Chapter 770 --770

Chapter 770: Chapter-770

Meanwhile, the women—the so-called heads of the households—were either lingering lazily outside the storefront smoking thin bamboo pipes, or standing off to the side of the shop with their arms crossed, chatting loudly amongst themselves. Some had accompanied their husbands out of obligation, but they seemed perfectly content to lean against the doorframes and let the men handle the tedious, domestic details of purchasing kitchenware.

Heena, on the other hand, had absolutely no intention of leaving the most important room in her empire to the judgment of someone else.

Ignoring the strange looks from the veiled husbands, Heena walked directly up to the main display table and began inspecting the heavy hardware herself. She didn’t just glance at the pots; she picked up a massive cast-iron wok, feeling the balance of the wooden handle. She tapped a knuckle against the dark metal, listening for the sharp, clear ring that indicated solid, thick-cast iron rather than cheap, brittle tin that would shatter over a high flame.

"What is this inner coating seasoned with?" Heena asked, turning the heavy pan toward the shopkeeper, a burly woman with soot-stained forearms.

"Pressed tea-seed oil, baked into the pores three times, boss," the shopkeeper replied, wiping her hands on a leather apron.

"Good. I’ll take two of the deep woks, and three of those wide-mouthed clay braising pots," Heena ordered smoothly. "And do you have a rolling pin? A solid one, made of dense date-wood, heavy enough for flattening wheat dough thin enough to read through?"

The shopkeeper blinked, clearly surprised that a young noblewoman in a black cloak knew exactly what kind of wood made the best pastry roller. "Uh... yes, right over here."

Then came the knives.

And that was where things became particularly entertaining for the rest of the shop.

Heena didn’t simply pick up one standard, all-purpose iron cleaver and declare herself satisfied like a normal customer. Instead, she asked the shopkeeper to unroll an entire leather canvas of freshly sharpened blades across the counter. She pulled back her heavy wool sleeve and began examining each one with the terrifying precision of a surgeon selecting scalpels.

She picked up a short, curved paring knife, testing the grip. "This one. It’s light enough for peeling and coring vegetables while sitting down."

She set it aside and picked up a massive, thick-spined rectangular cleaver, weighing it in her palm. "This one. The spine is heavy enough to drive straight through the bone joints of a chicken with a single strike without chipping the edge."

Next, she selected a long, razor-thin blade that flexed slightly when she pressed the tip against the wood. "This for filleting the river fish. The blade needs to glide under the skin without tearing the delicate flesh."

She moved down the row, selecting a sturdy, wedge-like blade for splitting dense root vegetables like yams, a medium utility knife for mincing garlic and ginger into a fine paste, and three others of varying weights and edge bevels.

By the time she finished her meticulous inspection, she had selected exactly eight different knives. And she had personally checked the edge, the balance, and the handle rivets of every single one of them.

The burly shopkeeper watched Heena’s deadly collection grow on the counter with an increasingly bewildered expression. Meanwhile, the ambient noise in the shop had noticeably dropped. The veiled men inspecting the soup ladles had completely stopped what they were doing, their eyes wide as they stared at the young woman hoarding enough bladed steel to equip a small mercenary band.

But Heena wasn’t finished yet.

She moved on to the small accessory bins and began sorting through the vegetable peelers. She selected three different styles: one with a wide, serrated blade, one with a smooth, straight edge, and a Y-shaped one with a pivoting head.

The shopkeeper finally couldn’t hold back her overwhelming curiosity.

"Miss," the blacksmith began, scratching her soot-stained cheek. "Wouldn’t one peeler be enough? You only have two hands. Why in the heavens do you need three of them?"

Heena looked up from the wooden bin, genuinely puzzled by the question. It seemed like the most basic culinary logic in the world.

"Oh, no. One isn’t enough," Heena explained, her tone completely deadpan. "Some vegetables, like winter melons, have incredibly thick, waxy skins that require a heavy, serrated edge to bite into the rind. Others, like young potatoes or carrots, are much softer and need a smooth, pivoting blade so you don’t waste the flesh underneath. Some peelers work better on certain angles than others. If you use a straight blade on a curved root, you’ll just end up hacking it to pieces and ruining the texture. So, I need different ones for different purposes."

She said it as though she were explaining that water is wet.

Unfortunately, the people standing around her didn’t seem to share that modern, hyper-optimized culinary opinion.

For a long moment, several customers simply stared at her in total silence. A few of the women standing near the doorway exchanged highly amused, baffled glances, quietly chuckling into their sleeves. The men who had been busy selecting their own domestic purchases found themselves paying far more attention to Heena than to the ironware in their hands.

It wasn’t every day they saw a woman—especially one who carried herself with the cold, intimidating aura of a syndicate boss—carefully inspecting fish-filleting knives, demanding dense date-wood rollers, and delivering a deadpan, deeply serious lecture on the fluid dynamics of vegetable peelers.

The idea that a woman might actually know how to handle the intricate, messy details of her own kitchen, rather than just eating whatever was placed in front of her, was completely astonishing to them.

Soon enough, the whispers began rippling through the shop.

"Look at her testing that edge," one woman murmured near the door, grinning. "She knows her blades better than a butcher. Must be an unmarried boss who really, really loves to eat."

"Or a very strict one," her companion whispered back, eyeing the terrifying row of eight knives. "I pity the kitchen servant who tries to serve her a bruised carrot."

A veiled man near the clay pots gently elbowed his companion. "Did you hear how she described cutting the fish? I’ve been cooking for my mother for five years and I just use the same chopper for everything..."

Heena, however, didn’t spare the whispering crowd a single glance.

She wasn’t interested in their opinions, nor did she care whether they found her intense dedication to kitchenware strange. Let them laugh and gossip. When she braised her first river fish in rich jaggery and dark soy tonight, the entire street was going to smell it and weep in jealousy.

She had come here to buy proper culinary tools, not to entertain a hardware store. While everyone else continued watching and gossiping about the bizarre, knife-obsessed woman, Heena remained completely focused on counting out her copper strings, inspecting the final rivets on her heavy cast-iron wok with the absolute seriousness of a general preparing for war.

As Heena finished meticulously counting out the heavy copper strings to pay for her massive culinary arsenal, the collective whispering in the hardware shop finally reached a tipping point.

Most of the veiled men in the store had been casting covert, baffled glances at her for the past ten minutes. In this matriarchal empire, women were the ruthless breadwinners, the scholars, the martial artists, and the politicians.