Free Web NovelA few years ago, on a bright and sunny afternoon—but for White Stone Town, it was the beginning of a long night.
It wasn't a large-scale army besieging the city; instead, it was a missionary group dressed in pure white robes, including a hundred fully armed Guardian Knights.
They arrived before the stone temple in the center of town that had enshrined the Dragon Ancestor for a hundred years.
This was the spiritual anchor for generations of townspeople; the old Priest, Cohen, was telling the children stories of Dragon Knights.
The golden feather flower Bishop stepped forward with a smile, speaking in a compassionate tone, "Poor children, you have been blinded by the lies of beasts for too long. Dragons are greedy reptiles, while the golden feather flower is the only truth."
Old Priest Cohen raised his staff in angry resistance. "False gods are not welcome here!"
The Bishop only sighed. "heretic, your soul is already rotten; it needs fire to be purified."
The knights behind him drew their swords and surged forward.
The old Priest's head was severed, blood splattering across the stone statue of the Dragon Ancestor.
Immediately afterward, the stone temple was torn down, and the knights smashed every stone tablet engraved with dragon patterns.
Upon the ruins, they planted a golden thorn banner, declaring that this place henceforth belonged to the Divine Throne.
That night, the townspeople tried to resist, but they were suppressed and slaughtered by the knights, who seized the water sources and granaries.
The former Stone Temple of the Dragon Ancestor was rebuilt into the magnificent Golden Feather Cathedral; from then on, the town began to change.
The Holy See did not rob them directly; 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. It is only right that the farmers offer half of their plumpest wheat to God as rent."
"But we're going to starve to death!" someone shouted.
The Bishop wore a sorrowful expression. "That is because you are not devout enough. Hunger is a cultivation of the flesh; only by offering more will God grant a bountiful harvest."
Thus, the warehouses were taken over, and every bag of flour that left had to be stamped with the red seal of the Holy See.
The furs caught by hunters had to be offered to the church first, and the cloth woven by farmwives had to be used for the Priests' robes first.
Naturally, the first violent resistance broke out.
Baron, the strongest blacksmith in town, finally went mad after watching his pregnant wife faint from hunger.
He raised his blacksmithing hammer and rushed to the church doors.
"Give us back our food!" he roared, followed by dozens of townspeople wielding pitchforks.
Of course, how could these commoners be a match for the knights? However, the blacksmith was not killed on the spot.
The Bishop said, "He has been possessed by a demon; we must help him with an exorcism."
The next day, the blacksmith was hung alive from the clapper of the bell tower.
Every time the bell tolled, the massive bronze hammer struck his spine.
"Dong—Crack." Accompanied by the blacksmith's blood-curdling screams.
Everyone in town was forced to watch this exorcism ceremony in the square.
The screams lasted for an entire day until they turned into intermittent moans and finally faded into a deathly silence.
The Bishop prayed below the platform, "Look, pain has cleansed him of his sins. He is finally at peace; God has forgiven him."
From that day on, the light in the townspeople's eyes went out, replaced only by fear.
As the rebels were eliminated one by one in the name of heresy, White Stone Town grew quieter and quieter.
For instance, the grocery store owner was reported by a neighbor for hiding a bag of beans under his bedboards, because the informant would receive half a bowl of flour.
The knights didn't arrest people crudely; instead, they knocked politely on the door. "You have hoarded God's ◈ Nоvеlіgһт ◈ (Continue reading) property; this is a sign of disrespect toward God."
That night, the family of four from the grocery store was taken to the church basement, supposedly for a spiritual retreat; they were never seen again.
Thus, hunger became the sole ruler.
The people in the small town no longer discussed right or wrong; they only discussed where to find food.
Tree bark was gnawed clean, edible soil was dug out, and people ceased to be human, becoming like wolves with eyes reddened by hunger.
When despair reached its peak and all dignity had been ground away by hunger, the Holy See brought out the final antidote.
Large cauldrons were set up in the square.
The Bishop spread his arms wide. "God cannot bear to see His people suffer. Look, this is Golden Soup, a gift brought from the Holy City—flowing gold and honey."
At first, no one dared to drink it, but hunger is invincible. The first vagrant crawled over and took a sip; his eyes lit up.
He stopped trembling, stopped crying out about the cold, and a never-before-seen rosiness and smile appeared on his face.
"I'm not hungry... I'm really not hungry anymore!" He knelt on the ground and kissed the tips of the Bishop's shoes. "Praise God!"
The people's psychological defenses crumbled. From that day on, White Stone Town was completely dead; those who drank the soup became docile livestock.
They no longer complained about taxes, no longer missed the Dragon Ancestor, and didn't even care about their own children.
Their only purpose for living each day was to wait for the bell that signaled mealtime.
That white church was like a giant blood-sucking spider perched upon the town's corpse, draining the last drop of blood while the corpses remained grateful... Hans looked out through the dust-covered window of the mill.
The streets were crowded with people, yet there was no conversation, no arguing; even the sound of footsteps was unrealistically light.
They stood in line, holding broken bowls, waiting for the Golden Soup.
The fat auntie from next door, who a few years ago could scold half the street, stood in the line. Now, her eyes were cloudy, shimmering with a grayish-gold light, her pupils dilated like a fish that had been dead for days.
The Priest ladled out the soup and poured it into her bowl.
She immediately wolfed it down. The soup trickled from the corners of her mouth, even dripping onto her collar, but she didn't wipe it away.
Hans was also in the line. He hunched his back like a bow and let his gaze go blank, imitating those around him perfectly.
When that spoonful of thick soup, emitting a cloyingly sweet aroma, was poured into his broken bowl, he suddenly tightened his fingers like an animal guarding its food.
The Priest glanced at him and looked away, satisfied.
But Hans did not drink it. Instead, he carefully returned to the dead end in the alley behind the mill and poured the Golden Soup into a deserted rat hole.
A rat emerged from the hole and took a lick.
At first, it shook violently, its eyes shining as it spun in place like it was drunk; then it froze, its limbs stiffening, motionless.
Hans stared at that puddle of golden pus, cold sweat trickling down his back... Late at night, in the mill's basement.
The massive stone millstone turned slowly overhead, emitting a low, rhythmic roar like a sleeping beast.
The search party had pried up the floorboards and overturned the barrels, but they found nothing; after a few times, they stopped coming.
Hans, however, knew its secret. At the bottom of the two-ton millstone, he had used the crudest method to gradually chisel out a hollow space.
Hidden there was his last half-bag of coarse wheat and a few pieces of air-dried salted meat, as hard as stones.
Hans reached into the hidden compartment in the sole of his boot and felt the thin, rough dragon scale token.
That was a low-quality token he had picked up from a battlefield many years ago when he was still an Apprentice Knight in the Imperial Border Guard.
The iron piece was cold, yet it put his heart at ease.
"The Dragon Ancestor teaches people to stand with their own strength," he whispered in his heart, "not by drinking soup."
To survive, he began to calculate every bite of food like a wild animal.
Every day, he ate only a small pinch of raw wheat, chewing it slowly in his mouth until it turned white and bitter, then swallowing it with his saliva.
To prevent others from smelling the scent of wheat on his breath, he would deliberately chew a few leaves of bitter tobacco to mask the odor.
It wasn't that he hadn't thought about escaping.
In the dead of night, Hans would sit on the steps of the mill's back door, gazing at the dirt road leading out of town.
As long as he crossed the hills behind White Stone Town and walked for another two days, he could leave the area under the Holy See's direct control—at least, so the rumors said.
But he couldn't take that road; the exits from the town had long since been sealed off.
Patrols draped in holy insignias were there, ostensibly to prevent heretics from escaping, but in reality, anyone who dared to step foot out of town would be stopped on the spot, without even a chance to explain.
Additionally, his old injuries from years of pushing the millstone cut into his bones like blunt knives on rainy days.
Relying on that little bit of raw wheat every day, he couldn't even muster the strength to walk normally for a day, let alone cross mountains and ridges.
What was even more terrifying was that those who escaped didn't all fail to return.
Some were caught and brought back, hung on wooden frames at the town entrance for public display.
Others were allowed to repent and were dragged off to drink an entire barrel of Golden Soup.
The next day, they would stand at the front of the line, shouting hymns with ecstatic faces and pointing at an acquaintance's door, saying, "He didn't pray last night."
There was no escape.
He withdrew his gaze, closed the mill door, and hid himself once again within the roar of the stone mill.
As long as that bit of food remained undiscovered, he could still live—but it was merely existing.
By playing the fool and relying on the mill and his secret stash of food, he endured one day at a time.
But then, one day, a turning point arrived.
In the early morning mist that had not yet fully dispersed, the town entrance, the outside of the mill, the church walls, and the market posts were all covered in crimson parchment.
The images on the paper were extremely exaggerated, even carrying a crude and malicious childishness.
The Red Tide Lord of the north was depicted as a monster walking upright, with curved ram horns on his head, beastly fangs in his mouth, and black flames burning in his eyes.
He sat upon an iron carriage spewing fire, its iron wheels crushing wheat fields, crushing churches, and crushing twisted human forms.
Old Hans stood at the mill's entrance, looking at the drawing, his stomach churning.
When the morning bell tolled, the square in front of the church was already packed with people.
The old Priest who usually prayed in a low voice and spoke slowly was gone.
In his place was a stranger wearing crimson robes.
On his chest hung a metal Inquisitor's Badge, reflecting a cold light in the sun.
"The mechanical demons of the north are coming!" The voice was amplified by an alchemical amplification array. "They do not grow food; they only eat human flesh!"
The crowd instinctively tightened; a child cried out in fear, only to be quickly silenced by their mother's hand over their mouth.
"Anyone who listens to the lies of the north is a lackey of the demons!" The Inquisitor suddenly raised his hand, his crimson sleeves snapping in the wind. "Only God can save you! God will lead you in resistance against them! Resistance against these demons!"
The moment his words fell, the square was deathly silent; after years of oppression, no one dared to speak.
Hans stood at the edge of the crowd, chills running down his spine... And so, from that day on, the Holy See began leading them in constructing fortifications to meet the Red Tide army that was about to head south.
The first unit to move in was dozens of squads of Thorn Knights.
Those warhorses looked as if they had been skinned whole, their dark red muscles exposed to the air and still twitching slightly.
The knights on horseback wore heavy armor, but from the gaps in the armor, dark red thorns sprouted, piercing their necks and jaws, rising and falling with their breath.
A townsperson accidentally blocked the middle of the road—perhaps he had drunk too much Golden Water, making his reactions a bit sluggish.
A Thorn Knight didn't even pull the reins; the warhorse's chest slammed forward.
The man was sent flying, the sound of splintering bones clearly audible; after hitting the ground, he never got up again.
The knight did not look back.
The procession continued forward, hooves treading through the blood as if crushing a puddle of water.
Hans had served in the border guard and seen true elite cavalry, but they were nothing compared to these terrifying knights.
This kind of unit wasn't meant for suppressing riots; it was meant for clearing out a city.
The townspeople stood by the roadside, everyone bowing their heads as if afraid to be caught by that thorn-like gaze.
The Priest soon gave the order: demolish the houses.
The houses near the mill were marked, their beams cut, walls pushed down, and stones pried out one by one to be piled by the road as material for building defensive walls... Hans stood at the mill entrance, watching the familiar streets being stripped of their skeletons bit by bit.
The blacksmith's son was also hauling stones.
The boy was only sixteen, sturdy, and before the Church came, he always laughed loudly.
Now, he was barefoot, carrying a stone block nearly half a man's height, shuffling forward step by step.
Suddenly his foot slipped, the stone block lost its balance, and it fell heavily.
Hans instinctively covered his mouth.
But the youth only looked down, glancing at his mangled foot.
The bone was blindingly white, and the flesh was stuck to the stone slab.
There was no expression on his face; he didn't even knit his brows.
Then another Thorn Knight walked over and, without hesitation, thrust his longsword in from the side, cleanly piercing the youth's heart.
When the youth fell, his eyes remained hollowly open, as if he hadn't realized what had happened even unto death.
The knight waved his hand.
Several townspeople with similarly dull eyes walked over, dragged the body away, and threw it into the pit of writhing thorn roots outside the town.
Dark red roots surged from deep within the earth like a swarm of insects scenting blood, entining the limbs and torso of the corpse.
The skin collapsed rapidly upon contact as the flesh was drained, making a fine, sickeningly squelching sound.
The body withered at a rate visible to the naked eye; in moments, only a skeletal outline wrapped in thorns remained.
Hans saw that after the thorns had gorged themselves on flesh, their color became deeper, and strange patterns appeared on them.
Several thick roots quickly extended outward, weaving a thorny net-like structure on the pit walls, like naturally grown chevaux-de-frise.
Others curled and twisted, eventually hardening into sharp thorn stakes that were pulled up by Thorn Knights and driven into the ground between the roads and trenches as new defensive obstacles.
That body, along with his entire life, was completely transformed into part of the fortifications in less than fifteen minutes.
The thorns in the pit slowly contracted, writhing contentedly as if waiting for the next sacrifice.
Throughout the entire process, no one screamed; it was deathly quiet.
In the final few days, the bells in the square were rung.
The rhythm of that sound was very strange—neither fast nor slow, yet it made one's heart tighten.
People who heard the bell walked out of their houses one by one, their movements as orderly as if being pulled by invisible strings.
Hans, mixed in the crowd, saw the Priest distributing items. freёwebnovel.com
They weren't swords or spears; they were bundles of alchemical explosives.
The mud at the north of the town was turned over, and rows of shallow pits were dug, reaching only to an adult's waist.
The Priest directed those numb parents to place their children into the pits.
Black explosive boxes were stuffed into the children's hands, with fuses connected to thorn wires buried in the soil.
Hans saw Amy.
That little girl who usually loved to cry most was now half-buried in the cold earth, clutching explosives in her arms.
She didn't cry, nor did she move; she stared straight toward the north with grayish-gold eyes.
The crimson-robed Priest walked back and forth among the children as if checking the growth of crops.
The Priest told them those were sacred fireworks; as long as they ran toward the Red Tide's iron carriages with them, they would see angels.
On the morning of the final day, Hans was still alive.
It wasn't because he was lucky, but because he was too old; he was responsible for transporting the so-called Sacred Candles—those heavy bundles of alchemical explosives.
He watched as batch after batch of neighbors, who had been doused in holy water, were driven into the trenches at the northernmost end of the town.
Hans knelt in the mud, his hands trembling as he looked up toward the north.
On the horizon, a black line was approaching.
It was the Red Tide army.
At this moment, he suddenly realized that he was no longer afraid of that northern lord who had been drawn as a monster.
Tears streaming down his face, he sent up the most malicious yet sincere prayer of his life: "That demon named Louis... I beg of you, even if you kill me too...
Please, slaughter every last one of these beasts."
