Chapter 139 The Rare Herb
The shower was boiling hot.
Veyra stood directly under the heavy spray, leaning her forehead against the cool tiles and letting the water wash over her aching shoulders. For the first time in what felt like weeks, the heavy knot of tension in her chest was finally starting to loosen up.
It had been a chaotic storm of events. The secret recording, the ugly confrontation in front of everyone, Xiomara’s complete humiliation, and Professor Sterling’s utterly pathetic defeat.
She had won. Against all of them, she had come out completely on top.
She turned off the taps, stepped out onto the bathmat, and wrapped a thick, fluffy towel around her body. She took a smaller towel and began drying her damp hair, catching her own reflection in the foggy bathroom mirror.
Just as she walked back into the bedroom, her phone began to buzz loudly on the wooden nightstand.
She walked over and picked it up. The caller ID displayed the name Clara Clark.
A genuine smile broke across Veyra’s face, and she swiped the screen to answer.
"Clara! How are you doing?"
Clara’s voice came through the speaker bright, warm, and bubbling with genuine excitement. "Mrs. Thorne! I am doing wonderful! I’m actually calling to invite you over to the shop."
Veyra blinked, pausing as she rubbed her hair dry. "The shop?"
"The pizza shop!" Clara explained with a happy laugh. "It is officially reopening tomorrow afternoon. I have fixed up everything from top to bottom. We have brand-new wooden tables, sturdy new chairs, and shiny clear windows. I even gave the main walls a fresh coat of bright yellow paint myself."
Veyra felt a sudden wave of warmth swell up inside her chest. "That is absolutely amazing news, Clara. You worked so hard."
"I wanted you to be the very first person to walk through the doors," Clara said softly, her voice turning sweet and sincere. "Honestly, Veyra, you are the whole reason the place is even still standing."
"I will definitely be there," Veyra promised with a small laugh. "What time should I swing by?"
"In the afternoon, right around two o’clock. I will have a huge, fresh pizza straight out of the oven waiting just for you."
"Deal. I will see you at two then."
Veyra ended the call and tossed her phone onto the soft bedsheets.
She felt instantly lighter, as if a massive weight had just been lifted right off her back. Clara was safe from those thugs, the shop was opening its doors again, and her own chaotic life finally felt like it was settling down into a steady rhythm.
She walked over to her study desk, pulled out the chair, and sat down. Reaching into the bottom drawer, she pulled out a thick, worn leather notebook.
The book was old and clearly well-used. The leather cover was scuffed at the edges, the pages inside were turning yellow with age, and the corners were slightly frayed from years of being tossed into various backpacks.
She opened it up and slowly flipped through the pages. The sheets were filled with her own neat handwriting, detailed research notes, chemical breakdowns, and complex herbal formulas she had spent years testing.
Then, her hand paused over a single page near the very back of the book.
Written right in the middle of the blank paper was a single string of numbers. The handwriting was not hers. It was crooked, incredibly shaky, and looked like it had been carved into the paper by a hand that could barely hold a pen.
She stared down at those ten digits for a long moment, her mind drifting backward through time.
She remembered that handwriting. She remembered that night perfectly.
Three years ago, her world had been falling apart.
Her grandmother had gotten terribly sick. Her heart was failing, growing weaker with each passing week, and the local hospital doctors had ultimately given her a grim diagnosis. They told Veyra her grandmother had a few short months left at best, maybe even less if her condition worsened.
Veyra refused to just sit around and watch her grandmother fade away into nothing. She had spent every waking hour frantically reading medical journals, digging through obscure herbal books, and searching for any potential treatment or miracle cure.
Eventually, she stumbled upon a theoretical formula for a groundbreaking heart medicine known as SN1818. It was a incredible concept, a drug that had the potential to repair damaged heart tissue and save countess lives.
However, the entire formula relied heavily on one crucial core ingredient: a ridiculously rare, wild plant known as the Heart Vine.
Veyra had tried looking for it through legitimate suppliers, but the price tag on the rare market was astronomical. It cost way more money than a poor student could ever dream of scraping together. She simply could not afford to buy it.
So, she made a reckless decision. If she couldn’t buy the herb, she would just go out and harvest it herself.
She spent days researching the plant’s habits and growth patterns. She learned that the Heart Vine was an extremely strange herb, its leaves only turning a deep, blood-red color during the cold dark hours of the night. She also learned that it only grew in the dangerous, steep cliff crevices hidden deep inside the Forest, making it nearly impossible for normal gatherers to reach.
Despite knowing how dangerous the terrain was, Veyra began making her quiet preparations.
She packed a heavy canvas backpack with essential supplies: a high-powered flashlight, a sharp hunting knife, extra bottles of water, non-perishable food, and a long coil of heavy climbing rope.
She kept her plan completely to herself, telling not a single soul where she was heading or what she was planning to do.
Once all her gear was packed and ready by the door, Veyra made up her mind. She would head straight into the treacherous mountain forest alone in the dead of night to harvest the rare herb and save her grandmother’s life.