Lord of Winter: Beginning with Daily Intelligence - Chapter 748 - 417: The Ignited Fuse
Among the refugees, there was a brief moment of silence.
An old man with white hair trembled as he raised his hand to catch the food falling from the sky.
Dazed, he looked at his palm and then hesitantly put the piece of meat into his mouth.
Suddenly, he lifted his head sharply.
Behind him, those massive steel monsters stood silently in the rain, their barrels still smoking, yet no ammunition fell among the crowd.
Looking ahead, the Battle Commander who had been brandishing a long sword and forcing them to retreat now lay in the mud, leaving only a mutilated corpse.
The old man’s breathing suddenly became rapid.
A simple and direct thought reassembled in his sluggish mind.
The monsters behind them were not killing them.
They only killed those who wouldn’t let them eat.
Silence lasted only a moment.
The next moment, it was unclear who first croaked out:
“That’s our food!”
“Grab it!!!”
The instant the cry erupted, reason was completely torn apart.
Hunger, fear, and the humiliation of being driven to a dead end surged simultaneously.
Survival became the only thought.
They no longer feared death because it was already right in front of them.
So, they began to fear another thing, the fear of being a step too slow.
The sound ignited like a fuse and exploded in the canyon.
……
And in the tower, the color drained completely from Kael’s face at that moment.
The wine glass in his hand slipped and fell, smashing onto the carpet, the dark red wine spreading rapidly like a pool of spreading blood.
“Impossible…This is absolutely impossible.” His voice was dry, as if squeezed out from his throat.
Kael pointed at the distant chaos of fire and crowds, his tone losing control.
“This place is four kilometers from the valley’s mouth! Through the pouring rain, across tens of thousands of people…how could they precisely hit the grain depot hidden in the hollow?!
Moreover…the power of that bombardment, actually capable of blasting open the defenses, turning the food into that kind of rain…”
Kael’s brain was working frantically, but he couldn’t find any applicable experience.
In his understanding of war tactics, catapults couldn’t reach that far, and ordinary cannons didn’t have such precision.
This was no longer a matter of firepower, but a mode of attack that exceeded range and understanding, something he had never encountered before.
A thought pierced into his mind without warning.
No, it’s not just about the cannons!
Kael’s breathing suddenly hitched: “How could they possibly know…”
His gaze fixed intently on the still-burning hollow, his voice low to the point of inaudibility.
“How could they know I hid the food there?”
The location of the No. 3 mine was never in the public supply records.
It was a temporary unloading point he personally marked, only used for the Battle Supervision team’s food supply.
Camouflage nets, fake markers, patrol routes, all were temporarily replaced.
Outsiders could not have known, unless…
Kael’s pupils suddenly constricted.
Over the past half month, all those anomalies he forcibly suppressed surged up at once.
The supply teams were intercepted too accurately.
The patrol gaps were stepped on too tightly.
The actions of the Northern Territory always seemed to have foreseen his deployments.
“There’s a traitor…”
These three words had been echoing in his mind for the past half month, a chill running up his spine.
He didn’t even know whose back those eyes were hiding behind.
Fear finally pierced through reason.
Kael watched helplessly as everything he painstakingly arranged began to collapse.
The human defense line he prided himself on didn’t even properly function before two cannonballs turned it into a fuse that backfired.
Those commoners who never even dared to look directly at the knights, at this moment, like beasts driven to the edge, used their teeth, their nails, their bodies to charge at the Battle Supervision team.
By rights, this shouldn’t have happened at all.
The Battle Supervision Knight was ignited with Fighting Energy, he was a well-trained Official Knight, usually capable of taking down thirty ordinary civilians face to face with no trouble, let alone these starved people who hadn’t eaten for three days and nights, barely able to stand.
But now Fighting Energy lost its meaning…because it wasn’t one or two people charging, it was an entire mass of humanity, a vast swarm.
A Battle Supervision Knight roared and wielded his spear, thrusting the Fighting Energy-tipped weapon through a refugee’s chest, but in the next instant, a dozen people pounced simultaneously, dragging him off his horse.
The Fighting Energy exploded on him, quickly swallowed up.
To snatch the bag of flour behind him, soaked in mud and water, that armored body was soon trampled into the ground by countless feet, without even a chance to struggle.
Such was not an isolated case.
People did not care whether the blade hit them; someone pierced by a longspear had yet to fall before those behind them trampled over, someone with an arm severed still clung tightly to a knight’s leg armor with their other hand.
The battle line collapsed entirely in a very short time.
Either a crossbow from the Red Tide’s position scored a precise hit, dropping a knight before combat even began, or they were overwhelmed from the front by the rushing black wave of people, with Fighting Energy and armor losing all meaning.
“Mad…they’ve all gone mad…” Kael’s teeth chattered uncontrollably, “all gone mad…”
That wall of sighs he personally built up had collapsed.
And it had collapsed right towards him, with a loud crash.
Watching the flood of people surging towards the granary, also towards the flank of Grey Rock Castle.
The terror in Kael’s eyes quickly settled, turning instead into a kind of cold and pure malice.
“Since you all want to eat…” His voice was hoarse and piercing, “then go to Hell and eat there.”
