Chapter 64:
The "Winter Express" Royal Special Train moved like a steel dragon belching black smoke, struggling northward through the howling blizzard.
Outside the windows was a vast white world. The temperature had already dropped to minus thirty degrees Celsius.
Inside the carriage, it was warm as spring.
Victor sat on a velvet sofa, swirling a glass of red wine with ice.
Sansa Stark sat opposite him, gazing at the familiar Northern landscape outside. Her eyes held both the joy of returning home and a deep worry.
"Too slow."
Victor checked his pocket watch, his brows tightly furrowed.
"According to the designed speed, we should have already passed the Neck and reached Moat Cailin by now. But we haven't even left the Riverlands yet."
"My lord."
The chief engineer from Pompey Heavy Industries rushed in, sweating profusely, holding a fragment of a burst valve covered in frost.
"It's not working! The temperature is too low!"
"The boiler is burning strongly, but the steam pipes cool down too fast outside, so pressure can't build up. And… one of the return pipes just froze and burst."
"Steam engines rely on water to function. In the North… water is ice."
Victor took the freezing fragment.
This was the punishment of physical laws.
The First Industrial Revolution (steam age) was invincible in temperate zones, but in extreme cold, its efficiency dropped dramatically.
To conquer this frozen wasteland and march his steel legions into the Lands of Always Winter, he needed technological iteration.
He needed oil.
He needed the internal combustion engine.
A heart that didn't rely on water, burned petroleum, and could still deliver explosive power in this temperature.
Victor looked at Sansa.
On the system panel, the unlock condition for [Internal Combustion Engine Technology] still pointed directly at her: [Complete the Godswood Ritual and birth a child of Northern blood.]
"Looks like this shot… I mean, this trip is unavoidable," Victor thought to himself.
…
At that moment—
Screeeeech—!!!
The ear-piercing sound of brakes rang out. The massive inertia nearly threw Sansa off her seat. Victor reacted instantly and caught her.
"What happened? Did we hit a bear?"
Victor straightened his military cap, his eyes turning sharp.
"Enemy attack! Enemy attack!"
Shouts came from the front of the train.
"It's not wights! It's… living people! No — monsters!"
Victor drew his custom large-caliber revolver [Persuader of Truth] from his waist and stepped out of the carriage.
The Hound had already jumped down, gripping his newly upgraded [Mass-Produced Valyrian Steel Greatsword].
In the blizzard, a dozen dark figures clung to the locomotive, frantically tearing at the steel plating.
They looked like wildlings or deserters from the Night's Watch.
But their skin was no longer pale dead flesh — it had a strange, semi-transparent crystalline texture.
Their eyes were not the blue of wights, but a deep purple-black.
Most terrifying of all, their movements were extremely fast. They didn't move like stiff corpses — they moved like beasts with the speed of leopards.
"What the hell are these things?"
The Hound cursed and swung his sword.
Clang!
The Valyrian steel blade, sharp enough to cut iron like mud, struck a "crystallized man's" arm and produced the sound of metal clashing against metal!
That layer of ice-crystal skin had the hardness of plate armor!
Although the sword eventually severed the arm, the resistance surprised even the Hound.
"Roar—!"
The one-armed crystallized man did not charge mindlessly like a wight. Instead, it leaped backward to dodge, then opened its mouth and spat out a visible cloud of frost poison!
"Careful!"
Victor raised his hand and fired.
Bang!
The bullet, enchanted with a trace of fire element, struck the creature's head.
Crack!
The monster's head shattered like glass, scattering ice shards across the ground.
"Wasn't the Night King dead?"
Sansa stood at the carriage door, staring in horror.
"These things… they're alive?"
"Melisandre!" Victor shouted.
The red priestess slowly emerged from the rear carriage. She looked at the ice shards on the ground, her face more solemn than ever.
"The Night King is indeed dead."
"But this is worse."
Melisandre crouched down and picked up a piece of still-twitching crystalline flesh.
"The power of the Cold God has lost its controller. It is now spreading like a plague."
"It no longer resurrects the dead. It corrupts the living."
"These wildlings inhaled mutated cold energy and were forcibly 'crystallized.' They retain the combat skills from when they were alive — and they're even stronger."
"Mutated Others."
Victor spat the words coldly.
The old Others were an undead army that relied on numbers.
These new mutated versions were bio-enhanced warriors that relied on individual combat power.
"My lord!"
The Hound ran back, breathing heavily.
"This damn weather is too cold. The hydraulic oil in the steam-powered armor has frozen solid. The suits move like rusty knights."
"If we run into hundreds or thousands of these hard-skinned monsters, the boys will be in serious trouble."
Victor looked at the ice shards on the ground, then at the steam train still puffing white vapor.
A sense of crisis surged in his heart.
If he didn't solve the power issue and the effect of extreme cold on machinery, his steel legions would be nothing but scrap iron in the North.
He turned around, grabbed Sansa's hand, and his eyes burned with intensity.
"Get back on the train."
"Full speed ahead."
"Where to?" Sansa was stunned.
"Winterfell. The godswood."
Victor gritted his teeth.
"No matter how cold it is outside, tonight… we must light that 'fire'."
"I want that child."
"And I want that internal combustion engine that will make machines roar across the ice fields!"
…
Two days later. Winterfell.
The ancient castle still stood firm against the blizzard.
Although Victor was nominally the Warden of the North, the Stark kin of Winterfell still looked at these smoking machines with wary eyes.
"Welcome home, Lord Pompey. And… Lady Sansa."
The acting castellan (a minor Stark branch) bowed respectfully but distantly.
Victor wasted no words.
"Seal off the godswood."
"Tonight, no one is allowed within a hundred meters of the heart tree."
Night fell.
In the godswood, the massive weirwood heart tree — with its red leaves and carved face — stood silent in the snowstorm.
Warm spring water flowed around its roots, bringing a touch of warmth.
Melisandre had already set up the ritual array beneath the tree.
It was not the fiery array of the Lord of Light, but a life array fused with Old Gods runes.
Sansa wore a thin white silk dress and knelt before the heart tree. She shivered from the cold, but her eyes were filled with unshakable determination.
For House Pompey, for the future of the North, and for her dignity as a woman.
She had to bear this child.
Victor stepped into the grove.
He removed his heavy military coat, revealing his muscular upper body.
In that moment, his fire element immunity/affinity made him radiate heat like a furnace in the freezing snow.
"Sansa."
Victor walked behind her and pressed his scorching chest against her ice-cold back.
"Do you feel it?"
"Hot…"
Sansa trembled, not only from the physical contact but from the deep throbbing in her bloodline.
Her dormant First Men blood began to awaken in response to the dominant true dragon fire within Victor.
"The union of ice and fire."
Melisandre chanted softly outside the array.
"Witnessed by the Old Gods, blessed by the New."
"When two extreme forces collide, what is born will be a storm."
…
(One thousand words omitted here… System performing high-difficulty gene fusion)
The blizzard above the godswood suddenly stopped.
The red leaves of the heart tree rustled without wind, as if countless ancient souls were whispering.
A visible blue energy wave spread outward from the two of them.
Wherever it passed, the snow melted, only to instantly freeze into sparkling ice flowers.
Ding!
The long-awaited system notification exploded in Victor's mind.
[Congratulations, Host! Successfully completed deep union with Northern bloodline (Sansa Stark)!]
[Conception Judgment: Success!]
[Special Environment Bonus (Godswood Heart Tree) Detected.]
[Fourth Child/Offspring Attribute Preview:]
Bloodline: Ice Wolf King (Dominant) + Industrial Overlord.
Talent: [Winter Sovereign] (Innate cold resistance, ability to control ice creatures, including mutated Others).
Companion Beast: [Frost Direwolf] (System will gift a cub at birth).
[Core Rewards Issued:]
Technology Unlock: [Complete Industrial Blueprints for Internal Combustion Engine] (diesel/gasoline engines).
Resource Map: [Distribution Map of Undeveloped Northern Oil Fields] (located 100 kilometers west of Winterfell).
Family Buff: [Co-Ruler of the North] (Forced 100% loyalty from all Northern vassals, including wildlings).
Victor let out a long breath and held the now limp Sansa tightly in his arms.
At this moment, strands of silver-white had appeared in Sansa's originally red hair — the mark of her bloodline awakening.
"It worked."
Victor looked at the internal combustion engine blueprints in his system space, smelling of fresh ink.
"The age of steam is over."
"Starting tomorrow…"
"We're going to make this frozen wasteland smell petroleum."
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