Castle of Black Iron

When Zhang Tie steadily landed the man-powered plane, a lot of people swarmed up at once.

As citizens of Hoorn Republic, these engineers felt pretty happy when they witness so many marvels concerning gliders in such a short period.

Several months ago, Zhang Tie created a marvel in this base by foot. However, today, he created another marvel by only sitting in a glider. Compared to the first marvel, the second one was more inspiring.

”Can we make it lighter?” soon after Zhang Tie got off the man-powered plane had he asked those experts from the Hoorn Republic.

”We used a very expensive light alloy to make this man-powered plane. Although its shape looks like that of WindTalker, its internal and external structures and raw materials had been greatly optimized. Therefore, although we added a set of variable transmission gears and some actuators inside this man-powered plane, we decreased its weight to 670 kg. It’s the best we can do.” An expert explained to Zhang Tie.

After hearing this expert’s explanation, Zhang Tie knew that someone had already posed the concept of manufacturing man-powered plane a long time ago in the Hoorn Republic, which was crazy about flight. Many people in the Hoorn Republic had fantasized about providing a driving force to a glider to make it a real man-powered plan with stepping pedals like riding a bicycle.

Actually, all those who had posed similar thoughts had failed. There were mainly two reasons for failure. Firstly, the man-powered plan was too heavy, which could almost not be driven by a human. Secondly, even though they could barely produce a very light man-powered plane, its performances could not even match that of common gliders. Nobody in the Hoorn Republic thought that could be qualified as a plane.

Many years ago, the Hoorn Republic had already made a man-powered plane using canvas and some light alloy. They controlled the weight of the man-powered plane within 150 kg. However, its best achievement in trial flight was 37 km’s distance within 5 m in height.

After that light man-powered plane failed its trial flight, the engineers and glider fans in the Hoorn Republic reached a conclusion, in this age, the man-powered plane had to be designed with an excellent structure featured with an optimal lift-drag ratio and aerodynamic configuration. However, if a glider satisfied these conditions, it would weigh at least 700 kg. This posed a very high requirement to its driver. Besides being a top glider driver, he should have unrivaled strength and endurance.

It could be said that the man-powered plane was waiting for the right man.

The Hoorn Republic was a mini country, whose total population could not even match that of Blackhot City. Therefore, it was very rare to have powerhouses above LV 10 in this country.

Zhang Tie’s advantage could be described as follows: those who had greater strength and endurance than him could not pilot gliders better than him while those who could pilot gliders didn’t have greater strength and endurance than him.

In many powerhouses’ eyes, glider sports was a very low-end and populist. Most of those who liked this sports were commoners. Few people above strong fighters would fly gliders when they were free. In commoners’ eyes, glider sports were interesting. However, in powerhouses’ eyes, it was as boring as playing mahjong. When they were free, they preferred to cultivate so as to promote to a new level or advance to knights.

Given the combined factors, Zhang Tie finally became the first person who could drive a man-powered plane to fly into the sky by foot.

After having crew members carry 1000 vials of all-purpose medicament off the Idiots and gift them to the Glider Base of Hoorn Republic as his gratitude, Zhang Tie left the Glider Base.

This time, the experts and engineers of the Hoorn Republic produced three man-powered planes for Zhang Tie in total. However, one of them was a prototype which could fly but had faults. Therefore, the prototype was left in the base. Zhang Tie carried away the other two man-powered gliders, a pile of detailed manufacturing blueprints and parts which were used for replacement and maintenance.

When driving a man-powered plane, Zhang Tie needed only to pay attention to the set of variable transmission gears. However, that set of gears had to be maintained with lubricating oil. According to those experts and engineers from the Hoorn Republic, even Zhang Tie stepped pedals of man-powered plane 10 hours a day, the set of gears would have no problem in a decade. Because the set of gears were top industrial products in the Eastern Continent, whose durability and precision could even match that of gears in different machines.

After staying in the Glider Base of the Hoorn Republic for a few hours, it was already dusk. When Zhang Tie returned to the Crystal Battle Fortress using the Idiots, there were already two bright moons in the sky.

Major General Ford had already waited 4 hours for Zhang Tie in the Crystal Battle Fortress. Soon after Zhang Tie returned to the base of the Crystal Battle Fortress had Major General Ford boarded on the Idiots.

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Zhang Tie met Ford in the command module of Idiots once again.

”Major General Ford, it seems that you’ve got a gift for me?” at the sight of Major General Ford, Zhang Tie had already focused on the metal box in Ford’s hand. A metal chain linked the box with Ford’s right wrist. It looked very valuable.

After throwing a glance at Zhang Tie, Major General Ford placed that box on the table. He then input the code and opened it. After that, he took out of a piece of diamond crystal being covered with a silvery metal and passed it to Zhang Tie.

Soon after Zhang Tie took it had he injected a strand of spiritual energy into it. In a split second, Zhang Tie saw some Chinese characters——”五行地像经(Five-element Ground-look Sutra)” in his mind.

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