Castle of Black Iron

After two days’ thorough practice, Zhang Tie had gradually adapted to the movements on top of the fine quincuncial piles that was 4 m in height. He then became increasingly flexible and could stand longer on them. From the 3rd day onwards, it had been harder for those women to kick Zhang Tie off the piles.

Additionally,as he practised movements on the quincuncial piles, Zhang Tie gradually combined the five basic movements of iron-blood fist, which were used to coordinate the 36 free hand movements into the movements on quincuncial piles.

He was not accustomed to that at the beginning, as he previously practiced it on the ground. Yet he had to practice on the quincuncial piles now. If he were to step on the place several inches away from the right place, he would lose his balance.

However, Zhang Tie gradually became familiar with the five basic movements of iron-blood fist on the quincuncial piles.

Zhang Tie didn’t know that the five basic movements of iron-blood fist on the quincuncial piles were the orthodox secret knowledge of iron-blood fist. Actually, except for the imperial households of Norman Empire, only a few people knew about this cultivation method. What Zhang Tie did instantly fixed the only shortage of his iron-blood fist.

Compared to his embarrassing state when he started to learn the fundamental movements, Zhang Tie excelled in learning the shield defense skills. That was a sharp difference.

Before he started to learn shield defense skills, Zhang Tie only knew that shields were used for defense and collision. After learning it, Zhang Tie only then knew that the three-worded skill of shield use were defense, attack and hide.

Defense referred to defense, block and protection; attack referred to collision, to move forward and to break the opponent’s attacking rhythm; hide referred to the shielding of one’s attacking intention during the process of the attack and defense.

Attack, defense and hide co-existed with each other. They could convert into one another and coordinate with each other for the sake of the application.

After learning shield defense skills systematically, Zhang Tie showed an extremely high talent when he used shield for the first time.

The women’s alleged guidance towards Zhang Tie were to attack Zhang Tie with storm-like attacks with a short javelin, the head of which was covered with a cloth ball. During this period, Zhang Tie could only defend himself with a shield.

He was purely there to be beaten. Those women wanted to give him a good lesson; however, it was out of their imagination that Zhang Tie, with a shield in hand, totally changed. Besides the attack at the beginning which made Zhang Tie grit his teeth, towards the end, Zhang Tie resembled an oily iron tortoise that could never be hurt.

It was the same even though they had changed into other weapons to attack Zhang Tie as the shield in Zhang Tie’s hand was a movable armor for him. No matter how they attacked Zhang Tie, they would be held back by his shield.

Finally, as they could not punish Zhang Tie when he practiced shield defense skills, those women directly gave up their ”guidance” to Zhang Tie on shield defense skills; instead, they transferred gave him guidance on the course of ”fundamental movements”.

Zhang Tie remembered a sentence told by Donder——peaches and plums do not speak, yet there was a path under them. [1] No matter how, you could not lift one’s morality by praising him; similarly, you could not ruin one’s morality by slander and gossip.

Time was the realest eyes as it could expose one’s real personality. Only those whose real personality could stand the test of time could gain others’ respect, as they would definitely be more charming than those only with language talent.

Zhang Tie felt that he was in that situation.

He never thought that he had high morality; however, at least, he knew that he was not bad as he had never done any bad things like benefited while others were harmed and dropped righteousness or been lecherous at the sight of beauties. He would always respect them kind people; he would always sympathize the underprivileged ones; he would never bully timid guys.

This was what his mom had taught him since he was very young. Zhang Tie always kept it in mind.

As Zhang Tie spent more time with those women, they started to change their attitudes towards him even though Zhang Tie didn’t urge for it . They started to realize that Zhang Tie was greatly different from the one described in gossip.

Zhang Tie was not as mean, shameless and lecherous as that in the gossip; instead, they could even find many good personalities of Zhang Tie.

Zhang Tie was very strong-willed; no matter how many times he was kicked off from the piles, he said nothing before he jumped back once again.

Zhang Tie was very generous. Although he would joke around with them, he would never argue about little things. Even though he suffered some braises, he just gave a big laughter and never place it in mind because Zhang Tie didn’t have evil thoughts when he looked at others. After several days, they finally lost their vigilance towards him.

Speaking of being lecherous, he was only flirting with them. In daily contacts, those women found that Zhang Tie paid special respect to girls. Even on the piles, he wouldn’t attack them excessively as he just narrowed the attacking range on their thighs and below their knees.

Especially after hearing that Zhang Tie had saved a girl’s life at the risk of his own life when he was a yaksha in the sea and didn’t expect for any payment, those women’s who ”educated” Zhang Tie on the piles had gradually changed their attitude towards him.

Therefore, gradually those women started to call Zhang Tie junior brother. When they stood on the piles together with Zhang Tie, they were no longer finding ways to kick him off, instead, they taught him more.

Compared to the three-worded skill of the use of the shield, the three-worded skill of the use of fundamental movements was fast, accurate and fierce——fast referred to high speed, accurate referred to precise judgement while fierce referred to great strength. After reaching the 3 basic requirements, he had to meet the further requirements: landing on the piles as steadily as a a nail being pounded into the wood by an iron hammer; moving as fast as a bolt leaving the string which was as heavy as thousand jun [2] and as light as a goose feather.

During the days when Zhang Tie were practicing the fundamental movements and shield defense skills, the effect of the solution gradually spread.

Each man had his own circle of friend, including yakshas in the sea, senior Chen in the Pearl Field, Zhu Wenqiang, Yang Yuankang and Zhang Lin from Breaking Heaven Department. After gifting a bottle of that special solution to each of them, its effect started to spread amongst those guys’ friend circles.

More and more people would like to try his solution. Within a short period of time, most of the dozens of kg of special solution taken out of the Castle of Black Iron had been taken away by Zhang Tie’s friends and his friends’ friends.

...

On May 18, 890 of Black Iron Calendar, it was definitely a memorial day for Zhang Tie.

In the morning, it was no different from the other days. After getting up early, Zhang Tie spent 1 hour to read the last chapters of the thick book——”General History of Human Beings”. After breakfast, he started his monotonous and hard learning and practiced about the compulsory courses for fighters.

Accepting the suggestion of those senior sisters, Zhang Tie included preliminary archery and the fundamental swordsmanship into his daily exercise in the previous 2 days. Now, Zhang Tie needed to practice four courses; instead of two.

Now, Zhang Tie could only rest less than 5 hours a day. He used to leave his residence at 6 am and came back at 1-2 am in the midnight when he was tired.

Zhang Tie felt that he had completely changed himself into a machine since he came to the Hidden Dragon Palace.

When he was in the Zhixing Department, he was a set of machine for picking navy-blue iron ores. When he was in the Breaking Heaven Department, in order to make clan contribution points, he became a diving machine. After making enough clan contribution points to apply for compulsory courses, Zhang Tie became other machines.

When he was learning the fundamental movements, Zhang Tie became a machine that jumped here and there on the quincuncial piles; when he was learning the shield defense skills, Zhang Tie became a machine which was beaten with a shield; when he learned preliminary archery, Zhang Tie became a machine that had to shoot an arrow; when he learned fundamental swordsmanship, Zhang Tie became a machine that constantly practiced picking, chopping, stabbing, hacking and cutting...

Besides, he was also a machine which only knew how to sleep, eat and shit.

He had been in the Hidden Dragon Island for over half a year. Besides monotonous training and tasks, he didn’t do anything else. Compared to such a lifestyle, his survival training in the Wild Wolf Valley was as sweet as lovers who were having a holiday.

Even when he was in the Iron-Blood Camp, Zhang Tie didn’t lived that hard.

Zhang Tie knew that he had no other choice. Although he could live a more relaxed life, facing the sense of crisis brought by the third holy war between human beings and demons constantly drove Zhang Tie to run forward while he gritted his teeth. He didn’t even dare to slightly loosen up.

It was a good day. Before he entered the training field for fundamental movements, Zhang Tie raised his head and looked up at the azure sky.

The azure sky reminded Zhang Tie of that sapphire ring he gifted Alice. The moment Zhang Tie thought about Alice, he remembered his friends in the Blackhot City.

’How are they now?’

Zhang Tie mumbled as he shook his head to drive all the thoughts out of his mind. He then pushed open the gate of the training field...

Zhang Tie didn’t know that he was going to be rich in this common day.

...

When Zhang Tie entered the training field for fundamental movements, at the entrance of the Dragon Cave, Yang Yuankang and some of Zhang Tie’s friends in Breaking Heaven Department had just ended their tasks as yakshas in the sea and were checking their equipment. They were ready to enter the underground world to hunt the LV 7 centipede.

Like bezoar in ox, stone of gallbladder, kidney and bladder in dogs, pearls in seashells, there were also some precious items in the magical beasts and the mutated living beings. People could find magical cores from very few centipedes.

Centipede’s magical core was a treasure which was mainly used to form battle qi and increase the power of battle qi.

In the latest months, the purchasing price of centipede’s magical core quoted in the Breaking Heaven Department had already reached 1200 gold coins, which was almost two times more compared to last year’s.

In order to make money, Yang Yuankang and some friends decided to enter the underground world to make money at the risk of their lives.

”We’d better check our own equipments and medicaments one more time in case of the worst scenario. What was most important was that we should make sure that we’ve taken LV 1 antidote!” As the leader of the team, before going down, Yang Yuankang reminded the others.

”Don’t worry. We’ve taken them all. But the price of antidote had risen again. Now, each vial of antidote would cost us 5 gold coins and 60 silver coins, while each vial of night viewing medicament had risen to 40 silver coins. Damned! if we cannot obtain a centipede’s magical core, we would suffer a loss this time!” A person said gloomily.

”Zhang Feng, the antidote will be used in saving your life. Once you were hit by the the venom of the centipede, if you don’t drink the antidote, you would lose your life in a couple of minutes! Although it’s expensive, it could never match your life!”

”I was just complaining about it. Those alchemists are really good at making money. Many vials of antidote would be sold on the Hidden Dragon Island. Compared to them, we are so stupid. We have to risk our lives to make a bit of money...”

”You only see the thief eating meat, you’ve not seen them being beaten. Each of the alchemists who could make antidotes on the Hidden Dragon Craftsmanship List and the Hidden Dragon Wealth List had experienced many hardships. Who were born to be able to produce antidotes. Even though antidotes could bring them money, they could not be easily produced!” Yang Yuankang spoke to Zhang Feng with a smile.

That man called Zhang Feng then gave back a smile as he recalled something. He then patted on the medicament container on his waist, ”Yuankang, whether this solution distributed by you is as marvelous as you told us?”

”Trust me, when we have no weapons and rations, if we drink that solution, we could definitely last longer!” Yang Yuankang replied with confidence. This was discovered by Yang Yuankang, Zhu Wenqiang and Zhang Lin after they concluded their experiences from several occasions.

Zhang Tie’s solution seemed very nutritious. After 100 ml of that solution was drank, one could remain energetic for another 10 hours.

For hunting centipede’s magical cores, Yang Yuankang shared some of the solution which was gifted by Zhang Tie with the others. Each team member possessed one vial of the solution for emergency uses.

In Yang Yuankang’s opinion, Zhang Tie could definitely sell his solution.

After the confirmation, everybody dripped some night viewing medicament into their eyes. After that, under the leadership of Yang Yuankang, the team of 6 entered the Dragon Cave...

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