Castle of Black Iron

The Seventh National School in Blackhot City was a standard male school; there were literally no female students in the school. Courses for male students were completely different from those for female students. For the purpose of conserving resources and increase teaching efficiency, boys and girls were separated into different schools after five years of compulsory preliminary education in the same school. All courses in the school for males were for survival. Each young man entering school should be able to accumulate their survival assets in the fastest speed and at the least cost! Each graduate had no graduation certificate at all; the best certificate was surviving in this world. Thus, each course in the school was closely related to your survival. In the male school, besides learning basic Chinese, laws, and math, they also had to learn skills like taking care of seeds, letting it mature, and turning grains into food. In contrast, education in the female school would be more human-friendly with courses like music, literature, cooking, fine arts, and dance.

How to use all resources near you and turn them into basic survival tools.

How to use convenient resources and build the simplest house.

How to identify and avoid attacks from dangerous wild animals.

How to make basic medicine with wild plants.

How to deal with several common diseases.

How to use weapons.

How to increase your own physical strength...

After eight years of national compulsory education, 99% of the common graduates would leave school and enter society. They had to start their own lives. If you had learned well at school, you could be a tenant with a hoe, a worker inside a factory, or a soldier in the army —or the food of alien clans or cannon fodder, although you have a little training. The national education spirit in the Age of Black Iron was to cultivate survivors instead of wild animal wastes, in the most efficient means and at the least cost.

Of course, same as before the Catastrophe, compulsory education in this age was not the greatest. After eight years of compulsory education, only a few elite students with a strong background or exceptional talents were qualified to learn more professional knowledge and receive true elite education in more senior and mysterious places. Naturally, Blackhot City didn’t have any senior elite colleges at all since it was founded by a group of businessmen and mill owners. It only had an ordinary commercial school which was already much-in-demand for commoners.

Only the human cities with deeper cultural deposits and core agglomerations owned true elite colleges; however, they had strict enrollment conditions that only one in ten thousand students could be enrolled. To put it simply, the Seventh National School in Blackhot City had one thousand graduates each year. Despite this, for eight consecutive years, it failed to cultivate a single graduate that was qualified to enter a true elite college. Eight years ago, a Chinese talent named Li Shizhen was selected by the Continental Alchemists Trade Union. He was directly taken away after graduation. The man became the pride of the entire school, and as a result, his personal photo was hung in the exhibition room of the school for eight years. In each general assembly, the headmaster would always talk about Li Shizhen’s glorious past. The other two photos that were hung together with Li Shizhen’s photo were both legendary graduates from the school. The high-end education in this age was definitely true elite education. By contrast, the enrollment scale of ten million students a year in national high-end colleges before the Catastrophe was utterly a myth. Knowledge in this age was unexpectedly expensive and was only mastered by the minorities, a few clans, powerful schools, and all shrines and churches. Only the true elites could have the opportunity to touch that.

Although Zhang Tie worked hard at school, he failed to become an elite or a lucky dog in this age where everyone was striving for survival. As none of Zhang Tie’s family members or relatives were big figures, Zhang Tie was also common in every aspect. He was not the worst, good, elite, or crap. If it went on like this, Zhang Tie felt that he would have to follow in his father’s steps. He might look for safe and stable work after serving the military. He would strive to be a common worker in a city mill and marry a diligent woman with common looks. He would have several kids and work hard like an ant for food for the whole family until one day, he would lay in bed, almost dead, recalling his miserable and dark life like a tiny screw in this age and missing the beautiful ladies like Goddess Daina whom he had met, but never slept with. Then he would raise his quivering hand and raise his middle finger towards this motherf*cking age before kicking the bucket…

Zhang Tie couldn’t help but shiver when this thought came to mind. He entered the classroom and swore to never live such a life. Although he had long made such a decision, he especially reminded himself to live long enough to have gold coins and sleep with enough beautiful women. If one day he had to pass away, Zhang Tie hoped for such a scene: a great number of beautiful and sexy ladies would weep for him, perhaps even die for him. Meanwhile, many disobedient children and grandchildren couldn’t help but chuckle to themselves, or even LOL, that thankfully, the old man kicked the bucket.

Zhang Tie imagined that he might also live those big figures’ lives one day — dozens of pairs of underwear in the cabinet, dozens of pairs of new leather shoes, meat in each meal, and a personal maid with plump, sexy breasts and bottom...

Zhang Tie always thought this way. He always thought that all big figures would never worry about food and clothes. However, it was unreachable like an ugly duckling rolling in a quagmire yet dreamed of being a giant dragon.

About ten minutes before the technical class, when Zhang Tie entered the classroom, he found several beasts peering out the windows with one hand rubbing fast. Some of them even slightly groaned. Zhang Tie looked out a window, and what impressed him was Goddess Daina’s big breasts as she passed by the flower terrace with her slim and supple figure…

Zhang Tie swallowed his saliva…

“Bastards!”

“Bighead, what’s up! Come on! Let’s enjoy it...” the acne covered guy who was rubbing his d*ck out of his trousers turned around and suggested “sincerely”.

“No, I saw Captain Kerlin heading for our classroom. You keep enjoying it!”

Hearing this, everyone stopped and turned pale. Their d*cks shrunk in a speed that could be identified by naked eyes, like deflating balloons. Then the classroom was in general turmoil. Several people’s flesh, even the pubic hair, was caught by the zippers. Therefore, howls and wails spread throughout the classroom. God bless. Zhang Tie would bet that Captain Kerlin would actually rush in and break their eggs if he knew what was happening in the classroom…

Everyone instantly returned and pretended to stand in front of their operating tables. All of a sudden, the classroom became peaceful. Zhang Tie also went to his operating table and cleaned it casually. He then started to check whether the tools on it were well arranged. Ten minutes soon elapsed. When the bell rang and the teacher walked into the classroom with a large amount of things in hand, Captain Kerlin still hadn’t shown himself. Relaxing, those bastards glared at Zhang Tie furiously, although they dared not to be presumptuous in the classroom.

The teacher was a 50-odd year bald man; he always looked gloomy and spoke as little as possible. However, no one dared to look down on him, as the old man once made a pile of waste into a small, single-cylinder streaming machine in a single morning by using several simple tools in front of them. The streaming machine started to rotate when a fire basket was put on it. Besides the old man, every teacher in this age was great.

As usual, when the bald man entered the classroom, he wrote “man-made spiral spring” on the blackboard. He then began his lessons, and after that, he left formulas and relevant data on the spring winding ratio, compressive slenderness ratio, core diameter, and tensile strength and designated people to distribute his steel wires. Each student received three steel wires. Their work this morning was to casually manufacture three kinds of spiral springs. Receiving the steel wires, everybody started to work on their own operating table. Those bastards looked totally different from before since they were striving for their survival now. The bald man walked out of the classroom with a glass of water in hand.

The largest difference between human beings and the powerful beasts and alien clans that only knew how to massacre was that human beings could create and use tools. Springs, although tiny, were applied in many areas. Undoubtedly, creating springs by hand became a survival skill.

Getting his own steel wires, Zhang Tie thought for a while and got an idea. He kept the formulas in mind and measured his three steel wires in different lengths and thicknesses. Then, he started to calculate on a writing board. Finally, he had decided the shape of the three springs. Namely, a simple column compression spring, a concave type compression spring, and a column-type torsion spring with a round hook...