Lord of Winter: Beginning with Daily Intelligence

The moment the green mist fused into his consciousness, Louis’s actions paused for an instant.

It wasn’t because of pain, but due to an extremely jarring sensory mutation.

It was an acrid sensation so intense that it made his teeth ache, suddenly exploding in the depths of his mind like countless invisible needles, probing madly.

Probing every subtle crevice of his soul, seeking any possible loose interface.

Meanwhile, whispers began to emerge, endlessly overlapping and replaying.

"What gives you the right... that should be mine..."

"You just got lucky..."

"You’re merely a chosen vessel..."

"Pull him down..."

"Let him taste the feeling of rotting in the mud..."

Amidst this noise, the sea of consciousness itself began to change.

The jade green toxic fog, like wildly growing thorns, spread from the void.

They did not rush directly towards the platinum primordial heart in the center of the sea of consciousness but instead bypassed it.

They seemed to be imitating, with the green mist twisting and reshaping frantically, attempting to construct a similarly structured island within the sea of consciousness.

The outline was repeatedly adjusted, layers continuously stacked, even the rhythm of energy flow was roughly aligned with the rotational frequency of the primordial heart.

Just as the false island was about to stabilize into form...

The primordial heart stopped spinning, and the sea of consciousness fell into a brief silence.

Immediately, the platinum starlight cut along the edge of the false island’s structure like an extremely precise scalpel.

Stripping away all the layers of luster used for disguise.

The façade constructed by the green mist instantly collapsed.

What was exposed was merely a hollow and chaotic core of thorns.

The red force then pressed down, transforming into a slowly rotating gigantic millstone.

Scarlet patterns spread across the bottom layer of the sea of consciousness, engulfing the root systems of thorns attempting to flee.

The deep purple aura followed, turning into countless invisible mouths that opened in the sea of consciousness, precisely gnawing at the high-energy remnants that had been stripped and shattered.

The pink force descended last, like a gentle and dense net, covering the remaining agitation.

The sharp fluctuations were slowly wrapped and smoothed over.

The sharpness was dulled, the desire to resist suppressed.

The jade green thorns were decomposed and reprocessed one by one.

The sea of consciousness returned to stability.

Familiar with the process, Louis did not rush to open his eyes but allowed himself to drift into the dark current formed by the remnants of old memories.

It wasn’t a complete timeline, more like a river shattered and reassembled, with blurred fragments beneath the surface.

He slowed down his breathing, gathering all extraneous thoughts, and began to capture them one by one.

The first scene that emerged was of a charred sky.

Huge winged creatures perched above the clouds, their shadows engulfing the entire land.

With each beat of their wings came a storm; each breath, a collapse of climates.

On the ground, humans lay naked in the mud, trampled like ants, flung by the gusting air currents, only to crash down into a mangled heap.

The scene abruptly switched.

On a temporarily constructed rock platform, a black-haired man in strange robes stood at the center of an array.

The array’s structure was complex and ancient, its lines entwined with a kind of block script, rather than usual demon pattern logic of this world.

An ancient dragon was forcibly bound at the center of the array.

It roared and struggled, dragon might pressing down like a tangible mountain, yet was dismantled layer by layer by the array.

The black-haired man thrust a sword into the dragon’s chest cavity, forcibly extracting the still-pulsing magic core.

Behind him, a somewhat younger blond man awkwardly assisted in adjusting the array’s patterns.

The scene jumped again.

The blond man had aged.

He lay beside a furrow, upon freshly turned earth, with the scent of crops nearing maturity in the air.

He died peacefully, with no fear or regret on his face.

That emaciated hand tightly clutched a key.

The people around were kneeling on the ground weeping, with heartfelt grief and gratitude.

To commemorate him, the survivors gathered spontaneously, initially in just a simple stone house.

Later the stone house became a church.

Time was fast-forwarded here.

Louis saw a pope obsessed with art and symbolism, standing alone in a secret chamber.

He opened the sealed box that had been passed down through generations.

Inside the box were two jade green eyeballs preserved in liquid.

The pope did not retreat.

He didn’t even feel fear.

In his eyes, they were relics left by God, treasures from the primordial era.

"It’s too lonely," the pope murmured softly, with a near-fanatical devotion in his tone, "It needs to see the light again."

The scene began to distort.

The Golden Thistle Crown, which was originally just a decoration, was placed on the white throne; at first, it was merely symbolic, an extension of faith.

Then it began to grow, small golden thorns pierced through the inside of the crown, silently embedding into the pope’s scalp, burrowing into his brain.

"As long as it can make the Church Authority Country great again..." the previous pope knelt on the ground, his voice trembling with pain, yet he did not flinch, "I am willing to sacrifice everything."

The thorns slowly and patiently siphoned away brain matter and consciousness.

The scene collapsed again, forcibly pieced together.

The last fragment emerged.

Eduardo stood there, trembling all over, with sweat soaking through his back.

He was pinned to the spot by an irresistible pressure.

Louis could even feel through the memory remnants the searing pain that pierced the soul.

Countless thorns cascaded like waterfalls from the dome, swiftly enveloping Eduardo’s body.

Fear was frozen in his eyes.

The scene completely shattered.

Louis suddenly opened his eyes.

Reality returned to his senses, everything regaining clarity.

A fleeting, deep jade green flashed briefly in his pupils, then quickly disappeared.

The thoroughly tamed green power flowed back along his consciousness, merging once again into the sea of awareness.

The fifth halo quietly took shape.

It did not approach the core, instead hovering at the outermost layer, like a circular defensive line bristling with thorns.

Louis could clearly feel the changes it brought about.

The first ability was that nothing appeared whole in his eyes, only as structures.

The connective points of a creature’s tendons, the obstructions in energy circuits within an array, overlooked gaps in tactical systems... all fragile points would be instinctively marked.

And the thorns on the mental plane could be projected outward.

They were invisible and silent, yet could pierce the energy core, disrupt spellcasting, and forcibly block the operation of a particular ability.

On a deeper level, in close proximity, he could even temporarily borrow one of the opponent’s traits, resistances, or specializations.

Of course, like other mists, this wasn’t all it could do; other abilities needed to be slowly developed by Louis.

Louis didn’t immerse himself in the feedback from the power; his attention immediately shifted to the newly acquired memories.

In those fragmented scenes, the symbols written by the black-haired man were not this world’s universal script, but the Chinese characters he was most familiar with.

He also thought of the pronunciation of the spell, its essence resembling the phonetic structure of Chinese more closely.

A conclusion naturally formed in his mind.

The so-called Primordial Mage was likely not a native of this world either.

He might have come from the same place as Louis.

It’s just that the memories about that person were still incomplete.

Many clues had already been gnawed away by the long history.

Louis slowly exhaled a breath.

The truth was not yet complete, but he was one step closer.

......

Weir’s crimson shield had persisted for too long.

Under high-frequency oscillation, the Fighting Energy began to heat up, like red-hot iron repeatedly forged.

Thudding impacts continuously reverberated on the shield surface, each strike sending ripples across the light membrane, and heat waves backfiring along the Fighting Energy circuits made his arm slightly numb.

He gritted his teeth, sweat sliding down his forehead into his eyes, too busy to wipe it away.

Beside him, Sacco was already in a sorry state.

The guy had dulled two Greatswords, with dark reddish Fighting Energy enveloping the blade, each swing accompanied by the dull sound of flesh being torn.

He was covered in green monster blood, with broken bones wedged in the crevices of his armor, looking like a bloodied man emerging from a swamp.

They were advancing, yet it seemed more like an endless grind.

For every step forward, three more layers of corpses had to be paved beneath their feet.

Severed limbs writhed on the fleshy ground, and half-dead stitched monsters tried to drag the knights’ ankles with teeth and remaining arms.

While not life-threatening, it was an exhausting siege akin to torture.

"Damn it!" Sacco kicked away a twitching half-body creature, his roar echoing in the corridor, "These things are endless! How long has the Lord been inside?!"

"Shut up! Maintain formation! Accelerate the advance!"

Weir took a deep breath, squeezing orders out from his throat: "Even if we pave the way with bodies, push forward."

The knights made no response, but all were gritting their teeth as they progressed.

They didn’t fear dying here; they feared for the Lord who had already ventured alone into the depths of the darkness.

Just as Sacco was about to once again burst his Fighting Energy and forcibly break through the wall of flesh and bone, a mutation occurred.

The oppressive, nauseating sensation that had been pressing on their chests suddenly vanished.

As if the source had been directly severed.

"Buzz——!"

A low resonance swept across the air, then quickly returned to dead silence.

The charging horde of stitched monsters suddenly froze in unison.

The next second, they began to collapse, the points of unnatural splicing losing support, like puppets with their strings cut.

Six-legged centaur monsters, their upper and lower halves simultaneously dislocated and fell to the ground, turning to ash.

The flesh chunks on the walls rapidly withered and shrunk, peeling off the skeletons in large patches, splattering onto the ground like rotting mud.

Thousands of monsters lost their vitality in the same instant, disintegrating into a nauseating mess of parts, leaving only the sound of viscous fluid flowing.

Sacco’s sword almost toppled him as it swung through empty air.

He stood there, staring dumbfounded at the mountainous pile of rotting flesh debris, his Adam’s apple bobbing once.

"Damn, did they just commit mass suicide?" Weir also froze for a moment.

The next moment, Weir sharply lifted his head, in his crimson eyes a nearly uncontrollable gleam bursting forth.

"No." His voice trembled, yet he couldn’t suppress the surge of joy, "It’s the source."

Weir gripped the sword hilt tightly, speaking almost gritting his teeth: "The Lord resolved the source."

"Everyone, listen up!" He suddenly turned around, his voice abruptly rising, "Release the defense formation!"

The crimson shield dispersed with a roar.

"Charge! Go to support the Lord! Now! Immediately!"

And so one hundred Red Tide Knights, disregarding conserving their strength, and the slippery muck underfoot that made it hard to stand firm, sprinted forward like mad.

......

After the last corner, ahead was the flesh-like giant door leading to the central hall.

Louis walked out from the shadows at an unhurried pace, his black army coat neat as new, without a single crease.

His white gloves were glaringly white, immaculate and starkly out of place with everything around, as though some invisible force repelled all external filth from coming near.

His expression was calm, as if he had just taken a stroll in a garden.

Weir’s rush almost made him stumble and fall to his knees.

He looked up, his voice noticeably trembling: "L-Lord? Are you injured?"

But Louis carelessly laughed, "What could possibly happen to me, let’s go, we’ll talk on the ship."