the palace, pretending to fall into a deep, exhausted sleep. But as the carriage jolted forward and picked up speed, a sudden, sharp clarity pierced through her mind.

She slowly opened her eyes. The gray, suffocating fog was completely gone. Her vision had violently snapped back into perfect, high-definition focus.

Heena blinked, calmly taking in the luxurious interior of the carriage. She tilted her head slightly, locking eyes with Samuel, who was still holding her securely against his chest with a look of deep, terrifying concern.

Without a single second of hesitation, Heena pulled back her arm and drove her elbow directly into his stomach.

"Fuck, stay away, you idiot," Heena grumbled, aggressively pushing herself out of his arms and sliding to the far side of the velvet bench. "It is entirely too hot inside this carriage for you to be clinging to me like that."

The Sudden Sickness

Samuel doubled over with a sharp wheeze, completely blindsided by the sudden, brutal physical assault. He clutched his stomach, his genius brain stalling out as he stared at his aggressive, newly resurrected wife.

"Huh?" Samuel gasped, entirely bewildered. He looked at her clear, perfectly focused dark eyes. The terrifying vulnerability she had shown in the royal study was completely gone. "Are you... okay?"

Heena opened her mouth to deliver a sarcastic retort, but the words immediately died in her throat.

A sudden, violent wave of nausea completely hijacked her nervous system. The lingering aftershocks of the Emperor’s neurotoxic incense, combined with the failing limits of her body, hit her stomach like a battering ram. The color instantly drained from her face.

She didn’t even bother asking the driver to stop. Heena aggressively kicked the heavy carriage door open, launched herself completely out of the moving vehicle, and landed gracefully on the side of the road. She immediately dropped to her hands and knees and started violently throwing up in the grass.

The Monumental Misunderstanding

The carriage screeched to a halt. Samuel, terrified that her deadly illness was finally taking hold, lunged toward the open door to go after her.

Before he could even step out, a heavy, calloused hand clamped down firmly on his shoulder.

Grandpa Vanguard stood behind him, staring out the door at his violently heaving granddaughter. The old war hero’s weathered face broke into a massive, incredibly proud grin. He slapped Samuel on the back so hard the scholar nearly flew out of the carriage.

"So fast," Grandpa Vanguard praised, his voice booming with absolute, unadulterated awe. "I knew you were a genius scholar, but I didn’t realize your efficiency was this terrifying!"

Grandma Vanguard leaned over, elegantly wiping a tear of pure joy from her eye. She patted Samuel’s arm with profound affection.

"Congratulations, dear son-in-law," Grandma beamed happily, completely ignoring the fact that Heena was currently fighting for her life in a ditch. "It hasn’t even been a full week since you arrived at the estate! And to think she was complaining about being tired and weak just an hour ago. The Vanguard bloodline is officially secured!"

Samuel froze.

His brilliant, hyper-analytical mind completely shut down as he slowly connected the dots of their horrifyingly inaccurate conclusion. He looked out the door at the vomiting warlord—who had explicitly told him she was dying in six months—and then looked back at the overjoyed grandparents who were currently planning a baby shower.

"Really?" Samuel whispered, his voice cracking into a high pitch of sheer, unadulterated disbelief.

While the Vanguard grandparents were busy celebrating the completely fabricated continuation of their military bloodline, the System was hovering just outside the carriage door, absolutely frozen in digital horror.

The blue orb stared at its host, who was still violently heaving in the roadside grass. The System knew for an absolute, undeniable fact that Heena was taking meticulous, fail-proof precautions. The Vanguard Madam getting pregnant was biologically equivalent to a solid, iron-hard bamboo stalk suddenly sprouting a delicate, fragrant jasmine flower. It was not just unlikely; it was scientifically and fundamentally impossible.

Ignoring the chaotic family congratulations echoing from the velvet interior of the carriage, the System frantically initiated a deep-dive diagnostic scan. A glowing, holographic medical encyclopedia materialized in the air in front of its pixelated face.

Its tiny digital hands actually began to tremble as it rapidly cross-referenced the cascading sequence of Heena’s physical failures.

Sudden, total temporary blindness.

Immediate, spontaneous restoration of perfect vision upon a shift in blood pressure.

Violent, uncontrollable nausea and vomiting without a direct digestive trigger.

The holographic pages flipped at lightspeed before slamming to a halt, flashing a glaring, critical red warning across the System’s interface.

This was not morning sickness. It wasn’t even the lingering aftershock of the Emperor’s neurotoxic incense. It was something infinitely worse, hiding deep within the physical vessel Heena had inhabited.

The digital text confirmed the terrifying reality: a massive, highly unstable cold blood clot resting directly against her optic nerve and motor cortex. The medical classification glared back at the trembling AI—an old traumatic intracranial hematoma.

The six-month expiration date she had confidently thrown at the Emperor wasn’t just a mystical limit on her soul’s compatibility with the body. Her actual brain was a ticking time bomb, and the sudden, violent shifts in her vision meant the countdown had just aggressively accelerated.

Heena wiped her mouth with the back of her sleeve, spitting the bitter, acidic taste of bile into the dirt.

Despite what cheap folklore and dramatic theater claimed, traveling through multiple worlds did not magically turn a person into an omnipotent, all-knowing god. Heena was a brilliant tactician and a ruthless warlord, but she was absolutely not a doctor. She possessed no secret divine healing techniques, no magical pills, and no ancient medical knowledge. Throughout all her lifetimes, she had mastered the art of causing severe brain damage, not curing it.

She had no idea how to dissolve the blood clot ticking away inside her skull. She didn’t even know how to lessen the agonizing, blinding pain.

Kneeling in the roadside grass, taking slow, shuddering breaths to steady her violently spinning head, Heena only knew one undeniable fact: death was creeping up behind her much faster than she had originally calculated.

The single, most terrifying problem with a traumatic intracranial hematoma was its complete lack of professional courtesy. Terminal illness did not operate on a polite, organized timetable. It wasn’t going to give her a scheduled one-month warning for a headache, or a two-month grace period before the next bout of blindness. It was just going to strike like a catastrophic bolt of bad luck—anytime, anywhere, and exactly when it wanted to.

Today, it had hit her in the relative safety of the Emperor’s study and her own family’s carriage. Tomorrow, it could strike while she was holding a sword, or while she was standing at the edge of a balcony.

As the nausea finally began to recede, Heena stared blankly down at the dirt, a rare chill of genuine dread crawling up her spine. If this sudden, agonizing blackout was just a preliminary warning shot from her failing body, she could already guess just how horrifyingly violent the next attack was going to be.

Behind her, the completely oblivious Vanguard grandparents were still happily discussing baby names, while Samuel stood frozen by the carriage door, his golden eyes locked onto her trembling shoulders as he desperately tried to make sense of a puzzle missing half its pieces.

Heena did not correct her grandparents. She didn’t say a single word as they gleefully helped her back into the carriage, completely ecstatic about a child that did not exist.

To anyone else, it would be a cruel lie, but to Heena’s hyper-analytical, deeply pragmatic mind, it was the perfect alibi. She knew exactly what her failing brain was going to put her through next. There would be more violent bouts of nausea, crippling headaches, sudden mood swings, and terrifying lapses in memory.