Chapter 737 --737

Chapter 737: Chapter-737

Fifty coppers was the price of two days’ hard labor, a painful sting to their pockets, but infinitely better than having their stalls confiscated by the city guards.

Nobody argued anymore. With pale faces and trembling fingers, the six neighbors frantically dug into their waist pouches and aprons, pulling out loose copper coins and knotted strings of cash. One by one, they hurried forward, keeping their heads bowed low and holding their breath against the stinging fumes as they dropped the heavy coins into a wooden bucket sitting just outside Heena’s threshold.

The moment their coins hit the bottom of the bucket, they bolted down the street as if a pack of hungry wolves were snapping at their heels.

That left only Old Zhao.

The burly poultry vendor stood alone at the bottom of the steps, her chest heaving and her face contorted as if she had just been forced to swallow broken glass. She had lost her prized, double-yolk-laying hen, her best tracking hound was currently whimpering in the mud with a chemically scorched nose, and now she was being extorted by the primary suspect.

Yet, looking up into Heena’s dark, dead-cold eyes, Old Zhao’s courage completely failed her.

With a low, guttural groan of defeat, Old Zhao reached inside her thick vest and yanked out five heavy, tightly bound strings of one hundred copper coins—her entire morning float from the poultry shop. She stepped up and slammed the heavy strings into the bucket with a loud, metallic clatter.

"Consider the debt paid!" Old Zhao spat bitterly, grabbing her whining hound by the scruff of its neck and practically dragging the poor beast down the street at a dead sprint, terrified Heena might suddenly invent another ruined ingredient.

Within ten seconds, the entire street in front of the apothecary was completely deserted.

Up in the smoky rafters, the golden lion cub slowly lowered its paws from its mouth, staring down at the bucket brimming with copper coins in absolute, stunned silence.

"...Host," the System whispered, its voice trembling with a mixture of sheer horror and profound awe. "You killed her beloved pet, boiled it in a pot, ate it for dinner, blinded her family dog with pepper spray, and then charged her five hundred coppers for the privilege. You aren’t a Black Lotus. You are Satan."

Heena didn’t even have the breath left to tell the AI to shut up.

Keeping her spine ramrod straight until Old Zhao rounded the corner out of sight, Heena calmly picked up the heavy wooden bucket of coins, stepped back inside her shop, kicked the door shut, and slid the iron bolt home.

The exact second the lock clicked, her terrifying aristocratic facade shattered into a million pieces.

Heena dropped the bucket, fell to her knees on the floorboards, and doubled over in a violent, hacking coughing fit.

"Cough! Cough, cough!"

Tears streamed freely down her flushed cheeks as the residual capsaicin and sulfur smoke scorched her throat and lungs. Every heave of her chest sent a white-hot spike of agony radiating through her fractured ribs. Crawling blindly across the floor away from the back room, she shoved open a shredded side window, sticking her head out into the narrow gap between the buildings to gasp frantically for fresh, clean morning air.

"Host! Breathe slowly! Don’t pop a stitch!" the System panicked, flying down to pat her back uselessly with its digital paws.

It took five full minutes of wheezing by the window before the burning in her chest finally began to subside. Wiping her streaming eyes and runny nose with a clean corner of her sleeve, Heena slumped back against the wooden wall, utterly spent.

Then, she looked over at the wooden bucket sitting by the door.

Sitting inside, gleaming dully in the shafts of morning sunlight cutting through the dispersing smoke, were eight hundred fresh copper coins.

Slowly, a wicked, breathless smirk tugged at the corner of her pale lips. Her lungs felt like they had been scrubbed with sandpaper, and the back room smelled like a demon’s latrine, but she had buried the evidence, established dominance over the entire neighborhood so no one would dare snoop around her shop again, and nearly doubled her liquid cash flow before breakfast.

"Not bad," Heena rasped, reaching out a dirt-streaked hand to pull the heavy bucket toward her. "That was one hell of a golden chicken."

After letting the acrid smoke air out of the shop and hiding the bulk of her freshly extorted copper under a loose floorboard, Heena tied a single heavy string of coins to her waist and stepped back out into the morning sun.

Her lungs still had a faint, spicy itch to them, and her ribs were tightly bound, but her pockets were jingling. It was time to go to work. She needed intelligence on the Lu family, and more importantly, she needed to see the capital’s red-light district firsthand to figure out what kind of perfumes and cosmetics the men in this city were actually using.

Of course, eight hundred coppers and three silver taels was decent survival money, not "buy top-secret aristocratic dirt from a high-end shadow broker" money. If she walked into an underground syndicate right now, they would fleece her dry before she even got through the front door. Since she couldn’t afford to buy information the polite way, she was simply going to have to go in and act like a ruthless street hooligan to shake it loose for free.

Initially, she turned her feet toward the regular stalls to buy salt, rice, and a fresh set of outer robes. Halfway down the block, however, she paused and changed course entirely. Why spend her own hard-earned coppers on supplies now when she could hit the pleasure district first, see how much coin she could save—or extort—from the local lowlifes, and do her grocery shopping with the leftovers?

"You are just a pervert," the System deadpanned, floating upside down beside her head with its digital paws crossed.

Heena’s eyebrow twitched. "Are you crazy? What nonsense are you talking about? I am doing market research. This is strictly work."

"Come on, Host, drop the act," the golden lion cub scoffed, rolling its glowing blue eyes. "You just want to go look at handsome, half-naked men."

"Shut up. Of course not," Heena snapped back mentally, her face a mask of icy, stoic dignity.

Yet, the exact moment she said it, her walking pace visibly doubled. Ignoring the dull throb in her side, she practically power-walked down the cobblestone street, completely throwing away the credibility of her own denial.

The System let out a long, resigned sigh. It knew its Host all too well. This woman would never straighten up. In their last world, the only reason she hadn’t run wild was because she had been suffocated by mountains of imperial paperwork, strict court etiquette, and a terminally ill vessel that coughed up blood every time the wind blew too hard. Now that she was free of noble obligations and had transmigrated into a body that—aside from a few cracked ribs—was actually young and healthy? Nothing on earth was going to stop her.

As it turned out, she didn’t even need to waste a single copper coin hiring a guide to find the pleasure district.

All she had to do was follow the trail of human wreckage. The further south she walked, the more drunkards she encountered stumbling out of side streets and slumping against alley walls in broad daylight. Asking a passing street child confirmed she was heading straight into the heart of the red-light sector.

The sight was bizarrely fascinating. In a normal ancient world, the gutters outside brothels were littered with lecherous, wasted men. Here, the roles were completely flipped. Rough-looking women with flushed faces and loosened tunics stumbled across the flagstones, reeking of cheap rice wine, singing off-key tavern songs, and slurring filthy jokes as they leaned heavily on one another.

Heena watched a burly woman trip over her own boots and land face-first in a puddle, muttering to herself that, no matter the universe or the gender flip, drunks were really all the same.

Within ten minutes, the cramped residential slums opened up into a wide, thriving thoroughfare draped in ratusan of red and pink silk lanterns.

Unlike the previous worlds she had visited, where a city might have one grand, isolated courtesan pavilion, this place was an entire commercial alleyway dedicated purely to vice. The street was flanked on both sides by four or five massive, multi-story pleasure houses competing aggressively for attention, their gilded balconies overflowing with trailing flowers and heavy, cloying incense.

And standing right outside the wide, lacquered doors of every single establishment were the men.

Heena’s brisk footsteps slowed to a crawl.

Damn.

They were undeniably gorgeous. Half a dozen young men stood arranged like prized porcelain dolls under the shaded awnings of the nearest pavilion. Unlike the timid, heavily veiled husbands she had seen scurrying through the morning vegetable market, these men were dressed to kill. They wore flowing robes of sheer, translucent crimson and pale peach gauze that left very little to the imagination. Their collars were pulled deliberately wide and loose, fully exposing pale, delicate collarbones, long, swan-like necks, and smooth chests lightly dusted with shimmering body powder.

They didn’t have to lift a finger or hawk wares like regular merchants. Their entire job was simply to stand there, lean languidly against the carved wooden pillars, and flutter their painted eyelashes at the women passing by in the street.

"Wipe your drool, Host," the System muttered sarcastically. "Your ’market research’ is showing."