The Ancestral Legacy Begins in the Wild West

Chapter 190 The Rose of France and the Sage from the East

De La Motte lowered his hand from between his eyebrows, placed it on the table, and tapped it twice.

"Keep a close eye on the situation," he said, his voice regaining its usual calm. "If these people stop committing crimes for the time being, then it doesn't matter."

"They weren't our primary target to begin with." He shifted his gaze from the Mercury Alchemist to the hazy sky outside the window. "Our experiment is the most important thing."

The lights on the opposite bank of the Seine, twinkling like stars, make it seem like another city across the river.

It was another evening.

Isabella leaned against the shadows by the window, outside which lay the inner courtyard of the Bastille, its cobblestones glowing red in the setting sun.

Several prisoners squatted idly against the wall. Her gaze shifted from them to the back of her hand resting on her knee.

She has been away from home for five years, traveling through Lyon, Bordeaux, Reims, and most of France, and has also been to Italy.

She went from being a noble lady who only knew how to tinker with bottles and jars at home to becoming like this.

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He combined the alchemy he had learned at home with a manuscript he later found at a secondhand bookstore in Naples, along with some items left behind by merchants from the East, and by blowing up countless flasks, he concocted the Tofana Elixir.

This also made her, in every aspect, perhaps the foremost alchemist in all of France. However, in this era, noblewomen didn't have the option of becoming alchemists. And that wasn't her ambition.

However, on the day she chose to establish the Free Iris, she could never have imagined that one day she would be chased by a bodyguard who was originally a leather worker, carrying a musket and pitchfork, like a medieval witch hunter, for most of Paris.

She remembered Rançois's face very clearly: a broad forehead, a thick chin, eyebrows that met in a line, and eyes that seemed to be burning with something, looking at people as if they wanted to burn them through.

The idea was simple: find her and then kill her.

It was for this reason that Isabella sought out Madame Pauline, the most intelligent and charismatic woman among her clients, who followed him into the Bastille.

Who would have thought that a woman who poisoned her husband to gain wealth and power, and a girl who caused panic among the rich in Paris, would find safety in a place like the Bastille?

She heard the rustling of clothes behind her. Mrs. Polina came out from the inner room. She walked to the window and glanced outside.

"I'll buy you some time," she said with a hint of helplessness. "But the rounds here are unpredictable. The excuse of cleaning the chamber pots won't last long. Come back as soon as possible."

Isabella nodded. She stood up from the low stool by the window, walked to the large suitcase at the foot of the bed, squatted down, and opened the lid.

Inside were neatly folded clothes and several pairs of shoes. She decisively reached her fingers into the gap at the bottom of the box, felt for a hidden snap, and gently flicked it. The bottom immediately popped open a crack.

Inside the inner layer was a dark green short jacket, made of thick fabric with a clean cut. The collar could stand up, and the hem was gathered above the waistline, like a riding outfit, but more form-fitting.

There was also a leather waistcoat with several rows of small pockets sewn inside and fastened with brass buckles, a pair of riding breeches, and a pair of silent boots. She took out all of these items one by one, her movements unhurried.

Finally, there were a few small items. Two flat metal boxes with transmutation circle patterns engraved on the lids, resembling either potions or bombs, and a rapier with clear mechanical structure patterns on the hilt and a raised buckle at the grip.

She pressed the latch down, and the blade immediately sprang out of the hilt with a very faint, metallic scraping sound.

The sword was thin and triangular, its blade reflecting a cold light in the dim room.

She pushed the buckle and then fastened the rapier to the buckle on the side of the waist guard.

Outside the window, it was completely dark, and the entire prison was eerily quiet. She quickly tidied herself, then turned sideways to the incredibly narrow iron-barred window, and nimbly jumped up, declaring, "I'll be back as soon as possible."

Zhang Chang'an stood in front of the long table in the laboratory, holding a beaker in his hand. The liquid at the bottom of the beaker gleamed amber under the phlogiston lamp.

As the underground experiments progressed deeper, Charles became inseparable from that chair. As a result, the large laboratory above ground was left empty, used almost entirely by him.

He quickly held the beaker up to the light, added two drops of reagent, and stirred it with a glass rod.

The sky outside the window was completely dark. The fluorescent lamp cast a bright white spot on the table, surrounded by a large shadow.

Out of the corner of his eye, he caught sight of something in the shadows. It flashed by, very light and fast, like a corner of cloth fluttering in the wind.

Then, his psychic senses instantly expanded, capturing an outline.

But after that, he didn't look up; he just continued stirring the liquid in the beaker. The glass rod tapped against the side of the beaker, making a crisp sound.

The next moment, he raised the beaker, turned around, and a slender blade was pointed directly at his throat. The blade was only a hand's width away from his skin, and his hand holding the sword was steady, his fingertips gripping the mechanical structure of the hilt without the slightest tremor.

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Zhang Chang'an shifted his gaze from the sword blade to the person holding it.

A dark green short jacket with a stand-up collar, covering half of her neck. A stiff waistband was tightly cinched, pulling the jacket's hem above her waistline. Below, she wore dark riding breeches and soft leather boots, looking both capable and light.

The coat was made of thick material, with a clean cut and neat lines. Her small face was hidden under the brim of a dark hat, revealing only a pointed chin and a pair of eyes.

The pupils in his eyes were a deep blue, pressed darkly in the shadow of the hat brim, like the frozen surface of a river in the depths of winter.

Her reddish-brown hair was piled up at the back of her head, mostly covered by a hat, with only a few wisps of hair hanging down by her ears, shimmering slightly under the light.

"Who would have thought," she began, her voice not loud, but clear in the empty laboratory, each word pronounced firmly, "that the Eastern sage, who was prosecuted as a fraud by nobles and sentenced to death, would actually help the president of the Alchemy Society conduct human alchemy experiments."

Zhang Chang'an looked into those blue eyes, his face showing no surprise. He didn't back down, remaining completely calm, even his breathing didn't falter. He gently placed the beaker on the table with a muffled thud.

"Who would have thought that the free-spirited Iris, who helped others poison countless nobles and wealthy merchants, was once a model noblewoman, known in Reims as the Rose of France."

Isabella frowned slightly upon hearing the name, but quickly recovered.

She suppressed her anger well. Silently sheathing her longsword, she said, "You were able to find this out."

She said with considerable displeasure, "You should have known I hate that nickname."

Zhang Chang'an didn't speak, but simply nodded slightly.

"How did you do that?" Isabella asked. "Those people outside who are tracking me probably don't know my true identity yet."

Zhang Chang'an did not answer directly. He simply shook the beaker on the table; the liquid inside was completely transparent, colorless, and odorless.

"Naples in the last century, all the way to the city of Rome."

Zhang Chang'an's voice was unhurried, as if he were reading a passage from an old book: "Countless women, in their teens, decide their fate for the rest of their lives."

As second-class citizens in Rome, their husbands and fathers had the legal right to beat and scold them. Their responsibilities included enduring these beatings, performing household chores, and continuously bearing children. The vast majority died before the age of thirty.

"As a result, dozens of women, including Julia Tofana and Giovanna Grandis, began to operate widely throughout Rome as astrologers, beauty product or perfume sellers."

They sell a poison disguised as a skin whitening product or perfume, but its actual ingredients are arsenic, lead, and even belladonna venom.

Countless Roman women used these substances to poison over six hundred people. It was known at the time as the "Potion of Topana."