Lord of the Frozen Winter: Starting with Daily Intelligence Reports

The council chamber on the top floor of Skull Fortress was like an inverted deep well perched on a reef.

Heavy granite walls sealed the surroundings completely, with only a narrow skylight cut into the very center of the dome.

Moonlight leaked down from there like an elongated silver needle, stabbing lifelessly into the floor.

A round table stood in the center, with three sea-beast oil lamps lit on its surface; the flames did not flicker but rose straight up, burning with an eerie, ghastly green.

The lamp shadows were stretched infinitely, cast onto the walls, distorting the figures of those seated into clawing, grotesque shapes.

Rosa sat in one of the seats, her one eye coldly scanning the round table.

Bone Crusher Kahn was the first to enter her sight.

This beast had his feet, clad in spiked boots, propped directly on the tabletop, while his hands gripped a raw leg of lamb that was still seeping blood, tearing at it, meat and bone alike.

Blood dripped down his messy beard, tapping out a clear and irritating sound on the tabletop.

Drip, drip.

Rosa sneered inwardly; a brainless fool who knew nothing but eating and killing. Once she got the venom formula, this beast would be the first to be cleared out.

Her gaze shifted; Viper Saunders was huddled in his chair like a coiled, sickly snake.

He repeatedly wiped a poison-coated dagger with a piece of deerskin, his movements meticulous, yet his eyes were always wandering, glancing back at the dark corners of the hall every few seconds as if an assassin might leap out at any moment.

Rosa scoffed; if something really happened, what could that little knife block?

Beside him, the old charlatan Moro was whispering prayers that no one could understand.

He rubbed several yellowed divination shells between his fingers, occasionally leaning toward the oil lamp to scrutinize the patterns on the shells.

Always acting all mystical; in Rosa's eyes, he was just a piece of trash who used crazy talk to earn a meal.

Rosa glanced to the right at the empty chairs around the table. Aside from those already dead, there were two seats for cowards who hadn't shown up... As time passed minute by minute, that damp, cold, deathly silence was slowly grinding away her patience.

Rosa suddenly stood up and pulled out the rapier with a jeweled hilt from her waist.

Clang—!

The tip of the sword stabbed fiercely into the tabletop, wood chips flying. The blade was still humming and vibrating.

She looked around, her voice sharp and mean, echoing repeatedly between the enclosed stone walls:

"This place is as cold as a morgue. Isn't there even a maid to pour wine?"

"That old thing Balke better hurry up and get out here." Rosa sneered, her fingers tightening on the hilt. "If I find out he's playing me, or if he can't produce a venom that can melt iron ships at all..."

No sooner had she spoken.

The old charlatan Moro, who had been huddled in the last seat, suddenly let out a sharp, strange cry.

"Ah—!!"

That sound didn't seem like a gasp of surprise, but more like a wail forced out of his chest by something.

He suddenly scattered the divination shells in his hand across the table.

"It's not right... it's not right..." His voice trembled as if his throat were being throttled by something damp and cold. "There's no money on them... no venom... and no way out..."

Moro stood up abruptly, knocking over his chair, his voice suddenly rising into an out-of-control roar:

"It's all water!! There's water below, and water above! We are at the bottom of the water! In the belly of a fish! Run!! This isn't a banquet... it's a sacrifice!!"

As his voice fell, there was a brief moment of silence in the council chamber.

Then, laughter broke out.

Kahn grinned with his blood-stained mouth and laughed loudly, pointing at Moro with the leg of lamb: "Is the old man having another episode? Did the smell of my mutton start giving you nightmares?"

Saunders lifted his eyelids, his tone cold and impatient: "Put away your intimidating tricks, Moro. If you could really calculate to this extent, you wouldn't be stuck in the last seat."

A few dry laughs echoed between the stone walls, forcefully suppressing that eerie lingering feeling.

But Moro could no longer hear anything.

He only felt the ground beneath his feet slowly rising and falling, as if the belly of some giant creature were breathing.

Like a madman, he pushed aside the chairs in his way and stumbled toward the closed oak doors.

At the very moment his hand was about to touch the doorknob.

The door slid open silently inward.

Moro couldn't stop himself and crashed directly into a stiff, cold embrace.

Balke finally made his appearance.

He stood at the door, one hand steadily supporting the old charlatan's shoulder, as if helping a drunken old friend.

Rosa's one eye narrowed slightly; the man before her was in a state that was disturbingly good.

The old man who needed a cane, whose face was covered in age spots and who seemed ready to drop dead at any moment, was gone.

Now, Balke stood with his back straight, wearing a well-tailored scarlet formal suit.

His hair was black and thick, his hairline was excessively neat, his face was glowing with health, and his skin was so tight he didn't look like someone of his age.

Moro shuddered violently in his arms.

He froze instantly, even his scream stuck in his throat, unable to come out.

Balke was smiling, the corners of his mouth stretched into an excessively wide arc, but his eyes hadn't blinked once in over a minute.

With his other hand, he held a woman; she was veiled in thick black gauze, her steps silent, her hem gliding along the floor, her toes completely invisible.

Balke gently pressed Moro back into his chair, his movements overly tender, yet leaving distinct purple finger marks on the other's arm.

"Why run, Moro? The banquet has only just begun. My apologies, friends, for preparing this..."

Balke paused, his smile unchanged: "...feast, I took a little time to carefully select the ingredients."

The ghastly green lamp light flickered behind him, illuminating that face to look excessively young.

The smoothness of that skin wasn't from good maintenance, but rather like a corpse that had been soaked in cold water for a long time, swollen to the limit, smoothing out all the wrinkles.

One by one, the gazes around the round table fell upon Balke.

Viper Saunders narrowed his eyes, the dagger between his fingers spinning rapidly, the blade pulling out an afterimage in the ghastly green light.

As a high-level Extraordinary Knight, he could clearly sense that within that old thing's body, life force was surging in a way that defied common sense.

It wasn't the recovery of a withered tree in spring. It was more like a skin being forcibly filled by something external.

Saunders licked his dry lips, his voice cold and greasy: "Hey, old Balke.

It seems you've not only found a weapon to deal with iron ships but also happened to scoop up a bucket of succubus bathwater?"

He laughed without concealment, his gaze scraping over Balke's face like a knife.

"This skin is so tender... I almost want to peel it off whole and make myself a new pair of gloves."

As he finished speaking, a few low chuckles rang out in the council chamber, and killing intent flowed shamelessly through the air.

Balke seemed completely oblivious to these malicious gazes.

He picked up a silver fork, its tines piercing into a plate, lifting a piece of raw, slightly quivering fresh organ.

Dark red juices dripped down the silver tines, landing on the snowy-white napkin like a blooming blood flower.

He put the thing into his mouth, his jaw only slightly opening, his Adam's apple sliding up and down, letting out a greasy swallowing sound.

"Gulp."

It was the sound of a mollusk sliding down the esophagus, swallowed whole.

Then he looked up, revealing that same smile, whose arc at the corners of the mouth hadn't even changed.

"This is a blessing from the deep sea, Saunders." His voice carried a murky echo. "As long as you are obedient, everyone can... be reborn."

When those words fell, the air seemed to freeze instantly.

Suddenly, Bone Crusher Kahn stood up abruptly.

As a half-step Peak Knight who had rampaged across these seas for thirty years, his patience had reached its limit.

He had never been good at listening to riddles, and even less could he tolerate being played for a fool.

"Enough!" This roar was like a clap of thunder.

The ground beneath his feet let out a dull groan, and spiderweb-like cracks instantly spread frantically outward from his war boots.

Earth-yellow Battle Qi erupted from his body like a volcano that had been suppressed for too long.

It was pure power-type Battle Qi, heavy and violent, carrying enough brute force to crush rocks, instantly filling the entire council chamber.

He kicked the edge of the round table.

"Boom—!"

The heavy, solid round table was flipped over directly.

Soup, organs, and grease splashed through the air, pitter-pattering against the stone walls and lamp stands; the ghastly green flames wavered violently.

Kahn threw back his head and roared, the sound exploding under the dome, making eardrums ache: "To hell with your rebirth!! I didn't come all this way to look at your wax-coated dead face!"

He stepped forward, his massive fist raised high.

Battle Qi was forcibly compressed in front of his knuckles, the air squeezed into a piercing sonic boom.

This punch gathered his lifelong cultivation; even a heavy-armored rhino would be smashed into meat paste on the spot.

"Hand it over! Or I'll crush that head of yours that's pretending to be young!!"

The fist swung down.

The wind pressure was like an invisible battering ram, slamming toward the main seat.

Yet Balke did not dodge, nor did he even blink those thin eyelids once.

That excessively young face still wore that perfect and stiff smile, as if the lethal iron fist smashing down before him was nothing more than a negligible breeze.

At the moment the wind from the punch was about to touch the tip of his nose.

He merely slowly raised his swollen left hand, which had been hidden in his sleeve.

Boom—!

Fist and palm met.

A wave of air exploded in the enclosed council chamber, like a muffled thunderclap compressed to the limit.

The ghastly green lamp light was instantly pulled into distorted lines; the already decayed tapestries around them couldn't withstand the impact, the fabric tearing apart as mold and stone chips scattered like a rainstorm.

But Kahn's heavy fist, carrying all the Battle Qi of a half-step Peak Knight and enough to shatter city gates, stopped.

It stopped an inch before Balke's swollen left palm, as if it had hit an invisible wall.

Balke's arm was chillingly steady, without even a single muscle fiber twitching.

The air between the two was forcibly squeezed, letting out a low groan.

In the chaotic airflow kicked up by the impact, the wide captain's tricorne hat on Balke's head was blown off completely.

The hat tumbled through the air a few times, lost its direction, and landed with a "thwack" in a dark corner.

Kahn was stunned for a moment, and in a life-and-death struggle, a moment was enough to be fatal.

In the council chamber, a deathly silence descended.

All eyes uncontrollably looked up, staring fixedly at Balke's exposed crown.

There was no hair there, not even... any scalp.

The upper part of his skull seemed to have been neatly sliced off by some precise alchemy tool, forming an open bone bowl.

And within that hollow bone bowl, a mass of pinkish soft-bodied organism was pulsating.

It was translucent, moist, and had a sickly oily sheen.

It looked like a giant mutated brain exposed to the air, or like a soft-bodied octopus forcibly stuffed into a cranial cavity.

Countless tiny, translucent tentacles extended from its edges, like plant roots, stabbing deep into Balke's cerebral cortex, even penetrating the base of the skull and disappearing behind the eyeballs.

With every rise and fall of breath, that mass of flesh would gently contract, making a viscous and clear watery sound.

"Guji, guji."

Rosa gasped, her stomach churning, acid rushing up her throat.

That wasn't some miracle of rejuvenation at all. It was live parasitism.

This body called Balke was nothing more than a carefully maintained skin, a fresh petri dish maintaining basic functions.

Kahn was the closest; he could even smell the fishy-sweet scent radiating from that mass of flesh and see the twitching of every micro-vessel on it.

At that moment, the fury in the bandit's eyes was forcibly drained away, leaving only the most primitive fear.

Balke tilted his head. The movement was somewhat stiff, causing the mass of flesh on his head to wobble slightly.

"Oh dear..." His voice rang out, carrying a hint of hypocritical regret: "The hat fell off. Being disheveled in front of guests... that's very impolite."

Before his voice had even faded, his left hand, which had caught Kahn's fist, suddenly clenched its five fingers.

"Crack!"

Without any warning, a tooth-aching sound of shattering rang out.

The Battle Qi armor Kahn was so proud of disintegrated like brittle glass.

Immediately after, his fist, that iron fist tempered for thirty years, was crushed in Balke's palm like a rotten tomato.

"Aaaaaah—!!"

The shrill scream had just burst from his throat when it came to an abrupt halt.

Because Balke's right hand was as fast as a bolt of red lightning; he grabbed Kahn's screaming face, five fingers sinking deep into the other's facial bones.

"Too noisy." Balke smiled, his fingers gently closing together.

"Splat!"

Like crushing a ripe watermelon, red and white matter instantly sprayed out.

Thick blood splashed onto Balke's face and also onto the pink parasitic brain atop his head. 𝒇𝓻𝓮𝓮𝙬𝙚𝒃𝒏𝓸𝙫𝒆𝙡.𝓬𝓸𝒎

The soft-bodied organism, which had been somewhat lethargic, trembled with excitement the moment it touched the scalding blood.

Countless tiny tentacles danced frantically, greedily sucking up the nutrients that ~Nоvеl𝕚ght~ had splashed onto it.

Moist blood flowed along the tentacles, making the thing look even more vivid and plump, even letting out a pleasant "guji" sound.

Amidst that nauseating sucking sound.

The headless corpse twitched twice and slumped softly to its knees at Balke's feet.

In the hall, a deathly silence.