Winter Lord: Starting with Daily Intelligence

Chapter 458 The Demon Named Louis

Several years ago, on a sunny afternoon, but for Whitestone Town, it was the beginning of a long night.

It wasn't a large-scale military attack; instead, a missionary group dressed in pristine white robes arrived, including one hundred fully armed knights.

They arrived at the stone temple in the center of town, which had been dedicated to the Dragon Ancestor for a hundred years.

This is the spiritual sustenance of generations of townspeople, and the old priest Cohen is telling the children the story of the dragon knight.

Bishop Golden Feather Flower stepped forward with a smile and said in a compassionate tone, "Poor children, you have been deceived by the lies of beasts for too long. Dragons are greedy reptiles, while Golden Feather Flower is the only truth."

The old priest Cohen angrily raised his staff in protest: "False gods are not welcome here!"

The bishop simply sighed: "Heretic, your soul is rotten and needs fire to purify it."

The knights behind him drew their swords and swarmed forward.

The old priest's head was severed, and his blood splattered onto the stone statue of the Dragon Ancestor.

Immediately afterwards, the stone palace was pushed down, and the knights smashed every stone slab engraved with dragon patterns.

They planted golden thorn banners on the ruins, declaring that this place now belonged to the throne of God.

That night, the townspeople tried to rebel, but were suppressed and massacred by the knights, who also seized the water source and granary.

The former Dragon Ancestor Stone Temple was transformed into the magnificent Golden Feather Cathedral, and the town began to change from then on.

The Vatican did not directly rob; instead, they invented a new term: divine quota.

The bishop said gently, “The land was created by God, and the sunlight is a gift from God. Farmers should offer the best half of their wheat to God as rent.”

"But we're going to starve!" someone shouted.

The bishop looked sad: "That's because you weren't devout enough. Hunger is a physical discipline; only by giving more will God grant a bountiful harvest."

So the warehouse was taken over, and every bag of flour that left the warehouse had to be stamped with the Vatican's red seal.

The pelts hunted by hunters must first be offered to the church, and the cloth woven by peasant women must first be used to make robes for priests.

As a result, the first fierce resistance broke out.

Baron, the town's strongest blacksmith, went mad when he saw his pregnant wife faint from hunger.

He picked up his blacksmith's hammer and rushed to the church entrance.

"Give us back our grain!" he roared, followed by dozens of townspeople wielding pitchforks.

Of course, these civilians were no match for the knights, but the blacksmith was not killed on the spot.

The bishop said, "He is possessed by a demon, and we must exorcise it for him."

The next day, the blacksmith was hung alive on the bell tower's hammer.

Each time the bell tolled, the enormous bronze hammer struck his spine.

"Clang—snap!" followed by the blacksmith's scream.

The entire town was forced to watch the exorcism ceremony in the square.

The screams lasted for a whole day, until they turned into intermittent groans and finally fell silent.

The bishop prayed from below the platform: "Look, the suffering has cleansed him of his sins, he is finally at peace, and God has forgiven him."

From that day on, the light in the townspeople's eyes went out, leaving only fear.

As the rebels were eliminated one by one in the name of heresy, Whitestone became increasingly quiet.

For example, a grocery store owner was reported by a neighbor for hiding a bag of beans under his bed, and the informant would receive half a bowl of flour.

The knight did not violently arrest the man, but politely knocked on the door: "You have hidden God's property, which is disrespectful to God."

That evening, the grocery store family of four was taken to the church's basement, supposedly for a retreat, and no one ever saw them again.

Thus, hunger became the sole ruler.

The people in the town stopped discussing right and wrong, and only discussed where they could get food.

The tree bark has been gnawed away, the edible soil has been dug out, and people have become less like people and more like wolves with bloodshot eyes.

When despair reached its peak, and all dignity was worn down by hunger, the Vatican offered its final remedy.

A large pot was set up in the square.

The bishop spread his arms wide: "God cannot bear to see His people suffer. Look, this is a golden broth, a gift brought from the holy city, flowing gold and honey."

At first, no one dared to drink it, but hunger was invincible. The first homeless man crawled over, took a sip, and his eyes lit up.

He stopped trembling, stopped complaining of the cold, and a rosy glow and smile appeared on his face that he had never shown before.

"I'm not hungry anymore... I'm really not hungry anymore!" He knelt on the ground and kissed the toe of the bishop's shoe. "Praise God!"

People's psychological defenses collapsed. From that day on, White Stone Town died completely. Those who drank the soup turned into docile livestock.

They no longer complained about taxes, no longer missed the Dragon Ancestor, and even no longer cared about their children.

Their sole purpose in life each day is to wait for the bell to ring for dinner.

The white church, like a giant bloodsucking spider, coiled around the corpses in the town, draining them of their last drop of blood, and even making the corpses grateful.

…………

Hans looked out through the dusty window of the mill.

The streets were crowded with people, but there was no talking, no arguing, and even the footsteps were so light they seemed unreal.

They lined up, holding broken bowls in their hands, waiting for the golden soup.

The chubby auntie next door, who used to be able to curse half the street a few years ago, was standing in the queue. At this moment, her eyes were cloudy, with a layer of grayish-gold light, and her pupils were dilated, like a fish that had been dead for several days.

The priest scooped up the soup and poured it into her bowl.

She immediately wolfed it down, the soup dripping down her chin and even onto her collar, but she didn't wipe it away.

Hans was also in the group. He hunched his back like a bow, his eyes vacant, mimicking the behavior of everyone around him.

When the spoonful of sweet, cloyingly fragrant soup was poured into his broken bowl, he clenched his fingers sharply, like a beast guarding its food.

The priest glanced at him, then looked away with satisfaction.

But Hans didn't drink it. Instead, he carefully returned to the dead end of the mill's back alley and poured the broth into an abandoned rat hole.

A mouse crawled out of the hole and licked it.

At first it shook wildly, its eyes gleaming, and it spun around in place as if it were drunk. Then it froze, its limbs outstretched, and remained motionless.

Hans stared at the pool of golden pus, cold sweat trickling down his back.

…………

Late at night, in the basement of the mill.

The huge millstone rotated slowly overhead, emitting a deep and rhythmic rumble, like a sleeping beast.

The search team pried open the floorboards and overturned the barrels, but found nothing and stopped coming after a few times.

Hans, however, knew its secret: he painstakingly carved a cavity into the bottom of the two-ton millstone using the most clumsy method.

There lay his last half-sack of coarse wheat and a few pieces of dried, salted meat, as hard as stone.

Hans reached into the lining of his boot and touched the thin, rough dragon scale token.

It was a cheap token he picked up from the battlefield many years ago when he was still a trainee knight in the Imperial Border Guard.

The cold metal sheet calmed him down.

"The Dragon Ancestor taught people to stand up with strength," he murmured to himself, "not by drinking soup."

In order to survive, he began to calculate every bite of food like a wild animal.

Each day, I would eat only a small pinch of raw wheat, chew it slowly until it turned white and bitter, and then swallow it with my saliva.

To prevent others from smelling the wheat aroma in his mouth, he would deliberately chew a few bitter tobacco leaves to suppress the taste.

He did consider escaping.

When the night was still and quiet, Hans would sit on the steps behind the mill and look out at the dirt road leading out of town.

If you cross the hills behind Whitestone Town and walk for another two days, you can leave the direct control area of ​​the Holy See, at least that's what the rumors say.

But he couldn't take that road; the intersection outside the town had long been blocked off.

Patrol teams draped in holy symbols were ostensibly there to prevent heretics from escaping, but in reality, anyone who dared to leave the town would be stopped on the spot without even a chance to explain.

In addition, the old injuries from years of grinding grain caused his body to feel like dull knives cutting into his bones on rainy days.

With just that little bit of raw wheat he ate each day, he couldn't even muster the strength to walk a normal day, let alone cross mountains and valleys.

What's even more terrifying is that not all of those who escaped returned. Some were caught and brought back, their bodies displayed on wooden frames at the town's entrance.

Some were allowed to repent and were dragged away to drink a whole barrel of golden soup.

The next day, they stood at the front of the procession, shouting hymns with ecstatic joy, and pointed to the door of an acquaintance, saying, "He didn't pray last night."

There is no escape.

He withdrew his gaze, closed the mill door, and hid himself once again in the roar of the millstone.

As long as that little bit of food hasn't been discovered, he can still live, but that's all he'll do.

He survived by feigning madness, relying on the mill and the little grain he had secretly hidden away, taking it one day at a time.

But then one day, things took a turn for the better.

In the early morning mist that had not yet completely dissipated, the town entrance, the outside of the mill, the church walls, and the wooden stakes in the market were all covered with scarlet parchment.

The images on the paper are extremely exaggerated, even carrying a kind of vulgar and malicious childishness.

The Red Tide Lord of the North is depicted as an upright-walking monster with curved ram horns on its head, beast-like fangs in its mouth, and black flames burning in its eyes.

He sat on a fire-breathing iron chariot, its wheels crushing through wheat fields, over churches, and over distorted human figures.

Old Hans stood at the mill entrance, looking at the painting, his stomach churning.

When the morning bells rang, the square in front of the church was already packed with people.

The old priest who always prayed in a low voice and spoke slowly was gone.

Instead, a stranger dressed in a scarlet robe appeared.

A metallic insignia hung on his chest, reflecting a cold light in the sunlight.

"The mechanical demons from the north are here!" The voice was amplified by the alchemical megaphone array. "They don't grow food; they only eat human flesh!"

The crowd instinctively tightened, and some children cried out in fright, only to have their mouths quickly covered by their mothers.

"All those who believe the lies of the North are the lackeys of the devil!" The judge suddenly raised his hand, his scarlet robes fluttering in the wind. "Only God can save you! God will lead you against them! Against these devils!"

The moment the words were spoken, the square fell into a deathly silence. After years of oppression, no one dared to speak.

Hans stood at the edge of the crowd, a chill running down his spine.

…………

From that day on, the Vatican began to lead them in building fortifications in preparation for the Red Tide army that was about to march south.

The first to arrive were dozens of teams of Thorn Knights.

The warhorses looked as if they had been skinned alive, their dark red muscles exposed to the air, still twitching slightly.

The knights on horseback were clad in heavy armor, but dark red thorns protruded from the gaps in the armor, piercing their necks and jaws, rising and falling with their breath.

A resident accidentally blocked the middle of the road; perhaps he had drunk too much Jinshui (a type of herbal drink), so he was a little slow to react.

One of the thorn riders didn't even rein in his horse; the horse's chest lurched forward.

The man was thrown into the air, the sound of his bones shattering clearly audible, and he never got up again after landing.

The knight did not turn around.

The caravan continued onward, the horses' hooves trampling over the bloodstains as if they were rubbing through a puddle of water.

Hans had served in the border guards and had seen real elite cavalry, but compared to these terrifying knights, they were nothing.

This kind of force is not used to suppress riots, but to clear out a city.

The townspeople stood by the roadside, all with their heads down, as if afraid of being swept away by that thorny gaze.

The priest quickly ordered the house to be demolished.

The houses next to the mill were marked, the roof beams were cut, the walls were knocked down, and the stones were pried off piece by piece and piled up by the roadside as materials for building a baluster...

Hans stood at the entrance of the mill, watching the familiar street being stripped bare bit by bit.

The blacksmith's son was also moving stones.

The boy was only sixteen years old, but he was strong and always laughed loudly before the church came.

At this moment, he was barefoot, carrying a stone slab that was almost half a person's height, and moving forward step by step.

Suddenly his foot slipped, the stone slab lost its balance, and he crashed down heavily.

Hans almost instinctively covered his mouth.

But the boy simply lowered his head and glanced at his smashed foot.

The bones were blindingly white, and the flesh was stuck to the stone slab.

His face was expressionless, not even a frown.

Then another Thorn Knight came over, and without hesitation, thrust his longsword into the boy's heart cleanly and swiftly.

When the boy fell, his eyes remained open and blank, as if he hadn't realized what had happened until his death.

The knight waved his hand.

Several townspeople with similarly gloomy eyes came over, dragged the body away, and threw it into the burrow of writhing thorn roots outside the town.

Dark red roots surged out from the depths of the soil, like a swarm of insects attracted by the smell of blood, and coiled around the limbs and torso of the corpse.

The skin collapses rapidly upon contact, flesh is drawn away, and a fine, sticky sound is produced.

The body withered away at a visible speed, and in a short while, only a skeleton covered in thorns remained.

Hans saw that the thorns, after being soaked in blood and flesh, had become a darker color and had some strange patterns on them.

Several thick roots quickly extended outwards, weaving a thorny net-like structure on the pit wall, like a naturally grown barricade.

Others twisted and tangled, eventually hardening into sharp thorn stakes, which were uprooted by the thorn knights and planted between roads and trenches as new defensive barriers.

That corpse, along with his entire life, was completely transformed into part of the defensive fortifications in less than a quarter of an hour.

The thorns slowly contracted in the pit, wriggling contentedly as if waiting for the next sacrifice.

Throughout the entire process, no one screamed; it was deathly quiet.

In the final days, the bells in the square were rung.

The rhythm of the sound was strange, neither fast nor slow, yet it made one's heart tighten.

One by one, people came out of the house upon hearing the bell, their movements so synchronized as if they were being pulled by invisible threads.

Hans mingled in the crowd and saw the priests distributing things.

It wasn't a sword, it wasn't a spear, it was bundles of alchemical explosives.

The muddy ground north of the town was turned over, and rows of shallow pits were dug out, only reaching the waist of an adult.

The priest directed the numb parents to put their children into the pit.

Black explosive boxes were stuffed into the children's hands, with fuses attached to strands of thorns, and buried in the ground.

Hans saw Amy.

The little girl who usually cried the most was now half-buried in the cold earth, clutching explosives in her arms.

She neither cried nor moved, her grey-gold eyes fixed on the north.

The red-robed priest walked among the children, as if checking the growth of crops.

The priest told them that those were sacred fireworks, and that if they clung to the iron chariot that was running towards the Red Tide, they would see angels.

On the morning of his last day, Hans was still alive.

It wasn't because he was lucky, but because he was too old and was responsible for carrying the so-called holy candles, which were actually those heavy alchemical explosive packs.

He watched as wave after wave of his neighbors, who had been bathed in holy water, were driven into the trenches at the northernmost edge of the town.

Hans knelt in the mud, his hands trembling, and looked up to the north.

On the horizon, a black line is approaching.

That was the Red Tide army.

At that moment, he suddenly realized that he was no longer afraid of the Northern Lord who was depicted as a monster.

With tears streaming down his face, he uttered the most vicious yet most sincere prayer of his life: "That devil named Louis... please, even if you kill me too."

And please, kill these beasts all of them.

(End of this chapter)