Winter Lord: Starting with Daily Intelligence

Chapter 387 The Pulse of Steel
In the early autumn of the North, the wind already carried a slight chill.

In the northern district of Red Tide City, a newly built freight station is separated by a circle of solemn red-armored knights.

Not many people were allowed to approach the inner circle. Apart from the black-robed clerk from the Ministry of the Interior, the surveyors in gray uniforms from the Roads Department, there were only a dozen or so invited caravan representatives and some senior craftsmen who were granted special permission to attend the ceremony.

On the outer earthen slope, a circle of people stood at a distance.

They were red from the cold, but their eyes were fixed on the parallel rails that stretched into the gray mist.

“Damn this weather…” Reto shrank his neck, trying to tuck his frozen chin into the fox fur of his collar.

He looked to be in his early twenties, dressed in a well-tailored but somewhat thin southern silk suit, which made him stand out among the group of northerners wrapped in thick furs.

This was the first time he had come to Red Tide City with his father.

“I don’t understand why we have to stand here in the cold wind,” Reto complained, stamping his foot to a small, unassuming man beside him.

He had no idea what the man's name was; he only knew that he was one of those invited by the Chief Executive of the Interior, Lord Bradley.

“Hey, listen up.” Reto sniffed, his tone full of arrogance as the young master of a large trading company. “My father is the president of the Golden Wheat Trading Company. He asked me to fill this vacancy because he had to deal with an urgent matter.”

The people in the Interior Ministry said this was some kind of epoch-making moment? Ha! Just because of these two iron bars laid in the mud?

The thin man next to him, named House, was not angry at Reto's arrogance.

He was wearing a work uniform covered in coal dust, which was the uniform of the Craftsmen's Office.

“Sir,” House said softly, “you would have better button up your collar.”

"What?" Reto frowned, thinking that these lowly people were mocking him for dressing scantily.

“Because that’s the Snowfield Iron Vein,” House muttered to himself. “The first time anyone sees it, their legs go weak. It would be very embarrassing to fall down, sir.”

"Huh?" Just as Reto was about to scoff at the country bumpkin's alarmist talk, he suddenly felt a strange sensation on the ground.

Just as he was beginning to feel uneasy, the pebbles at his feet began to move restlessly, making a soft clattering sound against the rails.

It wasn't the violent shaking of an earthquake, but a tremor like a stampede of horses.

"Woo——!!!"

Immediately afterwards, a long, unprecedented cry ripped through the chill of early autumn.

The sound was neither the rousing horn nor the roar of a monster.

It was cold, thick, and extremely penetrating, drilling directly into Reto's bone marrow, making his scalp tingle, and the mockery that was on the tip of his tongue was instantly swallowed back.

The distant mist was violently shattered.

In Reto's constricted pupils, a colossal steel behemoth spewing thick smoke was crushing him along the railway tracks.

"What...what kind of monster is that?!"

Reto instinctively took two steps back, his legs buckled, and his back slammed heavily against the railing.

If it weren't for the railing, he really would have sat on the ground just like House said.

“That’s the Snowfield Iron Vein,” House added in a low voice, his eyes gleaming with excitement.

The massive obstacle-clearing shovel at the front of the vehicle resembles a knight's heavy shield as he charges into battle, gleaming with the cold light unique to cold iron.

The massive metal linkage propelled the steel wheel, which was half a person's height, producing a sickeningly regular metallic clanging sound, carrying an absolute physical pressure that threatened to crush anyone who didn't move aside into mincemeat.

"Click, click, click!"

As the train drew closer, Reto felt the ground beneath the platform tremble slightly, and his ears were filled with the mechanical roar and the piercing sound of steam emanating from the behemoth.

He had never seen anything so enormous or powerful.

The confidence and disdain he once had as the young owner of a caravan were completely shattered by this steel behemoth.

He felt an indescribable shock, a shock that far exceeded his imagination of any weapon or warrior.

He instinctively opened his mouth, but couldn't utter a single word.

“That…is it?” Reto finally managed to squeeze out the words.

The platform was deathly silent, with only heavy breathing echoing in the air.

With a piercing screech of brake shoes, the train came to a precise stop beside the red line of the platform.

The scalding white steam ejected from the pressure relief valve instantly engulfed half of the platform, and the heat wave swept over us, dispelling all the chill.

The car door slid open.

Lord Louis Calvin of the Red Tide was the first to step forward.

He wore his signature black lord's robe, his expression calm, his gaze sweeping across the crowd.

"Open the hatch."

With a gesture from Louis, the engineers pulled open the seemingly heavy, enclosed cargo compartment at the back.

Inside were piles of burlap sacks, each one bulging at the opening, and each sack was printed with a golden wheat stalk and sun emblem.

Reto instinctively protected himself; he had seen too many starving people fight each other over half a loaf of black bread.

He imagined the Northerners would stare at the flour sacks like wild dogs, their eyes filled with greed.

But he was wrong, terribly wrong.

When those bags of life-saving grain were placed before them, none of the hundreds or thousands of people on the periphery gave the flour a second glance.

Countless eyes, as if drawn by some magnetic force, were fixed on the black-clad youth standing before the steaming white mist.

That's something more primal and fervent than the craving for food.

That is absolute worship of the one who brings miracles.

"Lord Louis!!!" Someone shouted first.

Immediately following, as if a strong wind were blowing through the wheat fields, groups of people on the earthen slope raised their hands.

There were no begs for food, only a soul-stirring roar: "Lord Louis!!!"

This shout was even sharper than the long wail of the steam whistle just now, instantly tearing Reto's eardrums.

"Guardians of Winter!!"

"The great Calvin!!"

The sound erupted like a tsunami.

Reto was horrified to see House beside him, the lowly craftsman, clinging desperately to the railing with a fanatical expression.

House's eyes gleamed with an almost maniacal pride, the look of a believer boasting of their God to a pagan: "Sir! Do you see clearly? That's our lord! That's the great Lord Louis!!"

Reto was forced to retreat repeatedly by the frenzied shockwave.

Amidst the deafening cheers, Louis did not show any smugness.

He simply stood amidst the billowing steam and cheers, watching those frenzied faces.

Then the young lord made a gesture.

He slowly raised his right arm and pressed his fist, gloved in black leather, heavily against his left chest in return.

"boom--!!!"

If the cheers just now were a tsunami, then this moment is like a landslide.

Upon seeing the lord's response, the crowd went completely wild.

Reto could even feel the platform beneath his feet trembling violently with the sound waves, and he could hear nothing but that name.

Louis held that position for a full three seconds.

He then lowered his hand, palm down, and gently pressed it in the air.

But the moment that gesture was made, the thunderous cheers miraculously began to subside, until only heavy breathing and the distant roar of steam engines remained.

It can be controlled and released at will.

This is not just affection; it is absolute dominance.

"A true man should be like this." This was Leto's only thought.

Louis did not linger on the platform. Surrounded by knights, he crossed the road that the enthusiastic crowd had automatically parted to make way for him and boarded the carriage back to the administrative center.

Even after the lord's caravan disappeared at the end of the street, the suffocating fervor lingered in the air.

Half an hour later, in the Red Tide City administrative center, in the lord's office, the heavy oak door slowly closed behind them with a soft "click."

That door, as thick as a wall, completely shut out the seemingly endless noise from the outside world.

Louis unbuttoned a button at his collar, removed his black leather gloves, which were stained with cold air and coal dust, and tossed them casually onto a corner of the long table.

"Please sit down." He walked around the desk and sat down in his high-backed chair.

There was no sense of relief after a great achievement; his back remained straight, and his fingers habitually tapped the armrest.

The others who followed in—Bradley, Deslan, Lambert, and the timid Hamilton—finally snapped out of their frenzied state and regained their composure as decision-makers.

Louis didn't speak immediately, but closed his eyes and tapped his fingers rhythmically on the table.

Four full days, just four days.

Louis's bones were still slightly uncomfortable from the prolonged vibrations, but it made him feel real and joyful.

In the past, this road was a broken blood vessel.

From the mines of Starforge to the docks of Dawn Harbor, it was a muddy, death march; from the farmlands of Wheatfield to the tables of Red Tide City, it was a gamble with the blizzard.

But during those ninety-six hours, this steel beast did not stop.

It doesn't need to sleep, doesn't need to chew fodder like a mule or horse, and won't become lame because the frozen ground is too hard.

It eats only coal and water, and then runs tirelessly across the wasteland where night and day alternate.

On the first morning, the iron ore from Starforge poured into the carriage like a black waterfall.

The next day at dusk, the sea breeze from Dawn Harbor, carrying the scent of southern spices, wafted through the window.

On the third day at noon, it carried a heavy bag of powder from the wheat field.

Now, on the evening of the fourth day, they are lying quietly in the warehouse of Red Tide City.

This is not magic, yet it surpasses magic.

When the four territories were forcibly bound together by this steel chain, the concept of the Red Tide finally transformed from ink marks on a map into a living entity.

“A full twelve hundred li... four days.”

Even after settling into a warm chair, Trade Commissioner Deslan still found it somewhat unbelievable.

He opened the ledger he carried with him, his fingers flying across it. His usually squinty eyes were now wide open, revealing a businessman's shrewd fervor.

"My lord, if it were my most elite caravan, without considering blizzards, bandits, or even the exhaustion of the mules and horses, it would take at least forty days to complete this journey. And that's in the summer!"

Deslan grabbed the thick ledger as if wielding a weapon: "This means our cash flow is ten times faster than those Southern Chambers of Commerce!"
While their goods were still rotting in the mud, ours had already been sold three times! This isn't even profit; it's practically robbery!

“I care more about how to cram all this stuff in than your damn profits,” Bradley interrupted Deslan’s wild ideas.

"They can transport a month's worth of wheat harvest over here in just four days... Good heavens, the city hall's granaries simply can't handle such a rapid throughput."

Bradley scratched his thinning hair, sighed, but a smile played on his lips.

Lambert, who remained silent, neither looked at the ledger nor drank any water.

He stood behind Louis like a statue, his gaze lowered, as if still savoring the vibrations of the train's movement.

"It's not just about goods."

Lambert's voice was low and deep, and only a few people in the room could hear it.

As a knight, he saw neither gold coins nor bread.

“If the wagons were carrying my knights and heavy crossbows for these four days… that would mean that as soon as the barbarians in the north began to assemble, our swords would already be at their throats.”

He raised his head and looked at Louis, his eyes flashing with a cold light: "Four days is enough time for us to launch a surprise attack in any corner of the North, or to support a besieged city."

As Louis listened to their discussion, the grand plan in his mind became clearer and clearer.

Food, wealth, war.

These three pillars that supported the survival of the territory finally found their most solid foundation amidst the roar of steel for four days and four nights.

He stood up and walked to the huge map of the North on the wall.

"The internal circulation is open, but this is only the beginning of the heartbeat. Next, we need to get the blood flowing to the limbs."

He picked up a pen and drew a winding dotted line on the gray ruins area on the east side of the map, next to the old site of Frostspear City.

"Phase II project, eastward. Laying a branch line connecting the Shuangji reconstruction area."

The surveying team has already identified the route. We need to avoid those damned, insect-infested wastelands full of corrosive and toxic gases and carve out a stable new line along the limestone valley.

The reconstruction of Frostspear City requires a massive amount of stone, which would take until the next century to haul by horse-drawn carts. I want to use railways to speed up the reconstruction.

Then he pointed south: "Phase III of the project, southward."

This time, even Deslan, the head of the Trade Commission, gasped in surprise.

"We need to build the railway to the point where it connects with the trade routes of the southern nobles."

Louis coldly looked at the area below the map that represented blockade and hostility: "Since someone is blocking our trade routes, then we'll use cheaper goods and more efficient logistics to break down their doors."

Let the red tide's goods flow south, drawing in all the refugees and profit-driven merchants who can't survive in the south, along the railway tracks.

What Louis was referring to was that the Calvin family seemed to have discovered that he was slowly distancing himself from the Calvin Trading Company, so they used some means to prevent some nobles from buying Red Tide's products.

Then Louis turned to look at Hamilton, who was huddled in his chair, frantically taking notes.

"This requires a technological upgrade. Hamilton, the current Snowfield Iron Vein is too heavy and struggles to travel long distances on mountain roads."

“Yes…yes, sir!” Hamilton pushed up his goggles and answered nervously.

“I want the next generation of boilers, lighter and more durable. I’ll order them to start casting finer gears at Starforge Ridge to accommodate climbing slopes.” Louis held up one finger.

"And the Crafts Academy should immediately open a steam repair course. I don't want the car to break down on the road and I have to wait for you to rush over from Red Tide City to fix it. I want every station in the future to have someone who can repair cars."

The young craftsman nodded frantically, almost breaking the pen in his hand.

Finally, Louis turned to Lambert and asked, "Lambert, what does this mean for strategy?"

“It means speed, sir.” Lambert said without hesitation. “Winter supply lines will no longer be a nightmare. Without relying on wagons, our heavy infantry can move ten times faster.”

“That’s right.” Louis placed his hands on the edge of the map, his voice low and carrying a suffocating sense of oppression, “In the future, when the Imperial War breaks out…”

Upon hearing the words "Imperial War," the air in the warm office seemed to freeze instantly.

Deslan's hand, which was flipping through the ledgers, stopped in mid-air. Bradley's smile froze on his face, and even Lambert couldn't help but twitch his eyelids slightly.

But Louis did not pause or evade the issue.

He continued calmly, as if discussing tomorrow's weather:
"...When the Imperial War broke out, while the enemy's legions were still eating hard bread in the snow and waiting for marathon-like resupply, the Red Tide Territory was able to assemble a well-equipped and physically strong army within three days."

The pen in his hand flew across the map, connecting Frostspear Old City, Silverpine Ridge, Crimson Tide City, Wheat Wave Territory, Starforge Territory, and Dawn Harbor.

It was a huge network that covered the entire southeast and north.

“This is the long-term goal: an inner ring road for the red tide and a northern outer ring road,” Louis said, dropping the camera and pausing before continuing.

Looking at the menacing and massive steel net on the map, they finally understood that the young lord's ambitions had never been limited to merely ruling a small corner of the world.

The crowd's breathing became heavy.

Louis sat back down in his chair, let out a soft breath, and steered the conversation back to the real threat.

“But the larger this network is, the more fragile it becomes.” He turned around, his gaze falling once again on the grease-covered head of the mechanical engineering team.

"So besides this fast snake, we also need a beast that can bite. Hamilton!"

The young craftsman, who had been lost in thought, suddenly jolted awake, nearly dropping his notebook. "Ah...yes! Sir!"

"I heard that thing has already woken up?"

Hamilton paused for a moment, then his initial restraint was instantly replaced by the radiance characteristic of a tech enthusiast.

He straightened his back: "Sir, the boiler pressure test has passed. Although the drive shaft is still a bit overheated under high torque, it is now fully capable of combat."

"very good."

Louis straightened his cuffs and looked at Lambert beside him: "Tomorrow, call everyone in the mechanical engineering team, and we'll go take a look too."

Lambert looked up with some confusion, meeting Louis's gaze.

“Go see your new mount, Lambert,” Louis said softly. “It’s a true war machine for you, and for the Red Tide Knights.”

(End of this chapter)