Castle of Black Iron

The largest difference between Chinese castles and western castles was that western castle buildings usually had spires, while Chinese castles were always featured with flank-corner towers with extended lofty and heavy eaves.

Of course, in this age, Chinese castles were built with the same architectural materials and armed defense functions. The whole castle was composed of an exterior wall, barbican, battlements, bartizans, entrenchments, suspension bridges and steam-driven power units.

The entire castle occupied over 30,000 square meters, which included the predominant building of over 10,000 square meters and an airship port of over 20,000 square meters. The building location of the castle was at the foot of the Yunju Mountain, which neighbored the White Dragon Town. The whole castle required 460,000 gold coins which would be loaned to Zhang Tie by the bank affiliated to Long Wind Business Group. Zhang Tie entrusted the professional construction team of Long Wind Business Group to build it.

Zhang Tie needed to discuss the fundamental functions of the castle with the professional building team and posed his own requirements and opinions on this castle. Thus, the professional team chose 3 locations for Zhang Tie, and he then chose Yunju Mountain as the last location.

Additionally, he signed 2 official agreements with Long Wind Business Group. One was the Loan Agreement, while the other was the Commissioned Construction Agreement on the Castle. After they signed the 2 agreements, on the same afternoon, the construction team of over 600 people had already arrived at the Yunju Mountain on the Hidden Dragon Island by a huge airship and were quartered there where they started the survey work with a great amount of construction instruments.

By the way, not until then did Zhang Tie know that not everybody had the right to construct buildings on the Hidden Dragon Island. Besides the permanent residents on the island, who could apply to build houses and some facilities in the towns, only the clan students of Hidden Dragon Palace were allowed to buy land and construct buildings. That was how the Hidden Dragon Island developed.

The land of over 200,000 square meters on the Yunju Mountain costed Zhang Tie more than 18000 gold coins, which was really expensive. In other places he could have even bought several hundreds of thousands of square meters of mountain forest and land, or even some mountains as a whole with this amount of money.

In this age, much land outside the city walls was not valuable, especially in some underdeveloped regions. Take Blackhot City as an example, so many black regions on the map surrounding the Blackhot City had no owners. Anyone, if powerful, could build a castle over there, even a city if they wanted.

However, at this moment, Zhang Tie was immersing himself in the pleasure of having his own castle. Therefore he didn't care about the land price at all. Additionally, recently whenever Zhang Tie thought that he could have a castle of his own, he would become delusional and feel that everything in front of him was not real.

Zhang Tie had never imagined that the inconspicuous essential-energy reiki yeast could change his life so greatly. Thinking of the little earthworms, golden uangs and those cheapest sand-scale fish, Zhang Tie was instantly filled with awe about mother nature and its creator.

In this world, nothing was trivial and worthless. This was what enlightened Zhang Tie these days. With this enlightenment, Zhang Tie now wondered how even a humble yeast or earthworm had a special ability to change the world. What special abilities were human beings, the wisest of all creatures, granted by the creator?

Zhang Tie wondered whether each person had a super ability, which they were born with. For instance, earthworms were born with super great vitality and anti-toxic ability, golden uangs were born to be able to carry substances which were thousands of times heavier than their own weight, while essential-energy reiki yeasts were born to be able to complete the fermentation of super enzymes. Nobody taught them how to do that, but they knew how. They were their instincts.

Were human beings born to have some special ability or instinct, which could change the world? Was this instinct a unique symbol of a person who was born to be able to use it like taking breaths, and did that make human beings above the other creatures?

'People are always more advanced than small creatures like earthworms, golden uangs and yeasts,' Zhang Tie speculated. Zhang Tie thought that if people didn't have such a special ability, this didn't conform with the universal law. Of course, great creatures should be matched with super talents.

What if people were granted with this ability? Why had he not heard about it? In this age, even in the age before the Catastrophe, most people learned talents from schools and other places. Nobody had performed any super talent which they were born with. What was the reason for this? Is it that human beings are the exceptions of the universal law or had they forgotten that they had such special talents?'

Zhang Tie had a great imagination and curiosity, but he didn't like to get into a dead end. Although he could not get the answer now, Zhang Tie didn't prepare to make blind and disorderly conjectures all day long. Instead, he just buried it in his mind like a bookmark with a question mark ——were human beings born with super talents in a book which was put back into the bookcase?

Zhang Tie found that his castle was gradually appearing on the Yunju Mountain at a rapid speed with the efforts of a great number of architectural experts.

On the 3rd day since the construction team arrived at the Yunju Mountain, under the booming sounds of a great number of locomobiles, the land of a simple airship port was cleared out. After that, the construction team paved 2 tracks by 2 railed cranes in different sizes. After that, a great batch of airships flew over there everyday and directly loaded off great loads of building materials.

When the simple airship port was finished, under the same booms of locomobiles, the foundation of the castle was completed in 4 days. After that, the construction teem paved the prefabricated foundation steel components on the foundation before they poured in professional quick-drying cement concrete. Then, they started to establish the super large building blocks.

The skeleton of the entire castle was made of standard steel components, which were constantly carried over by Long Wind Business Group's large-scale airships. The team connected and fixed them before pouring them with quick-drying cement concrete or prefabricated bricks. As a result, the castle was growing like bamboo shoots in the spring after rain.

Under the constant construction, the team only took 13 days to complete its capping construction.

After completing the capping construction of its main project, a huge brown cement bulk appeared on the Yunju Mountain, which although it looked ugly, still could present the majesty of a castle.

On June 15, after the shrine burning point was ignited, Zhang Tie completed the ignition of the 13th burning point on his spine and became a will-be LV 7 fighter. As long as a huge centipede's soul fire was gathered, Zhang Tie would officially become an LV 7 fighter. As a result, Zhang Tie's battle-qi totem would also turn from a hell black spider into a fiercer centipede. Additionally, his iron-blood battle qi would be further improved.

On the same day, Zhang Tie received the notice from the Herbs Valley that his first batch of exclusive crystal vials with his own symbol had arrived.

When Zhang Tie was noticed by a staff member of Herbs Valley, he was stopped by Yang Yuankang at the gate of the training field on fundamental swordsmanship.

Compared to the training of fundamental movements, the training of fundamental swordsmanship was more abnormal and nobody could pass its test by chance.

There were only 8 moves on fundamental swordsmanship, which were splitting, chopping, raising, pricking, lifting up, short-quick poking, stirring and holding-back...

If one wanted to pass the test on fundamental swordsmanship, one had to practice each move 1 million times. Everybody was practicing on a steam-driven metal robot which could calculate how many times he had hit one point. For instance, if one pricked that robot's eyes, throat or heart, the data on the "pricking display" would roll up to a higher number.

Similarly, one stroke on the robot's neck, hands and feet, and the data on the "splitting and chopping display" would change accordingly. The robot's 4 metal arms were waving different weapons respectively at a fixed rhythm. The defense or attack of the four arms were in line with the lifting up, short-quick poking, stirring and holding-back respectively.

There was a counter with 8 columns at the bottom of each metal robot. The minimum standard for passing the test of fundamental swordsmanship was 1 million on each column.

This was tough training that could not be evaded without reaching the regulated striking points.

Previously, Zhang Tie was wondering why there was only fundamental swordsmanship in the compulsory courses of Breaking-Heavens Department, instead of fundamental saber skills and fundamental spear skills. Zhang Tie finally understood why Chinese people called swordsmanship the king of weapons, because the 8 sword skills almost covered most of the basic attacking skills of other weapons. Compared to swordsmanship, saber skills were more focused on only splitting up and chopping, while spear skills were more focused on raising and pricking.

The moment Yang Yuankang caught sight of Zhang Tie, he instantly hugged him and said, "Brother, you have to save me this time!"