Chapter 734 --734

Chapter 734: Chapter-734

She whipped her head around and glared daggers at the floating golden lion cub. "Idiot! Think of something!"

"Come on, Host, what nonsense are you talking about?!" the System cried out, throwing its glowing paws up in defense. "I am a digital projection! I can’t eat the bones for you, and we are in negative points so I can’t teleport physical matter! Why are you blaming me when you are the one who assassinated someone’s pet?!"

Heena gritted her teeth, her eyes darting around the small room. Should I burn it?

She looked at the small charcoal brazier. No. Fresh bones took hours of intense heat to turn to ash, and burning wet feathers and skin would send a thick plume of foul, unmistakable smoke straight out the window, leading the mob right to her doorstep.

Her eyes locked onto the unpaved corner of the back storage room, where the wooden floorboards had rotted away years ago, exposing the damp earth beneath the foundation.

Without a second thought, Heena grabbed a heavy iron trowel left behind by the cleaners, dropped to her knees, and began digging into the dirt with frantic, desperate speed. Her bound ribs screamed in agony with every hard thrust of the iron, sweat beading on her forehead as she carved out a deep hole, shoved the entire clay pot, the remaining meat, the bones, and every single feather inside, and aggressively packed the dirt back over the top.

She stamped the soil flat with her bare feet, kicking a layer of dry dust and old burlap sacks over the fresh dirt to hide the disturbance.

Breathing heavily, she braced her hands on her knees, wiping the cold sweat from her brow.

Then, echoing from the end of the street outside, came the deep, booming bay of a hunting hound.

"Host!" the System shrieked, its digital fur standing straight up. "A foot of loose dirt isn’t going to stop a hound’s nose! You boiled that bird for an hour last night—the grease is in the air, the scent is on your hands, and that dog is still going to smell the carcass through the ground!"

The barking grew louder, accompanied by the heavy, stomping footsteps of angry market laborers marching straight down the east sector road.

Heena stood paralyzed in the middle of her shop, dirt smeared across her palms, her mind racing at blinding speed. The dog will still smell it. What the hell should I do?!

Outside in the street, the commotion swelled into a dull roar.

"Look! The dog is here! Old Zhao’s hound is catching a trail!"

Heena’s heart hammered against her bruised ribs. What should I do? If that tracker got within ten feet of the back room, a thin layer of loose dirt wouldn’t stop it from digging up the buried pot. She needed to destroy its sense of smell—not with water, which she didn’t have enough of, but with chemical warfare.

Her dark eyes darted frantically across the scrubbed wooden shelves, locking onto the rows of raw, high-grade spices, dried chili pods, Szechuan peppercorns, and a box of pungent, half-rotten sulfur roots she had shoved into the corner yesterday.

A ruthless idea snapped into place. Moving at breakneck speed, she sprinted back to the front door and quietly slid the wooden bolt open just a fraction, before bolting back to the storage room to ignite the charcoal brazier.

Seconds later, the heavy panting and scraping claws of a massive hound stopped dead right outside her dilapidated storefront.

WOOF! WOOF!

The deep, aggressive baying echoed down the street as the dog planted its front paws on her rotting wooden steps, scratching furiously at the threshold. Instantly, the nosy market crowd swarmed around the entrance, craning their necks and pointing.

"Oh! Whose shop is this?" a burly butcher asked, squinting at the ruined sign. "Wait, didn’t that noblewoman hire cleaners here yesterday?"

"Bah, what noblewoman?" the stout woman with the vegetable basket scoffed loudly. "Word from the west city is that she’s the illegitimate daughter who got kicked out of the Lu family estate for being a shameless beast!"

The veiled man beside her gasped, clutching his basket tighter. "Then... you mean to tell me a fallen noblewoman crept into the woods and stole Old Zhao’s prized hen?!"

Whispered gossip rippled through the packed street like wildfire. At the front of the pack stood Old Zhao—a towering, furious poultry vendor with forearms like tree trunks—holding the leather leash of a massive, slobbering yellow hound. Scowling darkly, Zhao raised a meaty fist and pounded heavily on the wooden frame.

From the sheer force of the knock, the unbolted door creaked and swung inward on its rusted hinges.

"Oh, it’s open!" someone in the back shouted. "Let’s go see! Catch the thief red-handed!"

Old Zhao didn’t wait for an invitation. Letting the straining hound lead the way, she stomped straight over the threshold, with half a dozen eager, gossiping neighbors crowding right behind her into the front room.

They made it roughly three steps inside before an invisible, suffocating wall of fumes slammed directly into their faces.

It wasn’t the mouth-watering aroma of boiled poultry. It was a violent, eye-watering, apocalyptic stench—a weaponized cloud of scorched Szechuan peppercorns, blackened chili seeds, pungent star anise, and foul, rotting bitter-roots all dry-roasting together at maximum heat. The air was practically toxic with capsaicin and acrid smoke.

"Achoo!"

The yellow hound didn’t even make it past the front counter. The moment it took a deep, tracking sniff of the floor, the scorching spice dust shot straight up its sensitive nasal passages. The massive dog let out a high-pitched, pathetic whine, sneezed violently four times in a row, and immediately began pawing wildly at its own snout, retreating backward out the door with its tail tucked firmly between its legs.

"Ack! Cough, cough! What in the heavens is that smell?!" Old Zhao choked, instantly throwing her thick sleeve over her nose and mouth as tears poured down her weathered cheeks.

The nosy neighbors fared no better, doubling over in a chorus of violent coughing fits and explosive sneezes as the thick, spicy haze rolled out of the back room.

Through the stinging, blurry gray smoke, they finally spotted the owner of the shop.

Right beside the unpaved patch of dirt where the chicken was buried, Heena was crouched next to a roaring charcoal brazier, aggressively stirring a massive clay pot with a wooden stick. She had tied a damp rag around the lower half of her face as a makeshift mask, and even then, the chemical assault she had created was clearly taking its toll. Her pale face was flushed a deep, fiery crimson from the heat and the fumes, and her dark eyes were swimming with unshed tears from the stinging pepper smoke.

Seeing the crowd stumbling into her shop, Heena paused her stirring. With a trembling hand, she tugged the collar of her coarse linen tunic slightly loose to let the stifling heat escape, before pulling down the damp cloth mask from her mouth.

"Cough, cough, cough..." Heena hacked genuinely, her bruised ribs aching from the violent spasm. She wiped her watering eyes with the back of her wrist and fixed the choking intruders with an icy, indignant glare.

"What are all of you doing in here?" Heena rasped, her voice dripping with cold annoyance as she gestured around the smoke-filled room. "This is private property. Don’t you know the law?"