Chapter 752 --752

Chapter 752: Chapter-752

Old Lady Lin frowned deeply, stepping closer to the mortar as Ren poured in the warm water and began rotating the pestle with practiced, rhythmic strength. "That is still just plain rice flour, girl. You can’t sell kitchen starch to a brothel for fifty taels."

"Of course not," Heena murmured, her eyes drifting toward the towering wall of apothecary drawers lining the back room. "Which is why I am in a clinic. Mother Lin—open the third row of cabinets on the left. Give me two liang of dried Bai Zhi root, a pinch of white Bletilla tuber, and the finest crushed mother-of-pearl powder you use for eye ointments."

Old Lady Lin’s grey eyebrows shot up. She didn’t move toward the cabinet right away, staring sharply at Heena. "You actually know pharmacology? Bai Zhi and Bletilla clear skin blemishes and draw out dark blood stasis, and pearl powder cools inflammation."

"I don’t know how to cure a fever, no," Heena said flatly. "But I know what makes human skin look like flawless imperial jade. The men in the pleasure district are rotting their faces with toxic white lead to look pale. Mix those three medicinal herbs into the levigated rice milk before drying it. Not only will the pearl dust give their collarbones a natural, candlelit shimmer without looking chalky, the herbs will actually heal the lead-rot sores underneath while they wear it."

Silence fell over the treatment room, save for the wet, rhythmic grind-grind of the stone pestle.

Ren’s eyes widened slightly as his hands worked the mortar, looking back at the pale woman strapped to his examination table with a sudden flash of genuine professional awe. Across from him, Old Lady Lin didn’t utter a single curse. Her sharp, greedy eyes narrowed thoughtfully as she did the mental math—a medicinal face powder that actually healed damaged skin instead of destroying it? The vain noblemen and brothel peacocks in the capital would sell their own kidneys for a jar of that.

Without another word of complaint, the old woman turned, marched to the apothecary drawers, and began weighing out the exact herbs Heena had demanded on her brass scales, even taking over the second stone mortar to pulverize the pearl dust herself.

"Look at her go," the System whispered in amazement. "You didn’t just hire the doctor, Host, you got the head pharmacist working for free too."

While the mother-and-son duo worked in synchronized efficiency to refine, skim, and dry the milky medicinal slurry over the charcoal stoves, Heena turned her attention to the true centerpiece of her plan: the ceramic distillation still sitting on the corner counter.

"Ren," Heena called out softly once the plates of rice paste were baking over the coals. "Bring the ten-year grain alcohol. And empty out the scrap drawer at the bottom of the herb cabinet."

Ren wiped the sweat from his brow with his sleeve and hurried over, placing a heavy clay jar of clear, biting liquor beside the still, along with a wooden tray filled with broken bits of dried botanicals. "These are just the broken trimmings from our pricey stock, Miss Lu. Crushed agarwood chips, dried white sandalwood shavings, bruised osmanthus blossoms, and some leftover cloves."

"Trash to a doctor is liquid gold to a perfumer," Heena rasped. "The perfumers in this city steep their flowers in pig lard and heavy sesame oil. By noon, they smell like a rancid kitchen. Alcohol doesn’t go rancid, and when distilled properly, it evaporates the second it touches warm skin, leaving only the pure soul of the scent behind."

For the next three hours, the small back room of the south-alley clinic transformed into a high-end laboratory.

Lying completely immobile on her stomach, Heena directed every single movement with the terrifying precision of a battlefield commander. She had Ren crush the sandalwood, agarwood chips, and dried osmanthus into the belly of the clay still, submerging them in the biting, high-proof grain alcohol alongside a secret weapon from the clinic’s cooling drawer: three tiny crystals of pure Bing Pian—natural borneol camphor.

As the low charcoal fire heated the clay vessel, the alcohol vapor rose through the aromatic herbs, stripping away the heavy, muddy impurities and carrying only the lightest, purest essential oils up into the curved bamboo cooling pipe.

Old Lady Lin kept a cold wet cloth wrapped around the bamboo pipe to condense the steam.

Drip. Drip. Drip.

Crystal-clear, colorless liquid began to trickle slowly from the end of the bamboo spout, falling drop by drop into one of Heena’s small porcelain vials.

Within minutes, a breathtaking fragrance began to bloom in the cramped room, completely overpowering the bitter smell of boiled poppy bark and harsh medicine.

At first contact with the air, the borneol crystals delivered a sharp, exhilaratingly crisp top note—like the first breath of frost over a winter lake, instantly cutting through the stuffy heat of the room. Then, a heartbeat later, the coldness melted away into the warm, intoxicatingly rich embrace of sweet osmanthus and deep, smoky agarwood. It wasn’t cloying, greasy, or loud like the cheap peony fat in the red-light district. It was haunting, aloof, and dangerously seductive—the scent of an untouchable immortal who had accidentally stepped into a mortal tavern.

Ren stood frozen beside the stove, his lips parted slightly as he breathed in the air, his pale cheeks flushing a soft pink just from standing near the vial.

Even Old Lady Lin stopped wringing out the cooling cloth. She stared down at the tiny porcelain bottle, sniffing the air twice before looking back at Heena as if the girl had just summoned a ghost.

"What... what kind of bewitching water is this?" the old woman whispered, her rough voice completely stripped of its usual venom. "There isn’t a single drop of oil in it, yet a single whiff makes my head spin..."

On the side table, the porcelain plates had cooled. Ren carefully scraped the dried, snow-white layer off the plates and passed it through the fine silk mesh for the fifth time. What fell into the waiting porcelain jar below didn’t even look like powder—it looked like a pile of fallen clouds, so weightless and silky that when Ren dipped the tip of his pinky finger into it and brushed it across the back of his hand, it vanished seamlessly into his skin, leaving behind a soft, luminous, pearlescent glow that made his pale hand look ten times more delicate.

Heena let out a long, slow breath, resting her heavy head fully down onto the linen pad as the exhaustion finally dragged her eyelids shut.

In two small porcelain containers sitting on a dusty clinic table rested the absolute collapse of the capital’s luxury market—and the exact bait that would bring her dear sister Lu Mei crawling on her knees.

"Cork the vials tightly with wax," Heena murmured, her voice fading into a drowsy whisper as the poppy sedative finally pulled her under for a real sleep. "Tomorrow at dusk... your fifty silver taels will walk right through the front door."

For a long moment, Old Lady Lin didn’t say a word.

She simply stood beside the worktable, her sharp, weathered eyes shifting from the two tiny porcelain containers to the pale, bandaged girl who had already slipped into a heavy slumber on the examination plank. The intoxicating, frost-and-osmanthus phantom of the spilled perfume still lingered in the air, making the dingy back-alley clinic smell like an imperial palace.