Chapter 196: LeeLee.

Chapter 196: LeeLee.It was fine if the cooks were crying while cooking – no one saw them. But the red eyes of the ones who served the food to the lords weren’t acceptable.

Steward felt helpless in the situation. In fact, he also mourned Finnie, but he had to manage the household properly. He was becoming desperate realizing he will be the one who’ll has to serve the lords during the meal on top of his already overwhelming duties. That was when he stumbled upon a young maid, energetically storming through the hallways with a mop in hand.

She wasn’t particularly meticulous, but something about her stood out in the current circumstances – she wasn’t crying! Even more, she was happily humming a tune as she cleaned the hallway, unaffected by the sobs echoing around her.

"What’s your name?" Steward asked, trying to remember whether he had seen her before.

"LeeLee." Lee said, inwardly shuddering at the nickname Ling Xiaotao tried to push on him. In the current situation it kind of worked, though.

"Do you have steady hands?" Steward asked.

"What?" Lee took an instinctive step back, furrowing his brows at the potential pervert.

"Come with me!" Steward said, realizing he didn’t need permission to order his underlings around.

Lee followed the man, with the mop in hand, ready to smack the guy on the head if he tried to do anything funny, but turned out his worries were unnecessary. They arrived at a spacious dining hall, with high ceiling and marble floor, and a long table in the middle of it.



But a glance at the table revealed the source of steward’s distress. Silverware was stacked on one side of the table, with glasses left unarranged. Two sobbing maids were trying to polish the plates, but their tears kept falling onto them, forcing the girls to wipe them over and over.

The place was a mess. Even if the patriarch was an empathetic person, he and his family needed to eat, and the steward was used to hold the place to high standards. He looked at Lee, trying to find the proper words, but the new maid’s following words shocked him.

"Get them out of here." Lee said, "I’ve got this!"

***

It wasn’t the first time Lee had to serve the nobles during a meal. Back in Sunwell, in the Newman mansion, he served Helen Newman who even threw a bottle at him. The only difference was that this time he had to serve twelve people, but at least they did it together with steward.

The downside was that during the meal Lee was so busy, he had no time to listen to conversations at the table. And when he found himself cleaning the table after the nobles were done, he realized he still had no clue who the heir he was supposed to kill was.

The patriarch of the clan was the one sitting at the end of the table – a middle aged man, in late forties or early fifties. None of the three ladies sitting at the table were his wives, but they also weren’t Lee’s targets. There was also a child, around the age of ten – probably the son of one of the ladies.

That left Lee with seven people. Obviously he didn’t intend to kill anyone and was mostly curious.

He didn’t have a clue what to do, though. On one hand he couldn’t escape, because he was pretty sure Shade would find him right after he stepped outside the manor. On the other – he had no place to plant the beacons since the elemental master never showed up. Thus there was no way to complete the sect’s mission either.

Trying to hoodwink either side was a silly endeavor since those people were much more experienced than him, to not speak of their strength. Basically Lee was stuck between rock and the hard place.

Unexpectedly, his efficiency was appreciated by the steward. The following day Lee got a promotion and could serve the lords during their meals.

For a new servant it was an incredible honor, but that was not the reason he was here. He was also not here for the looks full of jealousy that the other servants threw his way.

At one point, remembering the time in the Newman residence, he even became scared to eat or drink anything he hadn’t prepared himself. After all they were in Hantan city – the alchemy capital of the continent where getting poison wasn’t that hard.

***

Time flew by and Lee was working his ass off during the day and spend nights meditating. He wrecked his brain back and forth on how to get out of the situation, but couldn’t think of anything. On the fifteenth day after his arrival, a huge scandal shook the city and he found himself at the epicenter of the event.

He was serving dinner to the family, like usual, when two people stormed in. One dropped on a knee, bowing his head, the other fell on both knees, slamming his forehead into the floor, hard enough to crack the marble.



"I’m sorry, father! I have returned!" Lee almost dropped the plates he was currently carrying recognizing the elemental master’s voice.

Surprisingly, the guy wore simple linen attire, with a plain iron sword at his side. His companion, obviously Shade, was similarly dressed. The two looked worn out and tired as if they had covered thousands of miles, and judging from the context, the guy was going for the role of the lost son who had finally came home.

Silence filled the dining hall and everyone’s gazes were turned towards the patriarch. He sat there at the end of the table, with mixed emotions on his face, but then he looked around, and his expression hardened.

He said, "Zeming, you renounced the Han name more than a decade ago. You can never be the part of the family again, but you will always be my son. I don’t know the reasons why you’re here, but they don’t matter. You can rest in one of the guest rooms, along with your friend, but I expect you to leave soon."

Lee guessed this had to be incredibly humiliating, but now he finally understood the scheme, at least he thought so. He was supposed to kill the Han family heir and then Han Zeming, a person who left the family, would arrive from nowhere and take the place over when the time came.

It was simple and straightforward. All that was needed was for Zeming to bow his head and for the heir to die. The last part, of course, was on Lee. Obviously, by now he knew that his target was the young boy he always served at the table, but even if it was a grown man or an elderly, he wouldn’t attempt to kill them.

The problem was that he had exceeded the ten day limit to kill Han Jin, the patriarch’s second son. That, in turn, forced Han Zeming’s hand and apparently the guy decided to change his plans.

Lee didn’t know why he was in such a rush. Maybe this was the plan b and he had an idea on how to overtake the Han family after the Nethermoon plot failed. And maybe there was a reason why the guy was looking to establish his position in the continent’s political scene sooner.

In the end, it didn’t matter, at least to Lee.

Han Zeming obediently thanked his father and left with Shade in tow, but Lee could swear the latter threw a sharp look his way. Logically speaking a delay of a few days was nothing considering the stakes, but he felt that there were no arguments he could use to talk himself out of the situation. Most likely he was already a dead man walking before accepting the job.