Return of Black Lotus system:Taming Cheating Male Leads

Three-Fingers Qiu was sitting on her overturned wooden barrel, flipping a heavy iron wrench lazily in one hand while three burly female alley thugs leaned against the opposite brick wall, chewing on dried meat and keeping watch over the evening deliveries.

As the sound of slow, unhurried footsteps echoed down the slick cobblestones, the three thugs immediately straightened up, their hands dropping to the wooden cudgels at their waists.

𝚏𝗋ℯⅇ𝘄𝖾𝒃𝘯𝒐𝘃𝔢𝓵.𝔠𝖔𝘮

Qiu narrowed her scarred eyes through the pipe smoke, peering at the two cloaked figures approaching through the gloom. When she recognized the sharp, pale jawline beneath Heena’s hood—and saw the tall, veiled attendant carrying a lacquered box smoothly behind her—the gatekeeper’s scarred eyebrow shot up in genuine surprise.

"Well, I’ll be damned," Qiu rasped, tapping the ash from her pipe against the barrel. "When I heard the Lu family’s little viper got carried out of the south alley yesterday soaking in a puddle of her own blood, I figured I’d have to burn ghost money for you tonight. Looks like the King of Hell spat you back out."

Heena stopped four paces away, her hand resting lightly on Ren’s sleeve as her dark eyes swept coldly over the three armed thugs before settling on Qiu.

"The King of Hell couldn’t afford my consultation fee," Heena said smoothly, her voice quiet, raspy, and utterly devoid of fear. "And I told you not to worry about my schedule. It is the third evening, the lanterns out front are barely lit, and I am right on time."

Qiu’s eyes dropped from Heena’s face to the veiled figure standing quietly behind her. For a fleeting second, the gatekeeper’s sharp gaze lingered on the slender build and the clean, delicate fingers gripping the strap of the wooden box.

Immediately, Heena shifted her weight by half an inch, angling her cloaked shoulder just enough to block Qiu’s line of sight while letting a suffocatingly cold glint flash in her raven eyes.

"Eyes up here, Qiu," Heena murmured softly. "My attendant is here to carry my porcelain, not to be appraised by the help."

Behind the dark gauze veil, Ren felt a strange, tiny jolt run through his chest at the effortless, lethal way she stepped in front of him. His right hand relaxed slightly inside his cuff, his fingers sliding an inch away from the packet of blinding lime.

Qiu let out a dry chuckle, raising both scarred hands in mock surrender. "Easy, little boss. I don’t poach from business partners. "

However, the moment Qiu lowered her scarred hands, the amusement vanished from her face. She leaned back against the brick wall, looking at Heena with a flat, unreadable expression.

"Maybe that fever cooked your memory a little, little boss," Qiu said calmly, tapping the heavy iron wrench against her palm. "When you stood in this alley, we agreed on seventy-two hours. Three days."

Qiu tilted her head back, glancing up at the deep indigo strip of sky visible between the two towering brothel roofs.

"Because you spent thirty-six hours lying half-dead on a doctor’s table, you missed your window," Qiu continued smoothly. "It has already been more than thirty-six hours since your deadline expired, you know. Today is the fourth evening since you first walked into my lane. And in that regard... I don’t think our little agreement still works."

Heena offered a faint, polite smile, preparing to smooth the discrepancy over with aristocratic charm—until Qiu cut her off with a sharp wave of her three-fingered hand.

"Don’t bother trying to use clever scholar words on me, girl, because it isn’t going to work down here," Qiu said, her gravelly voice turning hard as iron. "In the underworld, a promise is a promise. We stake our necks and give our lives on the exact hour of a word in this business. You broke the clock, and you showed up late. So now? I don’t want whatever is in that box. The deal is dead."

Behind the dark gauze of his bamboo hat, Ren’s pupils dilated slightly. His pulse spiked as he realized what was happening—if the deal collapsed right now, the fifty-tael contract was void, Heena’s shop would be forfeited at midnight, and they had walked into a lethal alley for nothing. Inside his right sleeve, his fingers tensed against the packet of blinding lime.

Beneath the folds of her heavy black wool cloak, Heena’s pale hand curled into a tight, white-knuckled fist. For a fraction of a second, the urge to simply have Ren blind the three thugs while she smashed Qiu’s kneecaps flared in her chest.

Instead, she forced her fingers to unclench, smoothing her features into a mask of icy indifference.

"Is that so?" Heena said evenly. "It’s okay, then. If the Crimson Lotus doesn’t want to make silver tonight, I will simply take my chest and sell it to someone else down the avenue."

𝖿𝗋𝑒𝐞𝕨𝗲𝓫𝗇𝚘𝔳𝕖ℓ.𝘤𝘰𝒎

Qiu let out a low, mocking snort, folding her burly arms across her chest as her three thugs shifted forward half a step, effectively blocking the width of the wet passage.

"Walking away is your wish, little viper," Qiu drawled, her scarred lip curling. "But you actually being able to do business anywhere on this street without my nod? I don’t think that is possible."

Heena let out a cold, sharp sneer. Slowly, deliberately, she turned her back halfway toward Qiu, as if preparing to walk back out to the main thoroughfare.

"Whether you let me do business in the back alleys or not isn’t that big of a deal, you know," Heena remarked lazily over her shoulder, reaching into the folds of her cloak to pull out the small, wax-sealed porcelain sample vial she had kept separate from Ren’s box. She let out a soft, theatrical sigh as her thumbnail caught the edge of the wax seal, slowly peeling it away from the stopper. "If the pavilions won’t open their back doors, I can just set up a wooden stall right outside in the main street and sell it to the noble patrons myself."

Qiu’s eyes narrowed dangerously, her hand tightening on the iron wrench as she pushed off the barrel. "And do you seriously think I would let you set up a stall on my turf without smashing it to splinters—"

Pop.

With a tiny, almost inaudible sound, Heena pulled the tiny wooden cork out of the porcelain neck.

She didn’t throw it, and she didn’t wave it in the air. She simply tilted the open mouth of the bottle by a fraction of an inch, letting a single drop of the clear liquid wet the porcelain rim where the warm heat of her fingers rested.

In the damp, stagnant air of the narrow alley—choked with the heavy stench of rancid mutton grease, wet moss, and cheap, suffocatingly sweet pig-fat rouge—the high-proof grain alcohol evaporated instantly on contact with her skin.

And then, the smell hit Qiu straight in the face.

Qiu’s jaw snapped shut mid-sentence.

The words died completely on her tongue. For three full seconds, nobody in the damp alleyway moved a muscle.

First came the sharp, crystalline strike of pure borneol camphor—a breath of winter frost so piercingly clean that it instantly sliced through the thick, greasy stench of the alley gutters like an unsheathed blade. It cleared their sinuses in half a heartbeat, making the three burly thugs leaning against the brick wall blink rapidly as a cool, exhilarating shiver ran straight down their spines.