Chapter 750 --750
A wave of pure, unadulterated relief washed through Heena’s chest, far more effective than the poppy-husk decoction. Her fifty-two coppers were safe. Her startup capital hadn’t evaporated into thin air.
"She even threw in three blocks of fresh pressed tofu as an apology for being late," Old Lady Lin added, shaking her head in disgust as if she couldn’t fathom what kind of demonic extortion Heena had been running before noon. "We ate two of the blocks for dinner last night. Consider it the board fee for taking up my examination table."
"Keep... the third block too," Heena whispered magnanimously, her miserly heart finally settling back into a regular rhythm. "Touch the vials... or the rice... and we will have problems."
"Bah! As if my clinic is so poor I need to steal a handful of grain from a half-dead cripple!" Old Lady Lin barked, pulling the curtain back and marching out into the front room before she lost her temper again.
As the curtain swung shut, the heavy, numbing warmth of the poppy husk began to drag at Heena’s limbs, turning her arms and legs into lead weights. Yet, just as her eyelids began to droop, a second, far more urgent realization slammed into her brain.
Wait.
If she had been unconscious for thirty-six hours... that meant a day and a half of her three-day deadline with Three-Fingers Qiu had already vanished.
By the evening after tomorrow, she was supposed to walk into that back alley behind the Crimson Lotus with two finished, high-grade cosmetic prototypes. And right now, she was strapped flat on her back to a wooden plank, wrapped like a mummy, completely unable to sit up or lift a mortar and pestle without tearing her scabbing flesh wide open.
"Uh, Host?" the System asked nervously, noticing the sudden, terrifying glint of calculation snapping back into her drowsy eyes. "I know that look. Old Lady Lin literally just said not to move a muscle for ten hours. Do not tell me you are going to try and sneak out of bed to boil face powder."
"Am I an idiot?" Heena replied mentally, her gaze drifting toward the gap in the curtain where the faint shadow of a tall, slender figure was pacing anxiously back and forth in the front room. "Why would a commander do manual labor when she just acquired a perfectly good pair of hands?"
Summoning a breath into her bruised lungs, Heena cleared her sandpaper throat and spoke—not loud, but just sharp enough to carry past the thin cloth partition.
"Ren."
Outside, the sound of pacing footsteps stopped dead. Less than two seconds later, the edge of the curtain was hesitantly pulled back an inch, and Ren’s pale, handsome face peered into the dim room. The scarlet flush on his ears had faded only slightly, leaving a faint pink tint across his high cheekbones.
"Does your back hurt?" he asked softly, stepping inside while keeping a respectful, mother-approved three feet of distance from the edge of the table. "Or do you need more honey water?"
"Neither," Heena rasped, fixing her dark eyes on him. "I need... an alchemist’s setup. A ceramic distillation still... a fine stone mortar... and ten jin of the highest-proof clear grain alcohol you have in this clinic."
Ren blinked his long eyelashes, thoroughly bewildered. "Grain alcohol and a still? Right now? Miss Lu, your internal heat barely just subsided—you cannot possibly brew medicine in your condition—"
"I am not brewing medicine," Heena interrupted smoothly, though she had to pause every few words to swallow past the raw sting in her throat. "And I am not lifting a finger. You are."
Ren stared at her, pointing a slender finger at his own chest. "Me?"
"The entire东 market currently believes I nearly died fighting eight timber haulers to protect your honor," Heena murmured, a faint, wicked curve tugging at the corner of her blistered lips as she watched his ears instantly turn bright red all over again. "The least my rumored groom can do... is grind a few bowls of rice powder while I tell him what to do. Unless, of course... you want me to get up and do it myself?"
To emphasize the threat, she twitched her shoulder by a fraction of an inch against the table.
"Don’t move!" Ren yelped, immediately taking a panicked step forward with his hands raised before catching himself. He let out a long, helpless sigh, looking down at the ruthless, pale-faced woman who was somehow bossing him around from her deathbed.
Against all common sense, the tense crease between his brows smoothed out, replaced by a faint, reluctant smile that softened his entire face.
"My mother is in the back courtyard chopping firewood," Ren said quietly, turning toward the storage cabinets along the wall. "If she catches me grinding mystery powders for you instead of sorting the fever herbs, she will hit us both with the broom. Tell me what you need first—and if you move your spine an inch off that table, I’m doubling the bitter bark in your evening dose."
With the heavy poppy-husk decoction finally numbing her screaming nerves, Heena actually felt somewhat human again. She propped her chin up slightly against the folded linen pad, watching with satisfaction as Ren carried a heavy stone mortar over to the side table, poured in a bowl of her freshly delivered white rice, and picked up the stone pestle to begin grinding.
Just as the pestle touched the grain, a freezing, deadpan voice cut through the quiet room from behind the curtain.
"Very good, Ren."
Ren violently flinched, nearly dropping the heavy stone pestle onto his own foot as he whipped around in sheer terror.
Standing right in the doorway, holding an armful of freshly split firewood like a bundle of executioner’s clubs, was Old Lady Lin. Her weathered face was dark as a thunderstorm.
Lying flat on the table, even Heena gave an involuntary little tremble.
Old Lady Lin didn’t even bother with the firewood; she dropped the logs onto the floor with a deafening clatter, marched straight past her trembling son, and locked her blazing eyes directly onto Heena.
"You fucking noble bitch," the old woman spat.
Heena blinked, genuinely startled. She was a ruthless warlord who cursed people out on a daily basis, but in all her lifetimes of commanding armies and ruling courts, it had been a very long time since someone had stood over her bed and hurled raw, unfiltered street profanity directly into her face.
Before Heena could even open her blistered mouth to respond, Old Lady Lin lunged forward and grabbed a fistful of Heena’s coarse linen collar.
"Mom, wait—her back!" Ren gasped, reaching out in panic.
"Shut your mouth!" Old Lady Lin barked at him, never taking her furious eyes off Heena. Her calloused, iron-strong hands twisted into Heena’s tunic, yanking her upper body an inch off the table regardless of the bandages. "You dare to lie on my table and order my son around like a common slave?! Who the fuck do you think you are, huh?! Just because I boiled medicine to save your rotten life, you think you can lie here and show off your high-and-mighty noble nonsense in my house?! You just wait—I am throwing you into the gutter right now!"