Chapter 733 --733

Chapter 733: Chapter-733

"Bland," Heena said, before aggressively tearing into a chicken drumstick with undeniable satisfaction. "It desperately needs salt. Look at me, reduced to boiling stolen poultry in an old medicine pot."

"Hey, it was a stray! Finders keepers!" the System defended cheerfully. "Besides, your vital signs are already stabilizing. With a full stomach and a good night’s sleep, you won’t look like a walking corpse tomorrow."

Heena swallowed a mouthful of warm broth, staring into the glowing orange embers of the small brazier. As the calories finally hit her bloodstream, the sluggish fog in her brain completely burned away, leaving behind a razor-sharp clarity.

She set the half-empty bowl down for a moment and looked toward the neatly stacked boxes of raw spices and floral oils waiting in the front room.

"Tomorrow morning, I will spend ten coppers on a real bag of salt and rice," Heena murmured, her dark eyes reflecting the dancing firelight. "And then, we are going to boil a very different kind of pot. By tomorrow night, the pleasure district is going to smell exactly the way I want it to."

.

.

.

In her haste to fill her starving stomach the night before, Heena had completely forgotten one of the most fundamental rules of small communities. Whether in a rural countryside village or a tightly packed ancient market district, nothing stayed secret for long—and if something valuable went missing, the entire neighborhood turned into a hunting party.

Heena woke up late the next morning, her bound ribs still stiff as she pushed herself off the burlap sacks. Before she had even fully rubbed the sleep from her eyes, the loud, chaotic clatter of shouting voices and hurried footsteps echoed from the street outside.

Frowning, she walked to the front of the shop, cracked the heavy wooden door open, and stepped out onto the porch, pulling the door firmly shut behind her since the interior was still completely bare and unready for customers.

Near the neighboring teahouse, a small crowd of locals had gathered, craning their necks down the road. Heena approached a stout woman holding a basket of greens and a veiled man standing beside her.

"Excuse me," Heena asked politely, keeping her voice mild. "What is wrong? Why is everyone in such an uproar?"

"Oh, you haven’t heard?" the stout woman said eagerly, always happy to share morning gossip. "Old Lady Zhao’s chicken ran away yesterday evening! Her workers went searching at dawn and found its snapped hemp tether and some tracks up on the forested hill behind the market, so they know somebody dragged it back down this way!"

Heena froze. A very strange, unfamiliar sensation pricked at the back of her neck. For the first time in recent memory, a tiny pang of actual guilt hit her, immediately followed by a cold wave of dread.

"Oh... a chicken, huh?" Heena said, forcing a dry chuckle. "It’s only one bird, right? Why is half the street out here looking for it?"

The woman gasped, waving her hand dramatically. "Oh, no, no! It is not just one chicken! That is the prized treasure of the Zhao poultry shop! It lays double-yolked eggs every single morning. I swear to the heavens, that woman loves that plump red hen even more than she loves her own son!"

"Oh, come on, don’t say it like that," the veiled man beside her chimed in softly, shaking his head. "She raised that bird from a tiny chick in her own courtyard. It’s practically family to them!"

Heena’s heartbeat instantly kicked into a frantic, racing tempo.

Damn it. She hadn’t just assassinated a stray bird. She had boiled and eaten someone’s beloved family member.

"So... how are they planning to find it in a crowded market?" Heena asked, her fingers tightening slightly in the folds of her coarse linen tunic. "Does it have a name? Should I... help call out for it or something? I really don’t understand how one finds a lost bird."

"Oh, no, no, calling won’t be necessary!" the woman replied cheerfully. "They brought out the family dog! That big hound and the hen were raised together in the exact same courtyard since they were babies. They know each other by scent. That dog can smell the chicken from three streets away!"

Heena’s blood turned to absolute ice. "Smell the chicken?"

"Yeah! He’s got a nose like a magistrate’s tracker! Once he catches the scent, he’ll lead Old Lady Zhao’s thugs right to the thief’s door!"

"Oh. Really nice," Heena managed to say, her voice sounding remarkably hollow to her own ears. "So... have they searched this sector yet?"

The woman waved her hand casually toward the rear of the buildings. "Yeah, yeah, they are sweeping through the back alleys right now! They’ll be rounding the corner onto our street in just a few minutes!"

Heena’s mind flashed violently to the back storage room of her shop. Right next to the cold charcoal brazier sat a neat pile of plucked, reddish-brown feathers, a half-eaten carcass, and a handful of clean-picked drumsticks.

If a furious market boss and a pack of neighborhood vigilantes burst into her shop and found the butchered remains of their "family member" sitting in a medicine pot, they would literally beat her to death on the spot. And in her current physical state, with broken ribs and zero backing, she wouldn’t even be able to fight off the dog, let alone an angry mob.

Desperate to stall them or distract the nosy neighbors before they noticed the faint scent of ginger-boiled poultry wafting from her clothes, Heena stretched her lips into a stiff, awkward smile.

"Oh, wait—since you are all standing right here, do you want to come look at some spices?" she offered abruptly.

The woman and the veiled man blinked at her, looking thoroughly confused by the sudden change of subject. "Uh... maybe sometime later, miss. Not right now. We want to see who stole the bird!"

"Oh, yeah. Right," Heena nodded rapidly, backing toward her door. "I also need to go clean the store. Yes. Very dusty."

"Yeah, go do that!" the woman called out, already turning back toward the street.

Heena kept the polite, tranquil smile plastered onto her face as she pushed the door open, stepped inside, and slid the wooden bolt shut.

The exact millisecond the lock clicked, her expression morphed into sheer, unadulterated panic.

She bolted toward the back storage room as fast as her bruised body would allow, nearly tripping over her own hem. She dropped to her knees beside the brazier, frantically shoving the scattered reddish-brown feathers and the gnawed chicken bones into a dirty burlap sack.

"Host, what are you doing?!" the System yelped, popping into existence as she scrambled around the room like a cornered rat. "Where are you even going to throw that?! If you step outside into the alley right now, they are going to see you!"

Heena froze, clutching the incriminating sack of feathers to her chest. The AI was right. Because she had slept in so late, the morning sun was high, and every single street and alleyway was teeming with gossips and searchers. Walking out the back door holding a bloody sack was practically signing her own death warrant.