Return of Black Lotus system:Taming Cheating Male Leads

Chapter 396 --396

According to the strict etiquette of the capital, a daughter should rise to greet the head of the house, but she remained perfectly seated, her hands resting elegantly in her lap. She simply tilted her head, her dark eyes locking onto the man who had supposedly sired this body.

"Father," she said, her voice calm, polite, and entirely devoid of warmth.

The Marquis stopped at the edge of the pavilion. For a long, agonizing moment, he simply stared at her. He looked at the curve of her jaw, the shape of her eyes, and the midnight-blue silk that mirrored the colors of his own youth. He looked like a man staring at a ghost that had suddenly manifested in the daylight.

He opened his mouth, his throat working visibly, but no words came out. This was a man who commanded armies on the western borders, who navigated the treacherous waters of imperial court politics without blinking, yet he looked entirely paralyzed in front of his own twenty-two-year-old daughter.

He didn’t know how to speak to her. He had never known how to speak to her, even before she disappeared. He was a reserved, deeply emotionally stunted man who had left the raising of his child entirely to his mother and his wife, believing that his only duty was to provide the wealth and the title.

Slowly, awkwardly, he stepped into the pavilion and took the seat opposite her at the jade table.

The silence stretched, heavy and suffocating. The only sound was the distant chirping of birds and the soft, rhythmic clink of the wind chimes. Behind them, Samuel remained perfectly still, though another subtle tremor racked his calves as a sharp, residual ache flared in his lower back.

Finally, the Marquis cleared his throat. He looked down at the table, unable to meet her piercing gaze.

"Is... is the tea to your liking?" he asked.

It was such a profoundly inadequate, absurdly stiff question that Heena almost laughed out loud. Her hyper-analytical mind instantly tore the man apart. *I have been presumed dead for years. I was brutally thrown off a cliff, lost my memories, lived as a battered servant hauling water until my spine nearly snapped, and returned to a house completely infested with vipers... and you are asking me about the tea?*

"It is quite exquisite, Father," Heena replied, her tone perfectly even, though the underlying edge was sharp enough to draw blood. "A rare silver-needle blend, if I am not mistaken. It is slightly bitter on the swallow, but... considering the environment, I suppose a certain amount of bitterness is to be entirely expected."

The Marquis flinched slightly at the double meaning. His large, calloused hand rested on the jade table, his fingers twitching.

"I heard about what happened at the breakfast hall," he said, his voice low, gravelly. "Your mother... she can be difficult. She has been under a great deal of stress managing the estate in my absence."

"Stress," Heena repeated, testing the word on her tongue as if it were a foreign concept. She leaned forward slightly, resting her elbows on the table. "Is that what we are calling it now? I suppose harboring four adopted grooms, aggressively protecting a parasitic stray like Kavien, and forgetting that her own daughter supposedly cannot eat lotus root would indeed cause a great deal of stress."

The Marquis’s head snapped up, his dark eyes widening slightly at her blatant, unfiltered audacity. The daughter he remembered was quiet, obedient, and terrified of conflict. The woman sitting across from him was a hardened general surveying a battlefield.

"Seera..." he started, his voice laced with a heavy, pained exhaustion. "You must understand. When you were lost... the household fell into chaos. Your mother was inconsolable. The adoption of the grooms was a necessary political maneuver to ensure the stability of our borders. If the Emperor believed our bloodline had ended, he would have annexed our territories."

"A necessary maneuver," Heena mused, her eyes entirely flat. She studied him carefully, looking for any trace of the dark, apocalyptic conspiracy the System had uncovered. Was this reserved, awkward man a part of the thirteenth-loop regressor’s plot? Or was he truly just a blind, neglectful fool who had allowed his wife to turn his home into a den of treason?

Looking at the deep, genuine sorrow and crippling awkwardness in his eyes, Heena made a rapid calculation. He wasn’t the mastermind. He was the shield the Marchioness was hiding behind.

"Tell me, Father," Heena said softly, her voice dropping into a chillingly quiet register. "When the imperial knights found the carriage wreckage by the cliff... did you personally inspect the bodies they pulled from the river?"

The Marquis froze. His face drained of color. "What?"

"Did you look at the remains?" Heena pressed, her gaze unblinking. "Did you verify the broken bones, the shattered carriage wheels, the cut harnesses? Or did you simply take my mother’s word that it was a tragic, unavoidable accident, lock yourself in your study, and let her handle the burial?"

A profound, horrifying silence slammed down onto the pavilion.

The Marquis stared at her, his breathing turning shallow. His hands began to tremble on the jade table. The answer was written plainly across his devastated face. He hadn’t looked. He had been too cowardly, too broken by the grief of losing his golden heir, to inspect the truth himself. He had handed the reigns of the investigation entirely over to the Marchioness.

"I..." the Marquis choked out, his voice cracking entirely. "I could not bear to see you... like that."

"I see," Heena said, leaning back in her chair. The total lack of sympathy in her voice was absolute. "Your inability to bear the sight of blood allowed the person holding the knife to clean the blade right under your roof."

She stood up slowly, her silk skirts falling flawlessly around her legs. She looked down at the powerful, imposing Marquis, who now looked smaller, older, and utterly broken.

"I am tired, Father," Heena said, her voice returning to its polite, distant chime. "The noblewomen have exhausted my patience, and the sun is growing entirely too hot. If you will excuse me, I will return to my quarters."

She didn’t wait for his permission. She turned her back on him and began to walk away, stepping out of the pavilion’s shadow and into the bright sunlight.

"Guard," Heena commanded sharply, not even looking back.

Samuel instantly snapped out of his silent endurance. He stepped forward with heavy, rhythmic strides, his towering, iron-clad form falling perfectly into place two paces behind her. Despite the lingering tremors in his muscles and the stifling heat of the full-cover mask, his posture was flawlessly rigid, his devotion absolute.

They left the Marquis sitting alone at the jade table, staring at the cold tea, finally realizing that the daughter who had returned to him was not a lost lamb, but a dragon ready to burn his entire estate to the ground.

SMALL THEATER SPECIALY FOR READERS

Hina was peacefully drinking her tea.

One sip.

Two sips.

Three—

Suddenly, she looked up.

Directly at you.

"...Yes, you."

She narrowed her eyes.

"The reader hiding behind the screen."

Another sip.

"You can stop looking behind you. There is nobody there. I’m talking to you."

Hina placed her teacup down and pointed accusingly.

"Your author has done something useful for once."

A dramatic pause.

"I know. I was shocked too."

She took a deep breath and pressed a hand against her chest as if recovering from the revelation.

"Apparently, that useless author left gifts in the Author’s Thoughts."

Hina looked genuinely suspicious.

"I checked the sky three times to make sure the world wasn’t ending."

Another sip.

"It wasn’t."

She shrugged.

"Anyway, the first ten readers can get the gifts."