Castle of Black Iron

Because Zhang Tie had been there before, he was familiar with the path. Therefore, after speeding up, he arrived at White Dragon Town in a short while. After running across White Dragon Town, it took Zhang Tie less than 10 minutes to arrive at the wharf on Hidden Dragon Island from where he had landed on Hidden Dragon Island several days ago.

Zhang Tie remembered that when he landed on the wharf last time, he saw some fishing vessels next to the wharf. Close to the hotel was a fish market. Therefore, Zhang Tie directly rushed towards that fish market.

As the only fish market on Hidden Dragon island, most of the booths had already sold out when Zhang Tie arrived, except one, the owner of which was also preparing to leave although he had some fish left.

Zhang Tie hurriedly ran in front of that booth. For the god’s sake, there was still a barrel of fish which had not been sold out! All the fish inside the barrel were finger-long small fish with silver scales. The head of the fish had a fine needle-like spine. As there were so many kinds of fish in the sea, Zhang Tie could not identify its name.

”Will you sell them?”

Zhang Tie asked the booth owner, who was over 40 years old with an experienced face. Hearing Zhang Tie’swords, that man stopped and cast a glance at Zhang Tie.

”You want to buy these sand-scale fish?”

”These are sand-scale fish?” Zhang Tie realized at once, ”Yea, I want to buy them all!”

”How many do you want? They are not sold in small quantities!”

Zhang Tie pinched the five silver coins in his pocket and further asked, ”How much is one barrel of sand-scale fish?”

”A barrel weighs about 20 kg. As I’m going to leave, you only need to pay 1 silver coin for them.”

”1 silver coin?” Zhang Tie instantly let out a sigh as he had not imagined that they were so cheap.

That man thought that Zhang Tie felt it was too expensive, so he gave a further explanation, ”Sand-scale fish have less meat and more bones. Although they are not that valuable, they can be used for making fish sauce. If you like it, you can dry them before frying them with oil. Then you can eat them while drinking alcohol. They’re tastier than peanuts. If you really want to buy them, you can pay me 90 copper coins for 1 barrel of them.”

Zhang Tie directly pulled out of a silver coin and put it in the hand of the booth owner, ”1 silver coin is okay. I will come here every day in the future. You can leave all the sand-scale fish for me!”

Having not imagined that Zhang Tie was that generous, that man took over the silver coin and revealed a smile, ”Fine, I will leave all these sand-scale fish for you from then on.”

”Can I borrow your barrel? I will be back in 5 minutes.”

Zhang Tie didn’t bring any containers to load those sand-scale fish which were all put in the iron-sheet barrel in front of the booth.

The booth owner nodded at once. Therefore, Zhang Tie lifted the barrel of sand-scale fish before heading directly for the wharf.

The sand-scale fish might have realized what Zhang Tie was going to do as many of them started to jump happily when Zhang Tie lifted the barrel. Two of them even jumped out of the barrel and fell to the ground. Zhang Tie then hurriedly picked them up and put them back into the barrel.

”Little fish, little fish, I will send you back to the sea and set you free...” Zhang Tie mumbled to those little fish.

Zhang Tie came to the seaside very soon. He chose a place with crystal clear water and poured all the little sand-scale fish out of the barrel into the sea. Watching them return to the sea happily, Zhang Tie also felt a sincere pleasure.

Nobody would catch fish here, let alone these worthless little fish. Even if they wanted, they could not easily catch them. Therefore, after setting them free, Zhang Tie won’t worry about them being caught by others.

The sun was setting, creating a golden hue over the horizon. Some little sand-scale fish jumped out of the sea, seemingly greeting Zhang Tie.

”Watch out next time, don’t be caught again!”

When setting free earthworms, Zhang Tie had already understood a law——no life in this world was humble. Zhang Tie felt very happy about setting free a barrel of sand-scale fish with only 1 silver coin.

When he returned that barrel to the booth owner in the fish market, that 40-odd-year-ol-man gazed at Zhang Tie with a strange expression, ”You put them back in the sea?”

What Zhang Tie was doing had all been observed by this man. He felt it difficult to understand that someone would buy fish to set them free. ”Is there anything wrong with his mind?”

However, Zhang Tie had long prepared for that question.

”Erm, I met an old man before, who told me that by setting lives free, I could accumulate good karma from God. He urged me to set free more animals if I was able to do that!”

”Setting free animals to accumulate karma?” Hearing this theory for the first time, the booth owner became stunned. Obviously, he could not accept this. However, Zhang Tie won’t discuss that with him. After giving back the barrel and agreeing with him to buy sand-scale fish here at the same time tomorrow, Zhang Tie left the wharf.

After walking for a short while, Zhang Tie had already returned to the Zhixing Department of Hidden Dragon Department at night.

Sparkling light radiated from each building of Hidden Dragon Palace and extended from the memorial archways at the foot of the mountain all the way to the top of the mountain, making it pretty beautiful.

Outside the gate of the Zhixing Department, the old man who played the game of Go by himself under the tree all day long was still mediating at this moment. Because people were all very tired in the daytime, when the dusk arrived, many people had returned to their own room for a rest or practicing fighting skills. Therefore, Zhang Tie could barely see any people in the courtyard of Zhixing Department at this time.

...

”Sister Yuhan, I really want to go home, I miss mom, wu...wu...”

”Don’t cry. Staying here isn’t so bad. We have a lot of friends.”

”But it’s too difficult to make money here, wu...wh...I only picked three very common pearls for 6 silver coins and sold two boxes of seashell oil for 2 silver coins today. My hand was lacerated in the sea yesterday. If it touched the seawater, it would ache. I want to go home, wuwuwu...”

”You’re just not used to it yet. When you are used to it and have better diving skills, you would reach deeper into the sea. If you are lucky, you could even pick up colorful pearls, each one of which would at least worth 1 gold coin. We girls could make money easier than the badass boys as they have to pick up iron ores in the sea. They are not afraid of that, what would we be afraid of? You will definitely make it, Shasha...”

The moment Zhang Tie drew close to the front corner of the corridor, he had heard two girls’ voices. In order to avoid misunderstanding, when he drew close to them, Zhang Tie coughed twice and made his footsteps heavier on purpose. As was expected, the moment they heard about someone coming, the two girls became silent.

When Zhang Tie moved to the corner, he saw two girls who were also watching him. One of them was 15 or while the other seemed a bit older, about 17-18 years old. The younger girl had a good-looking round face whose eyes were like red peaches. Seeing Zhang Tie coming here, her face blushed as she hurriedly mopped off her tears. The other girl seemed to be comforting her.

Zhang Tie had formed a sharp instinct that the moment he saw a girl, he would know her key sizes. He didn’t mean to, but he would know naturally. After a glance over the two girls’ faces, his eyes had already scanned across their breasts, waists, butts, and thighs which had outstanding curves.

”Erm, compared to Alice, Hanna and the other girls, Chinese girls truly have a smaller figure at this age.”

”Humph!” The moment she saw Zhang Tie, the girl called Yuhan cast the whites of her eyes at Zhang Tie. Even the weeping girl was glaring at him and turned her head to the other direction.

Zhang Tie felt a bit strange about that...

When he walked a few steps away, he heard the two girls’ voices through his acute auditory sense.

”Humph, he’s that disgusting guy called Zhang Tie...” The girl called Yuhan said.

”His eyes were so terrifying. After being glanced by him, I felt uncomfortable all over!”

”I wouldn’t have imagined that this person is so lecherous. His eyes were too lecherous. Shasha, you have to warn other sisters to be careful about this boring guy who kept looking at your body under the neck. He’s not only boring but also dangerous to girls. Remember to not be tangled with this kind of person alone!”

Zhang Tie became depressed as he almost wanted to return to argue with them. ”Damn, I’ve been here for only two days innocently, how could I have been hateful?”

...

Returning to his own room, Zhang Tie recovered his composure and constrained his impulse to enter the Castle of Black Iron to see what fruit did the sand-scale fish bring him. Instead, he took out the crystal pyramid which was put on the windowsill to refill its energy. After putting it under his bed, he calmly and patiently sat on the bed to start cultivating.

He started to polish the 6th surge point on his spine. Within 2 hours of cultivation, the 6th surge point started to radiate very bright orange lights. When it almost broke through to radiate yellow light, Zhang Tie stopped. He then started to practice mental arithmetic by two abacuses. He kept making sophisticated divisions and multiplications on the two abacuses respectively at the same time. After a while, he started to do multiplications and additions on the two abacuses at the same time.

After finishing mental arithmetic by two abacuses, Zhang Tie’s mind felt highly spirited and flexible. He was in an unusually vigorous and pure condition.

At this moment, he could only hear insects chirps in the Zhixing Department. The two exotic moons were hanging high in the sky. Along with the sound of the wind blowing through the window was the sound of the waves in the distance. Zhang Tie stood still at the windowsill and looked outside at the bright moons. He felt everything was so fantastic that it couldn’t be described.

Standing still over there for quite awhile, when the fantastic sense in his mind gradually faded away, with a sound of ”Zhi”, Zhang Tie pulled off the curtain, leaving a great darkness in the room at once.

The darkness in his eyes soon disappeared; instead, a vigorous manor appeared in front of his eyes.

In a black swallowtail, Heller whose handsome face made Zhang Tie so envious that he even wanted to ruin Heller’s face walked towards Zhang Tie.

”Handsome and magnificent Castle Lord, welcome to the Castle of Black Iron!” After bowing towards Zhang Tie, Heller looked at Zhang Tie, ”Castle Lord, as the basic energy storage in Castle of Black Iron is going to be used up, I have to stop much work. You seemed having forgotten about our appointment.”