Two years after the long night, the north wind was still howling, but it was much weaker than before. The snow had long stopped because the entire sky was dry and cold. There were no more clouds dropping water vapor.
All the rivers in the world were frozen. The Blackwater River, the Mander River, the Trident River, the Honey River, and the Green Blood River in the Westeros were all frozen. The Rohn River in the Ursos continent was also frozen at its source.
One day in the future, the human world would have the same temperature as the Great Wall. The north wind would stop completely, and there would be no more sound in the natural world. It would be as quiet as a tomb.
In this dark and cold world, Denzel felt like he was a living corpse in a tomb.
He had just brought back a basket of tree root bark from outside the city and had missed lunch. He huddled by the fire and numbly gnawed on the hard bread made of tree root flour and bran. As the flames flickered, he seemed to be hearing things.
In his daze, the voice of Old Nan from the Harvest Hall rang out. "People grow up in the cold and die in the cold. They never see the arrival of spring.
The king in the castle is no different from the lowest servant. They all freeze to death in the long winter.
Mothers kill their children so that they will not be born to suffer. They cry loudly, but their tears freeze on their cheeks … "
"Daddy …"
His daughter's cat-like cries woke him up from his trance. Denzel looked around him. His sickly father-in-law, his daughter who looked like a stick of reed, and his emaciated wife who had half her chest exposed. Her expression was dull as she allowed her infant to cry.
"Am I still in a dream? I should be. Otherwise, why would the scene in front of me be exactly the same as in Old Nan's story … "he mumbled blankly." I'm dreaming. Old Nan's story is too scary. I have nightmares.
I can't sleep well. If I doze off while plowing the fields tomorrow, I'll be scolded by the count — "
"Daddy?" His daughter tugged at his sleeve pitifully.
"Ah!" Denzel screamed. He was so shocked that the bread in his hand fell out.
His daughter looked at the black and dry bread and gulped. However, she still picked it up sensibly and handed it to her father.
"Brother is crying," the nine-year-old Dina said softly.
"There's no milk. Hannah eats tree bark flour every day. There's no milk to feed the child." His father-in-law turned over in the tattered sheepskin bedding and sighed.
He was only fifty years old, but he looked like he had lived for a hundred and fifty years.
Once upon a time, his father-in-law's loud voice could make him tremble with fear even from ten acres away. Now, his voice was so weak that it could not alarm the sparrows on the threshing floor … if there were any sparrows left.
Denzel was now fully awake.
He did not have nightmares. Instead, he lived in a real world that was even more terrifying than nightmares — Pentos under the long night.
Denzel hastily ran to the outer room and retrieved a large earthen jar from the square table. He threw his black bread into the jar and hesitated for a moment. Then, he bent down and retrieved a bronze key from the seventh floor tile in the southwest corner of the room.
He crawled under the square table and uncovered the eight floor tiles in the center. A window-sized oak door appeared in front of him. He unlocked it with a key, revealing a dark hole under the door.
The sallow and emaciated middle-aged man quietly came to the door of the central room and peeked into the courtyard through the crack of the door.
It looked like a courtyard house, but the courtyard was long and narrow. There were long rows of houses on both sides, and dozens of families lived there.
To be able to live in such a house, one must be above the middle class in Pentos. At least the house belonged to him completely. Most of the freedmen either relied on renting the houses of the Princes of Trade to survive or were burdened with mortgages that they would never be able to repay in their lifetime.
At that moment, the courtyard was dark. The snow had been shoveled away, leaving the ground and sky dark. Only the top of the low chimney of the brick bed and the fireplace could be vaguely seen. Black smoke with tiny sparks rose from it.
Without the starving refugees staring at his house, Denzel heaved a sigh of relief. He returned to the square table and burrowed into the dark hole like a groundhog.
After about ten minutes, he crawled out again. His hands, which were covered in yellow mud, were holding something. In his left hand was a shriveled apple and a frozen turnip. In his right hand was a piece of black-red smoked meat the size of a cell phone.
He carefully washed the turnip, apple, and smoked meat, cut them into pieces, and placed them into the earthen jar. He filled it with water and carried it into the bedroom.
Two years after the sun went out, the brick bed that Dragon Queen had "invented" gradually became a standard feature of the surviving families.
Everyone was already used to sleeping in a shared bed as a family.
If conditions permitted, they would even build a fireplace next to the fire pit.
The warmer the house, the slower the hunger.
"It's not dinner time yet. If we eat now, we'll still be hungry at night," the father-in-law mumbled.
"Let's eat one more meal today. Eat three meals to nourish Hannah's body." Denzel hung the earthen jar on the fireplace before walking to his wife and daughter. He split the remaining apple core into two and gave one half to his daughter while stuffing the other half into his wife's mouth.
"An apple?" The little girl, Dina, was pleasantly surprised. She carefully placed it in her mouth.
"You went to the cellar to get food again?" The middle-aged woman, Hannah, was a little angry. "We have tree root noodles now. Although it tastes terrible, it's not like we can't survive. Those fruits are one less fruit after another. We have to leave some for Jaime."
Denzel looked at the baby boy in the swaddling clothes and frowned. "He's only six months old. His teeth aren't even fully grown yet."
"We'll eat it when he grows up, when he gets married, and when he's a child," his wife said.
Denzel was speechless. "You're thinking too far ahead."
"The Long Night will last for a generation. Perhaps Jaime will never see summer in his lifetime. But at least let him have a taste of the fruits of summer," the woman said sadly.
"The Dragon Queen only needs ten years to end the Long Night. Now that two years have passed, there are only eight years left. How old will Jaime be eight years later? He'll definitely see summer, "Denzel said.
"The Red God Priestess said that the seven Gods were lying," Hannah said.
"I believe the Queen's words. Our family is where we are today because of the Queen's grace," Denzel said.
Yes, Danny had met him once when she rode the dragon to the Loen River in search of the earthen steel statue.
However, Danny had never interacted with him personally. The one who had given him grace was Jon Clinton.
"The Red God Priestess isn't the only one who said that. The priests of the other temples also said that …" Hannah's expression was hesitant. "If the Dragon Queen refuses to comply with the will of heaven, the Long Night will never end —"
"Slap!" Before she could finish her sentence, she was slapped on the face.
Denzel said angrily, "I've said it many times. This is a rumor purposely spread by the evil gods. Those filthy Justice League — "
"Denzel!" The old father-in-law lifted the tattered sheepskin mattress and stood up to reprimand him. "Watch your words. Do you think you can slander the gods?
And Hannah, you clearly know that Denzel is the leader of the Beggar Army (Poor People's Assembly), but you still dare to speak ill of the Dragon Queen in front of him. "
Uh, the old father-in-law wasn't angry because his daughter was slapped. After the son-in-law received a few gold royals from the Queen's Knight, he had the right to hit his wife in front of his father-in-law. He was worried that his son-in-law would offend the gods.
This wasn't a groundless worry. If you scolded the Justice League and your neighbor heard it, the neighbor would casually tell the priest of any temple. Usually, that temple belonged to the Justice League.
Today, two years after the Long Night … especially the "Demon Riot" tragedy that happened in Reese a year ago, it shocked the entire world. The gods and mortals were closer than ever before.
"I'm sorry, I …" Denzel sighed and stroked his wife's red and swollen cheek. He said, "You can't read, but you've heard people talk about the Secret Records of the Gods. You shouldn't be so ignorant."
Hannah turned her head angrily and avoided her husband's right hand. She said coldly, "The Secret Records is a forbidden book compiled by the scholars. The words in it can't be trusted."
"The more the gods listed it as a forbidden book, the more it proves …" After hesitating for a moment, he didn't say anything taboo in the end. He only said, "It doesn't matter who's right. It only matters who's done more. If it wasn't for the Church of the Seven Gods, Pentos would have fallen like the Midsummer Islands and the cities of the Jade Sea.
Even if you don't know about the Midsummer Islands and the cities of the Jade Sea, you should know about the neighboring Cohor, right?
They claimed that they were protected by the gods and didn't allow the Church of the Seven Gods to enter the city. In the end, the city of more than three hundred thousand people, plus the millions of people in the surrounding cities, were all drowned in the tide of corpses.
In the face of a mere hundred thousand corpses, Cohor, which was protected by the gods, couldn't even hold on for a day.
Before the city fell, Prince Cohor had nowhere to go and no one to ask for help. He shamelessly sent a message to the Holy Church of Pentos … "
"I was in the Holy Church at that time, listening to Bishop Hagan's preaching. I saw with my own eyes, Prince Cohor and hundreds of other nobles crawling on the ground like dogs in the candlelight. They begged the Bishop to send a message to Dragonstone Island while crying, 'The gods are useless. The gods couldn't even withstand a single wave of the descending gods. The gods are immoral. When they saw that the situation was bad, they ran away immediately, completely ignoring the lives of the millions of people in the city.'
"Unfortunately, it was too late to ask for help at that time. It's bad enough that Cohor fell, but Pentos is just next door … "Denzel sighed and shook his head with a frown.
"A mere hundred thousand … Isn't a hundred thousand corpses scary enough?" Hannah muttered.
"A hundred thousand Living Dead in Westeros can only raise the danger index of a city from green to pink. Only a million corpses will trigger a red alert," Denzel said proudly and bitterly.
He was a Westeros. After he grew up, he settled down on the other side of the narrow sea. Before the Faceless Deviant Ghost outbreak, he was glad that he was far away from home. Now, he hated that he couldn't go back to the Seven Nations where the danger index was all green.
"Gurgle gurgle …" As the couple spoke, the broth in the pot started to boil.
His father-in-law wrinkled his nose and said in surprise, "There's still bacon and turnips?"
"Hannah's milk has dried up …" Denzel was even more bitter.
Hannah's expression changed. She pointed at the three wrist-sized vents in the corner and said anxiously, "Quick, block the vents. Don't let the aroma spread to the yard."
Her father-in-law hurriedly got off the bed and found three pairs of worn-out socks to block the vents.
"Half a month ago, someone on Ximen Street forgot to close the windows while cooking meat at night. As a result, the residents in the nearby streets started to riot.
We thought that the family had a lot of food. Who knew that after hundreds of rioters rushed into their house, they only found half-cooked children in the pot … "Hannah said softly.
"If you really have the heart to eat your own children, why don't you join the Volunteer Corps and go outside the city to catch corpses? Corpses can be eaten too," Denzel said disdainfully.
"But corpses eat people too," Hannah said with a trembling voice.
"The ones that eat people are Deviant Ghosts …"
Her father-in-law looked at the steaming pot and gulped. He said, "After we finish the broth, make a pot of pine needle tea to suppress the taste of meat in your mouth.
Also, remember not to burp in front of outsiders. Don't poop outside for the next two days. We can't let people know that we've eaten meat. “
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