Winter Lord: Starting with Daily Intelligence

Chapter 391 The Terrifying Red Tide City

By the time the envoys were officially received, it was already dark, but the city was as bright as day.

The magic stone lamps lined up in an arc along the main street, extending to the high tower of the administrative district.

Sorel was taken into the administrative center building.

The heavy door opened with a gentle push, without even a sound from the hinges.

The person waiting for him at the door was an elderly man with gray hair and impeccably dressed—Bradley.

The elderly man in charge of the Red Tide City's administrative center exuded a composure completely out of place in the North.

Bradley gave a slight bow, neither humble nor arrogant: "Welcome, Lord Sorel."

Sorel noticed that all the actions were just right, but lacked the obsequiousness that nobles usually showed to royal envoys.

He straightened his back instinctively: "Where is Earl Louis Calvin? I have important business to discuss with him."

Bradley maintained his mild yet aloof demeanor: "His Excellency the Earl is currently inspecting the new mines and the glacial shipping route. His return date is uncertain, but it will take approximately ten to fifteen days."

Sorel paused for half a second, instinctively trying to find a trace of deliberate harassment on the other person's face, but found none.

He sneered inwardly, "Hmph, hawk-training."

Having worked in diplomacy for many years, he immediately recognized this as a typical show of force: neither meet with the person nor refuse them an explanation.

You want to talk? Then wait.

Sorel wasn't angry, because the snow had blocked the roads, and he hadn't planned to leave within ten days anyway; his original plan was to wait until spring to leave Red Tide City.

Sorel smiled and said understandingly, "Perfect, this is a good opportunity for me to appreciate the beauty of the Pearl of the North."

“Of course,” Bradley nodded slightly and said calmly, “except for a few military control zones marked with red road signs, Red Tide City is completely open to you.”

Sorel became even more curious, but he didn't say it aloud. He just smiled and said, "Then I'll wait here."

Bradley gestured for him to enter: “Your accommodations are ready. If you need anything, simply tell the steward.”

Sorel was led deeper into the reception hall, and the further he walked, the more he felt that the ground beneath his feet was neither stone nor wood.

It feels stable and warm underfoot, even with a slight warmth.

When he pushed open the door, that "strange warmth" completely rushed over him.

There was no fireplace, no brazier, and no fire in the room.

But the air was as warm as spring.

He went inside and instinctively reached out to touch the wall.

The stone feels warm to the touch, like it's been warmed by a furnace, but not in a localized way. The entire wall is slowly radiating warmth, and the floor beneath your feet feels the same.

“…What is this?” Sorel frowned.

The accompanying attendant was also surprised: "My lord, there's no fire here...."

Bradley stood in the doorway, his tone calm: "Red Tide City uses geothermal pipes and central heating, so you don't need to worry about the temperature during your stay."

Geothermal energy, central heating.

Sorel had never heard of these words before; they seemed like some new and difficult concepts.

Anyway, he had never seen such a thing anywhere in the empire.

The room was not only warm, but the air was also clean, without any musty smell or dampness.

Fresh hot water was on the table, and there were wool coats and dry leather gloves in the wardrobe. The bed was more comfortable than a royal guest room in the capital.

Sorel remained silent for a long time.

He wasn't moved by the warmth; what he saw was something far more terrifying: energy redundancy.

While in other northern territories even a bundle of firewood is carefully calculated, here the floors and walls of the guest rooms can be heated.

This means that the Red Tide have fuel reserves so abundant that they can squander them, and their coal production, transportation efficiency, and energy storage technology far surpass any power in the North.

This means they are not afraid of the cold or winter, while the winter in the North has always been the sharpest knife for the locals.

Sorel sat in his chair, one hand on his forehead, his heart pounding a few times.

Bradley said softly, "You must be tired from your journey. Please rest first. I will arrange for someone to keep you informed of the Lord's progress every day."

Sorel looked up and saw that the other person still had that impeccably polite expression.

There was a strange sense of disparity in that expression.

He was treated as a visitor being received according to procedure, rather than an envoy of the Empire, a stark contrast to the warm welcome he had received all the way to the North.

“I understand,” Sorel said softly.

…………

The next morning, Sorel changed into a light-colored cloak prepared by his attendants, pulled his hat brim low, and took to the streets with two bodyguards.

He made no prior notice and brought no entourage, acting like an ordinary southern nobleman on a trip, simply looking around the city.

The wind and snow were still quite strong, falling like goose feathers and turning the eaves of distant houses into white lines.

But the road beneath my feet seemed to belong to a completely different season.

The three-section main road is wide and straight. The snow melts into water in less than a second after it falls on the ground, flowing along the paved drainage ditches to the roadside.

There was no snow, no mud, and no hard ice, which is common in winter.

Sorel crouched down, his fingers approaching the cracks in the floor tiles, and felt a faint warmth.

He frowned: "Just like inside the house, is the road underneath getting hot?"

The attendant asked, bewildered, "My lord, is it magic?"

“No.” Sorel withdrew his hand and stood up.

He recalled the warmth emanating from the walls of the guest rooms in Red Tide City, and then connected it to the main road beneath his feet that never froze; the whole picture instantly came together…

Red Tide buried heat channels under the roads to transport a certain type of heat energy from the city center to all the main roads.

What ordinary people see is simply that they won't slip when walking.

In Sorel's view, however, it is a completely different level of technical capability.

He stared at the road that didn't ice over: "They can keep the main thoroughfare of the entire city at a constant temperature? They can maintain transportation, commerce, and public order during blizzards... completely unaffected by the weather."

His perception of Red Tide's technical capabilities had improved considerably.

He then went to the containment area near the city gate.

Theoretically, this should be the dirtiest and most chaotic place; every major city in the empire has at least one such area.

They are not local residents, but rather like parasites from elsewhere, and they can't be driven away completely, so the only option is to allocate a specific area for them to live in.

In any case, they disappeared and reappeared like weeds, a shadow that no city in the empire wanted to mention.

But as he approached, he was quite surprised.

There was no putrid smell or sour smell of excrement in the air, only the fresh smell of lime water and sulfur soap.

“...It doesn’t taste right,” Sorel said in a low voice.

The attendant thought he was complaining, "Sir, I'll get right away..."

“It’s not dirty, it’s unnaturally clean.” Sorel gently raised his hand, gesturing for him not to move.

Steam billowed from the steam pipes outside the shelter, and several staff members wearing thick aprons guided the newly arrived refugees to line up and enter a huge public bathhouse.

The outer wall of the bathhouse was engraved with a red sun pattern, and two female doctors stood at the entrance.

A staff member noticed them, glanced at them briefly, and then came over: "Are you two visitors? This is the containment line. If you want to visit, you need to stand outside the yellow line."

Sorel glanced at the yellow line on the ground and couldn't help but ask, "Do you clean so many people every day?"

The staff member nodded: "It's the rule. New migrants arriving in the city must first get rid of lice and mold, otherwise they may bring disease outbreaks."

Sorel was taken aback by what he heard.

When the refugees entered, they were disheveled and covered in lice.

When they came out, their hair had been shaved short, their clothes had been changed into matching old cotton-padded coats, and each person was holding a bowl of steaming porridge.

Just then, a middle-aged man who had been pushed out suddenly stopped, his hand holding the porridge trembling slightly.

He saw the crimson sun pattern on the wall, and his eyes inexplicably welled up with tears.

He didn't speak to anyone, but suddenly knelt down in the snow, kowtowed hard, and choked out, "Thank you... thank you... I thought I wouldn't survive this winter..."

The foreman quickly pulled him up: "Don't kneel, finish eating and go register, you still have to work."

Not far away, a thin woman holding a child whispered to the female doctor, "Really...really can we stay? Won't they send us away?"

The female doctor draped a clean shawl over her shoulders: "As long as you are willing to register and work, you can stay."

The woman, holding her child, couldn't help but burst into tears: "Thank you... the red tide saved us..."

Sorel watched this scene and found it hard to bear listening to it.

These people were extremely grateful, but he didn't understand, since refugees were not wealth, but only risk.

Why would Louis spend so much money dealing with these people?

By the standards of the imperial nobility, this action was meaningless, laborious, unprofitable, and low-return.

In the Red Tide, everyone takes it for granted, as if they are following a perfectly established procedure.

Sorel couldn't understand it, and he couldn't possibly have guessed the real reason.

The increase in the number of refugees means a larger population base, which means that the number of available laborers, trained soldiers, and skilled craftsmen is increasing exponentially.

The washed refugees won't be of immediate use, but they will survive.

As long as they survive, they will be included in the Red Tide's food distribution, work points, and review system. They may not necessarily stay in the city, but will be assigned to other Red Tide territories in the surrounding area.

Once they enter the system, they are not a burden, but a resource—a human resource mine that can be continuously processed.

Louis wasn't providing relief; he was preparing people in advance for future industrial expansion.

As for finding new industries, it was not a problem at all for Louis, a transmigrator from Earth and a lord with the advantage of daily intelligence.

Sorel, of course, could not possibly have realized this.

From his perspective, this process was both expensive and labor-intensive, and utterly foolish.

He didn't understand the logic of this system because his perspective was too limited.

On the afternoon of the third day, Sorel walked to the square in the residential area.

That's an area where citizens congregate, and it's also the most direct place to observe the city's atmosphere.

Just then, an elderly man pushing a wheelbarrow slipped and spilled his entire bag of flour all over the ground.

Sorel instinctively assumed the knight would whip away anyone blocking his way.

After all, this is the most natural thing to do in the capital.

But in Red Tide City, the patrolling knights immediately reined in their horses, dismounted, helped the old man up, put the scattered flour back into the bag, and continued their patrol only after confirming that he was alright.

The surrounding citizens didn't back away; instead, several children's eyes shone like stars: "I want to be a knight too!"

Sorel stood there, stunned. Knights were no longer a privileged class, but protectors. Commoners were no longer inferiors to be avoided; they could look knights in the eye and even take pride in them.

If there were only one such knight, it would only mean that the knight was of high moral character. However, based on his experience over the past few days, the knights of the Crimson Tide were very kind to the common people and never showed any impatience.

This means that this was a rule specifically set by Louis, and every knight was strictly adhering to it.

This is not simply about management; it's about reshaping class consciousness.

Even so, he still felt that something was not quite right. Once the lower classes accepted the new order, the old aristocracy would become superfluous decorations, which would not be good for Louis either.

But here's the problem: Sorel only understood the surface level of the problem.

As for the deeper logic—why change class structure, why make knights more docile, and why get the public to embrace this order—he still couldn't quite grasp it.

For Sorel, this approach was too complicated and too risky, and did not conform to any common sense among the imperial nobles.

He racked his brains but couldn't figure it out, so he could only keep it to himself for now.

On the fourth day, he was allowed, with Bradley's permission, to visit the outer perimeter of the Red Tide City Council Hall.

That building had no gold, no reliefs, and not even the stained-glass windows that the capital city liked to flaunt.

The cold iron beams and pillars support the dome of the hall, while the red flags of the Crimson Tide fall from the heights like a waterfall, creating a strong sense of oppression against the cold, hard iron structure.

The outer hall was very noisy, with a constant stream of citizens from the Red Tide coming to conduct business. People were coming and going, and the noise was constant.

Inside, it was surprisingly quiet. The clerks carried red, yellow, and gray folders, walking briskly without whispering or making a fuss.

Each person's movements were concise and precise, like gears that had been ground down again and again.

A businessman ahead of me submitted his application documents. From taking a number, submitting them, having them reviewed, to getting them stamped and leaving, the whole process took less than fifteen minutes.

These scenes stunned Sorel. In the capital, such procedures would take at least three days, and he would have to prepare three separate payment requests.

He slowly exhaled: "Without layers of exploitation, without local clerks, without middlemen taking a cut... Louis's will can be transmitted to the very end without any loss."

This is a powerful centralized system, a highly efficient administrative machine, and a new way of operating the new order.

But here, he was stuck again. If the Empire did this, it would immediately provoke a backlash from all the nobles. How did Louis manage that? Why wasn't the North bombed?
He couldn't understand it at all.

In fact, the reason why Red Tide's administrative system can operate so efficiently is that Louise reformed the structure of interests rather than the structure of power.

The old aristocratic system of exploitation and stratification has been severed, replaced by a closed loop of integrated benefits encompassing infrastructure, industry, and taxation.

The fewer the intermediaries, the higher the efficiency. The resource growth of the Red Tide Territory will allow most people to make money, and the salaries of officials are very high. In addition, with a transparent promotion system, these officials will naturally obey this system.

Sorel, of course, couldn't see any of that.

He could only see the surface order, but he couldn't understand the underlying logic at all. He suddenly understood why the lords of the North were so afraid of the Red Tide.

This is not about establishing a territory; it's about establishing a nation, and a massive machine that is growing rapidly.

A machine with its own military, industry, energy, and administrative systems, and which does not depend on any resources of the empire.

Sorel stood on the edge of the high platform in the administrative district, looking up at the huge red flag, and suddenly felt that he was completely swallowed up by the shadow of the machine.

Beyond the city wall, one could see a distant area perpetually shrouded in a light mist.

There were no lights of bustling streets, nor the soft glow of magic stone lamps; only a massive cluster of buildings stretched out like a mountain ridge.

The lines are straight, the surface is cold and hard, and there are no patterns or decorations favored by the nobility.

It is more like a barrier made of iron and stone, rising from the frozen ground.

When Sorel first saw it, he thought it was some kind of military fortress.

There were no flags, no bugles, and no sounds of soldiers drilling, making the atmosphere all the more oppressive and unfamiliar.

Bradley had previously mentioned a "military control zone," and Sorel assumed this was one of them.

But the more he looked at it, the more he felt something was wrong.

The place was unusually quiet, unlike a military camp or a workshop; he had no idea what it was.

Sorel squinted, staring at the dark mass of buildings, feeling a tickle in his heart.

"What exactly did Louis put in there?"

He couldn't find the answer, and the more he thought about it, the more uneasy he became.

So Sorel then whispered to the two high-ranking elite knights accompanying him: "Don't alert anyone. Just get close and see what's going on in those dark houses."

The knights changed into grey cloaks and quietly left through a side door in the darkness.

Sorel lit a candlestick and sat by the window to wait.

The snow fell heavily, the candlelight flickered, and his heart pounded along with it.

Not long after, the sound of footsteps came from below.

The two knights knelt down: "My lord, we can't get in, we simply can't get in."

Sorel frowned: "Many guards?"

“Not many,” the knight said with difficulty, “but strong.”

He looked up, his expression as complicated as if he had seen something unbelievable: "There are at least three... no, maybe five extraordinary knights patrolling there."

Sorel almost lost his footing.

In the Empire, a single extraordinary knight could command a legion of five hundred men and become a guest of honor of a baron. They were the core of the battlefield and the symbol of noble power.

And red tide?

Louis actually used five extraordinary knights to guard the workshop gate?

Sorel felt a chill: "What's hidden in that smoking place...?"

The next day, he personally went to observe from a distance outside the main road in the eastern district.

The snow fell even heavier, but the main road leading to the industrial area remained unobstructed, and the transport teams continued to advance along the wet road.

Sorel did not approach, but stood at a safe distance.

Even so, he was still shocked by the sheer scale of it.

The input port is where the raw materials are swallowed up.

Hundreds of heavy trucks, pulled by two horses, lined up and drove out from deep in the snow.

The truck was piled high with: neatly cut logs, shiny black charcoal, and crude iron ore from the mine...

There were even several trucks carrying long strips of metal parts covered by tarpaulins.

These things were continuously swallowed into the huge iron gate, like food being fed into the belly of a giant beast.

Sorel murmured, "The daily consumption of this workshop is equivalent to the annual consumption of the Raymond family's blacksmith shop..."

He stared at the advancing transport convoy. "Just how many blacksmiths are on board? A thousand? Ten thousand?"

The more he thought about it, the less he could breathe.

Meanwhile, at the other entrance, a few trucks were slowly driving out.

The goods were completely covered by oiled black tarpaulin, making their shape unrecognizable and without any labels.

Although the number was small, each vehicle was ridiculously heavy.

Even on paved roads, the metal tires still left white marks.

The six draft horses were taut with all their muscles, and the driver could barely move the vehicle without using a whip.

He couldn't help but whisper, "Such heavy cargo... is it a battering ram? A catapult? Or iron bars meant to deal with heavy cavalry?"

Sorel stared at the giant gate for a long time, but in the end he suppressed all his guesses. Since he couldn't go in, he could only leave first.

He donned his cloak and returned to the reception hall, glancing back at the somber buildings every now and then, as if staring at a giant beast that might awaken at any moment.

Back in his room, he leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes.

Scenes I had seen in the city over the past few days began to flash rapidly through my mind.

Roads that don't freeze, odor-free shelters, motorcyclists who will help the elderly, administrative approvals that only take fifteen minutes...

Sorel finally managed to piece together a rough outline:
Traditional lords used whips to instill fear in their subjects, while better lords used charity to earn their gratitude.

But Louis Calvin relied on the system and life itself to blend himself into the atmosphere of the city.

The people here will cry over a bowl of porridge, laugh for an elderly person who has been helped up, and nod in greeting when a knight patrols.

It's not out of fear, nor because of a gift, but because they've become inseparable from this system.

“To these people, Louis is not a ‘lord’…” Sorel opened his eyes, his throat tightening, “He is like the sun; they can’t live without him…”

Sorel suddenly realized a fact that was even more terrifying than the industrial zone.

“If I were to bribe the Red Tide general, he would be tied up by his own knights and brought to trial. If I were to incite a riot, the citizens here would probably be the first to rush up and bite my throat.”

Sorel felt a weight pressing down on his chest: "In this city... Louis is a god. And I'm just a mortal trying to bribe a god with gold coins."

He remained silent for a long time before finally straightening his back.

Even knowing that success was impossible, he still had to fulfill his mission. If he returned empty-handed, he would only become a laughing stock the next day or a scapegoat.

Sorel slowly exhaled and took out the sealed letter with sealing wax, which circulated only within the inner circle of the empire, from his bosom.

That was the Second Prince's trump card, and also the most outrageous condition the Empire was willing to offer to win over Louis Calvin.

He was granted the title of Grand Duke of the North.

It promised the Red Tide Territory autonomy and exemption from corvée labor.

Seventy percent of the profits from opening up the two core trade routes in the south will be used as the initial capital for cooperation.

Guaranteed seat in the new Dragon Throne Council of the future empire.

Any one of these conditions would be enough to make half the empire's nobility kneel and weep.

Sorel stared at the secret letter, but only one absurd thought crossed his mind: "These things... Louis probably wouldn't even look at them."

But he still has to try.

He had even devised a strategy: while Louis was still developing, he would begin by bestowing titles upon him by the Empire, thus gilding Louis's image in the name of the royal family.

By using the position of Grand Duke of the North to induce political ambition in the other party, and then taking the opportunity to throw away the Raymond family's interests in the southern trade routes, the young lord became dependent on him.

Once Red Tide and Raymond are deeply intertwined in terms of their interests, Louis will be gradually drawn into the Raymond family's camp.

It's the Raymond family's camp, not the Second Prince's family's camp.

This is the method he is most proficient in in the capital.

But now, looking in the direction of Crimson Tide City, he suddenly realized that he wasn't hunting a wild beast, but rather trying to lasso a mountain with a rope.

Even so, he gritted his teeth and put the secret letter back into his pocket.

"I have no choice but to bite the bullet and continue the conversation... at least, so that the Second Prince can see that I have tried my best."

Sorel stood up, straightened his clothes, as if giving himself a final act of dignity.

“Louis Calvin won’t be easily won over… so I’ll start with those around him. First Bradley, then the legion commanders, then the trade route controllers…”

He murmured, "Even if I can't move the whole mountain, I'll still knock off a single rock."

(End of this chapter)