Castle of Black Iron

It was the longest evening that Zhang family had ever lived through, even without Zhang Tie’s elder brother daring to tell his parents about the dark message he received from outside. The lofty walls of the prison of Blackhot City were definitely like a formidable natural chasm for Zhang Tie’s family.

Three days. Zhang Yang had learned that Zhang Tie could not get out of the prison for three days. It was unknown whether he could hold on for such a long time inside. Zhang Yang’s last beacon of hope came from the amazing strength Zhang Tie revealed when forcefully taking his sword away from his hand.

Zhang Yang didn’t know how Zhang Tie could become so powerful. However, this amazing strength became his sole hope for Zhang Tie’s survival. In this age, strength was the real power; a powerful man could survive the prison of Blackhot City.

Early the next morning, before Zhang Yang had left home, his dad gave him a heavy purse. ”This is our savings. Take it, to make sure you bring Zhang Tie back home safe!”

Taking the purse, Zhang Yang knew that it contained all of his parents’ savings. So he carefully put it in his bag, nodding.

The moment Zhang Yang walked out the door, he saw several soldiers of the Norman Empire in dark red military uniforms. They were looking at Zhang’s door plate, seemingly intending to knock at the door.

”Hello, is this Zhang Tie’s home?” one of them asked, seeing a man similar to Zhang Tie walk out, .

In a very bad mood at the sight of the ’red-skinned dogs’, Zhang Yang became infuriated and shouted loudly, ”Wasn’t Zhang Tie caught and taken away by you yesterday? What are you here for today?”

”Who dared to catch Zhang Tie?” After hearing Zhang Yang’s exclamation, the soldier looked very startled, his expression turning gloomy. ”Could you tell me what happened to Zhang Tie? I’m his friend, Salvey...”

”You’re Zhang Tie’s friend?” Zhang Yang stared at this ’red-skinned dog’... no, the person who claimed to be Zhang Tie’s friend and became confused. When had Zhang Tie become acquainted with the soldiers of the Norman Empire?

”Yea, Zhang Tie once saved my life. I knew he would come back home yesterday after the survival training, so, I especially come here today to thank him. Considering the special case when he saved me, I had no chance to thank him at the time!”

At the sight of the soldier of the Norman Empire saying words like that, Zhang Yang immediately became spirited. Seizing Salvey’s hand, he explained, ”Zhang Tie was arrested, hurry up, go to the Military Administration together with me. If it’s too late, he might have already been killed...”

”What happened?”

”Someone framed him, wanting to kill him!”

At Zhang Yang’s words, not only Salvey, even all the other surrounding soldiers became irritated. If the savior of a glorious soldier of the Iron-Horn Army was set up in Blackhot City, it was definitely an aggressive maneuver that humiliated the honor of the entire Iron-Horn Army...

”Let’s go, we will go to the bastards of the Military Administration!”

It was truly not a good experience being in the dark cell. After only one evening inside, Zhang Tie already felt like he’d lost his nose since he could no longer smell anything. Besides, there really were too many fleas inside the cell, all of which would never care how many wolves’ strength you had.

Zhang Tie had managed last night’s time very well. Besides polishing his burning points, he had spent the remaining time in the Trouble-Reappearance Fruits. Last night, he had ’died’ four times in inside. Each time, he would be besieged by more than 500 wild wolves, over 20 huge wolves, 10-odd human eating varanids, and several lions.

Zhang Tie would always used the Iron-Blood Fist skills to kill them. Each time, he would exert his full hidden strength. However, he couldn’t yet kill an enemy with one punch.

Under constant fighting and killing, Zhang Tie’s wounds also gradually increased while his strength declined. At the lowest point of his physical strength, he would always be torn to shreds by the remaining wild beasts.

The practice in the Trouble-Reappearance Fruits was both painful and happy. Besides not really dying in the Trouble-reappearance Fruits, all the pains that Zhang Tie experienced in there were the same as the ones he would feel in reality.

He had ’died’ four times inside, and each time he felt like suffering from a cruel punishment. He would bear over 100 wounds all over his body before being torn to shreds by the wild beasts. What made Zhang Tie reassured, though, was that after leaving the Trouble-Reappearance scenes, he would not suffer from the pains anymore. They would disperse immediately, like tides and dreams. If not, Zhang Tie wouldn’t really be able to brave experiencing the pains time after another.

The happiness of cultivating in the Trouble-Reappearance Fruits could only be understood by people who had experienced it. The several hours in the Trouble-Reappearance scenes last night—many people would have wasted them by having dinner. However, Zhang Tie had experienced the tough challenges that many people might not encounter for their whole lives. Through such challenges, he had rapidly improved himself in all aspects.

In the past days, as Zhang Tie had increased his frequency of cultivation in the Trouble-Reappearance Fruits, he had also found many new features.

For example: an activated Trouble-Reappearance Scene could only last three hours at most. After this time, the energy that supports the entire Trouble-Reappearance Scene would weaken which would lead to the collapse of the entire Trouble-Reappearance Scene. Zhang Tie had found this when he tried to match speed and endurance with the wild wolves.

He activated the Trouble-Reappearance Scene of Crescent Prairie. After that, he dashed away, followed by several hundreds of wild wolves. Zhang Tie kept running for three hours. However, the wild wolves still failed to catch up with him. Then Zhang Tie received a notice before the Trouble-Reappearance Scene broke into light spots and disappeared.

This was the first rule of the Trouble-Reappearance Fruits that Zhang Tie had found. The second thing was that the more living beings he placed in the scenes and the higher level they were, the more spiritual energy he needed to inject into the Trouble-Reappearance Scene to activate it.

Additionally, during the activation, what consumed the largest amount of spiritual energy was not the living beings that needed to be activated, but the scene.

Zhang Tie had tried and found the following facts: when he activated one or two wolves, he could activate the Trouble-Reappearance Fruits 23 times at most. When he activated roughly 50-100 wolves, he could activate the Trouble-Reappearance Fruits for roughly 8-10 times. Like now, when he activated over 500 wolves and other species inside, he could only activate it four times.

The abundant spiritual energy that had surged by seven times felt a bit awkward now.

As sunlights or moonlight could not be seen in the dark cell, what reminded Zhang Tie of the arrival of the next morning was his biological clock.

It was not a good feeling to sleep with a lot of corpses in the same cell. However, Zhang Tie felt that these guys could not even match beasts. He preferred to see the corpses as the bodies of wild wolves, or something even more disgusting.

After waking up, he casually circled around the room before starting to cultivate a kungfu that he had created these days: Bear Back Iron-Body skill. He had created it when he saw a wild bear hitting a big tree using his back so as to pick the fruits that dropped off from the tree.

Since Iron-body Fruit required constant strikes on his body—and he could not serve as a flesh bag in the Iron-Thorns Fighting Club—enlightened by wild bears, Zhang Tie had considered to hit something hard using his back to stimulate Iron-body Fruits to ripening. To tell the truth, this method really worked. With this kungfu, Zhang Tie turned the negative strikes into positive strikes, the latter having a miraculous effect.

Zhang Tie had practiced this kungfu for two weeks, and had stimulated three Iron-body Fruits to becoming ripe. Similar to how his body responded after eating the previous Iron-body Fruits, when he ate the latest ones, he would still have a stomachache and would also excrete some black things.

However, the last two times, Zhang Tie found that the black things were becoming fewer. Besides, a wisp of icy energy from the Iron-body Fruits penetrated through his muscles which felt pretty comfortable.

Zhang Tie now found a plain cement wall that was vertical to the ground. Standing with his back against the wall, he kept his shoulders square and his feet open like the Chinese character ‘八’. He kept his heels roughly 40 cm away from the wall.

Once the preparations were done, he started to lean back and used his back to strike against the wall. After each ’strike’, he would stand still and wait for the dust on the wall to fall down to the ground...

Like this, Zhang Tie struck against the wall at 2 second frequency. This resulted in the entire underground floor 3 starting to reverberate with the loud ’bang’ ’bang’ ’bang’ sounds. As Zhang Tie had nine wolves’ strengths in his body and the strength as a LV 4 warrior, he was definitely more powerful than a huge bear.

The sound was so surprising that many criminals were woken up. When they found that the origin of the sound was the terrifying ’club’ where the brat had been thrown into last day, all the criminals became quiet. If this sound originated from there, it would not be strange, since nobody knew what perverted things were carried out in that cell.

The guards who had sent Zhang Tie in last night came here very early this morning. Usually, they would never come back so early. They did it because of Zhang Tie.

There was an unwritten rule in the prison: it’s normal to see dead people in the prison, and nobody would care about that. However, if the people die too miserably—like being torn to pieces—that might bring a lot of trouble to the officers there.

This was a tacit agreement between the prisoners and the prison officers. But since the ’club’ in floor 3 was too special—those perverts inside wouldn’t even let go of corpses—the guards didn’t dare to keep Zhang Tie inside for too long.

After one night’s torture, the boy would have been killed for certain. So before his corpse was made too disgusting, which might bring some trouble to the prison officers, they should get it out of the cell and report what had happened last night to the warden.

The moment the guards arrived at the dark floor 3, they heard the terrifying striking sounds that were reverberating from the end of the underground tunnel. It felt like the entire floor 3 was quaking.

The sound came from the ’club’. Hearing it, the guards’ face immediately turned pale, and they hurriedly ran towards the end of the tunnel.

When they saw the scene in that ’club’, they were all dumbfounded: the youth that should have been a corpse last night was casually striking the wall with his back. After seeing them, that youth halted, stopping the sound, .

”Morning!” he even greeted them.

”You’re not dead?” one of the guard’s cried out, like having seen a ghost.

”My life’s so good, why would I die?” Holding the bars of the iron gate, the youth then added, ”Oh, could you please get me out of here first? It doesn’t feel good to stay with a pile of corpses...”