Chapter 745 --745
With a vicious, backhanded swipe, Heena smashed the handful of crushed chili and coarse salt directly into the thug’s wide-open eyes.
The reaction was instantaneous and catastrophic.
The massive woman let out a blood-curdling, gargling shriek. The coarse salt scratched her corneas to ribbons, while the raw, concentrated capsaicin set her eyeballs completely on fire. She dropped her iron-toed boot instantly, stumbling backward and clawing frantically at her own face as blinding, agonizing tears poured down her cheeks.
Without pausing for even a fraction of a second, Heena pivoted on her heel. The two haulers dragging Ren had stopped dead in their tracks, staring in shock as their largest companion suddenly fell to the dirt, screaming like a slaughtered pig.
Heena didn’t give them time to process. She lunged forward, grabbing the heavy, splintered piece of wood that had once been the crossbar of the clinic’s front gate from the mud. It was three feet long, studded with rusted iron nails, and heavy enough to require both of her hands.
Ignoring the white-hot agony ripping through her bound ribs, Heena swung the timber like a baseball bat, aiming directly for the knee of the hauler holding Ren’s right arm.
CRACK.
The sickening sound of the kneecap shattering echoed through the quiet alley. The second hauler screamed, dropping Ren’s arm instantly as her leg buckled outward at a horrific, unnatural angle.
The entire alleyway plunged into a state of stunned, paralyzed silence.
The gossiping crowd at the mouth of the street stopped breathing. The remaining six timber thugs froze in place, staring in absolute shock at the battered, blood-stained girl who had just incapacitated two of their biggest fighters in less than three seconds.
Ren gasped for breath, falling to his knees in the dirt. He looked up, his wide, terrified eyes locking onto the back of the woman standing between him and the sedan chair.
Heena dropped the bloody piece of wood into the mud. She stood up straight, letting out a slow, ragged exhale as the adrenaline masked the agonizing tearing sensation in her chest. She slowly wiped a fresh streak of blood from the corner of her mouth with the back of her wrist, her raven-black eyes locking dead onto Mrs. Lynn.
"What the hell is this?!" Mrs. Lynn screeched, her fat neck turning a violent shade of purple as she pointed her silk fan at Heena. "Who the fuck are you?! Guards! Kill this street rat!"
Heena let out a low, dark chuckle that sounded like grinding stones. She didn’t retreat. She stepped deliberately over the groaning body of the hauler with the shattered knee and walked straight toward the wealthy timber merchant, stopping just inches from the tip of Mrs. Lynn’s fan.
"Who am I?" Heena murmured, her voice dripping with the terrifying, arrogant entitlement of the high nobility, loud enough for every single nosy commoner in the street to hear perfectly.
She turned her head slightly, casting a lazy, possessive glance back at Ren, who was still kneeling in the dirt, completely paralyzed by shock.
"I leave my bed for three hours to buy some decent groceries," Heena declared smoothly, her cold eyes snapping back to Mrs. Lynn, "and some decrepit, grave-robbing old bat is already trying to kidnap my man?"
Up in the air, the System threw its glowing paws over its face. "Oh my god, Host. You just claimed him in front of the entire district. You really leaned into the harlot rumor."
Heena ignored the AI, tilting her chin up as she stared down the wealthy merchant. "Tell your dogs to back away from my clinic. Or the next thing I shatter won’t be a kneecap. It will be your neck."
Mrs. Lynn’s face rapidly drained of its furious purple flush, replaced by a mottled, sickly shade of gray.
As the wealthy matriarch of the East Timber Guild, she was entirely accustomed to crushing poor commoners beneath the weight of her silver and her hired muscle. She knew exactly how to bully indebted families and terrify defenceless, soft-spoken men. But as she stared into Heena’s raven-black eyes, an involuntary shudder violently racked the older woman’s spine.
She was not looking at a terrified street urchin. She was staring into the abyss of a seasoned warlord’s soul. The sheer, suffocating weight of Heena’s bloodlust rolled off her in palpable waves, turning the humid morning air of the alley completely frigid.
"You... you dare?!" Mrs. Lynn stammered, her silk fan trembling so violently in her grip that the bamboo ribs rattled. "She’s a lunatic! What are you useless idiots standing around for?! I pay you to break bones, not gawk! Grab her! Tear her apart!"
She shoved the closest timber hauler forward, desperate to put a wall of muscle between herself and the blood-soaked girl.
But the remaining six thugs hesitated.
These women were brawlers, bullies who broke thumbs for overdue debts. They were not elite assassins. They looked down at their largest enforcer, who was still rolling in the mud, tearing at her own bleeding eyes and screaming in blind agony. They looked at their second fighter, sobbing uncontrollably over a knee that was currently bent backward in a grotesque, unnatural zigzag. And then they looked back at Heena, who hadn’t even broken a sweat.
Heena didn’t retreat a single inch. Slowly, deliberately, she reached down into the mud. Her pale fingers wrapped around the handle of a heavy iron hook one of the downed thugs had dropped. She lifted it effortlessly, the rusted metal gleaming dully in the sunlight as she tapped it rhythmically against her own thigh.
"By all means," Heena whispered. Her voice wasn’t a shout; it was a soft, lethal purr that carried flawlessly through the absolute, dead silence of the alleyway. "Step forward. I have always wondered exactly how long it takes a timber hauler to bleed out in a gutter. Let us find out. Who wants to go first?"
"Host!" the System shrieked in absolute panic, its digital interface flashing with blaring red hazard warnings. "Your internal bleeding is at critical levels! Your heart rate is redlining, and your chest stitches are completely torn! You are holding a heavy iron hook with a ruptured pectoral muscle! You are literally going to pass out in sixty seconds!"
"I only need thirty," Heena replied coldly in her mind, her eyes never leaving the thugs.
She took one single, deliberate step forward.
The six burly women collectively flinched, instinctively taking a step back. Not a single one of them raised their weapons. Ten coppers a day was a decent wage, but it wasn’t enough to buy a one-way ticket to the underworld, and the terrifying, dead-eyed girl standing in front of them looked entirely prepared to slaughter them all without blinking.
"You cowards!" Mrs. Lynn shrieked, realizing she had completely lost control of her own muscle. She pointed a trembling, ring-covered finger at Heena. "Do you even know who I am?! I am the head of the East Timber Guild! You are nothing but a disgraced, cast-off stray from the Lu family! You think you can claim this ruined harlot just because you climbed his wall in the dark?! I will have the magistrate drag you out of this city in chains!"