Chapter 729 — The Young Man from the North
Blade of Dawn · Page 1 of 2
It was snowing.
Pipe clamped between his teeth, Codd stood behind the broad floor-to-ceiling window of his office, gazing absently at the snowflakes drifting down outside and at the factory buildings of the works, faintly blurred amid the swirling white.
In this northern land, the first snowfall always came early; often, even before winter had formally arrived, an early snow would pay its visit ahead of time.
In the past—and the past was not so very long ago—a snow that came too early was usually regarded as a bad beginning, and was even bound up with death.
An early drop in temperature meant the early end of outdoor work, made it hard to store fuel, and forced common folk to fight a longer winter with limited food and fuel. For the poor, who had to reckon every stick of firewood and every loaf of bread to the last coin, one more day of winter often meant the difference between life and death.
So people even had a name for this kind of premature snow: the White Death.
But that was the past—at least in most parts of the Southern Region. In Codd's eyes, the scene of the first snow was gradually covering over the impression of the "White Death" in his mind. The scenery was not bad.
He only hoped this snow would not spread too far, above all not over the Holy Spirit Plain... after all, there were still many parts of this country that could not withstand the fury of the White Death.
Codd bit down on his pipe; a faint red glow flickered within the bowl, rich smoke slowly unfurled, and his thoughts drifted apart of their own accord along with the spreading smoke.
Wind drove the snowflakes against the great panes of crystal glass. This limpid, translucent material had always been associated with expense and scarcity in the past, and pieces of such size were seldom produced—the craft of making cheap, large white crystal had long been monopolized by the Typhon Empire, and the difficulties of transport, together with the Typhon side's deliberate blockade, meant that the standard window panes of every sort of building in the Ansu era had never exceeded half a meter. It was not until a year ago that Cecil's alchemy works finally cracked the secret of the Typhon method for making cheap white crystal, and large panes of crystal glass began to appear on all manner of buildings across the Southern Region.
With the arrival of large crystal panes, and with the new architectural style brought by the great Emperor Gao Yang Cecil, the "floor-to-ceiling window," a wholly new architectural element, had only this year begun to come into fashion.
As for how the technicians of the alchemy works had broken the Typhon technique with neither samples nor documents... of that Codd, a merchant, knew nothing.
This rare moment of leisure did not last long. A rhythmic knock at the door broke into Codd's wandering thoughts, and he heard his eldest son Parr's voice behind him: "Father, someone is here to see you."
The great merchant turned his head. "A representative of the Marlin Trading Company?"
On a snowy day like this, they had come rather early.
But the young man at the door shook his head. "No—a young man from the north. He says his name is Film, that he has something very important to show you, and that you will certainly be interested."
"A young man from the north?" Codd blinked in surprise. "Traveling a long way in this freezing weather is no easy thing. Perhaps he came south on the 'Highlander' to try his luck..."
The great merchant muttered to himself, a good deal moved in his heart.