Chapter 696 --696

Chapter 696: Chapter-696

Heena didn’t answer. She simply stared up at the heavy silk canopy of her bed.

She had already forgotten the faces of her grandparents. She had forgotten the name of the Prime Minister she had spent months plotting to destroy. She had even forgotten the exact layout of the Vanguard estate she was currently residing in.

But there was one thing her deteriorating brain clung to with a vicious, unyielding stubbornness. The feeling of the scholar.

She couldn’t picture Samuel’s face anymore. She couldn’t remember the exact shade of his dark eyes or the sound of his voice when he called her ’wife.’ But her body remembered the phantom warmth of his hands messaging her aching legs. Her soul remembered the terrifying, suffocating weight of his absolute devotion. It was the only anchor she had left in the endless fog.

Hundreds of miles away, completely ignoring the torrential rain turning the dirt roads into a muddy quagmire, a black horse tore through the night like a demon unleashed from the underworld.

Samuel did not stop to rest. He had not slept in four days.

His pristine white scholar robes were soaked with mud and rainwater, his hair plastered wildly against his pale face. His eyes were completely bloodshot, burning with a frantic, feral desperation that made the hardened mercenaries riding behind him genuinely terrified of the man.

Heena had given him a mission that should have taken two weeks. She had ordered him to infiltrate a highly guarded provincial treasury to intercept the Prime Minister’s hidden ledger.

Samuel had completely dismantled the provincial treasury, slaughtered the hidden guards, extracted the ledger, and burned the building to the ground in exactly forty-eight hours.

He knew. He was a genius who could calculate the political trajectory of an entire empire in his sleep; he wasn’t going to be fooled by a flimsy Vanguard distraction tactic. The moment the estate gates had been locked behind him, Samuel had deduced exactly what she was doing. She was isolating herself. She was hiding her deterioration so she wouldn’t look weak in front of him.

You arrogant, stubborn tyrant, Samuel thought, digging his heels violently into the flanks of his exhausted warhorse, pushing the beast to its absolute physical limit.

Behind him rode a carriage heavily guarded by his personal assassins. Inside that carriage sat an ancient, terrified man—a secluded, mythical divine physician Samuel had literally dragged out of a hidden mountain monastery by his throat.

I am not letting you die in the dark, Samuel vowed to the roaring storm, his knuckles turning white around the leather reins. If you forget my face, I will carve it into your soul. Just wait for me.

Back in the capital, the dawn of the tenth day finally broke.

Today was the Empress’s grand birthday banquet.

Heena stood in front of the bronze mirror in her bedchamber. The twenty elite Vanguard guards standing in the outer courtyard were silent, waiting for their master to emerge.

Heena stared at her reflection. She looked exactly like a corpse that had been dragged out of a river. Her skin was a translucent, ghastly gray. Her lips were entirely devoid of color, and the dark, bruised circles under her hollow eyes made her look like a vengeful ghost. She was trembling so violently she could barely hold onto the edge of the vanity table.

"System," Heena rasped, her voice sounding like grinding stones.

The golden lion materialized on the vanity, its tail drooping anxiously. "Yes, Host?"

"Open the system shop." Heena gripped the edge of the table, her knuckles white. "I know you have emergency stimulants. I want the highest-tier vitality booster you have in the inventory. The one strictly banned by the Bureau."

The System flinched, its blue light flashing a warning red. "Host, absolutely not! A Class-S vitality booster doesn’t heal you—it just burns your remaining life force as fuel! It will temporarily suppress the pain and make you look perfectly healthy for exactly six hours. But the moment it wears off, your physical body will instantly collapse! You won’t even have a day left! It will kill you!"

"I don’t need a day," Heena commanded, her dark eyes locking onto the glowing lion through the bronze mirror. "I only need one night."

"Host..."

"Give it to me," Heena ordered, the terrifying, absolute authority of the Vanguard Madam flaring to life one final time. "If I walk into the Imperial Palace looking like a dying woman, the Empress will laugh. The aristocratic faction will smell blood in the water and hesitate. I am not going to give those bastards the satisfaction of pitying me."

She slammed her hand against the vanity, ignoring the agonizing spike of pain in her skull.

"I am going to walk into that banquet hall looking like a god of war. I am going to stand tall, look the Empress directly in the eye, and burn her dynasty to the ground. Now, give me the drug!"

The System looked at her trembling, emaciated frame. It looked at the unbreakable, blazing fire in her eyes. It realized, with profound digital sorrow, that this was exactly why the White Lotus systems in the upper management were terrified of her. She was a true Black Lotus. She would gladly set herself on fire just to ensure her enemies burned in the same flames.

"Transaction approved," the System whispered. "Deducting 5,000 points on emergency credit. Dispensing Class-S Vitality Booster."

A small, glowing crimson pill materialized on the wooden table.

Without a single second of hesitation, Heena picked it up and swallowed it dry.

The reaction was instantaneous. A violent, scorching heat exploded in her chest, rushing through her freezing veins like liquid fire. The blinding pain behind her eyes was suddenly, aggressively muted. The violent tremors in her hands stopped completely. When she looked back into the mirror, color had flooded back into her cheeks, her lips were a natural, vibrant red, and the deathly gray pallor was entirely gone.

She felt no pain. She felt no exhaustion. She felt like an immortal.

"Call the maids," Heena ordered, her voice ringing out smooth, cold, and flawless.

The heavy oak doors of the bedchamber opened for the first time in days. The terrified maids rushed in, bringing the heavy, blood-red military robes of the Vanguard Marquisate. They painted her lips, pinned her dark hair up with heavy, lethal golden hairpins shaped like soaring eagles, and draped the thick, imposing silk over her shoulders.

When Heena finally stepped out of her bedchamber and into the morning sun, the twenty elite Shadow Guards waiting in the courtyard simultaneously dropped to one knee.

She did not look like a dying woman. She looked like a catastrophe wrapped in red silk.

"Prepare the carriage," Heena commanded, the cold, bloodthirsty smirk returning to her flawless face. "We have a birthday party to attend."

Heena paused halfway across the sunlit courtyard, the heavy, voluminous layers of the traditional Vanguard military robes suddenly feeling suffocatingly impractical.

​She looked down at the layers of blood-red silk dragging across the stone pavers. It was the flawless, expected attire of an aristocratic Marquis. It was also an absolute liability. The heavy sleeves would catch a blade, and the restrictive, wrapped layers of the traditional imperial dress would completely hinder her footwork if the throne room devolved into a physical bloodbath. And Heena fully intended for it to become a bloodbath.