Well, it was actually part of Heena’s plan to leave that opening.

Because let’s be realistic here: she wasn’t some Empress or Ruler with absolute authority right now. Nor was she some wealthy noblewoman with inherited power and resources.

She was currently just a normal scholar’s wife, and not even a high-ranking one—she was literally the LOWEST tier of respectable marriage, barely above a concubine in social standing.

So she didn’t have significant power, money, or loyal followers who would genuinely die for her.

Because without money—WITHOUT MONEY—no one was going to show true loyalty.

That romantic nonsense people spouted about "loyalty and love transcending material concerns" and "people dying for you out of pure devotion"?

Complete garbage.

Yeah, they COULD die for you... but only if there was MONEY involved. Payment. Reward. Material benefit.

Without financial incentive, who the hell was going to be genuinely loyal to you?

So that idealistic nonsense aside, Heena currently had no strong allies in this place beyond Samuel.

And she deliberately hadn’t hired anyone with the limited money she possessed.

Like, come on—she got her spending money FROM Samuel because she couldn’t exactly start a business or become an entrepreneur in this situation.

Unlike other transmigrator heroines in novels who magically became wildly successful merchants or invented modern products and got rich—Heena couldn’t do that here.

Because if she DID start openly conducting business, people would immediately start calling her all sorts of names. Questioning her morals. Saying she was shameless, unwomanly, inappropriate.

And that wasn’t even the main point.

The POINT was that Heena had absolutely no attachment to this place. She knew she needed to leave soon after completing her mission. She wasn’t going to stay here long-term, so she definitely wasn’t going to waste HER limited resources on something temporary.

Samuel could do it. HE had money. HE should waste it if anyone was going to.

And speaking of Samuel—you could say that now his wife had collapsed into a coma, now he finally had no restraints holding him back.

But honestly? This ruthless bastard had been planning his moves from the very START.

Heena’s poisoning just gave him the perfect EXCUSE and JUSTIFICATION to openly attack Maya without looking like a disrespectful son going after his father’s wife for no reason.

And just like a concerned, dutiful son, Samuel had gone directly to his father and told him EVERYTHING about what his beloved wife Maya had done.

The poison. The affair with Chen Yifan. The schemes. The attempted murder of Samuel’s wife.

All of it, laid out in excruciating detail.

And OF COURSE that revelation triggered another heart attack in the old Master.

Like, it definitely wasn’t Samuel’s fault that he just HAPPENED to tell his father this devastating information right AFTER the old man had taken his regular evening medicine.

Pure coincidence, really.

And Samuel DEFINITELY didn’t take advantage of his father’s delirious, semi-conscious state—while the old man was weak and disoriented from the heart episode—to get him to write and sign a will transferring all assets and authority to his son.

Samuel wasn’t THAT kind of underhanded, manipulative person.

Of course he was exactly that type of man, and of course he did exactly that.

And when Heena heard about it later (after waking from her coma), she was genuinely impressed and said approvingly: "Now THAT is exactly the ruthless, practical move I would have made. Well done."

But anyway, right now in the present moment, Heena was still directly in a coma.

And she wasn’t going to experience the typical dramatic nonsense of memory recovery that fiction usually portrayed—like some cinematic montage of images flashing before your eyes while emotional music played.

No.

Because that’s not how memories actually WORKED in her experience.

How the hell were you supposed to absorb and process YEARS worth of someone else’s memories and experiences in just a few seconds? That was physically, mentally impossible.

The human brain couldn’t handle that kind of instantaneous information overload.

So instead, Heena’s pragmatic, organized mind had done what it did best: it had efficiently compiled and streamlined all of Seera’s memories into a comprehensive SUMMARY.

---

’’[Inside Heena’s Mind - The Memory Theater]’’

Within the dark, silent void of her comatose consciousness, Heena found herself sitting comfortably in an imaginary armchair.

She had constructed a mental viewing room—because if she was going to be forced to watch someone else’s tragic life story, she might as well be comfortable while doing it.

A large screen materialized in front of her, like some sort of spiritual cinema.

’Alright,’ Heena thought, settling back into her chair. ’Let’s see what terrible secrets Seera’s past is hiding that warranted sending ME specifically to this world.’

The screen flickered to life, and the "broadcast" of Seera’s history began playing in organized, chronological order.

And as Heena watched, the true absurdity—the sheer, infuriating TRAGEDY—of Seera’s situation began to unfold.

---

’’[Act One: The Brilliant Daughter]’’

The first scenes showed a young Seera, perhaps five or six years old, in an elegant estate.

But this wasn’t some minor noble household.

The architecture was grand—multiple courtyards, extensive gardens, guard towers, administrative buildings.

And the family crest displayed prominently throughout showed a rank that made Heena’s metaphorical eyebrows rise:

’A Marquis household. Not just any noble family—a RULING Marquis with significant land holdings and political influence.’

Seera wasn’t some discarded illegitimate child or destitute peasant girl.

She was the SOLE biological daughter of a powerful ruling Marquis.

But her brilliance—her sharp, analytical mind and robust physical constitution—was exactly what doomed her.

The screen showed young Seera effortlessly managing household accounts at age eight. By ten, she was correcting errors in the estate’s agricultural planning. By twelve, she was identifying profitable trade routes and investment opportunities.

She possessed a razor-sharp mind for commerce, an intuitive understanding of estate management, and physical robustness that completely defied the fragile, decorative "ideal" that noble women were supposed to embody.

The Marquis and his wife—Seera’s parents—were shown in multiple scenes looking increasingly uncomfortable with their daughter’s capabilities.

They clung to traditional expectations: women should be soft, submissive, decorative. They should embroider, play music, write poetry, and look beautiful while producing heirs.

They should NOT be better at running the estate than their own husbands. 𝐟𝗿𝐞𝚎𝚠𝐞𝚋𝕟𝐨𝚟𝐞𝕝.𝕔𝕠𝚖

The screen showed the Marquis and his wife making a decision: they adopted FOUR boys from distant branch families.

The plan was straightforward and traditional: raise these boys as potential grooms, select the best one to marry Seera, and let the HUSBAND inherit control of the estate while Seera produced heirs and occupied herself with appropriately feminine pursuits.

Problem solved, right?

Wrong.

Because Seera outclassed all four adopted "grooms" COMBINED.

---

’’[Act Two: The Rising Resentment]’’

The screen showed the teenage years.

The four adopted boys—now young men in their late teens and early twenties—growing increasingly resentful and humiliated.

Every time they attempted to manage some aspect of the estate, Seera would politely, efficiently, devastatingly point out their errors.

"The rice yields will be lower if you plant in the eastern fields without proper irrigation—"

"That merchant is cheating you on the silk prices; the market rate is actually—"

"The tax calculations are wrong here, and here, and also this entire column—"

She wasn’t trying to humiliate them. She genuinely just saw problems and fixed them automatically.

But the adopted sons felt the constant sting of being outperformed by a WOMAN.

Even worse, Seera’s mother—a woman deeply entrenched in internalized misogyny—absolutely LOATHED her daughter’s ambitions and capabilities.