Chapter 545: Chapter-545
"What is all of this?" Heena demanded, stepping over a heavy sack of grain.
Samuel turned to face her, and the moment he did, Heena noticed something completely different about him. There was no teasing smirk. There was no exaggerated, clingy affection, nor the foolish, lovesick expression he had been loudly parading around the capital for the past few days.
His face was completely serious, his eyes dark and intensely focused.
"These are the reserve goods from the Seventh Store," Samuel answered, his voice dropping into a quiet, strictly professional tone. "The southern city granary and medicinal warehouse."
Heena thought for a second, her brow furrowing. "You mean the one that belongs to Grandma’s personal supply chain?"
"Yes. That one," Samuel nodded.
Heena crossed her arms, looking at the towering mountains of crates and sacks blocking her own courtyard. "So why are you emptying a perfectly good warehouse and dragging all of it directly into my personal mansion?"
"To check it physically," Samuel stated flatly.
Heena looked at him as if he had just lost his mind. "Could you not just check the inventory at the warehouse itself? Why drag it all the way here? And anyway, what business do you even have auditing that warehouse? I don’t think there is anything in Grandma’s supply line that concerns you."
Instead of arguing, Samuel simply stepped forward and handed her the wooden clipboard.
"I have been reviewing all of the family’s internal accounts," Samuel explained, his eyes locking onto hers. "And I noticed that some of the ledgers are slightly... off."
Heena took the clipboard, highly skeptical. She looked down at the parchment, fully expecting to see the usual, mind-numbing bureaucratic accounting full of jarring, flowery language and superficial numbers that took hours to decipher.
But as she flipped the page, she was genuinely impressed.
The handwriting was not just beautiful; the data organization was absolutely ruthless. It was laid out so cleanly, with clear columns and direct figures, that Heena could instantly understand the cash flow and inventory stock with a single glance.
She scanned the first page, her eyes darting through the organized data. Then, she flipped to the third page, cross-referencing the monthly totals.
Suddenly, Heena paused. She flipped back to the first page, her sharp eyes narrowing in on a single, specific line of text.
"Wait," Heena said, looking up at him. "Why is there a discrepancy of exactly two jins of Aurawood between the quarterly harvest and the monthly storage?"
Samuel’s serious expression softened into a look of genuine, profound respect. "That is exactly what I am talking about. Every single month, there is a discrepancy of exactly two jins—not only of Aurawood, but of several other specific herbs as well. The difference is so incredibly small relative to the massive scale of the warehouse that Grandma’s managers simply wrote it off as natural spoilage or transit loss. But the deficit is entirely consistent."
He leaned in closer, lowering his voice so the courtyard servants wouldn’t hear.
Heena looked back down at the document, a cold dread pooling in her stomach as she connected the dots.
Aurawood sounded like a useless, common name, but it was a highly specific medicinal herb. It was a ’cold’ herb, routinely stocked in the military granaries to treat soldiers who were suffering from severe heatstroke or aggressive fevers. But it was incredibly hard to find. It only grew in the high-altitude tropical mountains of the south. Harvesting it was exactly like harvesting saffron—you could only extract two or three tiny, usable bits from a massive plant.
But treating a fever was not its only use.
If you took Aurawood, roasted it under a high heat, ground it into a fine powder, and then seamlessly mixed it with normal, highly beneficial Ginseng... the chemical reaction fundamentally changed. The healthy Ginseng would perfectly mask the taste and smell, but the mixture would turn into a highly potent, undetectable, slow-acting poison.
"How the hell..." Heena whispered, her blood running cold.
She looked at the other missing herbs Samuel had highlighted. Some were dangerous, some were completely common. But if they were mixed together in exact ratios? They could create lethal compounds that would kill a person over a long period of time without raising a single suspicion from a royal doctor.
This was absolutely not the work of a greedy warehouse thief. A normal thief steals gold, silk, or massive quantities of grain to sell on the black market. A normal thief’s stolen quantities fluctuate based on opportunity.
But this? This was a precision theft. Exactly two jins. No more, no less. It was someone actively siphoning off exactly enough rare ingredients to brew a lethal poison that couldn’t be traced back to the capital’s pharmacies.
Heena snapped her head up, staring at Samuel in shock.
"How did you know about this?" Heena demanded. "How did you find a two-jin discrepancy in a warehouse that processes tens of thousands of pounds of goods every week?"
Samuel’s severe expression vanished, replaced by a warm, incredibly cunning smile.
"Well," Samuel murmured, his eyes dancing with amusement. "I was simply visiting the family shops over the last few days to ’play’ and ’buy gifts for my beloved wife.’ I just happened to take a look around while I was there."
Heena froze.
Suddenly, every single annoying thing he had done over the last week violently clicked into place in her mind.
’That absolute bastard,’ Heena realized, her shock rapidly turning into profound awe.
That was why he had been acting like such a useless, loud, clingy fool! Everyone in the capital, including Heena’s own guards, thought Samuel was just a love-crazed idiot completely obsessed with spending the Vanguard’s money. He had caused loud, dramatic public spectacles in the market. He had acted entirely unhinged.
Heena had genuinely thought his brain was malfunctioning. But it all made perfect sense now.
It was a brilliantly executed smokescreen. By acting like a completely harmless, spoiled fool, he had essentially blinded the spies. No one—not the corrupt managers, not the Prime Minister’s informants, and not the hidden poisoners—would ever suspect that the loud idiot screaming about buying silk for his wife was actually a lethal auditor conducting a microscopic review of their supply chain.
Heena looked at the flawless ledger, and then back at Samuel. She could only guess just how terrifyingly sharp this man’s mind truly was to spot a two-jin difference while actively pretending to be an idiot.
A profound, icy dread settled deep into Heena’s bones. A single, literal bead of cold sweat formed at her temple, slowly trailing down the side of her face.
She needed to find out exactly who was behind this, and she needed to do it immediately. The most terrifying problem wasn’t just that poison was being made; it was the absolute exclusivity of the ingredients. You could buy standard medicinal herbs at any common apothecary in the capital, but Aurawood and the two other specific herbs listed on Samuel’s ledger?
Those could only be found in the Marcuset family’s southern granaries and medical warehouses. They held a complete monopoly on the supply.
The political implication was a death sentence. If anyone in the capital died from this specific, slow-acting poison, and a royal physician managed to identify the compound... the absolute first and only suspect would be the Marcuset house. The poison would trace a direct, undeniable line right back to their front door.
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