Don’t raise unruly people in extreme cold weather

Chapter 806

Winter in the empire's homeland finally no longer means death.

When the first energy tower roared to life in the center of the square, old Tom, wrapped in a tattered blanket, even threw away his crutches. A blazing hot current gushed out from the hexagonal heat dissipation holes on the tower, melting the snow within a three-mile radius into misty streams.

"Is this tower spewing the spit of the god of fire?" Old Tom muttered with his gap-toothed mouth towards the steam-filled spire, his cloudy eyes reflecting an orange-red halo.

His tattered blanket was smoking, but he moved towards the heat source without noticing until the patrolman poked the old man, who was almost on the verge of spontaneous combustion, with a steam spear.

A strange living circle has formed around the energy tower.

Women spread frozen sheets on the ducts to dry them, homeless people huddled up next to the iron bars of the radiator to sleep, and even wild dogs knew to bring frozen mice here for a snack.

The surface of the copper pipes is covered with grayish-white salt frost, which is the tears left by the evaporation of melted snow.

For the first time, the children dared to run barefoot in the frosty month. When they put their chilblained fingers on the copper diversion tube extending from the energy tower, they could actually feel the warmth of spring.

"Martha, look! My torn socks are burnt!" The boy, his face covered in coal dust, laughed as he held up his smoking woolen socks. Melted snow was seeping through the gaps between his toes onto the hot cobblestone road.

His mother Martha was already in tears because she no longer had to scrape the ice off her child's feet this winter.

She stroked the rusty shell of the energy tower with trembling hands, and felt rhythmic vibrations from her fingertips.

The vibration crawled along the spine into the chest cavity, making the colic of her husband being hanged three months ago become blurred - on that snowy night, the iron boots of the steam knight crushed her threshold, and when her husband was dragged away for hiding resistance leaflets, he was holding roasted chestnuts for his son in his arms.

"I survived. Finally." Martha buried her face in the foggy scarf, the smell of salt and diesel making her nostrils sore.

New drilling platforms are roaring in the north, and more energy towers are rising among the ruins.

She saw Perfecto's declaration posted on the bulletin board of the town hall. The gold-plated letters were eye-catching in the reflection of the snow: "Every citizen of the empire deserves a warm winter."

My husband's noose was still dangling from the flagpole in the square, and the snow was falling along the rope.

The new diesel stoves have completely changed the rules of survival in the slums.

Aunt Marta converted the ancestral oak bathtub into an oil storage tank. The fireplace, which used to have to burn down the entire pine forest to survive the cold nights, now only needs half a liter of lignite diesel from Langton to boil a pot of hot soup.

"Use it sparingly!" She waved an iron spoon and hit the drunk who was secretly turning the oil valve. "This little diesel is enough to burn for three days. It's not like you who can be soft just by saying so!"

The drunks threw the frozen potatoes into the soup pot with laughter, and the oil splashed on the soup surface, creating golden ripples.

This was the first time in ten years that the smell of meat wafted through the slums - the patrol had just shot and killed a horse meat smuggler yesterday, and the diesel stove was cooking the half horse leg that had been bought in exchange for compressed biscuits.

Dick, a lame rag collector on the street corner, even welded a mobile stove out of scrap metal. The diesel flames licked the cans he picked up, so that every homeless person huddled in a leaky shack could get a mouthful of hot porridge - until the patrol team held up steam crossbows and forced them to dismantle these "illegal heating devices."

"Sir, this flame is not as thick as your nose hair!" Dick protected the stove with a playful smile until the iron hook shot from the steam crossbow tore his masterpiece apart.

When the iron stove fell to the ground, the last cluster of flames ignited the oil-soaked rags, and the small mushroom cloud rising over the slums announced the arrival of dawn earlier than the bronze bells on the church spire. The gray-green compressed biscuits made by alchemy were originally called "stone bricks".

Curses could be heard at the ration stations every day when they distributed flour: "The Empire is reluctant to give us even moldy flour!"

The ration officer wrapped in a military coat sneered with a cigarette in his mouth: "If you don't want it, get out. There are many people waiting to lick the soles of Ms. Perfect's feet."

The line immediately fell silent, with only frozen fingers creating deeper wrinkles on the ration coupons.

The lame baker pinched half a piece of swelled biscuit paste and sneered: "Open your eyes and see, this thing can swell up bigger than your wife's belly!"

His bakery closed half a year ago, and now he makes a living by certifying the quality of cookies for black market merchants.

When he used a notched dagger to pry open the biscuit layer, revealing the crystallized salt grains, the exclamations from the crowd reminded him of the crisp sound of bells when new bread came out of the oven.

When dock workers chopped open biscuits with axes and found particles of dried meat and salted seaweed embedded in them, protests turned into fights over ration coupons.

"I've found a gold mine!" The burly man with a stubble on his face ran wildly holding half a biscuit, and three sesame-sized pieces of meat residue were shining between his teeth.

This man, who had three ribs broken while sneaking into the northern border, now opened his clothes in the cold wind, allowing everyone to see his chest rising and falling with his breathing - there was an imperial eagle emblem left by a fresh branding iron, shining in the moonlight.

The underground of the tavern began to circulate "Savior" moonshine, which was brewed with biscuit powder mixed with sawdust.

"One sip warms your whole body, two sips will bring you to the dead!" The old woman selling bootleg liquor grinned with her black teeth, and the sawdust suspended in the bottle swam like tadpoles in a stagnant pool.

Her cellar contained twelve cans of un-soaked compressed biscuits, with a name carved on the back of each biscuit with a needle tip - all of them were drinkers who froze to death on the street corner last winter.

She would stroke the cool stone tablets under the counter as the drinkers cheered on the moonshine.

Black market merchants could spread honey on the surface of biscuits and resell them at ten times the price - until one day a rainstorm destroyed the granary, and people discovered that the stockpiled real flour had already molded and turned into poison.

"Fuck the wheat flour!" the grain merchant wailed as he knelt in the green mold. "Where are those waterproof tin cans of biscuits from the alchemical bitch? Dig out my biscuit can!"

His nails scratched blood in the mold, but he felt something hard - half a piece of compressed biscuit with a double-headed eagle logo, which was entangled in the mycelium and maintained perfect edges and corners.

That night, a fire broke out in the ruins of the granary, and the smell of burning was mixed with a strange aroma of oats.

The bronze bell on the church spire continued to ring for the Empire, but among the crowd huddled in the shadow of the energy tower and sharing compressed biscuits, new prayers began to circulate: "Praise the warmth bestowed by Ms. Perfectcott -" the tramp broke up the biscuits and soaked them in the stolen diesel, "May her steam knights rust in the eternal winter."

The diesel flames crackled in the can, making the smiles on everyone's faces distort like melted wax figures.

Martha silently stuffed her son's torn socks into the diesel stove and watched the wool curl up into gray butterflies in the flames.

The energy tower was still roaring, steaming more snow into a pale mist that enveloped the city.

(End of this chapter)