Return of Black Lotus system:Taming Cheating Male Leads

Chapter 384 --384

Samuel didn’t care about the sting on his neck or the smack on his head. He just smiled fondly, leaning his weight forward. He gently nudged the top of her head with his own forehead, his eyes dark and full of affection. "Well, we’ll have to ask my brilliant wife about that. Maybe you cast a magic spell on me."

Heena’s face twisted into an expression so intensely disgusted it looked like she had just been forced to eat a plate of literal garbage. She pushed his forehead away, glaring at him. "Shut your foul mouth, you black bug."

Seeing her visceral, stomach-churning reaction to his flirting, Samuel hidden a grin and hurriedly raised both hands in absolute surrender. "Sorry, sorry! My mistake."

Heena ignored his grin, carefully applying a small dollop of the herbal cream over the cut and pressing a clean linen bandage over his neck. Once she was finished, she packed the box away and crossed her arms, looking down at him. "Anyway, cut the nonsense. Why did you actually risk your life to sneak in here?"

Samuel’s playful demeanor instantly evaporated, replaced by the sharp, analytical precision of the top-tier scholar he actually was. He straightened his back, his gaze turning serious. "I have a real question. Before we turned in for the night, I secretly sent my shadow guards to dig up the official records and background registries of your four so-called grooms. But I found something incredibly strange."

Heena raised her eyebrows, her mind instantly shifting into strategic mode. "And what might that be?"

"I managed to uncover the family backgrounds, reputations, and lineage of three of your grooms with absolute ease," Samuel explained, his voice dropping into a low, confidential murmur. "Their trails are clear. But your eldest groom—that Koviyar guy—"

"It’s ’Kavien’," Heena corrected flatly.

Samuel waved his hand dismissively. "Whatever his name is. I found that his background is completely, messy-ly confusing."

Heena’s eyes sharpened. She already knew about Kavien’s lack of status, but she hadn’t expected Samuel’s network to flag it so quickly. The man really did possess a terrifyingly sharp mind when he wasn’t acting like a lovesick puppy. She tested him, tilting her head. "And what do you think is so confusing about it? He’s probably just some random street beggar my mother brought into the estate out of charity years ago."

Samuel slowly shook his head, his eyes narrowing in thought. "No, it’s not a standard lack of records. It’s not that his trail is naturally missing; it feels like someone has deliberately, meticulously wiped and altered his history so that no one can ever trace where he truly came from. And think about it, wife—I’ve observed your mother’s behavior today. She protects this eldest one fiercely, far more than any of the other three grooms. If she truly cared about choosing the best suitor for her daughter, she would favor the groom with the highest talent or the best station, right? Who in their right mind fiercely protects the worst, most useless one?"

Hearing that, Heena looked at him, her expression completely calm, cool, and collected. "Maybe she just likes that type."

Samuel looked at her with a flat, scoffing sneer, as if she had just told the most ridiculous joke in the world. "Really, wife? ’That’ type?"

Heena immediately leveled a sharp, icy glare at him.

Samuel instantly shut his mouth, coughing into his hand before quickly amending his tone. "I mean... think about it, who in their right mind likes such a useless person? The guy isn’t nearly as good-looking as me, he’s not talented like me, and he’s definitely not smart like me. Just logically think about it. For a high-ranking Marquis’s daughter, who the hell even goes out of their way to find such a useless piece of shit for a groom?"

Heena didn’t even blink. "My mother."

Samuel choked on his own breath, his eyes widening in a brief panic as he realized he had just casually called her biological mother’s favorite person a ’piece of shit’ right to her face. "I mean... not ’shit’, but—"

Heena looked at his scrambling expression and let out a dry, ruthless chuckle. "Yeah. He is exactly like a piece of shit."

Hearing her say it so bluntly, Samuel looked up at her with an expression of pure, unadulterated awe, like a devout man catching a glimpse of God. He clapped his hands together, entirely vindicated. "Right?! I knew it! I’m glad we are on the same page because I just honestly could not comprehend it."

Heena rested her chin on her hand, her gaze drifting toward the faint candlelight. "But you’re right to be suspicious, Samuel. A high-ranking Marchioness doesn’t shield a nameless, useless piece of trash out of the goodness of her heart. She does it because that piece of trash is holding a leash over her, or because they share a secret that could destroy her."

Samuel leaned forward, his elbows resting on his knees as the playful banter completely drained from his face. "So, you already knew his background was a fabrication?"

"I suspected it the moment she stepped in to defend him this afternoon," Heena murmured, her eyes darkening. "A woman like my biological mother only protects what directly benefits her own survival or ambition. If Kavien’s records were deliberately wiped from the imperial archives, it wasn’t done by a commoner. It requires high-level authority. Either the Marquis himself did it to hide something foul, or..."

She paused, her mind flashing back to the System’s warning about the fracturing world, the dead Guide, and the corrupted northern regressor.

’Or Kavien’s useless, nameless background is the perfect cover for a much larger variable.’

"Or what, wife?" Samuel asked, his sharp eyes tracking the sudden, intense focus in her expression.

"Does he have any connection to my mother’s past?" Heena mused out loud.

Samuel raised his eyebrows, leaning in closer as he processed her words. Meanwhile, the little lion System was completely absent from the room, entirely buried in his digital network trying to trace the high-priority data drop to upper management. God only knew what corner of the mainframe he was hacking into right now; he didn’t even have a second to spare to watch this domestic meeting.

Samuel looked at her, his brow furrowing. "I’m not sure I understand what you’re implying, wife."

Heena looked back at him, pausing for a brief moment as she carefully measured how much to reveal. "Well, it’s not a big deal, but..." She trailed off, keeping the deepest cosmic calculations to herself.

She fixed her gaze on Samuel and redirected his focus. "Instead of wasting your shadow guards’ time digging up more of Kavien’s current files, switch your targets. Start investigating my mother’s past. See if there was someone she used to love, someone who was obsessed with her, or if she had any hidden relationships before she ever met my father. And while you’re at it, find out exactly ’how’ a woman like her managed to secure the position of the Marquis’s wife in the first place. I want the entire history. Can you gather that for me?"

Samuel’s eyes flickered with intrigue. A sharp, confident smile returned to his face as he assessed the request.