Winter Lord: Starting with Daily Intelligence

Chapter 457 The Rapidly Collapsing Holy Eastern Empire

The air inside the cathedral was filled with a layer of white smoke.

That was priceless deep-sea ambergris.

Incense-burning altars were set up one after another, and incense was thrown into the fire pits regardless of cost.

Wisps of white smoke swirled beneath the dome, attempting to create an atmosphere of sacred solemnity and inviolability in an almost overbearing manner.

Selton knelt at the front of the coffin, his black mourning clothes tailored appropriately.

He was the center of everyone's attention and the rightful heir to the dukedom.

A large group of people knelt before the coffin, their faces draped in black gauze.

The Duke of Calvin believed in the philosophy of quantity throughout his life and left behind nearly thirty children.

At this moment, these filial sons and grandsons of pure blood are lined up in order of seniority, creating a grand scene that is both absurd and laughable.

The cries rose and fell, some genuine and some feigned.

Selton's gaze swept over them, and he quickly lost patience.

He tilted his head slightly and asked the old butler beside him in a low voice, "Who is that person who cried until they fainted...?"

The old butler followed his gaze, paused subtly, and said, "Sir, that is Miss Fourteen."

"Fourteen?" Selton raised an eyebrow slightly. "I remember she was not even twelve?"

“Yes.” The old butler’s voice was even lower. “She actually…didn’t see the Duke much. She was probably frightened by the grand occasion.”

Selton looked away, his lips twitching almost imperceptibly.

He was so frightened he cried, and he sneered inwardly.

The child, who can barely tell who his father is, is now kneeling here, waiting to inherit his estate.

A bunch of pigs, and I am the only heir.

…………

The mournful music gradually faded away.

Selton stood up and walked slowly toward the pulpit in the center of the church.

He had waited too long for this moment.

His steps were calm and steady, and he even deliberately let his shoulders slump slightly for a moment, as if his spine was bent by grief.

Then he straightened up again on the next step, which was the best posture for being forced to take responsibility in grief, everything was just right.

He stopped and looked around.

Countless eyes were fixed on him, filled with anticipation, scrutiny, calculation, and awe...

Nobles, clergy, military officers, merchant representatives... all the truly influential people in the Southeast Province are here.

Selton spoke, his voice low and restrained: "Father is a lion who has ruled this land his entire life."

He turned to the side, reached out and touched the cold coffin, lingering for a full three seconds—the optimal duration recommended by the ceremonial officer.

“He taught us loyalty, and he taught us responsibility. But he belonged to the old era.” He turned to face the crowd. “The lion is gone, but winter has not yet come.”

On the contrary, divine light will illuminate the southeast.

A brief pause.

“I am Selton Calvin,” he said, raising his right hand. Under the lamplight, the signet ring on his thumb shone brightly.

"I swear by the blood of my family that I will accept this heavy crown. This is not merely a transfer of power..."

Rather, it was the starting point for the Calvin family's sacred covenant with the supreme Papacy!

He could clearly feel the texture of the ring.

The real head of the family ring is made of deep-sea silver, but the one on his thumb at this moment is just a gold-plated imitation made overnight, like a cold, lifeless object.

"Damn old man..." A surge of annoyance welled up in Selton's heart. "He had to disgust me one last time before he died. Where did he hide the ring?"

His gaze swept over the main guest seat with extreme subtlety.

However, Salomon's gaze did not fall on his hands at all; his gray eyes were looking beyond the crowd, seemingly somewhere else entirely.

Selton's tension instantly eased, and a hint of mockery even welled up: "As long as the vault is in my hands, as long as those millions of gold coins are still there, I am real."

So what if the ring is fake? As long as the power is real, that's enough.

He straightened his back again, and as the thunderous applause erupted, a perfect blend of grief and determination appeared on his face.

…………

Even after the funeral, while the dark clouds outside the cathedral had not yet dissipated, the Duke's mansion was already brightly lit.

The banquet was held in the most luxurious main hall.

Crystal chandeliers hung in layers, and candlesticks and alchemical orbs shone brightly, illuminating the entire hall as if it were daytime.

The long table was filled with silver platters and goldware, and red wine swirled gently in stemmed glasses, reflecting a warm luster.

Selton sat in the main seat, holding a wine glass, a perfectly restrained smile on his lips, watching one group of Southeastern nobles after another bow and offer their toasts.

"To be the new regent."

"For the glory of the Calvin family."

"For the future of the Papacy and the Southeast."

Toasts rose and fell, like gentle waves lifting him to the heights of power.

Selton responded to each one with a smile, clearly enjoying the moment.

The father is dead, and the emperor is like a caged bird, controlled by the nobles and the Papacy.

The Papacy needed him, it needed him as a secular agent who knew how to silence the nobles and make the common people obey.

“I am not a puppet who has been pushed up,” Selton calmly concluded in his mind. “I am the only one who can maintain the balance; I am the operator.”

The banquet was in full swing.

The musicians played light but hollow tunes, the noble ladies chatted in hushed tones, and the air was filled with the aromas of wine, roasted meat, and spices.

Just then, the captain of the knights came to his side, leaned forward, and lowered his voice to a very low hue.

“My lord… His Majesty Lampard…” He paused for a moment, as if choosing his words carefully, or as if he dared not finish his sentence, “…disappeared.”

The glass trembled violently in Selton's hand, his breath hitched briefly, but he forced it back down.

"Missing?" Selton lowered his voice, almost squeezing the words out between his teeth. "What do you mean? Dead, or imprisoned?"

The knight captain's Adam's apple bobbed. "The palace has sealed off the news; the official explanation is that they were guided by holy light and entered a period of meditation and prayer."

But our informant says... it's been half a month, and no one has seen His Majesty."

The banquet hall remained noisy; the nobles, oblivious to the whispered report, were still lost in their illusions of alcohol and the changing of the guard.

But Seldon's world has quieted down.

His gaze slowly rose, passing over the long table and the dancing candlelight, landing on the VIP seats on the right.

Archbishop Salomon was gracefully cutting his steak, his movements calm and collected, as if none of this concerned him.

"Guided by the Holy Light?" Selton's mind raced. "Only the Vatican could come up with such nonsense. The Emperor disappeared right after Father's death?"

They were clearing the board; they were removing every uncontrolled piece, one by one.

Just minutes before, he thought he was an ally.

It is a secular fulcrum that the Papacy needs to check and balance royal power.

Selton suddenly realized a fact that sent chills down his spine.

"If they can even erase the emperor... then what am I? A regent who still needs their public coronation, in their eyes... am I not even worth a dog?"

An unprecedented fear crept up his spine.

He experienced firsthand the weight of the proverb "If the lips are gone, the teeth will be cold."

As if sensing his gaze, Salomon put down his knife and fork, looked up, and met Selton's eyes across the long table.

At that moment, time seemed to stretch out.

Salomon then simply raised his glass and waved to Selton from afar.

A gentle yet cold smile curled at the corners of his lips, as if to say, "Do you have any other choice?"

Selton's throat tightened, he forced a smile, looked away, and downed the drink in his glass in one gulp.

The liquor burned his throat, but it couldn't suppress the chill that surged up from within.

He quickly cut off his emotions, closed his eyes, and swiftly reconstructed logic in his mind.

"The Papacy purged the emperor to monopolize the profits. Where are those profits? In taxes, in gold coins, and who controls them?"

The answer came almost instinctively: "It's me."

"Without me, they couldn't open that enchanted vault; without me, those nobles below wouldn't cooperate with the tax collection."

If they kill me, all they'll get is a southeastern province with administrative paralysis and no cash flow.

But keeping me around... what they got was a steady stream of gold coins and a stable faith.”

This deduction convinced him, allowing his breathing to return to normal.

He straightened his bow tie, suppressing the lingering unease deep within his chest, and, holding his wine glass, walked towards the head table.

Salomon was elegantly wiping his mouth with a napkin.

“Your Excellency,” his voice was low and restrained, “I will always be the faithful steward of the Holy See.”

Salomon didn't look at him, as if he had only heard an insignificant report: "Very good."

…………

Just days after the Duke's funeral, the doors of the administrative hall were kicked open by the newly appointed Holy Tax Minister of the Papacy.

He was dressed in a gold-embroidered red robe, followed by fifty scribes, each carrying a brand-new blank ledger.

In his vision, this place should have been neatly stacked with tax registers and land records accumulated by the empire over fifty years; it was a map of the southeastern province's veins, a place where blood could be drawn directly.

What greeted him, however, was a blanket of black snow.

The heavy filing cabinet was pried open, and it was completely empty.

Those records of land ownership, population movement, and shop turnover, such as the "Land Measurement Records" and the "List of Real Tax Sources," are now just a layer of black ash covering the ground.

The tax minister knelt down and grabbed a handful of ashes.

That was the foundation of fifty years of rule over the Southeast Province.

The Papacy has seized this land, yet they know not where the food or money is; they have grasped the scepter, but have lost their eyes.

Of course, this did not stop the collection.

The Holy City's order was simple, yet cruel: tax at the highest possible rate.

What was called administration quickly degenerated into robbery disguised in a sacred guise.

The tithe was soon renamed atonement.

If you can't pay, it proves your faith is impure. If your faith is impure, you need to repay it with your body.

When people cannot produce the money, they are quickly branded as heretics who maliciously conceal God's property.

The church was turned into a labor camp and a slave warehouse, and every copper coin was stained with blood.

In another block, a long-bankrupt leather merchant knelt on the ground.

The tax collector, flipping through records from ten years ago, coldly declared that he owned three workshops, and that kowtowing and begging were pointless. "Poverty is not an excuse, it's fraud." The knight dragged the old man's granddaughter away down the street.

Amidst cries and screams, the ledger was turned to the next page, and a record was added: "Three hundred gold coins deducted from taxes, deposited in the Holy Maiden's Convent."

In an effort to quell panic over the devaluation of the Holy Tokens, Selton personally oversaw the opening of the Duke's underground vault.

Thousands of citizens and believers were summoned to witness this moment of faith.

But when the searchlight pierced the darkness, the stone chamber was empty, with only a few dead rats scattered on the ground.

"How could this be..." Selton's smile froze, as if he had been publicly plunged into ice water.

His mind went blank, but his ears were ringing, as if all the sounds of the world were fading away.

Bishop Salomon simply looked at him, a gentle, distant smile slowly spreading across his face, as if he were watching a prey that had finally realized it had no way out.

The sacred document completely collapsed on the same day.

Without the backing of gold, those counterfeit coins printed with thorn patterns are worthless.

In the morning, you can buy an apple; at noon, you can only exchange it for a grape; and by evening, it's so hard you can't even wipe your butt with it.

Citizens piled up mountains of money on the streets and lit these sacred tokens to keep warm.

The firelight illuminated the thin, numb faces.

Besides the disappearance of money, what was even more terrifying was the lack of food supplies. Under the control of the deceased old duke, sunken ships in the canal cut off the western food supply route.

The granaries that were opened and displayed to the public were filled with only yellow sand mixed with moldy chaff; most of the grain had been taken away by the Papacy.

Tree bark was gnawed off, rats were swallowed alive, and hunger taught people to relearn to eat their own kind.

Just when the people were in despair, Archbishop Salomon issued the Great Purification Edict.

He did not discuss when the food would arrive, but offered an explanation that would hold the despair in its grasp: the food had not disappeared, but had been stolen.

"Why don't we have bread? Because the witch stole it with black magic."

"Why does plague rage? Because heresy is hidden among the people, and they blaspheme God."

This logic is simple and requires no evidence.

Hungry people don't need the truth, they just need an enemy to whom they can vent their anger.

Soon, a black iron box appeared at the church entrance, which was called the Box of Truth.

The rules, written on a wooden sign, were simple and cruel: anyone who reports a hidden heretic, and whose report is verified by the court, will receive five pounds of flour.

Hunger destroyed the last vestiges of humanity overnight.

For the sake of a bowl of porridge for their child, the wife accused her husband of hiding gold coins to offer to the devil.

A neighbor reported that the neighbor across the hall was practicing witchcraft by leaving their lights on at night.

Some people even pointed to their elderly mothers and cried, saying that she was whispering in her dreams and that she was possessed by evil spirits.

Every day, the red-robed judges would carry a thick stack of letters of denunciation and kick open the doors of citizens' homes as if ordering food.

Arrests are no longer for trial, but to give a hungry mob an outlet to tear at.

The number of stakes for execution began to increase.

The first to be burned to death were not the poor, but those who were still trying to think.

Scholars, scribes, and former administrative officials were labeled as a cancer that undermined faith simply because they were literate, because they questioned the ingredients of the sacred elixir, and because they attempted to record what was happening.

Next came the old wealthy merchants; their property was confiscated and they were burned at the stake.

The number of stakes in the central square was increased from ten to fifty, burning day and night.

The black, foul-smelling smoke from burning corpses mingled with the sweet, cloying aroma of soup from the soup kitchens, enveloping the entire city.

The soup served in the soup kitchen was made with holy water bestowed by the Vatican.

Salomon stood on the high platform, looking down at the group of emaciated figures in the square, his voice compassionate: "Hunger is the lie of the flesh, proof of spiritual lack. Come, drink in the golden gift."

A huge bronze cauldron was set up, and the golden soup was boiling.

The starving people rushed to drink it.

Soon, they no longer felt hungry, and a sickly flush appeared on their faces.

They danced and cheered around the stake, as if celebrating a festival.

The flames illuminated their gaunt yet smiling faces, and also lit up the city's cemetery.

Inside the Duke's mansion, Selton locked himself in his study.

Outside the window, the cries of witch hunters could be heard, but inside the house, it was deathly quiet.

He sat at the table, clutching the key to the underground vault tightly in his hand.

He couldn't understand how millions of gold coins could simply disappear into thin air.

"An inside man? Impossible. Emptying the vault would require at least several hundred carriages; it would be too much of a commotion."

His father's image flashed through his mind, but he immediately dismissed it.

"That old man is so sick he can't even get out of bed, and he's breathless just talking. How could he possibly do something like this right under my nose?"

"Is it the Vatican? It must be Salomon. While he was negotiating with me, he had already sent people to dig a tunnel, transport the money away, and then pin the blame on me."

The conclusion gradually became clear: this was a case of the Vatican double-crossing them.

In despair, a bizarre idea suddenly occurred to him: as long as he could hold the Duke's mansion and hold out until the northern border moved south... Louis would not let this opportunity slip by.

He remains an indispensable asset.

Salomon merely cut off the Duke's water and supplies.

The Templars shouted from the street corner: "Selton is eating roast meat inside, while you're eating dirt outside."

Late on the tenth night, Selton was still wiping his sword in his bedroom, preparing to deliver another speech the next day.

The axe cleaved open the door, and what stormed in was not a mob, but a family knightly order.

Their eyes were sunken, their pupils were green, and they had drooling from hunger at the corners of their mouths.

The leading knight captain dropped his sword, leaving only a bone-chopping axe in his hand.

“Sir,” his voice was hoarse, “we really have no choice. We haven’t eaten for half a month.”

Before Selton could even defend himself, he was pinned to the ground, his silk pajamas were torn to shreds, and his fake ring was chopped off along with his finger.

He was dragged down a long corridor and thrown into the crowd of revelers outside the Duke's mansion.

In the square, the mob, having drunk the golden soup, erupted in thunderous cheers.

"heresy!"

"He stole our grain!"

Selton was hung upside down on the tallest stake.

As the flames engulfed him, he finally understood what he had lost and what he had never truly possessed.

"Ahhhh!"

A strong burning sensation swept through my entire body.

Through the distorted firelight, he saw Salomon's indifferent back on the clock tower, and also the hideous smiles of the nobles who had once toasted him at his feet.

The screams lasted for ten minutes.

In the end, only a charred, curled-up corpse remained.

…………

Night had completely enveloped St. Peter's Basilica.

There was no wind at the very top of the clock tower, only a stagnant silence that was almost suffocating.

Salomon stood alone on the edge of the terrace, with no railing beneath his feet.

The entire southeastern capital unfolded beneath his feet, like a painting repainted by flames.

The streets lit up with orange-red lights, the flames of the stakes rose and fell, and the screams were diluted by the high air, leaving only a vague tremor, like the earth breathing softly.

Salomon felt neither cruel nor pleasure.

He knew that someone was sabotaging him behind the scenes, but he didn't care. He even thought it was a good thing for this land.

“There are too many weeds.” His thoughts were calm and coherent, as if he were reviewing a gardening project.

"The remnants of dragon blood, the rotten glory of the old nobility, and the mortals' obsession with self and selfishness... they entwine this land like thorns, vying for the nourishment that should belong to the Lord."

"This is the root of suffering: because there is a self, there are differences; because there are differences, there is inequality."

He slowly raised his right hand.

In the palm of his hand was a dragon scale amulet, taken from the secret chambers of an old noble family.

The amulet has been worn smooth by time, and the edges of its scales gleam with a dark red luster, carrying the lingering warmth of the dragon ancestor worship from a thousand years ago.

It once symbolized lineage, power, and the right to be chosen.

Salomon looked down at it, his gaze devoid of hatred, only displaying a cold indifference as if scrutinizing a flawed object.

"The Dragon Ancestor... is arrogant. It allows some people to be born with fighting spirit, and others to be born with surnames and territories. It divides the world into the strong and the weak, the noble and the lowly."

This difference is itself impure, and when everyone's forehead is pressed to the ground, no one is more noble than anyone else.

To achieve true equality, everyone must first be made to obey, without needing to think or judge, but simply to listen to the voice of the Lord.

When everyone revolves around the queen bee like worker bees, there will be no more conflict in the world.

"Snap." His fingers tightened suddenly.

The incredibly hard dragon scale amulet, once considered a sacred object, was crushed into fine golden powder.

Dust slipped through his fingers, swept away by the night wind, and scattered across the burning city.

"Under the shade of the Golden Feather Flower, bloodline is unnecessary. As long as one drinks the Golden Soup, beggars can ascend to heaven and nobles can go mad. In the coming divine kingdom, all things are equal."

Salomon lowered his head and looked at the square in front of the church in the distance.

The hungry crowd knelt on the stone steps, their faces upturned, their cracked lips agape, waiting for the next pot of golden soup.

Salomon then turned around and walked back to the secret chamber at the deepest part of the clock tower.

The stone gate closed silently, shutting out the firelight and noise.

In the center of the sealed room, a golden feather flower seedling grows in dark red soil.

The seedling's leaves are translucent, with pale golden light flowing through the veins, and each throbbing is accompanied by a weak and steady pulse.

Salomon knelt before the seedlings, his forehead touching the ground in a devout gesture.

"The old roots have rotted, the new soil has been laid, great Lord... descend..."

After the prayer ended, he slowly stood up.

Just as he straightened up, the skin on his neck twitched slightly, as if something tiny was moving under his skin.

His eyes briefly lost focus, going blank for a moment, as if the signal had been interrupted for a second.

The next moment, the blank space disappeared, replaced by a familiar wisdom and coldness.

Salomon straightened the cardinal's robe sleeves and turned to leave the secret chamber.

Outside the clock tower, the flames are still burning.

(End of this chapter)