The "Black-Iron Pact" had secured the horses and the iron, but the final ingredient for the Syndicate's ultimate leverage remained locked beneath the permafrost. Black powder required charcoal, which they had in abundance from the Northern pines, and sulfur, which bubbled up from the volcanic vents in the foothills.
But saltpeter—the "Breath of the Dragon"—was the bottleneck. Without it, the sulfur and charcoal were just a pile of foul-smelling dust.
"According to the ancient mineral scrolls of the Iron Tusk, there is a place called the 'Crying Grotto'," Han Jing said, his breath hitching in the sub-zero air of the command room. "It's a massive cave system three miles into the Jagged Peaks. They say the walls bleed a white, bitter frost."
"That 'frost' is crystallized potassium nitrate," Su Chen said, tightening his fur-lined boots. "Saltpeter. We need tons of it if we're going to arm the Iron Tusk before the Imperial Winter Fleet arrives to investigate our 'disappearance'."
"Master, the Crying Grotto is cursed," General Yan warned, his hand resting on the hilt of his guandao. "The barbarians won't go near it. They say a 'Frost Wraith' haunts the depths—a creature that turns men to ice before they can draw a breath."
Su Chen didn't look up from his equipment check. "I don't believe in wraiths, Yan. I believe in physics. If men are freezing instantly, it's not magic; it's a localized thermal anomaly or a pressurized gas pocket. We don't need talismans. We need the thermal suits."
The Deep Cold Expedition
Su Chen used 2,000 of his remaining 5,000 SP to unlock a specialized logistical perk.
[Purchase: Tier 1 Hazard Equipment – Thermal Insulators] Cost: 2,000 SP Description: Advanced silk and wool layers treated with a heat-retaining chemical compound. Increases resistance to extreme cold by 70%.
[Total SP Remaining: 3,000]
The expedition consisted of Su Chen, General Yan, and twenty of the most loyal Syndicate guards. They didn't bring horses; the terrain was too treacherous. Instead, they hauled iron sleds designed to carry the heavy loads of saltpeter back to the outpost.
As they entered the Crying Grotto, the temperature plummeted. The light from their lanterns flickered blue. The walls of the cave were indeed "bleeding"—thick, jagged stalactites of pure white crystals hung from the ceiling like the teeth of a dead god.
"There," Su Chen whispered, pointing his lantern toward a massive vein of white mineral at the back of the first chamber. "Start the harvest. Gently. One spark in the wrong pocket of gas and we won't need to worry about the cold anymore."
The "Wraith" Appears
The guards worked in shifts, their heavy iron picks echoing through the silence. The "Crying" of the grotto was actually the sound of wind whistling through narrow fissures in the rock, creating a low, haunting moan that shredded the nerves of even the toughest sailors.
Suddenly, a guard shrieked.
A shadow, translucent and shimmering with a deadly blue light, drifted from a side tunnel. It moved with an unnatural fluidity, and where it passed, the very air seemed to crack and shatter into ice crystals.
"The Wraith!" a sailor cried, dropping his pick.
The creature lunged. It wasn't a ghost; as it drew closer, Su Chen's [Market Appraisal] flickered in his peripheral vision, struggling to identify a biological lifeform.
[Warning: Extreme Endothermic Organism Detected.] [Classification: Glacial Serpent (Rare Tier).]
It was a massive, pale-scaled snake that had evolved to survive by absorbing heat from its surroundings. It didn't bite; it simply drew the thermal energy out of its prey. The guard who had been near it fell to his knees, his skin turning a waxy, translucent blue as his blood froze in his veins.
"Yan! Keep the men back!" Su Chen shouted. "Your steel won't help you here! If you touch it, your blade will shatter like glass!"
The Glacial Serpent coiled, its head swaying. It fixated on the Heat-Core lanterns the men were carrying. To the creature, those lanterns were the sun itself.
The Syndicate's Solution
Su Chen realized that fighting a creature that ate heat with traditional weapons was suicide. He needed to use the creature's own biology against it.
"Han Jing! The sulfur bags! Throw them into the center of the chamber!"
Han Jing, terrified but obedient, hurled two heavy sacks of raw sulfur onto the ice. Su Chen drew a flint-striker.
"Everyone, masks on! Now!"
Su Chen ignited the sulfur. Because the cave was rich in oxygen trapped within the nitrate crystals, the sulfur didn't just burn; it erupted into a choking, high-temperature blue flame. Sulfur dioxide gas filled the chamber—a toxic, searing cloud.
The Glacial Serpent, programmed to hunt heat, lunged directly into the blue fire. But the sudden, violent surge of thermal energy was too much for its cold-adapted nervous system. The heat that it usually absorbed slowly was now being forced into its body like a physical blow.
The creature let out a high-pitched, crystalline shriek and shattered. Not into blood and bone, but into thousands of shards of frozen scales and steaming vapor.
The Bitter Prize
The chamber fell silent, save for the crackling of the sulfur fire.
"Is... is it dead?" Han Jing asked, his mask muffled.
"It's thermodynamic equilibrium," Su Chen said, stepping over the smoking remains of the serpent. "It couldn't handle the 'inflation' of the temperature."
He looked at the walls. The heat from the sulfur fire had loosened the saltpeter veins. Huge chunks of the white crystal were falling to the floor, ready to be gathered.
[Ding! Rare Encounter Defeated: Glacial Serpent] [Reward: 5,000 System Points!] [Bonus Material: Glacial Scales (Rare Alchemy Component)]
"Load the sleds," Su Chen commanded, his voice echoing with a new, dark authority. "We have the salt. We have the iron. And now, we have the thunder. Tomorrow, we show the Khan what a Syndicate 'firework' really looks like."
[Total SP: 8,000]
The Return
The expedition emerged from the Crying Grotto as heroes. The Iron Tusk scouts, seeing the sleds piled high with the "cursed" frost and hearing of the death of the Wraith, fell to their knees as Su Chen passed.
In their eyes, he wasn't just a merchant anymore. He was a sorcerer of the Deep Cold.
Back at the Outpost, the first industrial mixing vats were being prepared. Su Chen stood over the first batch of refined black powder, a small pile of grey-black dust. He took a single pinch and dropped it into a small iron tube.
BOOM.
The sound echoed across the tundra, louder than any horse's hoof or barbarian's shout. It was the sound of the middle ages ending.
"Master," General Yan said, looking at the smoking tube with genuine fear. "What is that called?"
Su Chen looked at the horizon, where the first Imperial scout ships would soon appear.
"That," Su Chen said, "is the sound of a hostile takeover."