Return of Black Lotus system:Taming Cheating Male Leads

Chapter 468: Chapter-468

She slammed her fist into the hard ground. And again. And again. She hammered her knuckles into the unforgiving earth four or five times until the skin split and her hands turned raw and red.

The System hovered over her frantically, its avatar glitching with panic. ’[Whoa! Host, what are you doing?!]’ It tried to project a virtual barrier to stop her, but it was useless against physical objects.

Heena finally paused, her chest heaving as she dragged in a ragged breath.

She wasn’t furious because she had been outsmarted. Her ego could take a hit. No, the thought burning a hole in her conscience was far darker: ’What if the Seventh Prince genuinely didn’t do anything?’

Normally, agents who worked for the System didn’t give a single damn about the life and death of "NPCs." They treated these worlds like disposable playgrounds. But Heena wasn’t like that. Whenever she lived in these worlds, she knew these people were real. They were living, breathing, walking, and talking—not just ink on paper or lines of code.

If some nameless bastard had just successfully used her as a proxy blade to murder an innocent person... Heena was going to tear them apart.

She wanted that bastard’s head. But who could it be?

Fighting through the throbbing pain in her skull, she forced her mind to rewind and analyze the board. Any character acting fundamentally out of character was a target.

First suspect: Her mother. That woman’s recent explanations and behavior were completely off. Heena definitely needed to dig into her background. Something was deeply wrong there.

Second suspect: Samuel.

Yes, Samuel. Even though he constantly paraded around with that triumphant smile, claiming he loved her and spouting all that affectionate nonsense, Heena didn’t buy it for a second. His demeanor was a mask.

She racked her brain, searching for a third suspect, but the pain was making her vision swim. She needed to clear those two off the board first.

"Seera? Lady seera?!"

A frantic voice shattered the quiet of the courtyard. Samuel, who had come out for a late-night walk, froze at the edge of the garden. Seeing Heena collapsed in the dirt, he sprinted across the grass, his usual composed demeanor entirely vanishing.

He dropped to his knees beside her, his hands trembling as he gently patted her pale cheek. "Seera! Wake up!"

She didn’t respond. When his hand brushed the back of her head and came away with dust and a slight trace of blood, sheer panic flooded his eyes.

"Guards! GUARDS!" Samuel roared, the raw terror in his voice echoing through the silent estate. Without a second thought, he scooped her limp body into his arms, rushing toward the main house. "Call the physician! Somebody, get the physician right now!"

The estate exploded into chaos. Maids shrieked, knights drew their weapons and secured the perimeter, and servants scrambled in every direction.

A breathless maid hurriedly led Samuel into Heena’s chambers, where he laid her softly onto the massive four-poster bed. As her arms fell limp against the silk sheets, the maids gasped. Her knuckles were bruised, split, and completely covered in dirt and blood. It didn’t look like a simple collapse; it looked like she had been fighting.

The heavy oak doors slammed open, and the old Marquis and the grandmother rushed into the room. Seeing their invincible granddaughter lying unconscious and bloodied on the bed, the grandfather’s face turned completely ashen.

The Head Physician pushed through the crowd, quickly examining her head.

"It... it appears Lady Seera has fallen backward and sustained a blunt force injury to the back of her head," the physician reported nervously. "That is likely the reason she has collapsed."

The old Marquis’s eyes went entirely bloodshot. He lunged forward, grabbing the physician by the collar of his robes and lifting him right off his feet.

"Look at her hands, you blind idiot!" the grandfather roared, spit flying from his lips. "Why are her hands bruised and bleeding like this?!"

The physician choked, desperately looking at Heena’s mangled knuckles. It was true—her hands looked like they had been repeatedly hammered against something solid. It made absolutely no medical sense. Why would a perfectly sane young lady brutalize her own hands before passing out?

"Could it be..." the grandfather snarled, his aura violently flaring and dropping the temperature in the room by ten degrees. "...that someone attacked her in her own courtyard?!"

A terrified murmur rippled through the guards. An assassination attempt right inside the Marcuset estate?

Meanwhile, deep within the quiet sanctuary of Heena’s mindscape, the System was staring at her with wide, horrified digital eyes. Its mouth was hanging completely open. It actually thought its Host had finally suffered a complete psychological break.

’[What the heck...]’ the System muttered in awe. ’[This woman isn’t even human. I have never seen someone so brilliantly smart, yet so terrifyingly ruthless. To completely frame an attack on herself... Host?]’

’’I am not dead yet, so speak,’’ Heena’s voice echoed dryly in her own mind.

Physically, her body was in a completely unresponsive, concussed state. She couldn’t move a single muscle, open her eyes, or twitch her mouth. But mentally, she was sitting perfectly upright in the dark, watching the chaos unfold.

’[Did you... did you do all of that on purpose?!]’

Heena mentally scoffed, crossing her arms. ’’What did you think? That I died? Or did you genuinely think I had gone crazy and was just punching the dirt for fun?’’

’[Well, of course I thought you went crazy!]’ the System blurted out defensively.

’’What did you just say to me?’’ Heena asked, her mental tone dripping with cold danger.

The System immediately realized it had misspoken and quickly tried to deflect. ’[W-Wait, Host! Aren’t you supposed to be completely unconscious? Why are you talking so much?!]’

’’My head trauma is real. I literally cannot move my body or open my mouth right now,’’ Heena replied smoothly, completely unbothered by the screaming going on around her physical body. ’’So, technically speaking, you can just tell them I am perfectly unconscious.’’

’[But Host, why are you doing this?!]’ the System pleaded, its digital voice laced with genuine panic. ’[You’re completely unconscious! The estate is in an uproar! Is there something wrong here?!]’

Heena didn’t even blink in her mental landscape. She just leaned back in the dark void of her mind, waved a dismissive hand, and said, ’’Shut up. Just wait and watch.’’

Hearing that, the System’s avatar slumped in defeat. It knew its Host entirely too well by now; if Heena said "wait and watch," there was absolutely no way she was going to reveal her grand master plan prematurely. But the System still desperately wanted to know what the heck this suicidal nonsense was about.

Intentionally harming the host body was a massive, unspoken taboo among dimension-hopping agents.

No matter how invincible or god-like an agent might seem when manipulating a world’s plot, they were bound to the physical limitations of their vessel. Every single ounce of suffering the character endured, the agent actually felt. If Lady Seera fell and snapped her leg, Heena would feel the bone tear through the muscle. The pain synchronization was one hundred percent real.