Chapter 806
Winter in the empire finally no longer means death.
When the first energy tower roared in the middle of the square, the old Tom wrapped in a broken blanket even threw away his crutch-hot currents spewed out of the tower's hexagonal cooling holes, melting snow within three miles into a stream with white mist.
"Is this tower spraying the spit of the Vulcan?" Old Tom muttered to the steam-wrapped spiral of the tower, his muddy eyes reflected an orange-red halo.
His broken blanket was emitting blue smoke, but he was unconsciously moving towards the heat source until the patrol team used a steam spear to wake up the old man who almost spontaneously burned.
A strange circle of living formed around the energy tower.
The women spread the frozen sheets on the diversion tubes to bake them, and the homeless man curled up by the iron radiator and slept. Even the wild dogs knew that they came here to have a meal with frozen mice in their mouths.
The surface of the copper pipe is covered with gray-white salt frost, which are the tears left after the melting snow evaporates.
The first time the children dared to run barefoot in Frost Moon, their frostbite-filled fingers were pressed against the copper guide tube extended from the energy tower, and they could even feel the temperature of spring.
"Look Martha! My torn socks are scorched!" The boy with coal ash on his face laughed, holding the smoked wool socks, and the melted snow water was seeping into the hot stone path through the cracks of his toes.
And his mother, Martha, was already in tears. She no longer had to cut off the ice on the soles of the child's feet this winter.
She trembled and stroked the rusty shell of the energy tower, and a rhythmic vibration came from her fingertips.
The vibration crawled along the spine into the chest, blurring the pain of her husband being hanged three months ago - that snowy night, the Steam Knight's iron boots broke her threshold, and when her husband was dragged away for his private rebel leaflet, he still had roasted chestnuts for his son in his arms.
"Living. Finally," Martha buried her face in the foggy scarf, and the smell of salt and diesel made her nasal acid.
New drilling platforms are roaring in the north, and more energy towers are rising among the ruins.
She saw the city hall bulletin board with Perficot's declaration, and the gold-plated letters were eye-catching in the reflection of the snow: "Every empire's people deserve a warm winter."
My husband's noose was still floating on the square flagpole, and the snow was falling down the rope.
The new diesel furnace completely changed the survival rules of slums.
Aunt Marta transformed the ancestral oak bathtub into an oil storage tank. The fireplace that used to burn out the entire pine forest to survive the cold night, but now half a liter of lignite diesel transported from Langdon is enough to boil a pot of hot soup.
"Save it a little bit!" She waved an iron spoon to hit the drunk man who secretly twisted the oil valve. "This little diesel is enough to burn for three days, but it's not like you, it's soft! "
The drunks laughed and threw frozen potatoes into the soup pot, and the oily flowers exploded into golden ripples on the soup noodles.
This is the first time that the slum has smelled of meat in ten years - the patrol just shot the smuggling horse meat vendor yesterday, and the half-horse leg cooked in the diesel stove was exchanged for compressed biscuits.
The cripple Dick, who was ragged in the street corner, even welded a mobile stove with scrap iron, and the diesel flame licked the cans he picked up, so that every homeless man curled up in the air-spreading shed could be distributed to a hot mouth until the patrol team held up a steam crossbow and forced them to remove these "illegal heating devices".
"Sir, this flame is not as thick as your nose hair!" Dick smiled and protected the stove until the iron hook shot from the steam crossbow ripped his masterpiece.
When the iron stove fell to the ground, the last cluster of flames ignited the oil-soaked rags, and the small mushroom clouds rising above the slums announced dawn earlier than the bronze bell on the spire of the church. Alchemy-made gray-green compressed biscuits were originally called "stone bricks".
When the ration station is distributed every day, you can always hear curses: "The Empire is reluctant to give moldy flour!"
The rationer wrapped in a military coat sneered with a cigarette in his mouth: "If you don't, get out, there are so many people waiting to lick Ms. Perficot's soles."
The team immediately became quiet, with only frozen fingers pinching deeper folds on the ration coupon.
The lame baker pinched half of the soaked biscuit batter and sneered: "Open your eyes and see, this thing can swell even more than your wife's belly!"
His bakery closed half a year ago, and now he lives by identifying the quality of biscuits for black market merchants.
When he used a gap dagger to pry open the biscuit interlayer and reveal the crystalline salt grains, the amazement from the onlookers reminded him of the crisp sound of bells when the new bread was released.
When the dock workers split the biscuits with an axe and found air-dried meat and salted seaweed embedded in it, the protest gradually turned into a fight for the ration coupon.
"I've dug up the gold mine!" The strong man with a stubble face ran wildly holding half a biscuit, and three sesame-sized meat residues were shining between the teeth.
This man, who had three ribs broken by smuggling through the northern border, opened his clothes in the cold wind, allowing everyone to see his chest that was rising and falling with his breathing - there was an imperial eagle emblem left by a fresh iron, and was glowing in the moonlight.
The "Savior" private wine brewed by the "Savior" is beginning to flow underground in the tavern.
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"Take a sip to warm your whole body, and see the dead with two mouthfuls!" The old woman selling private wine grinned with her black teeth, and the sawdust floating in the bottle swam like tadpoles in a dead pool.
Her cellar contains twelve cans of unsoaked compressed biscuits, each with a needle on the back of which is a winery who frozen to death on the street corner last winter.
When the drinkers cheered for the private drink, she always rubbed these cold stone tablets under the counter.
Black market merchants can sell them ten times the price by applying honey on the surface of biscuits. It was not until one day the heavy rainstorm washed away the granary that people discovered that the real flour they had already become moldy and poison.
"Fuck the wheat flour!" The grain merchant knelt in the green mold pile, wailing, "Where are the waterproof tin cans raised by those alchemy bitches? Quickly dig out my biscuits! "
His nails were bleeding from mold spots, but he felt a hard object - half a compressed biscuit with the double-headed eagle logo, maintaining perfect edges and corners as the mycelium was entangled.
That night, a fire ignited from the granary ruins, and the burnt smell was mixed with a strange oat fragrance.
The bronze bell on the church spire still rang for the empire, but it was curled up among the crowds who were sharing compressed biscuits in the shadow of the energy tower, and a new prayer began to spread: "Praise the warmth given by Ms. Perficote - "The tramp broke the biscuits and soaked them into the steal-coated diesel, "May her steam knight rust in the eternal winter."
The diesel flames whirred in the can box, making the smiles on everyone's faces twisted like melted wax figures.
Martha silently stuffed her son's torn socks into the diesel stove, watching the wool curl up into a grey butterfly in the flames.
The energy tower is still roaring, evaporating more snow into a pale mist that shrouds the city.
(This chapter ends)