Chapter 755 --755
Ren looked down at his slender, medicine-stained hands. The logic was undeniable, cold, and brutally practical—the exact kind of survival math that had kept him and his mother alive in the slums for twenty years.
He let out a quiet, resigned sigh, his shoulders dropping. "What is it that you actually want me to do, Mother?"
A slow, scheming smile spread across Old Lady Lin’s wrinkled face, making her look remarkably like the very street sharks she despised.
"Making a proud, ruthless woman like that fall for you is actually not that hard, son," she whispered, her voice dropping into a conspiratorial purr. "When she was high and mighty in her noble estate, a hundred pretty men couldn’t catch her eye. But right now? She is wounded, cast out, and completely alone. She doesn’t have a single person she can trust to watch her back. So... become her support."
Ren’s breath hitched slightly as his mother looked him dead in the eye.
"Be gentle when everyone else is harsh. Take care of her wounds, brew her tea, and make yourself indispensable," Old Lady Lin instructed smoothly. "Get her past the threshold and into your bed while she has no one else to lean on. Despite that feral mouth of hers, you saw how she ran back to that alley today—she is the type of proud fool who actually honors her debts. Once you become her man in truth, she will take responsibility and marry you properly. And once your name is on her marriage register, no matter how high she climbs or where she goes in this empire, you will have a good life."
Ren stared at his mother, the tips of his ears burning a fierce, mortified crimson in the dim candlelight.
"M-Mother!" he stammered, his newly found composure cracking instantly as he took a hasty step back from the table. "What kind of shameful things are you saying?! I am a physician, not a... a scheming courtesan from the south avenue! And you saw her back today—if anyone tried to climb into her bed right now, she would either bleed to death on the spot or snap their neck with her bare hands!"
Old Lady Lin rolled her eyes toward the ceiling beams, letting out a sharp tsk of pure maternal impatience.
"Did I tell you to go jump on top of her broken ribs tonight, you blockhead?!" she hissed, rapping her knuckles against the scarred tabletop. "Use the brain in your skull! I mean while she is recovering over the next month! When she is thirsty, be the one holding the cup. When her bandages itch, be the one applying the cooling salve. Let her get used to your face, your voice, and your cooking. Once a fierce stray wolf gets used to being fed by a single hand, she doesn’t bite it—she guards the whole house!"
Ren opened his mouth to argue, then slowly closed it again. His heart was beating uncomfortably fast against his ribs, a strange, tangled knot of emotions tightening in his chest.
He didn’t want to seduce anyone for a property deed. The very idea of calculating affection like a merchant weighing silver left a bitter, metallic taste in his mouth—reminding him far too much of the ruthless, cold-blooded games of the upper-ring estates his mother had fled before he was born.
Yet, when he closed his eyes, he didn’t see a scheming aristocrat. He saw a pale, blood-soaked figure standing squarely between him and Mrs. Lynn’s thugs, swinging a nail-studded beam with shattered ribs and declaring to the entire world that he belonged to her.
"I will treat her wounds because I am a doctor, and because we owe her our lives," Ren said quietly, his voice regaining its calm, stubborn steadiness as he reached for the door bolt. "And I will help her finish her alchemical batch tomorrow so our contract is honored. As for the rest... I am not going to play dirty tricks on a patient under my roof, Mother. Goodnight."
Before Old Lady Lin could bark another lecture at his head, Ren slid the bolt back, slipped out into the dark corridor, and pulled the door shut behind him.
Inside the room, the old woman stared at the closed door for a moment, then let out a dry, raspy chuckle, folding the thumbprinted contract carefully and tucking it beneath her pillow. "Stubborn boy. Just like me. Ah well... with that girl’s temper, an honest fool will probably hook her faster than a clever fox anyway."
Meanwhile, down the hall in the quiet treatment room, the subject of their grand matrimonial conspiracy was currently snoring softly into a linen pad, blissfully unaware that the clinic’s matriarch was actively plotting to pimp out her son.
Floating above the examination table, however, the System had heard every single word through the thin wooden walls.
𝔣𝖗ⅇℯ𝗐𝐞𝖇𝑛𝘰𝖛𝚎𝖑.𝒸𝔬𝑚
The golden lion cub sat on the rafters with its glowing blue paws pressed against its cheeks, staring toward the back hallway in absolute, scandalized shock.
"Oh. My. God," the System whispered to itself, its digital tail swishing wildly. "Grandma Scary isn’t a traditional mother at all—she’s a ruthless matchmaker! She went from trying to throw my Host into the street by her collar to telling her son to honey-trap her in less than four hours! Good thing Host is knocked out on poppy juice right now, or she’d probably charge them a twenty-tael ’seduction tax’ just for thinking about it."
The next day passed in a blur of bitter medicine, quiet efficiency, and strict bed rest.
Because the deep infection had finally been broken by the heavy drawing salves and cooling herbs, Heena’s raging fever did not return at dawn. While she still couldn’t sit up or twist her torso without feeling as though a dull knife were scraping across her shoulder blades, her mind was razor-sharp, and the raw fever blisters in her mouth had begun to heal thanks to Ren’s constant supply of lukewarm honey-licorice water.
True to his word—or perhaps slightly influenced by his mother’s midnight lecture—Ren was extraordinarily attentive all morning. Every time Heena so much as shifted her fingers, he was already there, adjusting the linen pad beneath her chin, cooling her broth so it wouldn’t sting her tongue, and quietly carrying out her final instructions to package the cosmetics.
By the time the late afternoon sun began to dip below the tiled rooftops of the East Market, casting long, bloody shadows down the narrow alleys, everything was ready.
Sitting on the small wooden tray beside Heena’s head were two wax-sealed porcelain containers: one holding two ounces of the "Fallen Cloud" medicinal pearl-rice powder, and the other containing half an ounce of the crystal-clear, borneol-and-agarwood distilled spirit.
The three-day deadline had arrived.
Wait—she obviously couldn’t walk down to the red-light district herself looking like a freshly wrapped corpse, and sending a striking, unmarried young man like Ren into the back alley of a male brothel was the absolute fastest way to get him kidnapped for real.
Which left only one courier in the building.
"Remember," Heena rasped from the examination table, fixing her dark, calculating eyes on Old Lady Lin, who was currently tying a dark, nondescript gray shawl over her head and tucking a heavy iron pestle into her waistband for good measure. "Do not go near the front doors. Walk straight down the wet alley between the Crimson Lotus and the Whispering Willows. Look for the scarred woman with the pipe sitting on the barrel—Three-Fingers Qiu."
"I have lived in this city forty years longer than you, little viper; I know where the back-alley rats sit," Old Lady Lin grunted, carefully placing the two tiny porcelain vials into a padded wooden medicine box and slinging it securely across her chest. "Wait until I see fifty taels of real silver before I hand over the box. If she tries to shortchange me by a single mace, I break her abacus over her head and walk back out."
"Actually, don’t ask her for fifty taels," Heena said smoothly, a slow, predatory smirk curving her pale lips.
Old Lady Lin paused by the curtain, her gray brows snapping together. "What? Are you trying to default on my contract already?!"
"Qiu is an alley gatekeeper, not a guild banker; she doesn’t keep fifty taels of silver sitting in her barrel," Heena explained coldly. "Give her the tiny testing sample I poured into the reed tube for free. Tell her to walk upstairs right now and spray two drops of the spirit onto the collar of the lowest-ranked boy in the pavilion, just before the evening drinking hour begins. Then tell her that if the Madam of the Crimson Lotus wants the actual vials in your box before her rival next door smells it... the price for the exclusive first batch isn’t fifty taels."
Heena’s dark eyes gleamed in the dim light of the clinic.
"It is one hundred and fifty. Cash on the barrel before the first lantern is lit."
The exact second the words Three-Fingers Qiu and Crimson Lotus Madam settled into the air, Old Lady Lin’s hands froze on the knot of her gray shawl.
Without a word of hesitation, the old woman violently yanked the shawl off her head, unstrapped the padded wooden medicine box from her chest, and slammed both down onto the side table with a resounding thwack.
𝖋𝒓𝒆𝚎𝙬ⅇ𝒃𝚗ℴ𝙫𝐞𝕝.𝘤𝔬𝔪
"I am not going, okay?" Old Lady Lin declared flatly, crossing her arms over her chest.
Heena blinked, staring sideways from her linen pad in genuine irritation. "You were literally walking out the door two seconds ago! Why are you backing out now?!"