Lord of Winter: Beginning with Daily Intelligence Chapter 669 - 385: The First Breeze of Spring in Cold Sand Territory (Part 3)

The instant the townsfolk caught sight of him on the street, the lively market didn't hush but erupted into even wilder fervor.

Men doffed their hats in homage, their gestures brimming with unheard-of earnestness.

Women grinned wide, hoisting their baskets high, desperate to shove the freshest provisions right into his palms.

Kids trailed after him like eager pups, the bravest ones boldly stretching fingers to brush his cloak's edge.

Pete beamed and inclined his head to every soul, graciously turning down the offerings while soaking in their profound homage.

He drew in a profound lungful of air laced with wheat and hearth smoke, a tender heat blooming softly in his bosom.

One full year had slipped by.

Pete idly fingered the subtle fray at his cuff, his mind floating back to twelve months earlier, that first moment his boots touched this soil.

Cold Sand Territory then stood worlds apart from its current glory—a voiceless settlement drained of spirit, where even the gusts moaned in sorrow.

He recalled the overcast afternoon as the Red Tide caravan rolled through the gates.

No cheers, no curses.

Just furtive gazes lurking behind door gaps, shutter slats, and splintered barriers.

Those stares brimmed with dull torpor, harboring underneath a sharp, guarded watchfulness, much like eyeing a prowling beast.

Back then, he stood mere inches from these locals, yet separated by vast chasms.

Close enough to catch the dank reek wafting from their threadbare garb, yet remote enough that his every word earned only panicked glares before doors banged shut.

To them, Pete clad in crimson symbolized yet another overlord arrived to plunder.

They shrank from him as from biting frost or the grave.

Pete refused to yield.

He summoned his Red Tide academy mentor's counsel: "Don’t expect them to understand you at first; you must engrave your rules into their bellies with your actions."

Thus, he deployed the expertise gained from Red Tide, conquering the land's miseries one challenge at a time.

First came reviving the forsaken mines.

Shafts choked with frigid subterranean floods, where prior overseers lashed folk into the depths, birthing naught but added cadavers adrift.

Pete eschewed the lash upon arrival, dispatching instead a pressing dispatch to Lord Louis.

Half a month on, hulking iron titans hissing steam arrived at the pits—steam pumps.

As the contrivance thundered relentlessly, sucking murky depths from the abyss round the clock like some primordial leviathan, the listless diggers collapsed to knees, hailing it divine sorcery.

"Stop kneeling," Pete bellowed from the sludge, "This is Red Tide technology! The water is gone, start work tomorrow, and there will be wages!"

Second, he aimed to mend their shattered backs.

Miners once bore crushing ore loads up endless ladders, spines buckling before age thirty.

Pete rallied the craftsmen guild to embed lines of timber-shod iron rails snaking through the veins.

When that premier ore wagon coasted silkily from the gloom along the rails, miners' quivering palms grazed the steel—they grasped anew that toil needn't demand their blood.

Third, revealing the fate of every coin.

Hardest feat: Pete hoisted a massive timber slab at the hall's portal, emblazoning it with a transparent ledger in Red Tide's crisp template.

Each levy, relief sack, copper's path laid bare.

"The former lords’ taxation was robbery, Red Tide’s taxation is rule," Pete declared, jabbing the ledger before the throng, "Every grain of wheat you hand over is on here. Anyone who dares to tamper with it, the Inspection Department’s knife will cut them."

As locals witnessed those figures forge into mended paths, sturdy Red Tide silos, and winter stores pressed into palms, distrust's frozen shell dissolved utterly.

Not forgetting the brand-new town academy.

Miners' offspring once wallowed in slag heaps like stray thistles; now they perch in sun-drenched halls under Red Tide mentors, chanting "Lord Louis saves Northern Territory..."

When the coal-smeared elder heard his lad voice book words for the first time, this tearless lifetime veteran clutched Pete's boots, sobbing without restraint.

So it unfolded, stride by stride, deed by deed.

Pete harnessed Red Tide's might and cunning to thrust into their world, transmuting sludge into bedrock.

Wolf-like suspicion evaporated, yielding to zealous faith and adoration.

They awoke to stern Officer Pete's divergence from lash-wielding tyrants past—he who delivered loaves, who braved storm-lashed nights to probe sagging thatch.

Such adoration transcended Pete alone.

Pete sensed it keenly: uttering "Lord Louis" fanned their gazes to fanatic glow.

For Pete had proclaimed, "I am merely an executor, the one giving you steam engines, tracks, food, and schools is Red Tide, is the great Count Louis Calvin."

Hence, this devotion channeled through Pete toward that remote, solar blaze of a name.