Chapter 503: Chapter-503
Heena looked down at him, her dark eyes completely unreadable.
"I didn’t defend you. I defended the time and effort I am wasting on you," Heena replied coldly, turning her back on him to leave. "If you want to survive the capital, Your Highness, learn to tell the difference between the people who flatter you to keep you weak, and the people who strike you to make you strong."
As Heena walked out of the moon gate, leaving the boy staring thoughtfully at the medicinal vial in the dirt, the digital lion materialized next to her shoulder.
’[Host, that was an absolutely flawless psychological manipulation,]’ the System praised in awe. ’[You just completely severed his emotional dependency on the Empress. He is going to be incredibly loyal to you now.]’
’’Good,’’ Heena thought, pressing two fingers against her temple as the familiar, dull throb of her headache began to creep back in. ’’Because I have established my absolute authority here, and the Emperor himself just gave me a blank check. My work in the capital is temporarily done.’’
She stepped into the waiting carriage, her eyes hardening into pure, calculating steel.
’’System. Begin compiling the logistical routes for a secure travel convoy. We are going south to the Vane estate.’’
.
.
The moon had already risen high over the Marcuset estate, casting long, silver shadows across Heena’s private chambers.
She was standing near her heavy oak wardrobe, silently going through the logistical preparations for the southern journey, when the attack hit.
It didn’t come on slowly with a dull throb like the previous ones. It struck with the sudden, catastrophic violence of an executioner’s axe. A white-hot, blinding spike of absolute agony erupted from the dead center of her brain. It felt as if a river of boiling lava had just been injected directly behind her eyes.
The half-folded traveling cloak slipped from her fingers.
Heena didn’t even have the breath to scream. Her knees instantly buckled, and she collapsed hard onto the wooden floor. Her hands violently flew to her head, her fingers digging so deeply into her scalp that her nails practically drew blood.
Her perfectly crafted, untouchable persona disintegrated in a single second. The pain was so intense, so consuming, that her body began to violently twitch and convulse on the floorboards.
"Ah... AHH!"
A raw, ragged scream finally tore its way out of her throat. It wasn’t the scream of a ruthless commander; it was the terrified, agonizing wail of a dying girl. The pain was literally burning her alive from the inside out.
"Mama!" Heena sobbed blindly into the empty room, her mind completely fracturing under the sheer weight of the agony. "Mama... it hurts! Mama!"
Tears poured from her eyes like a busted dam, soaking her face and the floor beneath her. The agony peaked, pushing her nervous system entirely past the absolute limit of human endurance. Through her blurred, tear-soaked vision, she saw a strange, faint light hovering directly above her.
And then, with a sharp, sickening snap, her consciousness completely went out.
But even though her mind had surrendered to the darkness, her physical body did not relax.
Her jaws clamped together with terrifying, bone-crushing force. Every single muscle in her body locked up in a rigid, violent spasm, pulling her limbs tight against her chest.
When the maids standing outside heard the horrific screams, they threw the doors open and rushed inside. Finding Heena thrashing and sobbing on the floor sent the entire household into absolute, blinding panic.
The timing could not have been worse. Grandpa and Grandma Marcuset were not at the estate; they had been summoned to attend a mandatory, high-level noble function at a neighboring duke’s manor and wouldn’t be back for hours. Samuel was nowhere to be found.
"Help her! Quickly, lift her!" the head maid shrieked.
Four terrified servants rushed forward, hastily picking up Heena’s rigidly locked body and carefully placing her onto the center of the massive canopy bed. They desperately tried to soothe her, to wipe the cold sweat from her brow, but her face was completely contorted in a grimace of residual agony. The maids tried to gently pry her mouth open to ensure she wouldn’t bite her own tongue off, but her jaw was locked so tightly that it felt like solid iron.
"Where is the physician?!" someone screamed down the hallway.
A minute later, the estate’s senior physician practically tumbled into the room, his medical chest clutched tightly to his chest.
When his eyes landed on Heena’s pale, sweat-drenched, convulsing form on the bed, all the blood instantly drained from his face. He felt his very soul try to leave his body.
He knew exactly what the stakes were. This girl wasn’t just a patient; she was the literal, beating heart of the family’s future. She was the singular lifeline holding them together. If she died on his watch, the old Marquis would not just fire him—he would personally chop the physician’s head off and mount it on a pike above the palace walls.
"Move! Everyone out of the way!" the physician roared, his hands trembling violently as he threw his medical box open.
The physician was sweating so profusely it was stinging his eyes, but decades of medical instinct kicked in, overriding his sheer terror.
"Her blood flow is entirely restricted! Her meridians are locked!" the physician panicked, recognizing the horrific state of her clamped muscles.
He immediately pulled out heavy, specialized meridian clamps—thick, pincher-like acupuncture tools designed for extreme trauma. With shaking hands, he aggressively drove the pinchers directly into the pressure points on the palms of Heena’s locked hands.
The intense, targeted nerve stimulation acted like an electrical shock. The locked muscles in her arms violently spasmed once, and then slowly began to yield, allowing the trapped blood to finally flow back into her extremities.
But her face was still deathly pale, and her teeth were still grinding together with enough force to shatter her jaw.
The physician grabbed his longest, finest silver needle. He leaned over her, perfectly isolating the Yintang point—the meridian located exactly between her eyebrows.
"Forgive me, My Lady," he whispered frantically, and drove the long needle firmly into the center of her forehead.
The effect was almost instantaneous. The targeted strike to the central nervous junction forcibly severed the tension command in her brain. Heena’s heavily clenched jaw suddenly slacked, her mouth falling open slightly as a shallow, ragged breath finally hitched in her throat. Her facial muscles completely smoothed out, returning to a deathly pale calm.
Not wasting a single second, the physician rapidly pulled out a dozen more needles, systematically driving them into the major pressure points along her neck, shoulders, and chest.
He was essentially manually shutting down her nervous system, forcing her body to abandon the pain response and enter a state of deep, chemically induced collapse.
Slowly, the violent rigidity left Heena’s body. Her hands fell limply to her sides, her breathing slowed to a faint, shallow rhythm, and she sank into a deep, coma-like rest.
The physician collapsed backward onto the wooden floor, completely exhausted, his heart hammering against his ribs. He dragged a trembling sleeve across his forehead, staring up at the unconscious girl.
He had pulled her back from the edge this time. But as he looked at the sheer, terrifying intensity of the attack she had just suffered, he realized a horrifying truth.
Whatever was destroying her from the inside... it was accelerating.
Visit and read more novel to help us update chapter quickly. Thank you so much!
Use arrow keys (or A / D) to PREV/NEXT chapter