Chapter 628: Chapter-628
She wasn’t balding, but the previously thick, luxurious dark hair had noticeably thinned out, losing its vital luster.
"Are you alright?" the grandmother whispered, her voice tightening with unshed tears.
Heena didn’t flinch. She offered a perfectly composed, reassuring smile. "Of course, Grandma. I am completely fine."
"You..." the grandmother started to argue, but the words caught in her throat.
Instead of demanding the truth, the old Marchioness suddenly stepped forward and pulled Heena into a fierce, desperately tight hug.
Heena, who had been standing perfectly straight like a seasoned soldier, completely paused. The sheer, unconditional warmth of the embrace caught her off guard. Slowly, her rigid shoulders relaxed, and she wrapped her arms around the older woman, returning the hug.
"Wow, Grandma," Heena chuckled softly, trying to lighten the heavy atmosphere. "What happened? Did you miss me that much?"
The grandmother patted her back gently, swallowing the heavy lump of sorrow in her throat. "Yeah. Granny just missed you. That’s all."
"I missed you too," Heena smiled softly, pulling back. She let the emotional moment settle before her dark eyes shifted toward the still-open carriage. Her expression sharpened back into the calculating Vanguard Madam.
"So," Heena asked, "have you brought the one I asked for?"
The grandmother wiped her eyes, her sharp demeanor returning. She smiled and nodded toward the carriage. "Yeah. Come out, child."
The heavy velvet curtains of the carriage were pulled aside, and a pair of legs stepped out onto the cobblestones.
Heena paused, looking down. The shoes were entirely wrong for a Vanguard. They were plain, unarmored men’s scholar shoes.
Her gaze traveled upward as the man fully emerged from the carriage. He was not a young, strapping military prodigy. He was a man in his early thirties. He was entirely average-looking—not devastatingly handsome like Samuel, not fiercely intimidating like Kael. He just looked like a normal, everyday citizen. He had long brown hair, plain brown eyes, and slightly tanned skin.
He was dressed in simple, light blue civil robes. And most notably, instead of the heavy, blood-soaked broadsword that every Vanguard family member wore on their waist, he simply had a delicate jade tassel hanging from his belt.
He had no muscles, no warrior aura, and absolutely no military training. He was just a completely normal thirty-year-old man.
Heena looked at the man, then slowly turned her head to look at her grandmother, raising a single, highly amused eyebrow.
"Did you not ask me to bring you an heir?" the grandmother stated matter-of-factly, gesturing to the utterly average man. "Here he is."
Heena walked forward, stopping a few feet away from the man. She looked him up and down, her dark eyes gleaming with a strange, brilliant satisfaction.
"Hello, dear son," Heena greeted him smoothly.
Even the thirty-year-old man completely froze at the sheer absurdity of the situation. He stared at the frail, terrifying young woman who was at least eight years his junior. But after a few seconds of internal buffering, he gave a polite, practiced smile and bowed his head respectfully.
"Hello, Mother," the man replied.
Hovering invisibly by the carriage, the System’s digital interface completely crashed.
"Huh?!" the System shrieked, glitching violently. "Wait, wait, wait, wait! He is literally older than you, Host! In this body, you are barely twenty-two! What is happening?!"
’Shut up,’ Heena retorted telepathically, not breaking her serene expression. ’I am older than him in spirit. Age is just a number when it comes to legal inheritance loopholes.’
"What the heck do you mean by Mother-Son?!" the System continued to panic. "What absolute nonsense is going on right now?!"
Heena completely ignored the floating blue lion. She turned her attention back to her newly acquired, thirty-year-old "son" and her grandparents.
"Let’s go inside, Grandma," Heena invited, her tone returning to that of a gracious hostess. "You too, come. Let’s all have lunch together."
As the matriarch and the patriarch began to walk toward the main dining hall, Heena paused in the courtyard. She looked at her new heir, then placed two fingers to her lips and let out a sharp, piercing whistle.
Swoosh.
A heavily armored Vanguard shadow guard instantly dropped from the rooftop, landing silently on one knee beside her.
Heena looked at the guard, then casually gestured toward the bewildered thirty-year-old man in blue robes.
"Go," Heena ordered the shadow guard with absolute authority. "Show the Young Master around."
As the thirty-year-old man turned to leave, he paused, looked back at , and gave another perfectly stiff, respectful bow.
"As you wish, Mother," he said solemnly.
With that, he turned and followed the shadow guard out of the courtyard.
The absolute second the heavy wooden doors clicked shut behind them, the old Marquis violently rubbed his face, looking completely utterly bewildered. He turned to his granddaughter.
"Um... seera," the grandfather started, gesturing vaguely toward the closed door. "How about I just adopt him as my son? Or your brother, or something? For your son... he is just too old, my child."
burst into a sudden, genuine fit of laughter.
"Come on, Grandpa," Heena smiled, walking over to the table and taking a seat. "If Grandma brought him all the way back to the capital, he must have something incredibly exceptional in him. Something so valuable that she went out of her way to secure him."
She poured a cup of tea, her expression shifting back to the calculating Vanguard Madam.
"As for adopting him under your name?" Heena shook her head. "If he is adopted as your son, the moment you pass away, the Emperor or the civil officials will immediately force him to inherit the heavy Vanguard title. They will send him straight to the front lines of a war, or use him as a political trigger against our army. Throwing him under your name causes thousands of problems. Throwing him under my name? That only causes about eight hundred."
The grandfather paused, aggressively rubbing his forehead, trying to process the sheer absurdity of the math. "But he is thirty. You are twenty-two! People are going to laugh at you!"
"Come on, Grandpa," Heena chuckled, taking a sip of her tea. "Wouldn’t it be incredibly fun to watch those old bastards in the civil court scratch their heads forever? They would have never, in a million years, expected me to adopt a child who is eight years older than me."
The grandfather sighed heavily. "Well... it is a good thing if it puts them in trouble. I always want to see them squirm. But still, what about your actual child? What about you?"
Heena set her teacup down, her dark eyes turning entirely serious.
"Grandpa, just think about it," Heena said softly. "If tomorrow I have a biological child of my own... do you want him to suffer the way our ancestors did? Do you want him chained to the battlefield?"
"Absolutely not," the grandfather answered in a split second, his voice leaving no room for debate.
"That is your answer," Heena nodded firmly. "This man... he can be used as our ultimate safeguard."
She leaned forward, laying out the flawless, sociopathic legal trap she had built.
"The five conditions I forced the Emperor to agree to? They officially start from my generation, not yours," Heena explained. "If I put this man under your name or my father’s name, he gets lumped into the older generation, and the Emperor will easily find legal loopholes to draft him or cause a massive problem for us."
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