Chapter 681 --681

Chapter 681: Chapter-681

"Your manners are... unconventional," Madam Gu managed to say. "And your name... the registry says you are—"

"Of course the registry is fake," the girl interrupted breezily. "My real name is Razia. Don’t ask me what it means, because I have absolutely no idea. My father travels the high seas a lot. He met some foreigners from a distant land, heard the name, liked it, and slapped it on me. It sounds strange here, but we don’t care."

Razia gestured wildly between herself and Heena. "Look at us! Our names are entirely different from the capital’s standard. You guys use names like Xinjin, Chenjin, Wuchan... whatever that nonsense is. My name is Razia. Her real name is Seera. My father is Roland. My grandmother is Supra. We travel so much and carry so many foreign aliases that having a bizarre name is our most defining family trait."

Madam Gu felt a headache coming on to rival Heena’s. "And the Vice Minister just... agreed to this?"

"Money, baby! Everyone follows the gold," Razia grinned, though she quickly crossed her arms and let out a dramatic sigh. "But let me tell you, it was ’’so hard’’ for me to do this job."

Heena, meanwhile, was slumping deeper into her velvet chair. A dull, rhythmic throb had returned to her temples, and a heavy, suffocating wave of drowsiness was pulling at her focus. She closed her eyes, letting Razia do the talking while she fought to stay conscious.

"You see this woman?" Razia pointed an accusing finger at the dozing warlord. "She wrote me a letter demanding that I infiltrate the civil court and ’’seduce’’ the Prime Minister! I mean, sure, the man had a handsome face, but I draw the line at sleeping with the enemy just because my sister asked me to. I flat-out refused!"

Razia’s eyes suddenly sparkled with manic glee. "But then... she offered me the Western script. It is the most beautiful, intricate writing system I have ever seen. I’ve been begging her for it since we were children, and she always said no. This time, she finally handed it over. I was almost convinced. But then she told me the full story about that bastard. She told me exactly what he was doing to you behind closed doors."

Razia took a step closer to Madam Gu, her chaotic energy softening into something fiercely protective. "When I heard what he did to you, I told her, ’’God, I am going to kill that bastard myself.’’ I spent weeks learning everything about you. I really love you, you know?"

Before Madam Gu could react, Razia reached out and gently cupped her face. "Ah, you are so different from us. You are so pretty and elegant. Meanwhile..." Razia shot a side-eye at Heena. "This woman looks like she just crawled out of a washing machine. So ugly."

"Where is she ugly?" Madam Gu instinctively defended her new mother, utterly bewildered by the insult. "She is terrifyingly beautiful."

Razia waved a hand dismissively. "You’re just blinded by gratitude. You are so cute, I really wanted to just hug you the moment I saw you at the banquets! But I couldn’t. I had to stay as far away from you as possible, because the poison we were both carrying is highly volatile."

The room went dead silent.

Madam Gu froze. The warm, chaotic domesticity vanished in an instant. "’’Poison?’’"

Razia realized her slip-up. She grimaced, slowly turning her head to look at Heena, offering a sheepish, desperate smile.

Heena let out a long, exhausted sigh. She slowly opened her dark eyes, the lethal warlord instantly cutting through the drowsy fog. "Now that you have spilled the beans, Razia, spill the rest of it."

Razia hesitated, fidgeting with her silk sleeves. "Well... you see... the poison that just made your so-called husband paralyze..."

Madam Gu couldn’t breathe. Her heart hammered against her ribs. She looked at Heena, her voice trembling. "I was carrying a poison?"

Heena leaned forward, resting her elbows on her knees, her gaze locking onto Madam Gu with cold, absolute pragmatism.

"The Prime Minister’s residence is a fortress," Heena stated bluntly. "I cannot just casually poison him. That bastard is paranoid. I thought about slipping a contact poison onto a flower vase, but he meticulously checks everything that enters his study. I couldn’t taint his food, because he forces tasters to eat every single dish first. I needed a method that would bypass his paranoia, and more importantly, I needed it to act slowly so he would collapse naturally, rather than dying violently and triggering an imperial murder investigation."

Heena’s dark eyes narrowed. "The easiest, most flawless vector of delivery... was ’’you’’. The one person who is in constant, unavoidable physical contact with him."

Madam Gu felt the blood drain from her face.

"But I couldn’t just hand you a pill to drop in his tea," Heena continued. "He doesn’t trust you enough to consume anything you hand him. So, do you remember the perfume I gifted you at my wedding?"

Madam Gu gasped. She remembered it vividly. She had been wearing it every single day until yesterday. The scent was intoxicating—a deep, earthy fragrance exactly like the first rain hitting dry soil. She had loved it.

"That perfume, on its own, is completely harmless," Heena explained calmly. "It would never endanger you or anyone else who smelled it. But..." Heena pointed to her chaotic cousin. "Razia was carrying the second half of the compound on her clothes. It is a highly sophisticated binary poison. When both isolated chemicals are repeatedly inhaled by the same target—say, a Prime Minister who spends his mornings arguing with a Vice Minister’s daughter, and his evenings beating his perfumed wife—the compounds bind together."

Razia nodded eagerly, taking over the scientific explanation. "Once combined in his lungs, it slowly attacks the meridians! His brain starts receiving the wrong signals, the nervous system misfires, and eventually, it triggers a massive, untraceable paralytic stroke. Because his body was naturally strong, it took weeks to finally break him down. But it is completely undetectable."

Madam Gu stepped backward, her hands shaking as the horrifying reality set in. She had been the weapon. She had been walking around, radiating the very toxin that destroyed her husband, completely oblivious.

"Did you use me?" Madam Gu whispered, her voice cracking with a mix of awe and profound betrayal. "You played with my life?"

Heena did not flinch. The warlord’s eyes turned freezing cold.

"I cannot fight your fight for you while holding your hand in the dark," Heena said, her voice striking like a steel blade. "I wanted to tell you. But ask yourself honestly—what would you have done if you knew? You would have been terrified. You would have flinched when he approached you. You would have sweated, you would have hesitated, and that paranoid bastard would have instantly known something was wrong."

Heena tilted her head, delivering the final, crushing truth. "The last time you tried to subtly fight back and handle a dangerous substance around him, what happened?"

Madam Gu swallowed hard. She remembered. She had tried to slip a mild sedative into his tea months ago just to get a single night of peace.