Castle of Black Iron

Although being a knight, Zhang Tie only had an obscure feeling about his cultivation progress. However, he could see his cultivation progress and level clearly on the knight's crystal plate.

Black iron knight's crystal plate was blue. When the knight was going to form his earth chakra, the shape of the chakra would be displayed as a round pattern on a plane. Due to different cultivation methods, some round patterns were simple, some were complex. Now that they were round, they were composed of 360 degrees. That was to say, generally, all the chakras could be divided into 360 smaller parts equally. After lighting the 360 parts, it meant that the knight had formed a new chakra and promoted to the next level.

The 360 parts of a round pattern referred to a concrete division of ranks and cultivation progress.

In knight's word, 360 units of a chakra were called scales, dragon's scales. 360 scales referred to the number of stages that a black iron knight needed to go up before promoting to an earth knight.

The forming progress of the chakra could be sensed and reflected on the knight's crystal plate.

On the dragon-shaped crystal plate, there was a dragon relief which had 360 fine dragon scales. When Zhang Tie activated the knight's crystal plate just now, one dragon scale turned into bright yellow. It indicated that Zhang Tie had just lit 1 of the 360 scales which were required to form the earth chakra.

If Zhang Tie formed the second chakra, all the 360 dragon scales on the dragon-shaped crystal plate would turn into bright yellow. The moment the earth chakra started to run, the entire knight's crystal plate would turn into bright yellow from blue.

After water chakra, the third chakra was formed, all the dragon scales on the knight's crystal plate would turn into black...and so on.

By displaying the cultivation progress to the knight, the knight's crystal plate could urge each knight to continue their cultivation and fix the target of each knight in the distant cultivation process.

What an exceptional function! However, after figuring out the third function of the knight's crystal plate, Zhang Tie became more dumbfounded.

The third function of the knight's crystal plate reminded Zhang Tie of the description about the information network that humans established in technological means before the Catastrophe that he read in the library. Before touching the knight's crystal plate, Zhang Tie had not imagined that there could be such an item in this age. He thought that the remote-sensing mirror crystal was already high-tech.

The remote-sensing crystal that could be used for one-to-one information transfer was already rare. By contrast, this knight's crystal plate was more powerful with more specialized functions. Especially after combining with the super powerful spiritual energy of knight, this knight's crystal plate had some exceptional functions that Zhang Tie had not even heard about before.

After being shocked for 2 seconds, Zhang Tie injected his spiritual energy into the mirror space of the knight's crystal plate in front of Elder Muray and that old guy.

The moment his spiritual energy entered the mirror space of the knight's crystal plate, Zhang Tie had sensed his spiritual energy being linked to a special information sea through the mirror space inside the crystal plate after being elongated as slim as a noodle. His spiritual energy then turned into a special wave.

That information sea was filled with a special brightness, which seemed to be billions of miles away from Zhang Tie but felt like it was right in front of Zhang Tie.

"Welcome to the Mountain of Brightness, human knight!"

A masculine, dignified voice drifted in Zhang Tie's mind through the feedback of his spiritual energy.

After the voice disappeared, a paragraph of words about Zhang Tie appeared in the astronomical information sea. The words were radiating faint, blue light.

Owner of the knight's crystal plate——Zhang Tie

Race——Hua

Clan——Huaiyuan Palace

Current Level——Black Iron Knight

Cultivation progress——1 scale

Byname in Mountain of Brightness——Chakra's Lion

Personal account——100,000 gold coins.

This information appeared in Zhang Tie's mind sea in blue words.

Zhang Tie knew that only he could see his individual information.

The byname in the Mountain of Brightness was fixed with each knight's crystal plate. Instead of being selected by individuals, it's completely optional. This byname was one each human knight's secret. They could not even expose it to their parents, wives or children. More than one human knight had been killed after leaking their byname in Mountain of Brightness.

The personal account was Zhang Tie's individual account in the organization of Mountain of Brightness. Needless to say, the 100,000 gold coins was spared from the 4 million gold coins that Elder Muray had just paid for him. He had to pay to activate some functions of this knight's crystal plate.

Each human knight's personal account in Mountain of Brightness could freely flow. They could deposit in or withdraw from it. Four banks were available for human knights in Mountain of Brightness, namely Golden Roc Bank, Xuanyuan Bank and Pangu Bank in Taixia Country and Intercontinental Bank in Western Continent. With their own knight's crystal plate, human knights could deposit in or withdraw out money from their exclusive personal account in any of the above banks.

After this information faded away, with the constant injection of his spiritual energy, Zhang Tie opened a wholly new paper's front page.

On the top of the front page, there were 4 Hua characters which radiated golden light——光明之山.

There were some notices in the scarlet letter right in the most eye-catching place below the 4 Hua characters "光明之山".

The first notice was——"Lion Fortress in Earth-element Realm wants No. 1 knights"

The second notice was——"Knights who head for the 3rd abyss for capturing underground dragons, attention, please. Bronze-class far-ancient demon beasts are discovered in the 3rd abyss.

The third notice was——"Severe demonized puppets disaster broke out in Blackhot Sub-continent. 180 million people turned into demonized puppets. Mountain of Brightness and 37 human countries across Blackhot Sub-continent off a reward to suppress it"

Zhang Tie didn't know what earth-element realm was.

He didn't know where was the 3rd abyss either.

He knew that Blackhot Sub-continent was far away from Waii Sub-continent. It was much larger than Waii Sub-continent. However, Zhang Tie just read it on the map. As for the terrifying demonized puppets disaster being involved with 180 million people, Zhang Tie felt goosebumps all over.

Zhang Tie injected a bit of spiritual energy into the first notice while some new lines of words gradually appeared in Zhang Tie's mind sea.

It was a very fine map, which led people from the world above ground to the Lion Fortress in the Earth-element Realm. Right below the map was the treatment for No. 1 knights.

Black iron knight——2 earth-element crystals per month; keep all the booties; only after staying in Lion Fortress for 5 years, you will be qualified to leave your name on the Heavens Fortune Namelist and be awarded as a lord.

Earth knight——1 water-element crystal per month; keep all the booties; only after staying in Lion Fortress for 2 years, you will be qualified to leave your name on the Heavens Fortune Namelist and be awarded as a lord.

The map was valuable. After glancing over it, Zhang Tie bore those details in mind. Closely after that, he retreated from the first notice and returned to the front page.

Below these notices were three green words, respectively reward for hunting; goods trade; information exchange.

Zhang Tie skimmed all of them by his spiritual energy.

As for Zhang Tie, everything in the knight's world was strange. It seemed that he had entered a new world.

In the section "reward for hunting", Zhang Tie saw a live, grim image of a demon knight, below which was an introduction in two lines and some photos. The background of those photos was an urban relic and numerous human corpses...

——Daruba, a black iron demon knight raided the capital city of Filin Kingdom, a state of the Saint Dias Humans Countries Alliance on September 27th, the 895th year of Black Iron Calendar and exterminated the royal members of Filin Kingdom. Besides, it killed over 267,000 innocent humans in total.

——Daruba, who cultivates Black Demon Sutra, is powerful. It's estimated that he has lit at least 200 scales on its earth chakra.

——Amount of reward——45 million gold coins.

After promoting to a knight, people could issue and receive reward tasks.

Of course, if you really didn't like someone, you could add 10 million more gold coins under that guy's reward for hunting notice so as to have him killed as fast as possible.

Under this demon knight was a long name-list of demon knights or knights of Three-eye Association. The minimal amount of reward for them was 10 million gold coins.

When in Waii Sub-continent, Zhang Tie saw less than 10 demon knights and knights of Three-eye Association in total. However, the name-list for hunting contained at least 300 demon knights and knights of Three-eye Association...

Watching this name-list, Zhang Tie indeed sensed the sheer terror of the holy war and great threat facing humans. The over 300 knights were just identified at the beginning of the holy war. However, many demon knights were unidentified among the super demon corps. Many demon corps were still on the way. For instance, Zhang Tie didn't know the name of that demon knight whom he killed in the underground world where he discovered the tower of time. Additionally, many human knights who had surrendered to demons were not unveiled yet.

'The key point is that I can only see this name-list as a black iron knight. I cannot see those names which could be seen by earth knights.'

As for any black iron demon knight whose name was not recorded on the name-list, as long as you could kill it or had a certificate of killing it and brought its head to any branch of Mountain of Brightness, you would be able to get 5 million gold coins as a reward.

After reading this introduction under the name-list, Zhang Tie realized that he had wasted 5 million gold coins when he killed that demon knight in the underground world.

In the section of "goods trade", Zhang Tie saw all sorts of demands and ads for rare materials and equipment. Each ad was involved with an amazing trading volume.

These ads, or posts before the Catastrophe could not be issued for free. According to the service regulations, each ad should be verified by Mountain of Brightness at the cost of 50,000 gold coins before being displayed in this section and be available to all the knights through the spiritual ties with their crystal plates.

This section contained many pages, which was more similar to that information stored in crystal books. The difference was that the contents in the crystal books always remained unchanged, however, the contents in this section kept updating around the clock.

It would cost a reader 1000 gold coins to leave any comment behind any post. Additionally, that reply could not be displayed under that post without the consent of the administrator of the Mountain of Brightness.

All the human knights could contact other human knights through the Mountain of Brightness. However, this contact had to go through the Mountain of Brightness. Each message would cost 1000 gold coins too. Additionally, it would have a time lag.

All the knights issued messages and joined all the activities in Mountain of Brightness by their bynames.

...

As for the section "information exchange", Zhang Tie saw the notices on the top of the section that No. 1 knights were needed by over 100 countries on all continents and subcontinents. Those black iron knights who wanted to enjoy a respected life could select a country to serve.

There were all sorts of posts in the latter. Only by skimming over those posts' topics, Zhang Tie had felt like widening his vision.

Among the posts, the most remarkable one was called "The Comparative Analysis about the Battle Forces of the Knights in the Seven Major Clans of Taixia Country"...

This was a paid read. A great part of posts was paid read in the entire section "Information Exchange". Some of these posts were passages, some were photos, some were sections of scenes that knights kept by secret methods. Such sections of scenes could also be transferred to Mountain of Brightness by knight's crystal plates through remote spiritual links, the price of which varied from thousands to tens of thousands of gold coins.

The byname of the author of the famous post "Comparative Analysis about the Battle Forces of Knights in Seven Major Clans of Taixia Country" was ——Student Informed Black Iron. Its price was 10,000 gold coins. Its overall rating was 87 points. At the sight of the viewing times of paid read, Zhang Tie's eye corners twitched——13614.

'A passage is worth above 100 million gold coins?'

When Zhang Tie retreated from the knight's crystal plate, he was still shocked by the value of the passage.

'Is this the knight's world?'

Although that passage was eye-catching in the section Information Exchange, not all the paid reads could be marked at such a high price. Some posts even had no view. However, Zhang Tie was still shocked.

Zhang Tie finally understood why a knight's crystal plate was worth 4 million gold coins. Because the only crystal information network was established in Mountain of Brightness, the exclusive circle of the top figures in this age.

...

After half an hour, Zhang Tie and Elder Muray left Tianfang City. After walking out of the city, they blasted off and flew towards Huaiyuan Palace.

"Elder Muray, I will have Golden Roc Bank transfer 4 million gold coins to you when I come back!" Zhang Tie told Elder Muray after recovering his composure.

"No need. It's paid by Huaiyuan Palace out of respect. If Huaiyuan Palace couldn't afford such a payment, it's destined to be exterminated!" Elder Muray recovered his bad-tempered personality. After replying to Zhang Tie, he sighed, "But there's only one earth-element crystal!"

"Ahh, what's this crystal used for?" Zhang Tie took out that golden crystal and asked Elder Muray.

"Whether you could only get earth element from elements realm now?"

"Yes!"

"Earth-element crystal is a rarity exploited from the earth-element realm. It contains a large number of pure earth elements. It's the best tunic for black iron knights. When you enter meditation next time, you can hold this crystal by hand so as to extract the pure earth elements from it. After that, you can inject it into the earth chakra. In this way, you could accelerate your cultivation speed greatly!"

"Oh, I see!" Zhang Tie tightly held that earth-element crystal.

"As a clan elder of Huaiyuan Palace, you can get 4 earth-element crystals per year. They could accelerate your cultivation speed greatly, although being less!"

"Can we buy it from somewhere?'

"As such crystals contained pure elements, no knights would sell them; instead, they will all keep them for themselves. Therefore, you can not buy them no matter how rich you are!"

"Mountain of Brightness is generous!"

"Ha...ha...if you want more earth-element crystals to accelerate your cultivation speed, you have to fight in the earth-element realm. It's also an incentive!"

"Earth-element realm?"

Zhang Tie recalled this name while the map that he saw through his knight's crystal plate reappeared in his mind. Zhang Tie remembered that there was an underground cave in Lanzhou Province, Taixia Country that led to the Lion Fortress in Earth-element Realm...

When he thought about Taixia Country, Zhang Tie waved his head once again. 'Based on my current situation, even though I want to go to the Earth-element Realm, I would not make it in a short period. Step by step. Just handle the current things first.'

The passage which was worth over 100 million gold coins reappeared in Zhang Tie's mind...

'What an interesting knight's world...'

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