Castle of Black Iron

After departing from Bonder’s group, Zhang Tie ended up today’s plan for hunting wild wolves. Although he had looked very calm before Bonder’s group, actually, he was not that calm inwardly. It was also Zhang Tie’s first time to seeing his peers die in front of him. Or maybe they were also the first casualties in this survival training.

It was told by teachers at school that above 70% of casualties in survival training happened on the second month after it started. This was because after one a month’s time in survival training, the horny students became much braver than before, although their fighting force didn’t improve that fast, easily causing tragedies.

Zhang Tie wandered on the path of the Wild Wolf Valley while thinking about the bloody wounds, which reminded him of the survival rules in this world—even the lowest level disparity would lead to a life or death situation and further cause mixed emotions in the weaker party’s family members. Four families, four mothers and many relatives of the four youths would feel extremely dejected due to the huge wolves this noon.

Zhang Tie could imagine how grieved the families would be after learning what had happened to their kids. His own family members had experienced the same grievance. Although his eldest brother had died on the battlefield many years ago, its impact on his parents was ever lasting.

‘Fist skill is namely power. When one exerts their utmost effort, one will obtain the essence of the skill!’—the general outline of Iron-Blood Fist flashed across Zhang Tie’s mind. He had a new understanding of this sentence. The route the Fibonacci Golden Numerical Array pointed at was not a path of evolution, but a path of power based on real force. The greatest and ultimate power in this world was the power to determine others’ life or death, and the power to beat others into hell.

‘The second Snade and Huck will never be allowed in my life’, Zhang Tie told himself. ‘Besides myself, nobody else is allowed to determine my destiny.’ Thinking this, he quickened his pace...

Ten minutes later when Zhang Tie passed by a river, a red-eyed wild wolf abruptly jumped out of the reeds and rushed Zhang Tie. Almost the moment the wild wolf left the reeds, a lance had already fallen from the sky and nailed it to the ground. Zhang Tie dashed past it without even a bit of deceleration. Without even glancing at his victim, he passed the wild wolf, just pulling out his lance and putting it back into this lance container before continuing on his way...

“Who’s that guy?”

A hunting team composed of eight or nine students widely opened their eyes at the sight of what Zhang Tie had done. Just now, when the wild wolf had jumped out, they even wanted to shout out to warn him. Unexpectedly, before they could scream out, everything had come to an end.

Not until Zhang Tie had long disappeared did that group of people arrive at the wild wolf that had been nailed to the ground. After checking it carefully, they all took a deep breath. Judging from the wound on the wild wolf, they realized that the lance must have entered its body from beneath the neck and exited from the back of its heart, causing a sec-kill. It was really great. Was that a coincidence? They felt really lucky today as they put away the dead wild wolf.

“Can we just do this?” one of the people in the group of students asked.

“If he felt this wild wolf was valuable, he would have stayed. Do you think a man who can easily kill a wild wolf would treasure a dead wild wolf?”

Hearing his words, everybody else nodded.

“Let’s go, brothers, it’s not early today, this wolf is enough for us to eat for two days...” the leader said, waving his hand.

“Who’s that man? I’ve never heard of him before!”

“Trust me, such a sharp guy would never be unknown. We will know who he is if we casually inquire about other people in Wild Wolf Castle!”

……

Zhang Tie kept running at a medium speed. He had already learned how to run in the first week when the survival training started. If he ran too fast, he could not continue it for long. Besides high consumption of physical strength, if he ran too fast, he might also miss something, especially changing terrains in hills, which might hurt him later by preventing him to make the most correct response to some incoming crisis.

In contrast, if he ran too slowly, his moving range would be extremely limited, which might also cause him to miss something. Especially for loners who needed to hunt for prey by themselves like Zhang Tie, if he always stayed in a small area, he might do nothing but wait for starvation as he would have fewer chances to find any prey.

Therefore, for a loner, the most proper running pattern was at a medium speed which would enable one to keep running for one to two hours without feeling fatigued, and enable one to get familiar with the surrounding environment and terrain by running as well as expanding the moving range. In other words, running at a medium speed could help to exert the utmost fighting force every time and then respond to some emergencies without feeling too tense.

Besides running speed, Zhang Tie also learned how to breath while running. It took him one week to master this medium-speed moving skill at his most proper rhythm. Now, Zhang Tie could keep running at such a speed for one hour on rugged mountain roads while retaining his maximal fighting force.

He felt that this kind of running was like a vocabulary ‘cruising speed’ that was used to evaluate the performance of an aerocraft called plane taught by science teachers at school. Zhang Tie had already mastered the skill of ‘cruise control’ during the first week upon starting the loner’s survival training. His ‘cruising speed’ was about 15 km per hour. He could kept running at this speed for about 1 hour while still maintaining his maximal fighting force.

Ha! Wasn’t it interesting? He had become a plane himself!

He was lucky just now and killed one more wild wolf, indicating that the wild wolf seven-strength fruit was that much closer to becoming ripe. Thinking of this, Zhang Tie accelerated.

He really enjoyed the feeling of free running in the valley. During his previous fifteen years, Zhang Tie had lived a boring life in Blackhot city. Besides going to school, he would be either at Donder’s grocery store or home. During that period, he had not experienced such a freestyle.

Simply by running like this, Zhang Tie felt pretty happy. If he could stick to it, he would prefer to keep running like the wind for the rest of his life. This way, he could go wherever he wanted, letting the motherland move under his feet. He would prefer to keep running freely like this without caring about anything else so that he could view the scenery of the whole world.

By free running in the valley alone, Zhang Tie felt that he had fallen in love with the loner’s survival training.

When the fiery sun’s glow appeared in the west sky, Zhang Tie finally arrived at the place which he had named as his ‘No.2 base’ after over one hour’s running.

This was a natural mountain cave, over 10 meters above the ground. Its inclination downwards was about 80-90 degrees. A pile of vines hung down from the top, allowing one to climb onto the mountain cave along the stones and bulges by holding onto them.

The mountain cave was more than 20 km away from the Wild Wolf Castle. This place was a bit farther than where he had met Bonder’s group yesterday. More than 10 km away from the other side of the cave was the Crescent Prairie. The space between the ranges on both sides of the Wild Wolf Valley abruptly expanded greatly here, like an opening door.

One week after he started his loner’s survival training, Zhang Tie’s moving range gradually increased and grew closer and closer to the Crescent Prairie.

When he arrived beneath the mountain cave, Zhang Tie looked around, seeing no one. He then pulled the vines and climbed onto the entrance of the mountain cave. When he reached the entrance, Zhang Tie squatted to carefully check those scattered leaves from the vines and some broken stones on the ground for roughly 20 seconds. After that, he stood on tiptoes and carefully walked in by stepping only in specific locations

Those items on the ground were not traps, but a ‘wild mark system’ used by pioneers. Once anybody had entered the entrance after Zhang Tie left, through that ‘wild mark system’ that seemed a disorderly scattering, Zhang Tie would know of it. This was a trick that pioneers usually used in the wild. A set of ‘wild mark system’ could reveal a lot of information.

Many pioneer teams added secret languages and signals in the ‘wild mark system’ that could only be understood by their own. Sometimes, a withered twig, several leaves, and broken stones scattered casually on the ground—in insiders’ eyes—would contain dozens of messages based on their location and the direction they were facing. They might also be used as an early warning device like how Zhang Tie was using them. As long as anyone had entered, he would know.

After checking it, Zhang Tie did nothing else but sat down on a stone at the entrance of the mountain cave. In the breeze, he stared at the sunset far in the distance The setting sun was really beautiful. Before this loner’s survival training, Zhang Tie had not seriously watched it. However, these days, he would always sit calmly somewhere and watch the sunset in the skyline until it fell behind the mountain and disappeared.

This was another reason for why Zhang Tie came to like the loner’s survival training. Besides free running, he could also calmly sit anywhere he wanted and enjoy the beautiful sunset without worrying about being pointed at and called an idiot by surrounding horny students.

‘The world has its own beautiful scenery!’—this was Zhang Tie’s feeling when he was enjoying the sunset.

‘I wonder how long dad and mom haven’t enjoyed such a beautiful sunset.’

Thinking of their increasingly white hair due to hard work every day, Zhang Tie vowed that when he was rich he would definitely buy a big house just for them. That big house will contain two huge balconies, one to the east so that his parents could enjoy the first wisp of sunlight when they woke up; the other to the west so that they could enjoy the beautiful sunset sitting on a very comfortable huge chair on sunny days.

Previously, Zhang Tie might not have been able to make this dream come true even if he used up the rest of his life. However, now he understood that once he had enough power, he will definitely let his parents live such a pleasant life.

Although he could not make it at LV 2, what about LV 3? LV 4? LV 5? LV 6? LV 7? LV 8? LV 9? LV 10? His elder brother had told him a LV 10 military official in Blackhot city was qualified to be allocated with an independent villa...

Oh, and that appointment with Miss Daina!

……

When the sun finally set, the afterglow in the skyline also gradually dissipated. Several aboriginal residents of the mountain cave—bats—flew out and started their nightlife.

Zhang Tie then entered into the deep of the mountain cave where he could access the Castle of Black Iron and improve his strength using another method. As he had killed five huge wolves today, Zhang Tie knew that a new Trouble-reappearance Fruit would have formed on the small tree. He had concluded in the past few days that once he could kill more than three wild wolves or huge wolves, he could get a new Trouble-Reappearance Fruit on that very day.

He had eaten four Trouble-Reappearance Fruits these days, enabling him to choose eight Trouble-reappearance scenes and activating over 23 wolf souls [1] at once, 22 of which had wild wolves and one a huge wolf. Little by little he started to discover more and more secrets about the Trouble-reappearance Fruit...

After eating the third and the fourth Trouble-reappearance Fruits, Zhang Tie had found that the fruits actually contained two elements, namely Trouble-reappearance scene and wolf souls. He could allocate the wolf souls at his own will and arrange them in his designated Trouble-reappearance scene.

After activating them, they would fight him. The two elements of Trouble-reappearance Fruit could be joined or separated at his will. Each Trouble-reappearance Fruit would bring him two more elements that could be used to further improve his fighting skills, namely fighting environment and fighting objectives.

The Trouble-reappearance Fruit was really great. It was simply amazing. After practicing in Trouble-reappearance Fruit, Zhang Tie felt his fighting and killing skills were rapidly improving.

After killing five huge wolves today, he couldn’t wait to try fighting six huge wolves and 22 wild wolves at the same time in the Trouble-reappearance Fruit…

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[1] Zhang Tie named it himself.