Lord of the Frozen Winter: Starting with Daily Intelligence Reports

The Morning Light Plaza was bathed in a light that did not belong to the mortal world.

It was a translucent, amber glow, filtered precisely from blazing sunlight.

In this light, the shadows of the buildings were so short they almost vanished.

The bas-reliefs and murals on both sides of the street were neatly arranged.

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Their content was highly unified: the reappearance of miracles, the suffering of saints, and the descent of glory.

The lines were precise and the composition rigorous, yet there were no personal traces belonging to the creator.

Any attempt to introduce personal emotion was considered an impurity in the soul here, and would be gently and thoroughly erased.

A faint scent of pollen drifted in the air—not sweet or cloying, but sharp enough to be sobering.

The golden feather flower was blooming at the edge of the plaza.

These flowers did not follow a random rhythm of growth; instead, they slowly opened and closed at an eerie, unified frequency.

Every opening and closing was precisely timed to an uncomfortable degree, as if an invisible conductor's hand were setting the beat for the entire plaza.

There were no vendors hawking goods on the ✪ Nоvеlіgһt ✪ (Official version) streets here, nor the sounds of children chasing each other.

A woman pushing a cradle walked across the plaza.

The infant in the cradle had its eyes open, neither crying nor laughing, but quietly gazing at the dome above, its pupils clear and vacant.

Just then, a rhythmic metallic sound came from the other end of the street.

A squad of Golden Feather Knights approached.

Their steps were perfectly synchronized, and the sound of their armor colliding was like the gears of a precision timepiece meshing in unison, without a single superfluous echo.

The sunlight fell upon them, reflecting off their golden full armor, yet appearing cold and hollow.

This armor was not worn; it had grown out of them.

Through Bio-Alchemy, the consecrated metal was fused directly with the knights' flesh and bone, making the armor an inseparable part of their bodies, impossible to remove and requiring no maintenance.

Runes glowed faintly on their breastplates, rising and falling rhythmically, mimicking the rhythm of lung respiration.

Eduardo was at the core of the knight procession, his pure white Cleric's robe appearing even more noble against the backdrop of the golden armor.

The edges of the robe were embroidered with intricate golden feather patterns, the highest symbol of the Golden Feather Flower Church—the Secretariat of the Holy Seat.

In Avalonia, this robe meant he possessed the authority to mobilize the Inquisition, and that he was one of the candidates closest to the Pope.

Within a hundred meters, everyone who saw Eduardo simultaneously knelt.

It was as if an invisible boundary had been triggered, and everyone realized at the exact same moment that they ought to kneel now.

Commoners, Priests, Monks... there was no difference.

Their movements were neat and natural, foreheads touching the ground, backs curved to an identical arc, and even the rhythm of their breathing unconsciously converged into uniformity.

This was not the Iron-Blood Empire style of fear toward the nobility; it was more like a self-evident obedience.

Eduardo had long grown accustomed to this.

Growing up in the Holy City, he was used to this kind of order, where everyone's edges were smoothed down, placed in the appropriate position, and only responsible for bearing the weight from above.

But he also knew that this feeling was not innate.

Because he didn't always stay here.

As an important executor of the Church, he spent most of his time each year dispatched to the Iron-Blood Empire for missions.

In the Empire's towns, people would argue, fear, and lose control due to greed and hatred.

Soldiers there would hesitate under orders, and commoners would tremble before power, yet they would also secretly raise their heads to peek.

Compared to that, the kneeling in the Holy City seemed excessively smooth.

Every time he returned to Avalonia from the Empire, he needed time to readjust to this obedience that required no command.

Over time, he realized that this very habituation was unnatural, and as his rank increased, that sense of strangeness did not disappear, but became clearer.

His gaze briefly rested on an elderly Priest.

That face reminded him of a memory from long ago.

When he was young, the Archbishop responsible for teaching him scriptures was a talkative old man who would share anecdotes about the Old Empire after class, sometimes even mixed with inappropriate sarcasm.

Now, that old man was seated properly in a high-backed chair in the Hall of Cardinals.

Eduardo had secretly read his memories.

There was no emotion left, no personal stance, only sections of doctrinal texts that were repeatedly calibrated and played back, like a human-shaped artifact polished to perfection.

At that moment, he realized clearly for the first time that the Holy City was not a height of faith, but a continuously operating filter.

Filtering out doubt, filtering out desire, filtering out all noise that could not be explained by Divine Authority.

He did not like this feeling.

It wasn't because of fear, nor was it because of an aversion to order itself.

Rather, it was because he would subconsciously wonder: what were these kneeling people thinking?

Such thoughts were unwelcome in the Holy City.

They stubbornly persisted in Eduardo's mind, like a fine splinter that had never been removed.

He did not hate the city, nor was he eager to destroy this system, and he understood that he couldn't change any of this right now.

However, deep down, a grand idea slowly took shape

If this system was destined not to be overthrown, perhaps it could be corrected.

It was precisely for this reason that the white Holy Seat, for the first time, ceased to be merely a goal set by his family and became a path perhaps worth embarking upon.

Yet, his father's image surfaced in his mind.

When he was sent to the Holy City years ago, Duke Calvin's goal for him wasn't high: to secure a retreat path for the family that wasn't dependent on any empire.

At that time, he was simply judged to be talented, so the white Divine Seat was not his father's initial goal.

It was only later, as his rank continuously rose, that the possibility gradually emerged, prompting his father to write and insist that he must strive for it... Inside the Sacred Curtain Hall, three candidates stood side by side.

The high dome soared above, and platinum-colored arches extended upward in layers, seemingly without end.

The Holy Hall itself needed no decoration to display its majesty; the sheer scale of the space was enough to instinctively make people quiet their breathing.

The Cardinals stood in the shadows of the higher-level corridors, their faces obscured by hoods and light, leaving only a subtle, spiritual gaze.

Eduardo stood in the center, his expression calm.

He could feel that the woman on his left, known as the Forest Saintess, was synchronizing with the Life Network within the Holy Hall in an almost instinctive manner.

Her breathing, heartbeat, and even the faint spiritual flow on her body were unconsciously drawing closer to the golden feather flower array.

On some level, she had been partially accepted by the system.

On the other side, the The Adjudicator, clad in a platinum robe, had a completely different presence.

His Divine Battle Qi vibrated at an abnormally high frequency; even when deliberately restrained, it still caused subtle tremors in the air.

It was a power that had been repeatedly tempered, existing solely for execution and judgment.

The The Adjudicator's gaze briefly swept over Eduardo.

There was no hostility in that gaze; if this were a trial, he was confident he would be the last one standing.

There were no words between the three, but the invisible competition had already begun.

Eduardo could feel the gazes from above constantly shifting focus, comparing the three of them back and forth.

These were the most outstanding individuals Avalonia could produce in this era.

They were also the highest quality candidates that this system had filtered out for itself over the long ages.

They were all geniuses, and precisely because of this, they stood here as candidates.

At this moment, the Cardinal Archbishop slowly walked toward the three candidates.

His skin was so pale it was almost transparent, as if he had been deprived of sunlight for a long time; blood vessels were faintly visible beneath the skin, like silk threads soaked in water.

Every step he took caused the golden feather flower reliefs embedded in the floor beneath his feet to vibrate slightly.

The sound spread along the stone grain, propagating across the entire floor of the Sacred Curtain Hall, causing people's bones to involuntarily resonate.

The Cardinal Archbishop stopped in front of the three.

He spread his withered fingers and held up a Holy Decree forged from gold foil, retrieved from his sleeve: “According to Volume One of the Avalonia Codex: The will of The Anointed must not be gazed upon directly, and the transmission of divinity must not be profaned.”

His pace was steady and devoid of emotion, as if he were reading an instruction manual he had memorized a thousand times.

“For the next two hundred days and nights, you shall remain with the current Holy Seat, together in Eternal Tranquility.”

As these words fell, an almost inaudible echo came from the depths of the Sacred Curtain Hall's dome.

It was not an echo, but more like a slow confirmation.

The Cardinal Archbishop slightly raised his chin, his gaze sweeping over the three individuals one by one.

“These two hundred days are not a period of waiting. Your consciousness will undergo high-frequency collision with The Crown.

He who endures is a God; he who does not is dust.”

The Holy Decree slowly closed, and the ritual immediately began.

Twelve Cardinals appeared from the sides of the Holy Hall, forming two rows, maintaining a posture facing the Holy Seat as they walked backward.

The distance, speed, and angle of every step were unsettlingly precise.

They wore the same expression on their faces.

It was neither joy nor piety, but a tranquility achieved after long-term calibration.

As if confirming that a certain process had finally entered its predetermined stage.

When the last Cardinal exited the Holy Hall, the massive door forged from white stone slowly began to close.

The door hinges turned, emitting a heavy and prolonged rumble.

The massive white stone door, weighing tens of thousands of tons, closed little by little. The dense runes upon it gradually lit up, and the flowing light patterns acted like chains, completely isolating the last sliver of natural light.

Only four people remained inside the door.

Upon the white Holy Seat, the current Pope sat upright.

His body was suspended by countless golden threads, like a meticulously controlled puppet.

The threads extended into the deep shadows of the dome, their source invisible.

When he spoke, the voice did not come from a single throat.

It was an overlapping whisper, as if thousands of people were sighing simultaneously near the ear: “Come... who can share this... vast love?”

Eduardo's right palm suddenly stung sharply.

It was like an alarm buried deep in his soul being violently triggered at that moment.

Divine Favor was screaming.

His Memory Reading ability went out of control under this stimulus.

It wasn't that Eduardo actively looked, but that everything around him willingly opened up to him.

In that instant, his vision was forcibly torn open, and the surface structure of the Holy Hall was made transparent, like a fragile shell.

The massive white stone pillars soaring into the dome were no longer load-bearing structures.

There was no stone material inside the pillars at all. It was a sickening sight.

Countless golden Nerve Fibers densely filled the entire stone column, twisting and writhing together, covered by a translucent Spiritual Membrane, like blood vessels that hadn't fully formed.

These fibers were not still; they were pulsating.

Contracting and expanding repeatedly with a stable yet cold rhythm, as if the entire Holy Hall itself were breathing.

Eduardo saw that these fibers extended in all directions.

But all endpoints ultimately converged toward the single core, following thick main lines beneath the floor.

The white Holy Seat, specifically the Feather Crown covered in thorn patterns.

The thorn-like wings opened and closed at an extremely slow pace, as if adjusting their breath, or waiting for a specific signal.

Every faint rhythm triggered a synchronous tremor in the internal Neural Network of the entire Holy Hall.

Eduardo could not understand the purpose of this structure.

It possessed no religious symbolism, nor did it conform to any known alchemical logic.

This was a gigantic organ that had completed its calibration and was maintained in a long-term standby state.

And now it was evaluating the nodes that could be connected, one by one.

The air inside the Holy Hall began to sink.

It was as if the entire space was being compressed inward by some invisible weight, and even the light was being dragged and bent toward the floor.

Breathing became difficult, the edges of thought began to slow, and even time lost its sense of linear progression, leaving only a constantly repeated stillness.

The Forest Saintess, Sylvie, was the first to give way.

Her breathing unconsciously synchronized perfectly with the rhythm of the Holy Hall.

The spiritual fluctuations on her body were smoothed and weakened layer by layer, until they approached zero.

Her pupils slowly dilated, and her gaze lost focus.

There was no pain on her face, but a daze bordering on satisfaction, as if she had finally found her correct place and was permitted to merge into a grander whole.

Her body leaned slightly forward, as if she were listening to a summons only she could hear.

The next instant, her heart stopped.

There was no violent twitching or screaming; her body lost support and quietly collapsed onto the cold floor, without even a single extraneous echo.

The The Adjudicator, Gabriel, stepped forward almost simultaneously.

His Divine Battle Qi violently erupted under the impulse of instinct, and platinum-colored light burst forth from the gaps in his armor.

However, before that power could spread, it was violently pressed back by an entity of a higher order.

Gabriel's expression fluctuated wildly for the first time—it was a complete cognitive collapse.

His Battle Qi, his faith, everything he relied on to define himself, was proven meaningless at this moment.

He opened his mouth, seeming about to say something, but the next second his pupils suddenly contracted.

A golden nerve fiber erupted from beneath the floor, piercing his chest cavity like a venomous snake.

There was no splatter of blood; the fiber synchronized with the Divine Battle Qi the instant it entered his body.

Gabriel's body stiffened for a moment.

Then, his entire body slowly collapsed onto the ground, like a shell that had been emptied of its contents.

Two corpses lay quietly below the steps of the Holy Hall.

Eduardo stood in place, having not moved the entire time.

The center of his right palm was no longer just a simple sting now.

The golden pattern symbolizing Divine Favor was completely out of control, rapidly deepening in color to red, like a red-hot branding iron pressed directly onto his soul.

Intense searing pain spread along his nerves, rushing straight into the depths of his consciousness.

It was pain at the soul level forcibly issuing a final command to him.

Run.