Chapter 746 --746
Heena’s lips curved into a chilling, predatory smile.
"The East Timber Guild?" Heena mocked, tilting her chin up with the pure, untouchable arrogance of the high aristocracy. "You chop dead trees and sell firewood to the slums, and you think that makes you royalty? I am Lu Heena. The blood in my veins is older and more ruthless than the mud you built your pathetic guild upon. A fallen tiger is still a tiger, and you are just a bloated, grave-robbing rat."
The crowd of nosy commoners blocking the street gasped collectively, stepping back as if the words themselves were physically dangerous. The rumor had mutated in a matter of seconds. Ren wasn’t just some loose, desperate clinic doctor anymore. He was the personal, fiercely protected property of the Lu family’s terrifying, demonic daughter.
Heena raised the rusted iron hook, pointing the curved, bloodstained tip directly at the space between Mrs. Lynn’s eyes.
"He is exactly who I say he is," Heena declared, her voice ringing with absolute, undeniable finality. "And I say he is mine. If I ever see your ugly, wrinkled face anywhere near my man or this clinic again, I will not bother with the magistrate. I will personally visit the East Timber Guild, bar the doors, and burn your warehouses to ash with you screaming inside them. Now, pick up your trash and get out of my sight before I lose my temper."
Mrs. Lynn’s mouth opened and closed soundlessly. The threat wasn’t a bluff; it was a promise carved in stone. The wealthy matriarch looked at the shattered bodies of her best fighters, then at the terrified faces of the remaining thugs, and finally at the utterly merciless eyes of the girl blocking the clinic door.
"You... you will regret this, you feral bitch!" Mrs. Lynn spat, though her voice shook with undeniable terror. She violently snapped her silk fan shut. "Grab them! We are leaving!"
The six remaining thugs didn’t need to be told twice. Moving with frantic, terrified speed, they grabbed their blinded companion by the arms and hauled the weeping woman with the shattered knee off the dirt. Without a single backward glance, the entire procession of bullies scrambled out of the alley, practically tripping over themselves in their desperate haste to escape the blood-soaked girl.
As they fled, the dense crowd of commoners at the mouth of the street instantly parted like the Red Sea, completely terrified that Heena might suddenly decide to turn her wrath on the audience.
Within ten seconds, the alley was completely deserted, save for the three of them.
The heavy, oppressive silence rushed back in, broken only by the sound of ragged breathing.
Heena stood perfectly still for three long seconds, watching the end of the street to ensure they were truly gone. The moment the last timber hauler disappeared around the corner, the terrifying, demonic aura of the Black Lotus evaporated like smoke in the wind.The rusted iron hook slipped from her trembling fingers, hitting the mud with a dull thud.
Her vision violently pitched sideways. The adrenaline that had been holding her shattered body together completely snapped. A sudden, agonizing wave of white-hot pain tore through her chest, so intense it robbed her of all breath. She brought a shaking hand up to her ribs, feeling the warm, sticky dampness of fresh blood seeping through the coarse linen of her tunic.
Behind her, Ren was still kneeling in the dirt, his beautiful, pale face completely frozen in shock. His wide, trembling eyes were fixed on the back of the woman who had just single-handedly massacred an entire squad of thugs to save him.
His mother, Old Lady Lin, stood frozen on the ruined front steps of the clinic, the wooden staff slipping from her grip as she stared at Heena in absolute, terrified awe.
Heena slowly turned around to face them. She tried to maintain her cool, arrogant posture. She tried to offer a sharp, witty remark to ease the tension, perhaps something about the absolute lack of gratitude for her saving his chastity.
She opened her mouth to speak.
Instead, a thick mouthful of dark blood spilled past her lips, dripping rapidly down her chin to stain her collar.
"Well," Heena rasped weakly, her eyes rolling back into her head. "That was... exhausting."
Her knees simply ceased to function. She collapsed forward, plunging face-first into the cold, muddy cobblestones as the world finally faded to black.
The cold, filthy mud of the alleyway pressed against Heena’s cheek, a stark contrast to the burning agony radiating through her chest. Through her half-lidded eyes, the world was a blurry, spinning mess of gray and brown.
She expected the frantic hands of a grateful rescue. Instead, what she got was the sharp, bitter sting of absolute resentment.
Old Lady Lin stood over her, the wooden staff dropping from her trembling hands. The initial shock and awe on the older woman’s weathered face rapidly warped into a scowl of profound, unadulterated disgust. She glared down at Heena’s bleeding form, her chest heaving as she pointed a shaking finger at the girl in the mud.
"Don’t you dare try to play the hero here," the old woman spat, her voice cracking with a mix of leftover terror and furious blame. "Do not act like you saved us! It is entirely your fault that we came to this situation in the first place!"
Well, Heena thought sluggishly, not even possessing the energy to open her mouth, let alone fire back a venomous retort. She isn’t exactly wrong.
Her throat was choked with blood, and her lungs felt like they had been filled with lead. She couldn’t fight back, and logically, she didn’t want to. If Heena hadn’t carelessly vaulted over their back wall in the dead of night to escape the Lu family’s thugs, the neighborhood gossips wouldn’t have had the ammunition to brand Ren a harlot. She had handed Mrs. Lynn the exact legal loophole the timber merchant needed to bring her bridal sedan chair at noon.
Yet, deep down, both Heena and the fiercely protective mother knew the unspoken truth. Mrs. Lynn had been circling this quiet clinic like a starving vulture for months, completely obsessed with the handsome young doctor. Heena’s midnight intrusion was just the convenient spark; the powder keg was always going to explode sooner or later.
"Host! Stop agreeing with her and tell them to stop your bleeding!" the System wailed, its digital voice glitching with sheer panic. "Your HP is completely bottoming out!"
Before Heena could even attempt to move her lips, a sudden, desperate blur of white silk dropped into the mud beside her.
Ren, who had been kneeling frozen in the dirt for the last two minutes, finally snapped out of his paralyzed state. His medical instincts, honed over years of patching up the worst injuries in the slums, violently overrode his timid, societal conditioning. He looked at Heena—at the horrifying amount of dark blood soaking through her coarse linen tunic and pooling rapidly in the dirty cobblestones—and his pale face went stark white.
He whipped his head around, his beautiful eyes flashing with an uncharacteristic, blazing intensity as he glared at his mother.
"Mom, shut up!" Ren yelled.