Return of Black Lotus system:Taming Cheating Male Leads

Chapter 471: Chapter-471

Normally, a kick from Heena would have shattered the woman’s ribcage into a dozen pieces. But after two full days without food, water, or movement, her muscles were severely atrophied. Still, the kinetic force was more than enough. The mother gasped in shock as the impact lifted her completely off the mattress, sending her crashing hard onto the wooden floor. The silver knife clattered uselessly into the shadows.

Heena slowly pushed herself up.

’Crack. Pop. Crack.’

The sickening sound of stiffened vertebrae and locked joints popping echoed through the quiet room as she forced her weakened body to sit up. Every single muscle screamed in protest, and her throat felt like it was lined with shattered glass. She hadn’t swallowed a drop of water in forty-eight hours; drawing breath was physically agonizing.

She looked down at the woman sprawling on the floor. Speaking was going to hurt like hell, but Heena forced the words up through her raw throat, her voice coming out as a raspy, demonic whisper.

"You damn old bitch..." Heena hissed, her phoenix eyes glowing with lethal intent. "Did you really think... I am that easy to kill?"

The mother scrambled backward against the wall, clutching her bruised chest. All the color instantly drained from her face, leaving her looking like a terrified ghost.

"H-How?!" the mother stammered, her eyes bulging with pure, unadulterated horror. "How the hell are you awake?! How are you alive?!"

Heena looked at the terrified woman, a chilling, bloodless smile stretching across her pale face.

"Of course I am alive," Heena whispered, her voice raspy and broken, yet dripping with absolute mockery. "I am still a filial child. Before sending the old generation off to their graves... how could I possibly die first?"

Her throat screamed in agony with every syllable, but Heena completely ignored it. Even if she were to die from the pain, she was going to make absolutely sure this wretched woman died of pure, suffocating frustration first.

Hearing the sheer arrogance in Heena’s voice, whatever sanity the mother had left completely snapped. She bared her teeth like a cornered animal. "You damn bitch!" she shrieked, scrambling to her feet and lunging forward with her hands outstretched to strangle her own daughter.

Heena just watched her approach, genuinely bewildered. ’’Is she completely crazy? Or just stupid?’’ she thought. ’’Does this old woman really dare to fight me in hand-to-hand combat?’’

Even starved and dehydrated, Heena was a vanguard grandmaster. As the mother lunged, Heena didn’t even bother dodging. She simply shifted her weight, raised her hand, and delivered a brutally crisp, devastating backhand directly across the woman’s face.

’SMACK!’

The mother’s head snapped to the side, and her entire body spun mid-air before crashing violently into the heavy oak tea table, sending wood and porcelain shattering across the floor. She crumpled into the wreckage and didn’t move again.

"Well," Heena muttered, rubbing her bruised knuckles. "Congratulations on your nap."

### ’’The Aftermath’’

Clearing the rest of the board the next morning was almost insultingly easy.

Once Heena fully "woke up" and casually drank a pitcher of water, she simply handed over a small, meticulously researched stack of documents she had compiled through the System. The paper trail laid bare every single one of the mother’s schemes, her embezzlement for Kavien, and her murderous intent.

When the grandmother read the ledger, a terrifying, silent fury took over the matriarch. She marched directly into the holding room where the mother had been pretending to be fainted for the past seven hours. The grandmother didn’t say a word—she just ruthlessly kicked the "unconscious" woman in the ribs five, six, seven times until the mother broke character and shrieked in pain.

As for Heena’s father? The old Marquis literally dragged his own son into the courtyard and whipped him.

Why? Not because the father was part of the assassination plot—he was completely oblivious—but because he was a blind, useless, pathetic idiot who had brought a viper into the Marcuset household and let her fester for decades.

Within twenty-four hours, both parents were officially "divorced" and permanently exiled to two very different temples.

’’The Father’s Temple’’

Because he wasn’t inherently malicious—just staggeringly useless—Heena decided to let him live. However, she knew that if a useless noble was left to his own devices, he would eventually get drunk, bring home another scheming woman, and spawn more annoying half-siblings for Heena to deal with.

Honestly, if she could have gotten away with it, Heena would have just ordered a physician to give him a vasectomy and permanently sever his bloodline. But since she couldn’t exactly write that into a formal imperial decree, she settled for the next best thing.

He was banished to a strictly monitored, remote Buddhist temple high in the freezing mountains. For the rest of his natural life, the foolish man would be forced to shave his head, eat a strict, bland vegetarian diet, and chant sutras to Buddha from dawn until dusk. No wealth. No power. No women.

’’The Mother’s Temple’’

The mother was also sent to a "temple"—but this one was situated deep underground.

It was the Marquisate’s black-site dungeon, a hellish subterranean prison reserved for the most brutal, irredeemable criminals captured by the vanguard. But Heena wasn’t a total monster; she was a dutiful daughter, after all. She made sure her mother was given a "perfect" private room.

It was a literal iron cage suspended in the center of the dark, damp dungeon, completely exposed to the mocking eyes of the surrounding criminal population. The only place hidden from view was a tiny, cramped corner for the bathroom.

In the center of the iron cage sat a single, small, smiling Buddha statue for her to "pray" to.

As for her accommodations, Heena ensured she was fed quite well. Twice a day, the guards threw a coarse, blackened bread bun into her cage—a bun baked so incredibly hard that a prisoner could literally use it to hammer iron nails into the stone walls. To wash it down, she received a bowl of cold, murky vegetable soup that smelled distinctly of swamp water and regret.

Kicking out the rest of the rot from the Marcuset estate was as easy as sweeping dust from a marble floor.

This was the absolute advantage of not putting all your eggs in one basket. If the father and mother had actually held the true military or financial power of the family, Heena would have faced a massive, bloody political struggle to root them out. But the old Marquis and the grandmother were remarkably wise. They weren’t like those foolish, old-fashioned aristocrats who blindly handed over the keys to the empire just because a son was born.

They saw early on that their son was incompetent, so they simply bypassed him.

The grandmother had only ever given Seera’s mother a superficial amount of authority over the inner courtyard—just enough to manage the daily chores. Because Heena had warned her grandmother weeks in advance, the matriarch had already quietly clawed back even that small amount of power.

When the hammer finally fell, there was no civil war within the estate. The mother’s loyal servants were dragged out by the vanguard knights and exiled before breakfast.

Heena sat alone in her newly cleaned, quiet bedroom, casually pouring herself a cup of hot tea.