Castle of Black Iron

For years to come, people would still consider what the Zhen Clan in Heavens Cold City, Jinyun Country of Waii Sub-Continent did on July 7th, 890 of Black Iron Calendar as the symbolic event of the arrival of the Third Holy War between humans and demons by many people.

The arrival of the previous 2 holy wars between humans and demons were both symbolized by human cities being destroyed or occupied by demons. However, the event in Heavens Cold City was not launched by the demons themselves, but Heavens Cold City still collapsed. Although it was demons’ lackeys and remnants of Three-Eye Association, this event still started the Third Holy War.

According to the public information, before the event in Heavens Cold City, there were in total, a population of over 1.3 million in Heavens Cold City. After that event, although with the efforts and rescue from all parties, less than 30,000 people survived. From then on, Heavens Cold City had deteriorated into a ghost city.

The event in Heavens Cold City was a tragedy of the human race. If you wanted to find something positive from this tragedy of 1 million casualties, you might find that those who were still puzzled about holy war became clear-minded at once after that.

This event was like thunder on a sunny day as it woke up many people who were still not well prepared for the coming holy war. After the information that was only known by a minority of people was released to the public, most of average people had more time to prepare for the coming drastic change.

It wasn’t only commoners who were stunned. Even those who had prepared for the coming holy war had been shocked by this event. especially for the later. After knowing the details of the event in Heavens Cold City, everybody knew that the Third Holy War would be unprecedented.

The reason that big figures made this judgment was that worm in Zhen Clan which caused the event in Heavens Cold City.

The worm being broken was not common. It was the terrifying living being of the demons——puppet worm.

This kind of worm appeared late into the Second Holy War. Because of its appearance, the Second Holy War lasted another 15 years. Billions of people died directly or indirectly because of this kind of worm. Some human historians even asserted that if puppet worm appeared five decades earlier or if the demons realized mass-production of puppet worms, the human race might have disappeared today.

Puppet worms didn’t have powerful fighting strength or lethality but they were terrifying due to the following 2 reasons.

First, a mature puppet worm was like a terrifying queen ant or queen bee as it could lay hundreds of thousands of eggs a day. Their eggs were very small as they were only several times larger than common colibacillosis, namely 15-30 microns. People couldn’t see them with the naked eye. We could only see them through a microscope.

Additionally, eggs of puppet worms had super terrifying survival capability and environmental adaptability like some powerful bacteria——Under -50 ℃, their eggs could survive for half a year; under 120℃, their eggs could survive longer than 48 hours. Most common pesticides and sterilization drugs were ineffective against their eggs.

Once the egg entered the human body, it could reach people’s brain through blood circulation. After that, it started to grow and incubate in people’s brain. When it matured in people’s brain, its host would die. As a result, the host’s body would become a walking dead under the control of that parent puppet worm. The host would then have no self-awareness, sense of pain or feelings, and liked to kill and swallow the blood and flesh of all the living beings, even more ferocious than wild beasts.

Even wild beasts had spirituality. The one acting as the host of eggs of a puppet worm was not even a man at all. It was only a zombie with people’s skin, blood and flesh.

Towards the end of the Second Holy War, demons had built tens of millions of puppet armies in only a few years through a few puppet worms which brought a huge catastrophe to the whole human world.

It could be said that each puppet worm cultivated by demons had killed many people.

For the human race, the puppet worm was an almost unrivaled living being. After paying a great price for that, people started to know the properties of this terrifying living being.

Eggs of puppet worm were very powerful, they were hardly discovered and eliminated. However, they had a weakness——all the eggs relied on the existence of the parent puppet worm very much. Since their birth, each puppet worm had established a mysterious, permanent contact with the parent puppet worm.

Although puppet worms could survive many harsh conditions, even after incubation, as long as they left the parent puppet worm about 200 km or longer, they would die without exception. All the eggs relied on the parent puppet worm.

Although the parent puppet worm could control numerous brains hosted by its eggs, it could not protect itself as it was very weak and needed other puppet worms’ protection, without which, even a dog could kill it by eating it, let alone a person.

Furthermore, it took eggs 4 years to turn a host into a zombie. During this period, if the parent puppet worm suddenly died, all the eggs would complete incubation in an extremely short period. Eggs that complete incubation in this way would be out of the control of the parent puppet worm. Instead, they started to attack and destroy any living beings, including those who were hosted by eggs from a different parent puppet worm.

This destructive attack was like revenge for the death of the parent puppet worm. They were driven mad and became irresistible within the effective distance from the place where the parent puppet worm died.

Although Zhang Quan just broke a parent puppet worm, actually, he killed all the people who were being hosted by the eggs of that parent puppet worm.

According to the survey and analysis of this event, when the Zhen Clan ruled Heavens Cold City, the Zhen Clan threw the eggs of the parent puppet worm into the running water supply system in Heavens Cold City, letting them easily enter mouths of about 1 million people, including soldiers and common citizens and find their own hosts. Knowing such a grim means they used, everybody was shocked.

What made someone more frightened and surprised was not puppet worms themselves, but the fact that puppet worm was in the Zhen Clan’s hand.

A puppet worm was not a cheap cabbage as it was extremely precious for the demons. In the Second Holy War, only very few demon armies were provided with one puppet worm, which could only be managed by the colonel of the army. However, the Zhen Clan had one. What did this mean?

The Zhen Clan was a member of Three-Eye Association, the remnants of demons while Three-Eye Association was the peripheral force of demons among the human race. However, the extremely precious puppet worm appeared in the hand of the peripheral force of demons. What about demons themselves? How many puppet worms did they truly have? Whether demons had cultivated more powerful puppet worms? How many remnants of Three-Eye Association like the Zhen Clan were hiding across the Waii Sub-Continent?

These were the most important questions.

For smart guys who knew the details of this event, now that demons’ lackeys had started to throw the eggs of a parent puppet worm in Heavens Cold City, the Third Holy War would break out in less than 4 years based on the time that eggs of parent puppet worms need to incubate.

Actually, it should be faster as people didn’t know how long ago the Zhen Clan threw the eggs of the parent puppet worm into Heavens Cold City. If the Zhen Clan had just thrown them into the water supply system of Heavens Cold City yesterday, the Third Holy War would break out in 4 years. But if they had thrown them inside 1 year or 2 years ago, less time was left.

If not the arrival of Third Holy War, the Zhen Clan would never dare to change so many people into zombies controlled by a parent puppet worm. If they dared to do that, the Zhen Clan would become the public enemy of the human race and be eliminated at once.

Only at the beginning of the holy war or after it started did Zhen Clan dare to do such a merciless thing in Heavens Cold City with demons as its reliance.

Therefore, when those eggs in Heavens Cold City would complete their incubation if their parent puppet worm was not killed was very important.

Certainly, as the participant and witness of the event in Heavens Cold City, Zhang Tie gradually knew about the above information. However, after receiving the first order, all the clan fighters and elites of Huaiyuan Palace in Bluestone Pass Fort felt strange.

The order was delivered from the airship——all the elites of Huaiyuan Palace in Bluestone Pass Fort should chop off all the heads of the Zhen clan’s soldiers as fast as possible. What a bloody yet puzzling order!

When they executed this order, many people were confused, including Zhang Tie. But when the greater part of the corpses’ heads were chopped off and the rest corpses whose heads had not been chopped off started to stand up by twisting their bodies, all the girls present were scared and started to cry...