Chapter 790 --790

Chapter 790: Chapter-790

By the time the meal was over, both Ren and Madam Lin were so full that they could barely eat another bite.

For once, neither of them had to worry about saving a little congee for the next meal. Heena had made sure of that.

However, while Ren collected the bowls and carried them to the kitchen to wash, Madam Lin was still grumbling under her breath.

"Such a waste! We could have eaten the remaining congee tomorrow, but no! Someone just had to insist on finishing everything today."

Heena was sitting leisurely beneath the veranda, looking out at the evening sky. Hearing Madam Lin’s complaints, she didn’t even bother turning her head.

I don’t give a damn.

She had already explained herself. If Madam Lin still wanted to complain, then she was welcome to do so. Heena wasn’t going to change her mind just because someone refused to understand her.

A little while later, Ren came out of the kitchen, wiping his hands with a towel after finishing the dishes.

Heena glanced at him and spoke as calmly as though she were discussing the weather.

"Starting tomorrow, there must be at least one of these three things in our meals: eggs, chicken, or fish. You can choose whichever is available, but there must be one of them."

Ren stopped wiping his hands.

Madam Lin also turned towards her.

"And I’ll prepare vegetable dishes myself," Heena continued. "I’ll take care of the cooking and the expenses for our meals. I can’t keep eating the way you two do."

She said it without the slightest hesitation.

It wasn’t that she disliked congee or couldn’t appreciate a simple meal. She simply refused to live on watery porridge and pickles when she could afford better food. She needed proper nutrition, and she wasn’t going to compromise on that just to save a few coins.

Madam Lin felt as though someone had sprinkled salt directly onto her wound.

She stared at Heena, her expression growing increasingly displeased.

"Ha! You’re certainly a spirited woman, aren’t you? Now I understand why the Lu family kicked you out!"

Heena paused.

For a moment, she simply looked at Madam Lin.

Then, without any change in her expression, she answered, "No. The Lu family kicked me out because I refused to hand over the last shop my father left me to my brother-in-law. That’s why they kicked me out."

Madam Lin fell silent.

Ren, who had been standing beside her, also froze.

Neither of them had expected Heena to answer so directly.

People who had been disgraced by their own families rarely spoke openly about the circumstances. Even among close friends, many would rather swallow their humiliation than reveal the ugly truth behind their misfortune.

It wasn’t just a matter of pride. Such things were deeply personal, and admitting them often meant exposing the very people who had once been their family.

Yet Heena had stated the reason so plainly that there was no room for misunderstanding.

She hadn’t even tried to hide it.

Madam Lin stared at her, momentarily at a loss for words. She had intended to use the Lu family’s rejection to mock Heena, perhaps expecting her to become embarrassed or defensive.

The dim, flickering light of a single, cheap tallow candle cast long, wavering shadows across the stone counter. Heena sat across from Old Lady Lin, with Ren standing quietly by his mother’s side, but the air in the back courtyard had grown heavy with the sudden, serious shift in conversation.

Heena looked at Ren, then down at the older woman, before turning her gaze toward the small, slatted window where the dark night sky loomed.

"I am not telling you this to make you feel sympathy for me, or to beg for your pity," Heena said calmly, her raspy voice cutting through the quiet crackle of the dying hearth. "I just want you to know that the rumors the Lu family spread to justify throwing me out are absolute garbage. There is no nonsense about me setting my eyes on my brother-in-law."

She scoffed, a genuine flash of revulsion crossing her pale features. The very idea of coveting the stiff, arrogant men of the upper rings made her skin crawl. The Lu Matriarch had needed a scandalous excuse to banish a useless daughter without looking like a monster, and framing Heena as a predatory homewrecker had been the perfect, reputation-destroying lie.

"I will get married eventually. That is a certainty," Heena continued. Her dark eyes shifted, locking onto Ren’s with a cold, absolute sincerity that made his breath catch in his throat. "But when I do, I will never try to take another person’s spouse, forcefully or otherwise. I don’t steal from other households, and I certainly don’t take leftovers."

With that iron-clad declaration hanging in the air, Heena calmly stood up from her wooden stool. She wiped her hands on a cloth and turned toward the front of the shop.

"I am going out."

Old Lady Lin blinked, her wrinkled face pulling into a deep frown. "It’s the middle of the night! Where in the heavens are you going?"

"I am just going for a walk outside," Heena replied, pulling her heavy black cloak from its peg and draping it carefully over her healing shoulders. She gestured vaguely to the suffocatingly dark room around them. "It is too dark in here."

Even with the single candle burning on the kitchen counter, the massive, two-story apothecary was swallowed by pitch-black shadows. The corners of the room were impenetrable. Without a proper array of oil lamps, Heena practically had to navigate the front storefront by pure memory and guesswork, her hands brushing against the bare wooden shelves to guide her way toward the exit.

She unlatched the heavy wooden bolt and pulled the door open, stepping over the threshold into the cool, silent street.

The contrast was immediate. Out here, away from the suffocating, windowless darkness of the unlit shop, the sky was utterly clear. A brilliant, silver moon hung high above the capital, casting a stark, luminous glow over the curved tiled rooftops and the packed dirt of the East Market. The moonlight washed over the quiet street, providing a gentle, silvery brightness that allowed Heena to finally see clearly without squinting into the gloom.

She let out a long breath, a plume of faint white mist curling from her lips in the crisp night air. Leaving the shocked physician and his mother behind in the apothecary, Heena pulled her cloak tight against the chill and began to walk down the empty, moonlit lane.

As Heena walked down the quiet, moonlit dirt road, the sheer silence of the street began to press heavily against her ears.

For the first time all day, she actually found herself missing the annoying, high-pitched buzzing of her digital chatterbox. Usually, when she was working, her mind was moving at a thousand miles an hour, fueled by pure spite and survival instinct. But now that the adrenaline was fading and there was absolutely nothing left to physically build or buy, a profound exhaustion was settling into her bones. And without the System floating beside her to bicker with—the night felt suffocatingly empty.