October 9, Red Tide Fief.
The morning mist had yet to clear, but the skies above Red Tide Fief were quieter than usual.
There was no bustle from the streets, no children's laughter or rumble of carts and horses.
Only family after family, dragging luggage and carrying swaddled children on their backs, silently entered the Tulou buildings.
"Go inside. These are the lord's arrangements," a gray-haired old woman murmured, as though reciting a divine oracle. "The great Lord Louis... would never harm us."
No one refused, and no one complained.
Even though the Tulou buildings were cramped and crowded, they still lined up in orderly queues to enter.
Because those were Louis's orders.
They remembered clearly that just over a year ago, they had still been huddling amid icy winds and mud, sleeping in torn tents and eating gruel mixed with grass roots and bone fragments.
Back then, children froze to death every night, and the adults silently dug graves in the morning.
It was Louis who had lit hearths amid the blizzards, brought medicine amid the plagues, and built granaries with his own hands amid the wars.
Because of him, they had enough to eat, firewood to burn, and clothes to wear.
Tents had become brick houses, cold nights had hot springs, wheat fields spread below the mountains, and new irrigation channels opened on the slopes.
Roads were connected, storehouses properly sealed, and the infirmaries had staff stationed in them.
These were not miracles granted through prayer.
He had given them all of it.
This was the reality Louis Calvin had brought them.
And so today, when he personally ordered, "Enter the Tulou buildings. Do not go outside. Cooperate fully," everyone felt as though they had heard a god's whisper.
They neither hesitated nor questioned him, only spoke words