Castle of Black Iron

In any country, region, or time, education would have its natural defects and weaknesses. Education was designed for the interests and demands of the rulers. Since the rulers of Blackhot City required the schools to raise soldiers, farmers, and workers to support the operation of the city, most of the courses at school reflected this; they were related to and taught the basics required for those jobs, thus the students would never have the opportunity to learn to create traps that could capture low-level beasts.

Even in the eyes of many teachers, creating and setting traps was not a skill that was necessary to be imparted at school, as the beasts that could be trapped were just worthless, low-level beasts like tigers and wolves. People above LV 5 could already easily deal with those low-level beasts, even to the point of just tearing them by hand. Therefore, there was no need to set traps at all. If they had free time, it would be better spent in practicing cultivation, striving to ignite as many burning points in their body as possible. Not to mention that hunting was not a skill that was of importance in the eyes of the rulers of Blackhot City. In this age, personal fighting strength was king, while the other skills were not worth mentioning.

As a result of their education, almost no student in Blackhot City, perhaps even in the Andaman Alliance, placed much importance to it. In fact, most of them knew nothing about traps. From Zhang Tie’s memories, throughout his entire time at school, it seemed that it was only in last year’s survival class did the teacher casually mention that it was sometimes effective to set traps in the wild; however, this was something that few students would pay attention to.

Using traps was something used by those low-level pioneers who explored the wild. Naturally, they would not catch too many people’s eyes. Had Zhang Tie not worked at the grocery store, he too would not have learned about traps. Coming to Wild Wolf Valley this time, Zhang Tie realized that he could really put the traps to use here...

If he had not caught those golden threadfin breams earlier, Zhang Tie wouldn’t have the confidence to encourage the others to set traps. Those golden threadfin breams made Zhang Tie realize that the knowledge imparted unto him by Donder was rather valuable, at the very least during this survival training. Although they could learn a lot from the education provided in Blackhot City, they could learn much more from outside the high walls of Blackhot City.

In the eyes of the other members of the brotherhood, who had never learned about trapping skills, trapping was a difficult and mysterious skill that would only be used in boring knight novels, where they were all brimming with killing tricks that would frighten people and cause them to be muddleheaded. However, in the end, knight novels were completely fabricated by guys with too much time. After hearing Zhang Tie’s explanation, everybody understood. In fact, everybody could grasp a powerful trapping skill——digging a hole! A 5 m deep pit was already able to trap most of the fierce beasts and common animals in Wild Wolf Valley. If any beast falls into the pits, they would become live targets for the brotherhood, as any member of the brotherhood could just use the “Iron Gate T21” that Barley had brought to shoot it to death.

……

As usual, Zhang Tie woke up a bit later than 6:00 am the next morning. The entire Wild Wolf Valley was still fast asleep, with the exception of a couple chirping birds and insects. Sharwin was still on duty. Zhang Tie climbed off the tree and walked to the stream to wash his face and rinse his mouth. Afterwards, Zhang Tie replaced Sharwin, letting him go sleep. Sitting by the tree hollow, he took the “Iron Gate T21” and waited for the other members to wake up.

It was the fourth day since they had arrived here. Zhang Tie carefully stared at the “Iron Gate T21”. Compared to the various portable bows that were created by the people before the Catastrophe, “Iron Gate T21” was much more powerful. Zhang Tie had learned that the era before the catastrophe was a time when people used weapons with gunpowder and had too many powerful weapons to choose from, thus they did not pay much attention to the development of weapons that did not utilize gunpowder. However, in this age when weapons that did not use gunpowder became prominent in wars, development that once had nothing to do with weapons with no gunpowder were applied to them, resulting in them gradually becoming extremely powerful.

Using a light, complex pulley-based bow as an example, when compared to the traditional manual bows, the largest advantage it had was the hydraulic sliding rod, which was used to pull the string back into the proper position. Although it was similar to a jack[1], it was much more complex than it. Using this hydraulic device, a commoner would be able to pull the string back, putting it at the position for launching the arrow; in contrast, without the device, a strong person would have to use more than 200 kg of force to do the same thing. The addition of the hydraulic device and the standard arrow container, which was developed based on the cartridge holder used in gunpowder-driven weapons before the Catastrophe, caused this bow to be about 30 kg, making it much heavier than common machine bows; however, this increase in weight also meant that it was more powerful. Theoretically, if the “Iron Gate T21” was in the hands of someone with great strength, he could possibly shoot well over 120 arrows a minute.

In contrast, people like Zhang Tie and the other members of Hit-Plane Brotherhood could only shoot out at most ten arrows a minute using this bow. In the previous two nights, although he had adjusted the tension to be ⅛ of the original, Sharwin still needed to pull the hydraulic sliding rod eight times for it to succeed. And even Bagdad felt pain in his hand after two attempts when he had adjusted the tension to ⅕ of the maximum. This morning, Zhang Tie had stealthily adjusted the tension to ⅕ of the maximum, and like Bagdad, he only succeeded after two attempts with his left arm and hand feeling pain after.

After two attempts of using the “Iron Gate T21”, Zhang Tie confirmed two things. First, his strength was almost equivalent to the dark-skinned Bagdad. Second, The Iron Gate series of bow were amazing killing machines. As this bow was just a light one, Zhang Tie found it difficult to imagine the strength of a heavy bow of the same series.

Before the other members woke up, Zhang Tie played with the bow, trying to get used to it as he practiced by visualizing an abacus. Ever since Zhang Tie could visualize an abacus that was capable of doing seven digit calculations, he began to practice visualizing one for eight digits. Recently, whenever he had free time, he would practice eight digit calculation. If he wasn’t disturbed, he would spend two minutes to visualize an eight-column abacus in his mind and would slowly carry out eight digit calculations...

After Zhang Tie’s spiritual energy surged seven times, all of his senses had become sharper. After each time he practiced , Zhang Tie was able to see a slight increase in spiritual energy that had been brought about by visualizing that golden abacus. Although he didn’t know the reason, it still made him really excited. He had even begun to think about how he should share this method with his elder brother and Donder. After that incident about Huck and Snade, Zhang Tie always felt that he owed Donder. He could probably return the favor by telling him this secret, an effective method to increase spiritual energy. As Zhang Tie had never heard about this before, he believed that this was a great gift to show his sincerity to Donder. Since Donder had told him not to share the abacus skill with foreign clans, Zhang Tie didn’t want to violate Donder’s rule; therefore, he could not temporarily share this method with the other members of the brotherhood.

About 1 hour after Zhang Tie got up, Barley and the other members climbed out of tree hollows one by one. Having not even washed his face, the moment Barley saw Zhang Tie sitting in that pit, Barley was pretty surprised. “Wasn’t it Sharwin’s turn to keep watch last night? Where’d he go?”

“I got up early and couldn’t go back to sleep, so I let Sharwin go back and get some nice rest!”

Hearing Zhang Tie’s words, Barley became silent and rapidly climbed off the tree. He then went to the stream and washed his face and mouth. Followed by Barley, the other guys also woke up one by one...

After everyone made preparations, with the exception of Sharwin, who was staying in the base, the others all went to see how Zhang Tie trapped the golden threadfin breams.

Ensuring that nobody followed them, the group of five carefully followed Zhang Tie up the stream to the place where Zhang Tie had set the traps. Before arriving at the location, they were already stunned by the sight before them—there was a shoal of fish bigger than the size of an adult’s palm surging in the water 2 m away from the mouth of the stream. This scene was also somewhat out of Zhang Tie’s expectation. Zhang Tie hurriedly approached the pond and silently uncovered the twigs on it...

Like a bowl of treasure, the number of fish in the pond had increased over the night. Inside the pond, there were at least five golden threadfin breams that were not smaller than the ones from yesterday and at least ten other fish that varied in size. At the sight of the fish, everybody became excited...

Barley felt that his decision of having Zhang Tie join the Hit-Plane Brotherhood was the best decision he has every made. Although Bighead looked pretty average at school, but at the critical moment, he was reliable and brought many surprises; he really makes people admire him...

[1] Jack - A device used to lift heavy objects