Chapter 757 --757

Chapter 757: Chapter-757

Old Lady Lin didn’t even flinch. Standing by the side table with her work-worn arms crossed tightly over her chest, the old woman looked at Heena’s dramatic, wobbling performance and let out a dry, knowing scoff, a sharp smile curving her wrinkled lips.

"Save your breath, Ren," Old Lady Lin said coolly, her sharp eyes locking straight onto Heena’s fluttering eyelashes. "I spent two hours scrubbing and wrapping that back myself—I know down to the exact inch what is under those bandages. It is just some bruised muscle tissue and split skin, not her whole body cut into pieces! With the amount of poppy root and stasis herb I poured down her throat today, an ox could step on her foot and she wouldn’t feel a thing. If she wants to throw herself onto the floor to put on an opera for us, let her hit the tiles!"

For two full seconds, Heena remained frozen at a forty-five-degree angle, one hand still dramatically pressed to her forehead and her eyes squeezed shut, waiting to see if the old woman would cave.

Nothing happened. The only sound in the treatment room was the faint crackle of the charcoal brazier and the muffled snickering of a digital lion cub rolling around on the ceiling beams.

"Busted," the System wheezed, slapping a glowing paw against the wood. "Ten out of ten for the tragic fainting maiden pose, Host, truly Oscar-worthy, except you forgot your audience is the literal surgeon who drugged you!"

Realizing her performance had completely flopped, Heena smoothly straightened her spine, dropped her hand from her forehead, and opened her eyes without a single shred of embarrassment on her pale face.

Ren blinked, his outstretched hands slowly lowering as he stared at her in bewildered silence. One heartbeat ago she had looked like a dying swan; now she was standing on both feet, her posture straight and her dark eyes irritatingly clear.

"Ah," Heena said calmly, brushing an imaginary speck of dust off her coarse linen sleeve. "A sudden miracle. Your mother’s medicine just kicked in right at the last second."

"Miracle my foot," Old Lady Lin snorted, though the corner of her mouth twitched upward. "Your skin is thicker than the city wall, girl. You think a few crocodile tears and a wobble are going to trick me into walking down that brothel alley to get my throat slit for you?"

"I wasn’t trying to trick you into going alone," Heena replied smoothly, leaning back lightly against the edge of the examination table to take the strain off her stiff back muscles. "And I wasn’t lying when I said I was going myself. I just needed a walking stick with a heartbeat—and since your son was so eager to catch me, it looks like I found one."

Both Ren and Old Lady Lin stiffened at the exact same time.

"Wait—you want to take Ren?!" Old Lady Lin barked, her protective maternal hackles rising instantly as she stepped between them. "Are you out of your mind?! I wouldn’t go down there with an iron pestle, and you want to drag an unmarried man into the back lane of five pleasure houses at dusk?! Those traffickers and brothel guards will swallow him whole before you even reach the barrel!"

"They would if he walked in there looking like a frightened clinic doctor," Heena agreed coldly, her dark eyes sweeping over Ren’s neat robes and soft, gentle features. "They won’t touch a hair on his head if he walks in right behind me carrying my medicine box." 𝚏𝗋ℯⅇ

She looked straight at Old Lady Lin, her voice dropping into the cool, calculating register that had convinced the old woman of her brilliance the night before.

"Use your head, Mother Lin. Why did you refuse to go?" Heena asked sharply. "Because if a lone old woman shows up instead of me, Three-Fingers Qiu will think I am either dead or too cowardly to show my face, and she’ll rob you blind. Why can’t I hobble down there completely alone? Because if Qiu sees me trembling and bleeding through my tunic without a single attendant, she’ll smell weakness in the water and try to squeeze my throat for the recipe."

Heena raised a pale finger, pointing between herself and Ren.

"To bleed a street shark for a hundred and fifty silver taels, you have to look like a bigger shark," Heena stated flatly. "If I stroll into that alley wrapped in a heavy cloak so she can’t see my bandages, leaning lazily on the arm of a personal attendant who carries my box while I don’t even bother to lift a finger... she won’t see a half-dead castaway. She will see a ruthless noble boss who already has people serving under her."

Silence settled over the room as the sheer psychological math of the bluff sank in.

Ren looked down at the padded wooden box on the table, then back up at Heena. "And... what if she still tries to use force when you demand a hundred and fifty taels?"

Heena reached into the folds of her waistband, pulling out a leftover paper packet of the fine, white Bing Pian camphor crystals and setting it next to a small bottle of clear grain alcohol.

"She won’t," Heena smiled, a chilling, obsidian glint in her eyes. "Because the moment she smells what is inside that vial, greed will rot every last bit of caution in her brain. Now, Mother Lin—you can either lend me a thick dark cloak, a wide-brimmed bamboo hat with a veil for your son, and come stand at the mouth of the main street with a broom to watch our backs... or we can all sit here and drink bitter bark water while my fortune evaporates."

Old Lady Lin stared at Heena for five long seconds, her jaw working silently as she weighed the terrifying audacity of the girl against the promise of fifty solid silver taels.

Finally, the old woman spat out a curse that would have made a dockworker blush, spun on her heel, and marched toward the back wardrobe.

"If a single brothel guard so much as breathes on my son’s sleeve," Old Lady Lin snarled over her shoulder, yanking open the wooden cabinet doors to pull out a heavy, winter-weight black wool cloak and a veiled bamboo hat, "forget your shop deed—I will personally boil your bones into glue!"

"Deal," Heena rasped, a victorious smirk tugging at her blistered lips as Ren stepped forward to help drape the heavy black cloak gently over her bandaged shoulders. "Now hurry up. The evening lanterns in the south avenue are about to be lit, and it is time to go rob a brothel."

While Heena remained in the treatment room, carefully sliding her arms through the sleeves of a clean outer robe so she wouldn’t crack the dried salve on her back, Ren stepped into the narrow back storage room to fetch the heavy winter cloak and the veiled bamboo hat.

Just as his fingers closed around the rough black wool of the cloak, soft, deliberate footsteps sounded right behind him.

Ren turned around, clutching the heavy fabric to his chest as his mother stepped into the dim space and pulled the wooden door mostly shut behind her.