Winter Lord: Starting with Daily Intelligence

Chapter 420 Crazy
As dusk fell, the gray rock fortress was not torn apart by artillery fire.

Outside the city walls, the Red Tide Legion's chariot formation had been fully deployed.

The steel was lined up in a row, the engine was revved to its lowest speed, and the deep roar rolled along the ground like a thunderclap on the chest.

Instead of advancing quickly, they simultaneously turned on their searchlights.

The cold, white beam of light swept across the city walls, moats, and arrow towers, finally coming to a steady stop atop the towering castle. This deliberate pause was more agonizing than any siege.

Grayrock Fortress fell into a deathly silence. The garrison stood guard at their posts, but no one knew what they were waiting for.

The attack was delayed, negotiations were nowhere in sight, and even death was postponed.

Kyle Raymond stood on the tower terrace, his eyes bloodshot and his nails digging into his flesh.

The sound of the wind entered my ears, but gradually changed tone, like a whisper against the back of my head.

“Kyle.” The voice was gentle and calm, as if it had been standing behind him all along. “I can see everything you do.”

Kyle turned around abruptly. The terrace was empty, with only the castle's silhouette fragmented by searchlights.

This auditory hallucination began after the collapse of Blackrock Canyon.

It comes at night, and it comes when I close my eyes.

Kyle staggered into the council chamber.

The heavy oak door closed behind him with a dull thud.

The sound lingered in the empty hall, like an untimely death knell.

The long table was full of people.

The nobles, commanders, and quartermasters of the Gray Rock Province were all present.

The candlesticks were arranged in two rows, their flames flickering slightly, illuminating each face as sallow and weary.

Commander Baron stood near the head of the group, his forehead covered in sweat, his hand resting on the hilt of his sword.

This is an instinctive reaction under pressure, a precaution against the possibility of an attack horn sounding outside the city at any moment.

A nobleman was praying in hushed tones.

An officer stared at the table, as if silently calculating how long they could hold out and whether they could hold out until the Duke returned.

This is reality, but Kyle can no longer distinguish reality from fiction.

In his perception, the world had been completely transformed.

The dim candlelight cast long, thin shadows of everyone, which clung crookedly to the stone wall like a group of monsters baring their fangs.

He had no colleagues or subjects.

Every face is an eyeliner planted by the Red Tide.

Every subtle movement is a signal that they are about to take action.

The way Baron gripped the hilt of his sword no longer appeared tense to him, but rather a gesture of preparing to draw his sword.

The baron in the corner's lips twitched slightly, but to him it appeared as a sinister smile.

Those whispered prayers were no longer pleas to the gods, but rather secret signals for mutual confirmation.

He heard it, not with his ears, but directly in his mind.

"Tie him up..."

"Louis only wants his head..."

"Tonight...now..."

The sounds piled up one after another, as if they were opening simultaneously inside his skull.

Kyle's breathing began to become uncontrollable, and a ring of tiny black shadows appeared at the edge of his vision.

traitor.

They are all traitors.

He stood in the center of the wolf pack.

Commander Baron was the first to realize something was wrong.

This veteran, who had fought alongside Duke Raymond for thirty years, noticed that Kyle's face was abnormally pale, his eyes were unfocused, and his pupils were uncontrollably contracting.

He hesitated for a moment, but still stepped forward.

"Young Master," he said, his voice deliberately lowered, tinged with a tired hoarseness, "you don't look well, perhaps we..."

Before he could finish speaking, Kyle interpreted the sentence as having taken on a different meaning.

"You want to kill me?!" Kyle suddenly looked up, letting out a scream that was almost inhuman. "Dream on!!"

He didn't even think; his hand had already moved first.

The longsword was drawn, and gray battle aura drew a cold arc in the candlelight.

"Pfft." The sound wasn't loud, but it was clear enough to send chills down your spine.

The sword pierced through the chest of Commander Baron and emerged from there.

The veteran, who had always stood ramrod straight, froze.

He looked down at the rapidly spreading bloodstains on his chest, then slowly looked up at Kyle.

There was no anger in his eyes, only bewilderment.

"Young..." Blood and froth welled up in his mouth, "Master..."

Before he could finish speaking, Commander Baron fell backward and crashed heavily to the ground.

The council chamber erupted in chaos.

Someone accidentally knocked over a chair, someone stumbled backward and bumped into a companion, a wine glass shattered on the ground, and the wine flowed out along the cracks in the stone.

Several nobles instinctively huddled against the wall, not daring to even raise their heads, as if looking at them for even a moment would bring about their deaths.

But in Kyle's eyes, this scene took on a completely different appearance.

Those retreats were not out of fear, but rather a tacit understanding spreading out.

Those overturned chairs weren't accidentally dropped; they were clearing a path for attack.

Those intersecting figures were blocking his escape route.

Kyle abruptly pulled back his bloodstained longsword, the tip dragging on the ground with a screeching sound, the dark red bloodstains stretching out little by little.

"Don't come any closer!" he roared, his voice shrill and distorted, like a wild beast cornered. "I see you!"

His gaze swept back and forth across the faces, hurried and chaotic, as if he were counting enemies.

"You are all from the Red Tide!"

In Kyle's mind, this was not a sudden outburst of madness, but a truth that had finally been confirmed.

The failure of the Human Canyon was not accidental.

The granary was precisely blown open, the detonation point was cut off in advance, and every step he took seemed to have been planned in advance. This cannot be explained by mere tactical brilliance.

Even earlier, the Red Tide roamed the edges of the Gray Rock Province like a ghost.

They always seem to appear in the places where they least expect to.

The supply convoy had clearly changed its route, yet it was ambushed just before the downpour...

All actions were counterintuitive.

They did not rush to the nearest target, did not pursue the fleeing troops, and did not take advantage of the victory to expand their gains. Instead, they repeatedly avoided the most reasonable choice.

It's like someone knows in advance what you're going to think.

It's as if someone is standing behind Kyle, watching him give the order, and then taking a step in the opposite direction.

If it were just once, Kyle could attribute it to luck.

But when this happens repeatedly, when all the coincidences point in the same direction.

That leaves only one explanation.

The castle had long been seeped through like a sieve.

Scouts, quartermasters, nobles, and even the old ministers he could name could all have sent out intelligence.

Otherwise, how could the red tide know where he hid the grain?

How could he possibly accurately predict the rainstorm, the wind direction, and even know exactly when he would give the order?
To him, their silence was not out of fear but out of guilt; their retreat was not an act of avoidance but an attempt to create distance and wait for their companion to make a move.

Commander Baron's body lay on the ground, blood spreading along the cracks in the rocks.

Kyle didn't look at it again.

The body that had served the Raymond family for thirty years had long lost its meaning in his eyes.

"Anyone who dares to move an inch will be killed first!" Kyle wildly brandished his longsword, forcing everyone to retreat. "I am Raymond!"

He shouted that as long as their identities remained, as long as the fear remained, they wouldn't dare to pounce on them immediately.

"None of you are going to hand me over!!" He retreated step by step, his back slamming heavily against the cold stone pillar, with nowhere left to go.

In Kyle's view, the wolf pack was closing in.

The people in the council chamber could only watch helplessly as their young master was surrounded by enemies he had imagined, and collapsed completely in a state of out-of-control fear.

Just as the nobles froze in place, terrified by the bloody scene, Kyle became certain of one thing—they were afraid, and he had survived.

This was an extremely dangerous escape from death.

He gave no one time to react, turned around abruptly, and charged towards the side door like a startled wild beast.

He forcefully pushed open the heavy wooden door with his shoulder and staggered out. Everyone stood there dumbfounded, watching Kyle run out like a madman.

"You want to trade my head for a bounty? Dream on." He gasped for breath, his voice broken and excited. "I have another trump card."

"I won't give Louis anything his father left behind, even if it's destroyed."

He leaned against the wall to his feet, dragging his blood-stained longsword, and stumbled toward the depths of the castle.

As the steps began to descend, the air gradually became damp and sticky, and a pungent smell of sulfur mixed with the stench of blood rose from the depths of the earth.

That was the Raymond family's true trump card.

The gate to the lowest level of Grayrock Castle slowly opened before him.

The light suddenly spread out.

The underground hall was brighter than the ground floor, with neatly arranged alchemical lamps illuminating the entire space.

At the very center is a blood pool nearly twenty meters in diameter, the dark red liquid gleaming eerily under the lights.

In the pool of blood, the remains of an ancient dragon lay horizontally like a cleaved mountain ridge.

The pale white spine was exposed, and the broken bone wings were suspended by chains and then sank into the blood.

Inside the open chest cavity, countless alchemical pipes were inserted, and a pump rose and fell heavily beneath the dragon's chest, emitting a regular and low rumble, as if breathing for this dead monster.

Around the hall were rows of blackened iron cages.

Hundreds of children were huddled in the cage.

They had thin metal tubes inserted into their bodies, and the medicine was slowly flowing along the tubes.

Some were twitching softly, some had stopped moving, and others were emitting hoarse groans that couldn't be formed.

They have no names, only numbers.

"Young Master!" The chief alchemist greeted him, unaware of what had transpired above the research lab. Thinking it was a routine inquiry, he began his report.

"The suppression field has entered the red zone! The fully-fledged form is not yet fully tamed, and the semi-finished product is in a period of strong rejection! Release now..."

Before he could finish speaking, a flash of sword light streaked past.

The chief alchemist's voice abruptly stopped as his body was cleaved in two by a sword, his blood splattering onto the rune array on the ground.

"Get out of here." Kyle's voice was unusually calm.

He stepped over the fallen corpses, ignoring the screams of the other alchemists, and climbed onto the main control panel beside the blood pool.

Countless indicator lights flashed wildly in front of him, and the alarm runes had turned a bright crimson.

His hands grasped the red gate that symbolized ultimate authority.

"Come out." A near-maniacal smile stretched across his lips. "Children, go and kill all those bad guys up there."

The gate was slammed down, and a piercing alarm instantly resounded throughout the underground.

The iron cages popped open one by one.

The first batch to break through consisted of sixty fully grown animals.

They are over two meters tall, their bodies are covered with gray-black scales, their limbs are twisted with reverse joints, their vertical pupils are cold, and they have no emotions.

Then came hundreds of unfinished Dragon Blood Youths.

Their mutation was not yet complete; their bodies were being torn apart and reshaped repeatedly, in agony and rage, as they roared and lunged toward the light.

Kyle stood on the high place, spread his arms, and burst into laughter.

This is his army, his last trump card, and they obey only Raymond.

Just then, a fully evolved creature, numbered 3373, leaped onto the control panel.

It landed silently, its vertical pupils contracted, and it stared at Kyle without any emotion.

There was no response to the command, no gesture of submission.

Kyle's laughter froze on his face.

The monster moved in the next instant.

The sound of something tearing through the air exploded at close range, and the figure of No. 3373 transformed into a gray shadow, its sharp claws aimed straight for the throat.

"Get out!" Kyle roared, forcibly activating his battle qi.

Gray battle aura exploded from his body, enveloping him like a rough outer shell.

He swung his sword upwards, the blade colliding head-on with the claws.

"Qiang——!"

The grating sound of metal scraping echoed through the hall.

Number 3373 was cleaved in two by this sword, its scales and flesh torn apart from its shoulder to its abdomen, and its body was thrown out, crashing heavily into the edge of the blood pool.

Kyle staggered to his feet, his chest heaving violently.

"Do you see clearly?!" he roared hoarsely, his eyes bloodshot. "I am your master!"

Number 3373 fell to the ground, his body twitched, but he did not die.

The severed body writhed in the pool of blood, its vertical pupils still fixed on Kyle.

What Kyle didn't see was that more figures were already approaching.

The fully formed creatures leaped up from all sides, while the unfinished dragon-blooded youths surged wildly out of the iron cage.

They didn't care about their companions' corpses, nor about their collisions; they only followed the most primal command.

kill.

Tear into pieces.

The first boy lunged forward, but Kyle severed his neck with a single sword stroke.

The second one grabbed his cloak and was sent flying by the aura.

The third one, the fourth one...

Strength loses its meaning when it comes to quantity.

Sharp claws tore through the armor, and teeth bit into the shoulders and arms.

Kyle's fighting spirit rapidly dissipated under the continuous impacts, and he began to retreat.

"I am Raymond!" he roared, his voice distorted, "I am..."

The sound was drowned out.

Number 3373 moved again, its broken body springing up in an illogical way, its arms tightly embracing Kyle, dragging him into the wave of monsters.

Claws, fangs, and twisted limbs pressed down at once.

The sounds of flesh being torn apart echoed throughout the room.

Kyle's figure quickly disappeared into the churning shadows, leaving only intermittent roars and muffled thuds of bones breaking.

When the monsters dispersed again, all that remained in front of the control panel was a blurry mass of flesh and blood.

Kyle Raymond died at the hands of a monster created by his father.

But death did not stop the chaos; on the contrary, it was like a broken gate.

After a brief pause, the monsters shifted their gaze from the pool of flesh and began searching for new targets.

These goals are not on the path to advancement.

The closest sounds and smells are right here in the hall.

The researchers, who had just been operating valves and recording data while wearing alchemical robes, finally realized what had happened.

They retreated, turned, and ran away; some fell by the pool of blood, while others tried to hide under the control panel.

too slow.

The first alchemist was tackled to the ground by the half-finished boy.

Claws tore through the robe and plunged directly into the boy's abdomen. The boy lowered his head, tearing at his still-twitching internal organs with his teeth, letting out a satisfied, hoarse growl.

On the other side, two researchers were simultaneously pinned down by the fully-formed body.

The reversed joints pressed down on the limbs, and the scales rubbed against the ground.

The next instant, his neck was snapped, the sound as crisp as breaking a thin piece of wood.

There is no hatred here, nor any hesitation.

These monsters do not distinguish between masters, commands, or identities.

In their fragmented and simple understanding, there is only one criterion: whether something is blocking their way.

The alchemist's scream was quickly drowned out by the roars.

The bloodstains flowed along the talisman array into the blood pool, staining the surface with dark red ripples.

The dragon-blooded youths stepped over their bodies to move forward, as if overcoming obstacles.

When the last researcher collapsed, only the heavy, rhythmic breathing of the pump remained in the hall.

The monsters roared and surged upwards through the passage.

The city of Grayrock and its inhabitants faced their true doomsday.

　There's another chapter coming out tonight; I had something to do yesterday and didn't write it.

　　
　
(End of this chapter)