r18novel Chapter 375 --375
Chapter 375 --375
"My birth mother was a woman who deeply appreciated elegant, high-sounding names. However, an astrologer once warned her that my fate was far too weak to carry a grand title. Thus, she chose the most insignificant, common name she could find, hoping that by remaining entirely ordinary, I might escape the envy of the heavens and live a long, quiet life."
Heena’s eyelids twitched violently beneath her calm exterior. She looked away, fiercely biting the inside of her cheek. *What absolute, utter nonsense is this man spewing?* But outwardly, she merely nodded with a straight face, acting as if his explanation was the absolute, gospel truth.
Off in the digital ether, the System was literally rolling on the floorboards, clutching his holographic stomach as he burst into a frantic fit of silent laughter. *[Pfft—hahaha! Roni! Good god, Host, you changed the name of a terrifying, estate-burning lord to Roni? He sounds like a delinquent from a roadside high school! I cannot handle this!]*
Fortunately, the grandmother accepted the explanation without further scrutiny. In this chaotic era, commoners named their children whatever they wanted; half the merchant class named their sons ’Tuesday’ or ’Seven’ simply based on the day or hour they were born. It wasn’t worth her energy to care about the lineage of a random guard.
Heena quickly drew her grandmother’s attention back to her narrative, weaving the lie Samuel had prepped for her. "When I first came to my senses after the incident on the mountain, I was entirely blank. I wandered into a remote province, a nameless girl with no memory of where she belonged. At that time, a wealthy merchant couple who were passing through the area saw me. They had just tragically lost their own young daughter to an illness, and when they saw me shivering on the roadside, they tried to find my original parents. When all their inquiries yielded nothing, they decided it was the will of the heavens and adopted me."
She let her voice soften, dropping into a tone of quiet melancholy. "With them, I left the capital entirely. We moved to a remote, distant territory quite far from here. They took incredible care of me, Grandma. They loved me as their own blood. But... just a few months ago, a terrible sickness struck our estate. My adoptive parents passed away, one right after the other."
The grandmother’s eyes filled with fresh tears, her heart aching for the hardships her baby had endured.
"I have a brother left," Heena continued, her voice steady but laced with a perfect hint of grief. "But after the funeral costs and settling the business, he took what remained of the merchant fleet and went out to sea in search of new aspirations in the foreign lands. So right now, I have no living family left in that province. And during that same chaotic period, while I was traveling, my own carriage suffered a terrible accident, plunging down a ridge. The severe blow to my head caused me to lose
, but when I finally opened my eyes... the fog in my mind had cleared. I recovered my true identity."
She paused, looking down at her laced fingers. "After the double shock of losing my adoptive parents and suddenly remembering my past, I was in so much agonizing pain. I wanted to stay and wait for my brother’s return, but I was so incredibly worried about you, Grandma. I didn’t know what to do. While I was conflicted, I met a passing traveler who had just arrived from the capital. They told me that the Marquis and Marchioness were still holding grand memorial services and actively searching for their long-lost daughter."
Heena raised her eyes, her gaze locking onto the pale, sweating face of the Marchioness who was standing a few paces away. Heena’s smile turned sweet, almost venomous. "When I heard that my lovely biological parents were still searching for me, crying over my memory year after year, I realized I couldn’t be unfilial. I couldn’t let them die with such bitter regret, waiting for a ghost. I didn’t want my parents to leave this world without seeing my face one last time. So, I gathered my guards and came straight back to the capital."
The grandmother took it all in, her heart completely breaking for her granddaughter. She began sniffling again, pulling Heena into another protective embrace, entirely convinced that her precious, innocent Seera was incapable of telling a single lie.
On the other side of the veranda, the Marchioness’s expression was a shifting kaleidoscope of pure disgust and absolute horror.
*This little bitch,* the Marchioness screamed in her mind.
Heena had just brutally crushed her three to four times in front of the entire household. *’I couldn’t let them die with bitter regret.’ ’I didn’t want my parents to leave this world without seeing my face.’* What the heck was that? Was this ungrateful brat literally cursing her and the Marquis to an early grave right here on their wedding anniversary? She was essentially implying that she had returned just to watch them die!
But did the Marchioness dare to open her mouth and say a single word of protest in front of the old matriarch?
Of course not.
She didn’t dare because this damn old woman, who was currently sitting in front of everyone sniffling and wiping her nose with a silk cloth, was the absolute, unyielding core of the Marquis household.
When Seera’s grandfather—the great General of the Empire—was alive, he was undoubtedly a powerful, terrifying man on the battlefield. But who had actually handled the sprawling estate? Who had managed the complex web of political alliances, controlled the immense finances, and ruthlessly crushed the treacherous branch family members who tried to launch a coup and take over the succession? It was this grandmother. She had beaten the greedy relatives into absolute pulp and single-handedly built the Marquis house into the high-society fortress it was today.
Her word within these walls was absolute, sometimes carrying infinitely more weight than the Marquis’s own official decrees.
Furthermore, in this intensely sophisticated, strictly traditional era, high society operated on the absolute law of filial piety. If the capital ever caught wind of a rumor that the Marquis and Marchioness had tried to mistreat, disrespect, or put down the venerable elder and matriarch of their own house, the public backlash would be fatal. An official ’unfilial’ title slapped onto a noble’s name by the imperial court was a death sentence for any government officer or aristocrat; it was a brand that would literally drag them from their high thrones straight into a social coffin.
So, the Marchioness swallowed her rage, her knuckles turning white as she stood in the shadows of her own ruined anniversary, forced to watch the daughter she had tried to slaughter completely take over her home.
Heena leaned forward, resting her hands gently near her grandmother’s waist as she looked up into the old woman’s eyes with an expression of pure, unadulterated adoration.
"I really, really missed you, Grandma,"
Heena whispered, her voice softening into a sweet, affectionate tone. "You know, even though my memory is still so foggy and I couldn’t recall every detail about the estate, the moment I saw you, my heart just knew. I knew you were the best person in my life.