Castle of Black Iron

Stars Viewing City was located in the northwest of Huaiyuan Prefecture where the largest slaves trade center of Huaiyuan Prefecture was situated.

The slave trade center in Stars Viewing City not only ranked first in Huaiyuan Prefecture, but was also very famous across the entire Waii Sub-Continent. The reason was that, besides the local slaves from Waii Sub-Continent, the slaves from other continents and some small, distant human settlements would also be transported to Huaiyuan Prefecture through overseas trade constantly and be transferred here through ports like Yiyang Port of Huaiyuan Prefecture.

Slaves were the 4th most popular trading commodity among humans in this age. According to many slave traders, the slave trade was an important system to optimize the general human resources allocation of mankind, maintain the survival of the fittest among people, and keep everyone energetic and enterprising.

Although the slave trade was not noble, its existence was necessary and reasonable to a certain degree; after all, not only slaves, each person in this age was facing the threat of demons.

The name ’Stars Viewing City’ was very poetic; however, the city itself was not poetic at all. Besides the mammoth scale slave trade, it also had the biggest gambling houses, most exotic brothels, and the bloodiest fighting arena of Huaiyuan Prefecture.

Zhang Clan of Huaiyuan Palace presented another image here.

Many people could imagine how a place with the most slaves, prostitutes, and gamblers looked. If it wasn’t in Huaiyuan Prefecture, Stars Viewing City might be very chaotic; however, due to the most terrifying Hurricane Army of Huaiyuan Palace, the city was in a pretty good order.

The crime rate of this city was even a bit lower than that of Yiyang City. Its level of public security could rank in the top 3 of the 8 cities within Huaiyuan Prefecture.

As the iron fist of Huaiyuan Palace, Hurricane Army contained 420,000 people, over two thirds of which were slaves from countries on different continents. After completing the stipulated term of service or performing certain military exploits, they would gain the status of free citizen from Huaiyuan Palace.

Hurricane Army had existed for over 300 years, during which period, Huaiyuan Palace had already worked out an efficient and stable system on managing this mixed army. Under this management system, each person’s fighting strength and loyalty were exerted to the utmost.

Many senior brothers served in Hurricane Army as military officers after leaving Hidden Dragon Palace.

Zhang Tie learned the general information about Stars Viewing City while he was free at home.

After staying at home for 2 days, Zhang Tie left for Stars Viewing City alone after breakfast at home.

It was a sunny day. Zhang Tie was wearing a pair of sunglasses and driving his Faerie Dragon T9 sports car which he had bought less than an hour ago on the highway from Jinhai City to Stars Viewing City.

Over the past hour, Zhang Tie had figured out a few things.

First, the price of an average car was as high as 1000 gold coins. In this age, the price of most steam-driven cars changed from 100 gold coins to 200 gold coins. The reason that cars in Blackhot City were very expensive was that there were no car manufacturers in Blackhot City; therefore, the cost of those cars being transported to Blackhot City had to include various taxes and the importation policy of Blackhot City.

Because Huaiyuan Prefecture had its own automobile industry, the price of an average steam-driven automobile was only a bit more than 100 gold coins.

The price of the sports car that Zhang Tie was driving was only a bit more than 500 gold coins, which almost ranked top among automobiles.

Second, in this age, although automobiles were driven by stream, different steam-driven units on automobiles would bring completely different driving results.

There was a set of turbine-steam driven, heat-recollection, external combustion engine installed on Faerie Dragon T9. This kind of engine was in between an internal combustion engine and common steam-driven boiler engine. Compared to common steam-driven engines, this kind of engine featured a higher heat utilization efficiency. Additionally, this engine didn’t consume coal, but pure alcohol, which had a fuel value that was much lower than that of coal. Pure alcohol was several times more expensive than coal.

This heat-recollection external combustion engine driven by turbine stream contained 9 parallel pistons, which were installed on the chassis in a tilted way. With the movement of pistons, its power output was not transferred by rotating but by swaying; through an inclined shaft, its power output could then be transferred to the axel through an angle transmission device before driving the car to move forward.

Compared to automobiles with coal as fuel and common steam-driven engines as the power unit, this kind of automobile with pure alcohol as the fuel and a turbine steam-driven, heat-recollection, external combustion engine as the power unit featured a rapid start-up, which could greatly shorten the preheating start time of the steam-driven car.

However, this car also had extremely high running costs.

One kg of pure alcohol was made from 10 kgs of fermented grains; one could almost buy one ton of coal in coal-producing area like Blackhot City or hundreds of kgs of coal in other areas for that much grain. Additionally, the fuel value of alcohol as heavy as coal was far lower than that of the latter; therefore, the price of alcohol would almost be 1000 times that of coal for the same amount of fuel value.

Due to the above factors, alcohol-driven automobiles became an expensive toy that could only be afforded by few people.

Before the Catastrophe, humans could gain alcohol through chemistry; however, as non-renewable resources like petroleum became exhausted, and after the Catastrophe, mankind could only gain alcohol through the traditional method — fermenting grains. In this age with resource shortages, many countries even forbad the production and sale of power equipment with alcohol as the fuel.

A notable exception was the Holy Golden Orchid Empire, whose crazy empire Heiger VII dreamed about manufacturing a powerful, alcohol-driven internal combustion engine to help him fly in the sky.

It was said that alcohol truly could be used as the fuel of internal combustion engine of automobiles and planes. However, after the Catastrophe, like many other substances whose states and attributes had changed, alcohol’s fuel value also became much lower; therefore, it could not meet the requirement to be the fuel of an efficient internal combustion engine.

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The Faerie Dragon T9 was flying on the highway at the speed of over 100 km per hour. Zhang Tie was really satisfied by the cool feeling of driving in such a convertible.

After leaving Hidden Dragon Island, Zhang Tie felt he’d become incredibly rich.

On Hidden Dragon Island, he’d spent hundreds of thousands of gold coins to build a castle so easily and could gain dozens or hundreds of gold coins a day just by selling a few vials of all-purpose medicament. As he could make money so easily, Zhang Tie almost ignored the notion of money.

Although this car was even cheaper than that vial of senior recovery medicament that he had given to his elder brother, he was still under the admirable and jealous eyes of the people in the vehicles passing by. At this moment, Zhang Tie strongly felt that — it’s really good to be rich!

After leaving Hidden Dragon Island, he could buy a cool sports car only at the cost of several hundreds of gold coins, stay in a city comfortably for one month at the cost of only a couple of gold coins, buy a nice house at the cost of several hundreds of gold coins, buy a villa at the cost of one thousand gold coins, share a grand dinner with his family members at the cost of just over 10 silver coins, and employ an average worker at the cost of dozens of silver coins...

All this made Zhang Tie enjoy the magic of money.

The Stars Viewing City that he was heading for was definitely a place that defined the magic of money. In that place, you could even buy people at the cost of dozens of gold coins or hundreds of gold coins.

With the paper note of 20,000 gold coins that was given by Zhang Taibai for one of his well-fermented terrine of all-purpose medicament, Zhang Tie came to Stars Viewing City to buy slaves.

After experiencing one crisis, Zhang Tie realized that it was time for him to slowly change money into a power to shock others; otherwise, what was the function of money? Without money, even a few douchebags could chase him like chasing a dog; with money, he could give them a lesson with money.

After driving for one more hour, Zhang Tie found more and more billboards along the roadside, which were advertising various sexy beauties or gambling devices, available at hotels, gambling houses, and brothels.

Of course, there was also advertisements for the biggest slave trade center. He saw a line on a billboard with a background of a unique building outline — Paradise Lost, You Can Find Everything Here.

Suddenly, with the jarring, booming sound of an engine, a red sports car into the lane on the left of Zhang Tie’s Faerie Dragon T9. The two cars then drove shoulder to shoulder.

Compared to the Faerie Dragon T9, which had a masculine look, that Red Rabbit sports car looked more elegant and slimmer, whose driver was a 20-odd young beauty with short hair.

Zhang Tie exchanged glances with that beauty.

However, Zhang Tie had not imagined that the girl would throw a contemptuous glance towards him with her nose turned up...