Read Novel Full Chapter 846 - 457: That Demon Named Louis (Part 2)
Chapter 846 - 457: That Demon Named Louis (Part 2)
Hans was also in the line, his back hunched into a bow, eyes vacant, perfectly mimicking those around him.
When the ladle of sweetly scented thick soup was poured into his battered bowl, he clenched his fingers abruptly, like an animal guarding its food.
The priest gave him a glance and, satisfied, looked away.
But Hans didn’t drink it. He carefully returned to the dead-end alley behind the mill and poured the golden soup into an abandoned rat hole.
A rat emerged from the hole and took a lick.
At first, it shook frantically, its eyes shining as if drunk, spinning in place before it froze, limbs straightened, unmoving.
Hans stared at the puddle of golden muck, cold sweat trickling down his spine.
......
Deep into the night, in the mill’s basement.
The massive stone millstone turned slowly overhead, emitting a low, rhythmic rumble, like a slumbering beast.
The search team pried open the floor, overturned barrels, but found nothing, and after a few times, they stopped coming.
Hans, however, knew its secret—he had carved a hollow space at the bottom of the two-ton millstone in the clumsiest way possible.
There, he hid his last half-bag of coarse wheat and a few pieces of dried salted meat, as hard as rocks.
Hans reached into the lining of his boot and found the thin, rough token of the dragon scale.
It was a low-quality token he picked up many years ago when he was an Apprentice Knight with the Imperial Border Army.
The metal was icy, yet it calmed his heart.
"The Dragon Ancestor taught people to stand with strength," he whispered in his mind, "not by drinking soup."
To survive, he began calculating each bite of food like a beast.
He ate only a small handful of raw wheat each day, chewing it slowly in his mouth until it turned pale and bitter before swallowing it with saliva.
To avoid letting anyone smell the wheat scent on his breath, he would deliberately chew a few bitter tobacco leaves to mask the flavor.
He hadn’t even ruled out the idea of escape.
In the dead of the night, Hans would sit on the steps behind the mill’s back door, gazing at the dirt road leading out of town.
As long as he crossed the hills behind Whitestone Town and walked for two more days, he could leave the direct control area of the Church Court, or so the rumors said.
But he couldn’t take that road; the road out of town had long been sealed shut.
Patrol teams bearing the Holy Emblem, ostensibly there to prevent heretics from escaping, would actually stop anyone who dared take a step out of town without a chance to explain.
Moreover, his body, marred by old injuries from years of grinding work, cut into his bones like a dull knife on rainy days.
Relying on that little bit of raw wheat every day, he could barely gather the strength for a day’s walk, let alone cross mountains and rivers.
Even more frightening was that not all who managed to escape stayed gone.
Some were caught and brought back, hung up at the town entrance as a spectacle.
Some were allowed to repent and were dragged off to drink a whole bucket of golden soup.
The next day, they stood at the front of the line, chanting hymns with euphoric expressions, pointing at their neighbors’ doors, saying, "They didn’t pray last night."
There’s no escape.
He withdrew his gaze, shut the mill door, and hid himself again within the millstone’s rumble.
As long as that little bit of grain remained undiscovered, he could continue to live— though it would merely be existing.
Surviving by playing the fool, by the mill, and by the grain he had secretly hidden away, enduring day by day.
But suddenly, one day, a turning point came.
In the thin mist that had not yet fully dispersed, the town entrance, outside the mill, the church walls, and the market stalls were all plastered with crimson parchment.
The images on the paper were extremely exaggerated, even carrying a crude and malicious childlike flair.
The Red Tide Lord from the north was depicted as an upright beast with curved ram horns on his head, beast-like fangs in his mouth, and eyes burning with black flames.
He sat in an iron chariot breathing fire, its iron wheels rolling over wheat fields, over churches, over twisted human forms.
Old Hans stood at the mill’s entrance, looking at the picture, and his stomach churned.
By the time the morning bell tolled, the square in front of the church was already packed with people.
The old priest, who usually prayed in whispers and spoke slowly, was nowhere to be seen.
In his place stood a stranger dressed in a crimson robe.
On his chest hung a metallic emblem of judgment, reflecting a cold light in the sun.
"The mechanical demons from the north are here!" The voice was amplified by an alchemy amplification array, "They don’t grow crops; they only eat human flesh!"
The crowd instinctively tensed, a child cried out in fear, quickly silenced by its mother covering its mouth tightly.
"Anyone who believes the northern lies is a hound of the demons!" The inquisitor raised his hand sharply, the crimson robe sleeves flapping in the wind, "Only God can save you! God will lead you to resist them! Resist these demons!"
The moment the words fell, the square fell into dead silence—after years of oppression, no one dared speak.
Hans stood on the edge of the crowd, chills running down his spine.
......
And so, from that day forth, the Church Court began leading them to build defensive fortifications in preparation for the Red Tide Army that was marching south.
The first to be stationed were dozens of Thorn Knights.
The warhorses looked as though they had been skinned entirely, their dark red muscles exposed to the air, still twitching slightly.
The knights atop their backs wore heavy armor, from which dark red thorns emerged from the seams, piercing into their necks and jaws, rising and falling with each breath.
A townsman accidentally blocked the road, possibly because too much gold water had dulled his reactions.
A Thorn Knight didn’t even rein in his horse; its chest suddenly surged forward in a violent charge.