Castle of Black Iron

The coming crisis facing Taixia Country made the elders of Huaiyuan Palace in the Ancestral Shrine Palace suffocated.

At this moment, Zhang Tie sensed that he was trivial and helpless once again. He was not God. Therefore, he couldn’t change what had happened. After recovering his composure completely, Zhang Tie found that he could only make his full efforts to adopt correct countermeasures.

He was a man, the father of 8 kids, the husband of 6 women, the pillar of Zhang Clan in Jinwu City, the founder of Iron-Dragon Sect and a human earth knight. He couldn’t shirk off his heavy responsibilities. He didn’t have time to feel sad and furious. If it were a battle, he had already been on the battlefield. Besides adopting correct countermeasures to survive himself and his fellows and kill enemies, he should not be influenced by any mood.

“It’s already come to the fact that the grains and grain seeds that are circulated through Heavens Reaching Church have been demonized. We need to figure out what trick have Heavens Reaching Church and demons played on the demonized grains and grain seeds. Only in this way could Huaiyuan Palace adopt the correct counter-measures!” Zhang Tie glanced around before saying calmly, “As honorable elders and clan head are more experienced in this aspect, you should believe that it’s true!”

Zhang Taixuan and all the other elders frowned silently.

After changing their faces, Elder Muyuan opened his mouth, “Given the history before the Catastrophe, would Heavens Reaching Church and demons continue to transfer some special pathogen in the grains and have grains carry the pathogen into the human body?”

“I don’t think so!” Elder Muyu shook his head before continuing, “Demons and Three-eye Association have already played such a trick before the Catastrophe. By transferring unidentified pathogen into the human body through demonized grains, they caused a great number of Hua people to lose their fertile ability and race reproduction ability. A large number of Hua fetuses were aborted due to death or malformation in their mothers’ wombs. Taixia Country dared never forget such a miserable lesson until today. In order to prevent demons and Three-eye Association from adopting the same trick, since the founding of Taixia Country, a large-scale mechanism on the statistics, general survey and discovery about epidemics across Taixia Country have been established across Taixia Country. Even Youzhou Province has started to run this mechanism since the beginning. The medical care data about patients in public hospitals across Taixia Country would be collected in the provincial and prefectural medical affairs bureau in each season, which would be selected and analyzed by the large difference engine system. As long as the same, large-scale health problem appeared in different provinces, those provinces would report it to their superior agencies for further investigation!”

“As the most powerful human country, Taixia Country would never make the same mistake in this aspect. Han Zhengfang was also clear about the mechanism about health care and defense across Taixia Country; if the grains and grain seeds being circulated through Heavens Reaching Church were demonized, after a few years, those eaters would have had problems in their health for sure, which would have been discovered along with the real identities of Han Zhengfang and those clans of Heavens Reaching Church. They couldn’t manage such an evil business for dozens of years without being discovered. Therefore, they definitely didn’t transfer dangerous pathogen into grains.”

After hearing Elder Muyu’s words, everybody else at present nodded. Therefore, the first method that Heavens Reaching Church and demons adopted to demonize grains was vetoed.

The history might repeat itself; however, it would never repeat simply. This was the law of history.

“Now that they didn’t transfer pathogen into grains, whether do Heavens Reaching Church and demons realize cross-species genetic control over Hua people indirectly by modifying the genes of those grains? The second method had also been used on Hua people by Three-eye Association and demons!” Elder Muan said.

After hearing Elder Muan’s words, all the others at the round table started to consider about it seriously.

Before the Catastrophe, when demonized grains appeared in the public for the first time, they were always covered with the halos of high-tech biological technologies. In quite a long period, the mechanism of action of demonized grains and demonized traditional Chinese medicines and their dangers to the human body were the secrets of Three-eye Association and demons. In that age, the lackeys of Three-eye Association mostly liked to propagate that demonized grains and the toxin in demonized traditional Chinese medicines wouldn’t pose any influence to human health. Additionally, there was no evidence that demonized grains could change human genetic functions. According to them, demonized grains were as same as normal grains. In that age, all the people who said that demonized grains would do harm to people’s health were regarded as rumormongers, innocent and stumbling blocks on the way of human civilization.

In that age, it was Hua scientists who first discovered the secret that demonized plants could realize cross-species regulation of human genetic functions. In one word, the microRNA of plants could enter the blood, tissues and organs through daily food intake; the moment they entered the human body, they would affect the physiological functions of the human body through regulating the target genes in the human body.

The above sentence revealed the basis and principle that demonized grains influenced human body. Today, this sentence evolved into a maxim about human and food, which was favored by all the pharmacists——people are not eating “food”, but “message”.

In the opinion of a traditional pharmacist who was obsessed with the conspiracy theory, if the history of people and country was divided by food, the catastrophe of demonized grains that Hua people experienced 1,000 years ago was just the second catastrophe that Hua people experienced on food problem. The first catastrophe of food that Hua people experienced before the Catastrophe started when Hua people turned pork into their main meats. Although Hua people had a long history in raising pork and eating pork, in quite a long period, Hua people’s main meats were mutton and beef; instead of pork.

Because we were not eating “food” but “message”, a clean and powerful nation should have a clean and powerful food source at first.

In a preliminary book “Food Message Theory” for herbal medicine apprentices, pork’s harms were described as follows, “Pig eats everything and sleeps wherever it wants; it doesn’t even look at the sky and move like a sick man; its nature is lascivious; its meat tastes cold; its image is extremely ugly. It’s the worst animal in the world. If people ate pork, people would be affected by its nature.

There was one sentence in Huang Di’s Canon of Medicine , “People who eat grains are wise; those who eat meat are despised”.

There was another comment about pork made by an ancient famous Hua doctor in Compendium of Materia Medica—— If one always ate pork, one would have fewer sperms and a recurrence of an old disease…besides, one would feel pain, fatigued and breathless all over.

There was another classical quotation in the Quotations of Famous Doctors ——Porks could tighten one’s blood vessels; weaken one’s tendons, bones and muscles. People couldn’t always eat porks; especially those who suffer from knife wounds.

In the Patron Church that Zhang Tie believed in, clergies always stuck to such a doctrine and principle——Don’t eat all the disgusting things!

The Patron Church believed that if people wanted to maintain a pure soul, sound consideration and nourished a zealous spirit and a clean and healthy body, they should pay special attention to the diet that they survived on. Food was different, good or not, clean or dirty, different food would pose different influences to the human body. Good food would do good to the human body; bad food would do harm to the human body. Therefore, people had to pay special attention to diet!

Many nations didn’t eat pork; besides, they had a lot of requests for their daily staple!

It was definitely not a coincidence, but the wise words of forerunners.

Although pharmacists ate meats, they didn’t eat pork. In Zhang Tie’s family, since Zhang Yang became a pharmacist, the entire Zhang family had not eaten pork anymore. Additionally, pork was not the main meat for Hua people anymore in this age.

There were over 900 years from when Hua people started to eat pork on a large scale to when they were cheated to eat demonized grains before the Catastrophe. Coincidentally, pork and demonized grains posed the same influence to Hua people’s health, namely, having fewer sperms, having a recurrence of an old disease, tightening one’s blood vessels, weakening one’s tendons, bones and muscles. Therefore, some far-sighted Hua people were curious about the reason. Perhaps, in the long river of history, before serving demonized food on the dining table of Hua people, demons and their lackeys among Hua people had played a trick on the food of Hua people and turned pork into their main meat. As a result, Hua people gradually declined physically and spiritually and experienced large-scale catastrophes one after another.

…

After hearing Elder Muan’s words, the entire Ancestral Shrine Palace was in silence. All the elders at present were in meditation and memory, including Zhang Tie. Finally, Zhang Taixuan shook his head, “It’s possible; but almost impossible. Being similar to the first method, if Heavens Reaching Church used such demonized grains and grain seeds, these demonized grains would definitely arouse large-scale health problems after circulating in Taixia Country for so long. Such health problems couldn’t be buried at all; unless these demonized grains have a very small poisonous effect and just target at a minority of people. If so, it was unnecessary for Heavens Reaching Church to do that!”

“Then, there’s only one possibility!” Elder Muen took in a deep breath.

Zhang Tie let out a sigh before saying, “It means that these demonized grains and grain seeds didn’t take effect until 10 more generations later, even dozens of generations later. There’s no dangerous pathogen or genetic modification that target at weakening human health; however, the normal growth and reproduction ability of these grains and grain seeds have been “castrated”. Their genes have problems too. Although these grains and grain seeds look normal now, they would not bear any seeds one day. Each grain and grain seed managed by the clans of Heavens Reaching Church is a time bomb. Since they started to manage these grains and grain seeds, they had preset the precise time for the bombs. Given Taixia Country’s population, as long as it runs out of grains, ordinary people would have no food. As a result, Taixia Country would be in a civil strife due to “hunger” before demons arrive. Because no subcontinents or continents could bear the great food consumption of Taixia Country.