Chapter 749 --749
Ren’s pale ears instantly flushed a bright, mortified scarlet. He cast a fleeting, hesitant glance back at Heena on the table, bit his lower lip, and quietly ducked out through the curtain as told.
Once they were alone, Old Lady Lin grabbed a thick, folded linen pad and slipped it carefully behind Heena’s neck, lifting her head just an inch so she could swallow without moving her pulverized spine.
"Drink this," the old woman ordered flatly, holding the steaming black bowl to Heena’s mouth. "It has heavy poppy husk and stasis-clearing roots in it. It tastes like rot, and it won’t cure you overnight, but it will dull the nerve pain in your back so you stop clenching your teeth to dust."
Heena didn’t argue. If someone told her horse urine would stop the feeling of a hot iron grate pressing against her shoulder blades, she would have drunk a bucket of it. She parted her blistered lips and forced down the thick, scalding, violently bitter decoction in slow, agonizing swallows.
When the bowl was empty, Old Lady Lin lowered her head back onto the pillow and wiped Heena’s chin roughly with a clean towel.
For a long moment, the old woman just stood there, staring down at the bruised, pale girl wrapped in half a bolt of her clinic’s best linen.
"You kept your word about the Lynn hag," Old Lady Lin said quietly, her voice stiff and rough. "The timber haulers carried that old bat back to her estate yesterday afternoon. Word on the street is that the big one you blinded with chili salt lost the sight in her left eye, and the other one will walk with a cane for the rest of her life. Mrs. Lynn was so terrified you’d actually come burn her timber yards down in the night that she sent double guards to her own gates and withdrew the marriage demand before sundown."
Heena let out a slow, shallow breath through her nose, waiting for the inevitable ’but’ as the heavy herbal sedative began to send a warm, numbing tingle down her screaming nerves.
"However," Old Lady Lin continued, her scowl returning with full force as she crossed her work-worn arms, "thanks to that lunatic mouth of yours shouting across the entire south alley that Ren is ’your man’, no matchmaker within ten miles will touch our doors now! Every thug, butcher, and gossip in the lower district thinks my pure, respectable son has been claimed as the ferocious street-bride of the disgraced Lu daughter!"
"Oof," the System winced from the rafters. "She has a point, Host. You basically peed on him to mark your territory in front of three hundred witnesses."
Heena blinked slowly up at the grumpy mother. Her voice was still a hoarse, wrecked whisper that scraped painfully against her throat, but her dark eyes were crystal clear.
"Would you prefer..." Heena rasped, pausing to swallow hard, "...he be married to a corpse-maker... or engaged to a rumor?"
Old Lady Lin opened her mouth to bark a retort, then snapped it shut. Her weathered face twitched.
"A rumor doesn’t beat him to death," Heena whispered flatly. "And as long as this district thinks he belongs to a lunatic... nobody will dare touch your door again."
The old woman stared at her for a long, heavy beat. Beneath her prickly resentment, she was a survivor of the slums; she knew the brutal math of the streets better than anyone. Her son’s traditional marriage prospects were ruined, yes—but his life was intact, and the predatory vultures of the market were now thoroughly terrified of the madwoman who lived down the block.
"...Hmph. Sharp-tongued little menace," Old Lady Lin muttered, turning away to hide the slight softening at the corners of her eyes as she picked up the empty tray. "Rest. Don’t move a muscle for the next ten hours, or the salve on your back will crack and I’ll have to scrub it out with grain alcohol all over again."
Wait. Thirty-six hours?
Heena’s numbing brain suddenly snagged on a crucial piece of timeline math.
"Wait..." Heena croaked, her eyes widening slightly as a sudden spike of pure, penny-pinching horror cut straight through the poppy-husk haze. "How long... was I out?"
Old Lady Lin paused at the curtain, glancing back over her shoulder. "Since noon yesterday. It is late afternoon of the next day. Why?"
Heena stared blankly at the ceiling beams.
"...Oh no," the System whispered, suddenly realizing what she was thinking about. "Host. Don’t tell me—"
My groceries.
Fifty copper coins’ worth of polished rice, pressed lard, fresh green scallions, and five porcelain vials—left sitting on the corner of a terrified woman’s tofu stall over twenty-four hours ago with a twenty-minute timer.
Heena closed her eyes, letting out a long, silent groan of pure financial agony into the quiet clinic. Forget the Lu family, and forget the East Timber Guild. That poor tofu vendor had probably either fled the capital in terror or died of a heart attack standing next to a sack of rice.
Old Lady Lin lingered by the heavy curtain, one grey eyebrow arching sharply as she watched a look of profound, soul-crushing tragedy wash over Heena’s pale face. The girl hadn’t flinched when told she had nearly died of blood poisoning, nor had she blinked when informed that she had made a mortal enemy of the East Timber Guild. Yet now, she looked as though her entire dynasty had just collapsed into the sea.
"What is that look for?" Old Lady Lin demanded suspiciously. "Did you leave a burning brazier going in that ruined shop of yours?"
"Worse," Heena croaked, staring bleakly at a knot in the wooden ceiling beams. "My rice... my lard... fifty coppers..."
"Fifty-two coppers, actually, if you count the porcelain vials," the System corrected helpfully, curling its glowing tail around its paws. "Though honestly, Host, after watching you turn a woman’s kneecap into gravel with a nailed board, I don’t think that vendor dared to eat your scallions."
At the mention of the rice and lard, the sour scowl on Old Lady Lin’s weathered face abruptly froze, morphing into an expression of sheer, baffled exasperation.
"Oh," the old woman grunted, her lip curling. "So that was yours."
Heena’s dark eyes snapped sideways toward the curtain so fast her neck twitched. "...What?"
"Yesterday afternoon, barely an hour after we dragged your bleeding carcass onto this table, Fatty Zhang from the central market tofu stall came sprinting down the south alley like a pack of hellhounds was chewing on her heels," Old Lady Lin said dryly, shifting the wooden tray on her hip. "She was weeping so hard she could barely breathe. She dropped a sack of polished rice, a jar of lard, some pottery, and two bundles of green onions right onto our ruined porch, kowtowed three times to the doorframe, and screamed, ’Tell the young lady not a single leaf is bruised, please don’t bury me under the floorboards!’ before running away."
Up in the air, the System burst into hysterical, pixelated laughter, rolling onto its back and kicking its glowing paws. "Bwahaha! She actually delivered it! Host, you traumatized an innocent bean-curd merchant into running a free courier service!"