Extreme Cold Era: Shelter Don't Keep Waste-Chapter 857 - 86: The Winter Revolution

The winter in the Empire is finally no longer synonymous with death.

When the first Energy Tower roared to life in the center of the square, old Tom, wrapped in a tattered blanket, even discarded his cane—scorching warmth gushed from the tower's hexagonal vents, melting the snow within a three-mile radius into streams of white mist.

"Is this tower spitting the God of Fire's saliva?" Old Tom mumbled at the steam-cloaked tower tip with his toothless mouth, his murky eyeballs reflecting an orange-red glow.

His tattered blanket was smoldering, yet he was unaware as he moved closer to the heat source, until a patrolling guard prodded him awake with a steam spear, preventing him from self-immolation.

A peculiar community formed around the Energy Tower.

Women baked frozen sheets on the heat pipes, vagrants curled up next to the iron grilles at the heat vents to sleep, and even stray dogs knew to bring frozen mice here for a meal.

The surface of the copper pipes was covered in gray-white salt frost, tears left behind after the snow evaporated.

For the first time, children dared to run barefoot in the frost moon, their chilblain-scarred fingers touching the copper heat pipes extending from the Energy Tower, finding a spring-like warmth.

"Martha, look! My worn socks are scorched!" Laughed a coal-dust-faced boy, holding up his smoking woolen socks while melting snow seeped between his toes into the hot cobblestone street.

But his mother, Martha, was already in tears, for this winter she wouldn't have to scrape away the ice shards from her child's feet.

She trembled as she caressed the rusty shell of the Energy Tower, a rhythmic vibration tingling her fingertips.

The vibration climbed her spine into her chest, blurring the spasms of grief from when her husband was hanged three months ago—that stormy night, the Steam Knight's iron boots smashed her threshold, taking her husband away for hiding resistance pamphlets, with roasted chestnuts for their son still tucked in his arms.

"We survived... finally..." Martha buried her face in her foggy scarf, salt particles and the diesel scent stinging her nostrils.

New drilling platforms thundered in the Northern Territory, more Energy Towers rising amidst the ruins.

She saw Perfikot's proclamation posted on the city hall bulletin board, with gold-lettered words scorching the eyes amidst the snow's reflection: "Every citizen of the Empire deserves a warm winter."

Her husband's noose still hung on the square's flagpole, the snow cascading down the rope.

The new diesel stoves completely changed the survival rules of the slums.

Aunt Martha converted her ancestral oak bathtub into an oil tank, where once they burned through entire pine forests to make it through a cold night, now half a liter of brown coal diesel from Langton was enough to boil a pot of hot soup.

"Use it sparingly!" She waved an iron ladle, tapping a drunkard fiddling with the oil valve, "This bit of diesel is enough for three days, unlike you, who'd soften at once!"

The drunkards burst into laughter as they tossed frozen potatoes into the soup pot, the oil blooming golden ripples across the soup surface.

This was the first time in ten years that the slums were filled with the scent of meat—yesterday, patrols shot the merchant smuggling horse meat, and the diesel stove was cooking a half horse leg traded for compression biscuits.

At the street corner, the crippled scrap dealer Dick even welded a mobile stove from scrap metal, letting diesel flames lick at old tin cans so every vagrant huddled in makeshift shelters could get a share of hot mush—until patrols demanded they dismantle these "illegal heating devices" with steam crossbows in hand.

"Sir, this flame's not thicker than your nose hair!" Dick grinned protectively over his stove, until the iron hook from a steam crossbow tore apart his creation.

As the iron stove crashed to the ground, its last licks of flame ignited an oil-soaked rag, sending a small mushroom cloud over the slums, announcing dawn even before the church spire's bronze bell could.

The gray-green compression biscuits made by alchemy were initially dubbed "stone bricks."

At the rationing stations, curses could always be heard when the biscuits were distributed: "The Empire wouldn't even spare us moldy flour!"

The ration distributor, clad in a military coat, retorted with a cigarette in his mouth, "If you don't want them, get lost, plenty of others are waiting to lick Lady Perfikot's feet."

The line fell silent immediately, only the stiffness of cold fingers deepening creases on the ration coupons.

The crippled baker sneered as he held half a soaked biscuit mush: "Take a good look, this stuff can swell bigger than your wife's belly!"

His bakery had shut down six months prior, now he lived by identifying biscuit quality for black market traders.

When he pried open a biscuit layer with a chipped knife to reveal crystal-like salt granules, the crowd's gasps made him momentarily recall the sounds of bells ringing for fresh-baked bread in days past.

When dock workers split biscuits with axes to find embedded dried meat chunks and salted seaweed, protests gradually turned into scuffles for ration coupons.

"I've struck gold!" A burly man with stubble bolted with half a biscuit, three sesame-sized meat scraps glimmering between his teeth.

This man, who had three ribs broken for trying to smuggle across the Northern Territory, now bared his chest to the cold wind, letting everyone see the fresh burn mark of the Empire's eagle emblem, glistening in the moonlight with oil.

The tavern's underground started circulating "Savior" moonshine brewed from biscuit powder mixed with sawdust.

"One sip warms you all over, two sips meet the dead!" The old woman selling moonshine grinned her black teeth, sawdust in the bottle swirling like tadpoles in stagnant water pools.

Her cellar stored twelve cans of unsoaked compression biscuits, each engraved with names on the backside using a needle's tip—names of those who froze to death on street corners last winter.

When the patrons cheered for the moonshine, she often caressed these cold gravestones under the counter.

The black market vendors coated the biscuit surface with honey and could sell them at ten times the price—until one day a torrential rain collapsed the granary, and people discovered the hoarded real flour had long turned into Poison.

"To hell with wheat flour!" The grain merchant wailed amidst the green mold, "Those bloody alchemy biscuits… where're the waterproof tin cans? Get my biscuit cans out!"

His fingernails scratched bloody marks onto the mold, finally touching something hard—a half-biscuit imprinted with the double-headed eagle, maintaining its perfect edges amidst the mycelium.

That night, a fire rose from the granary's ruins, its charred smell mingling with a strange oat scent.

The bronze bell atop the church spire still tolled for the Empire, but among the crowd sharing compression biscuits in the Energy Tower's shadow, a new prayer began to spread: "Praise the warmth Lady Perfikot has granted us—" A vagrant broke apart a biscuit to soak in stolen diesel, "May her Steam Knights rust in eternal winter."

Diesel flames puffed in tin cans, casting the laughter on their faces into waxwork-like warps.

Martha silently stuffed her son's worn socks into the diesel stove, watching the yarn curl into gray butterflies in the flames.

The Energy Tower continued its roar, vaporizing more snow into the pale mist that shrouded the city.