Chapter 753 --753
"Hmph. Rest, then, you half-dead menace," the old woman finally muttered under her breath. Without barking another threat or throwing another insult, she turned on her heel, pushed the heavy curtain aside, and went off to rest her own aching bones.
Left alone in the quiet room, Ren couldn’t help the small, genuine smile that curved his lips. Moving with quiet care so as not to disturb Heena, he melted a bit of candle wax to seal the corks of the two porcelain vials just as she had instructed, washed the stone mortar and the ceramic still, and slipped out into the dusk-lit courtyard to fan the charcoal stove and brew her evening medication.
By the time full night fell over the East Market, a thick, peaceful silence had settled over the clinic.
Heena only roused halfway when Ren gently lifted her head to spoon the fresh, warm decoction between her blistered lips. Too exhausted to even open her eyes, she swallowed the bitter liquid on pure instinct and immediately sank back into a deep, restorative sleep, with the glowing golden lion cub curled tightly against the pillow beside her cheek.
Once her breathing was slow and even, Ren quietly blew out the extra oil lamp, pulled the curtain shut, and walked down the narrow wooden corridor toward the back living quarters.
Stopping outside a closed wooden door where a sliver of yellow candlelight bled through the floorboards, Ren raised his hand and knocked twice.
"Come in," Old Lady Lin’s voice called from inside—low, gravelly, and as serious as ever.
Ren slid the door open and stepped inside.
The small bedroom smelled faintly of dried mugwort and old paper. Sitting squarely at the low square table in the center of the room was his mother. She hadn’t changed into her sleeping clothes yet. Spread out flat on the scarred wood directly in front of her was the coarse ledger sheet—the fifty-tael mortgage contract bearing Heena’s bold, messy red cinnabar thumbprint at the bottom.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
Old Lady Lin’s calloused index finger beat a slow, rhythmic tattoo against the edge of the table as she stared down at the red smudge, her brows drawn together in deep, calculating thought.
Ren closed the door softly behind him and walked over to the table.
Normally, when standing before his formidable mother, he kept his shoulders slightly rounded, his head bowed in the quiet, deferential posture expected of an unmarried son in this world. Tonight, however, he didn’t lower his gaze, and he didn’t fidget with his sleeves. The lingering memory of the blood-soaked mud in the alley—and the sound of his own voice screaming at his mother earlier that afternoon—had shifted something permanent inside his chest.
He looked down at the thumbprinted contract, then raised his dark eyes to meet his mother’s gaze squarely. When he spoke, the timid softness was gone, replaced by a quiet, steady firmness he had never used with her before.
"Why did you let her stay here, Mother?"
Old Lady Lin didn’t immediately answer. She kept her sharp, weathered gaze fixed on the red cinnabar thumbprint in the flickering candlelight, her calloused finger ceasing its rhythmic tapping against the scarred wood.
"Close the door completely and bolt it," she said calmly.
Ren slid the wooden bolt home, shutting out the draft from the corridor, and stepped fully into the small room.
His mother finally raised her head, leaning back slightly in her chair as her shrewd eyes studied his face. "Before I answer you, tell me—what do you think about that girl lying in our back room, Ren?"
Ren paused, his brows drawing together slightly as he weighed his words carefully. "She is... undeniably useful. Her knowledge of alchemy and distillation is unlike anything I have ever seen in the medical texts. But..."
Old Lady Lin arched a single gray eyebrow. "But?"
"But she has far too many enemies," Ren finished quietly, his voice steady. "She was cast out by the Lu estate in the West District, and within two days she has already spilled blood in the streets. Keeping someone like her close could bring an avalanche of trouble down on our clinic."
Instead of agreeing, a slow, knowing smile spread across Old Lady Lin’s weathered face.
"You are only seeing half the board, Ren," she said softly. "Tell me, what do you think about that damn timber merchant? About what really happened outside our gate with Mrs. Lynn yesterday?"
At the mention of that name, Ren’s jaw instantly hardened. His slender hands curled into tight, white-knuckled fists at his sides, a flash of bitter anger cutting through his calm demeanor. "That woman has been keeping her eyes on our clinic for months," he gritted out through clenched teeth. "She has had her thugs loitering at the end of the alley since the spring."
Old Lady Lin nodded, a proud glint warming her eyes. "That’s why you are my child—you aren’t blind like the rest of these street fools. The gossips at the stalls all think Mrs. Lynn marched down here with a sedan chair only because that noble girl climbed our wall in the dark. I yelled at the girl in the mud for the exact same reason, so the neighbors hovering down the lane would hear me blame her. But have you ever stopped to think? Even if Lu Heena had never fallen into our garden, that timber bitch would have come through our door before the month was out anyway, using one fabricated excuse or another."
Ren stood silently, listening closely as the tension in his shoulders shifted.
"This girl was thrown out of her family, yes," Old Lady Lin continued, tapping the coarse contract paper on the table. "But a starved tiger thrown out of a mountain pack is still a tiger among sheep. Her ruthlessness—and the residual terror her bloodline commands—is far greater than commoners like us can muster. Just think about it. Which woman in this entire East Market dares to breathe loudly in front of Mrs. Lynn, let alone touch a hair on her haulers’ heads? Yet that girl walked up half-dead, crippled two of her strongest fighters in the blink of an eye, and threatened to burn the Timber Guild to the ground. And Mrs. Lynn actually backed down. Isn’t that answer enough?"
Ren frowned slightly, looking down at the floor. "So you let her stay because of brute strength?"
Old Lady Lin let out a sudden, loud bark of laughter, shaking her head in sheer amusement.
"Brute strength?!" she scoffed. "Boy, you just stitched her back together—you know better than I do what her body looks like! Even after she blinded the first thug and shattered the second one’s knee, Mrs. Lynn still had six burly haulers standing right there with clubs in their hands! Brute strength wouldn’t have stopped six grown women from beating her to pulp!"
Ren raised his eyebrows, caught off guard.
"That girl didn’t win with muscle; she won because she knows how to manipulate the human mind and strike pure terror into someone’s marrow," Old Lady Lin said, her voice dropping into a tone of grudging, profound respect. "Tell me, as a physician—with the state her torn chest and feverish blood were in yesterday, if Mrs. Lynn had ordered just one more hauler to step forward and take a swing at her, would that girl have survived?"