Chapter 739 --739

Chapter 739: Chapter-739

"Host, she is holding a two-pound piece of solid iron!" the System yelped, hovering anxiously between them and scanning the weapon. "If she swings that thing at your chest, you are going to turn into 2D art! Just give her one of the silvers!"

"Give her silver?" Heena scoffed mentally, not breaking her stride until she was standing a mere three paces from the barrel. "If I flash silver in a back alley looking like this, she won’t answer my questions—she’ll whistle for three thugs to slit my throat and take the rest of my pouch. In the underworld, you don’t buy respect from a scavenger. You step on their neck until they offer it for free."

Heena stopped just outside the swing radius of the iron wrench. Instead of looking intimidated, she tilted her head slightly, her dark eyes sweeping lazily from the wooden abacus on the woman’s knee to the side gate where the wine cart had just disappeared.

"Keep the copper, then," Heena said lightly, tossing the single coin through the air.

The scarred woman’s free hand snapped up by reflex, catching the coin mid-air. Before she could throw it back at Heena’s face, Heena spoke again, her voice dropping into a quiet, conversational purr.

"Consider it a generous tip for keeping your mouth shut when the Madam of the Crimson Lotus comes down to audit the rear entrance this afternoon."

The woman’s smirk vanished. Her eyes narrowed to slits. "What the hell are you babbling about?"

"The two male attendants who just walked past you toward the washhouse," Heena said smoothly, ticking a pale finger into the air. "They were carrying baskets of soiled silk sheets. Yet their arms were straining as if they were hauling bricks, and they paid you four coppers each just to cross the alley without you looking under the linen. Smuggling the pavilion’s silver wine flagons out in the dirty laundry to pawn, or smuggling private love tokens from the courtesans to their secret lovers?"

The scarred woman’s jaw tightened, her knuckles whitening on the iron wrench.

Heena didn’t pause, raising a second finger. "And the delivery driver with the cart of ’premium’ wine jars. Full clay vats sealed with imperial wax weigh at least forty pounds apiece, yet the wooden axles of his cart barely creaked over the cobblestones, and there were fresh water rings around the base of the corks. He brings in watered-down swill through the back gate, bills the pavilion for top-shelf liquor, and splits the silver difference with you."

Heena took a single, slow step forward, looking straight down into the woman’s stunned, widening eyes.

"You aren’t guarding the Madam’s back door," Heena murmured, a cold, razor-sharp smile cutting across her pale face. "You are bleeding her dry from the inside. Now, I wonder... if a bruised street beggar walked around to the front doors right now and screamed at the top of her lungs that the alley gatekeeper is skimming ten percent off the Crimson Lotus’s wine ledger, whose ribs do you think those bouncers out front would break first? Mine, or yours?"

Silence fell over the damp alleyway, broken only by the distant strumming of a pipa floating down from a third-story balcony above.

Up in the air, the golden lion cub stared at Heena with its digital mouth hanging wide open. "Host... you deduced an entire embezzlement ring in twelve seconds just by looking at wet corks and laundry baskets?!"

"Basic logistics," Heena replied mentally. "Every corrupt quartermaster in every army I’ve ever commanded uses the exact same tricks."

On the barrel, the scarred woman stared at Heena for a long, suffocating ten seconds. The hostility in her posture slowly drained away, replaced by the wary, calculating caution of a predator realizing she was looking at something much larger and much more venomous than a stray dog.

Slowly, deliberately, the woman released her grip on the iron wrench, letting it clink softly against the cobblestones. She took the unlit pipe out of her mouth and tapped it against her palm.

"People around here call me Three-Fingers Qiu," the woman said, her voice dropping its loud bluster in favor of a low, businesslike rasp. "Though as you can see, I still have all ten. I took three fingers off the last loudmouth who tried to stick her nose into my abacus."

"Good for you," Heena replied without blinking. "I prefer to take heads, personally, though my current schedule is a bit tight."

Qiu let out a short, humorless chuckle, shaking her head as she gestured toward an empty wooden crate sitting against the opposite wall. "You’ve got a pair of brass lungs on you, girl, I’ll give you that. Coming down here smelling like a scorched pepper mill and threatening me on my own turf. What do you want? If it doesn’t cost me my neck, we can talk."

Heena didn’t sit down—bending her torso to get up and down off a low crate was a distinct indignity her cracked ribs didn’t need right now. Instead, she leaned back against the cool brick wall, crossing her arms loosely beneath her chest.

"Two things," Heena stated cleanly. "First, the Lu family of the West District. Specifically, the eldest daughter in line, Lu Mei, and her pampered husband, Su Jin."

Qiu’s scarred eyebrow twitched upward. Suddenly, the bloody rags and the aristocratic cadence of Heena’s voice clicked together in the broker’s mind.

"Ah," Qiu drawled, a flicker of dark amusement passing through her eyes. "So the rumors from the west gates are true. You’re the cast-off sister who got thrown into the mud two nights ago. Looking for a way to bite back?"

"I’m looking for their habits," Heena corrected coldly. "Lu Mei likes to play the righteous, dutiful heir in front of our mother, which means she hides her dirt somewhere deep. Which of these pavilions does she crawl into when she thinks no one is watching?"

Qiu leaned back against the brick wall behind her barrel, rolling the single copper coin across her knuckles. "Lu Mei isn’t the sharpest blade in the rack, and she’s got a temper like cheap firecrackers. She doesn’t come into the Crimson Lotus—too many high-ranking officials drink here who know her mother. She slips into the House of Whispering Willows right behind you, every third night of the week, using the side alley."

Heena’s eyes gleamed. "Who does she see?"

"The top male courtesan on the third floor. A pretty little thing named Lord Yan," Qiu said, curling her lip in mild disgust. "And here is the funny part—she hasn’t even managed to touch the boy’s hand yet. She dumps puluhan of silver taels into that pavilion just to sit behind a silk screen and sniff the air around him. Word from the chamberboys is that she’s completely obsessed with him because he wears some rare, imported Southern incense blend that drives the noblewomen feral. She’s been trying to buy the recipe off the Madam for months so she can force her own husbands at home to wear it, because she can’t stand the way her current stable smells."

"Bingo!" the System gasped, practically doing a backflip in the air. "Host! She hates the way her husbands smell! That means she hates the way Su Jin smells too!"