Castle of Black Iron

Rolling into that jet-black hole, Zhang Tie quickly pulled out the dagger that had been stabbed in the wolf and stabbed it again. Within a short span of time, he had already stabbed that wolf’s heart and stomach four times before finally feeling the jaw of the wolf who had bit his shin completely lose its strength.

At this moment, he had completely forgotten the injury on his shin. Raising his head, he kept his eyes fixed on the constantly narrowing space ahead… As one of the deepest cave left by the Gold-Eating Boas in Wild Wolf Valley, this was a bottomless pitch-dark hole with a diameter greater than three meters and was also the only chance for Zhang Tie to survive the attack of the wolves.

Being closely chased by seven wolves, Zhang Tie could only survive by doing two actions. The first action he had to take was to jump into the hole before being caught by the wolves within 20 seconds, which he finally successfully accomplished despite being injured. The second action depended on luck; if this cave completely led to the ground without any obstructions, then he would fall to the ground and die miserably—though, that would still be better than turning into wolf sh*t.

Zhang Tie was betting his life in this wager; however, he did have two assumptions on which he based his actions on. The first assumption was that Gold-Eating Boas would not be that silly to drill a hole like a well, which directly led to the ground, and would always have curved paths, thus Zhang Tie thought that as long as there were any curved sections in the hole that did not lead to the ground, then he would be able to save himself.

The second assumption was that the wolves would not follow him and jump into this pitch black hollow. Zhang Tie was right with this assumption, though the wolves did linger around the mouth of the hole for quite a while. From this point forward, Zhang Tie would have to rely on his first assumption—whether the first turn would appear before Zhang Tie fell to the ground and died a miserable death.

Zhang Tie dropped at a fast speed together with the wolf. By the time he had stabbed the wolf four times, the tunnel had already become completely dark since the sunlight could no longer reach inside.

Zhang Tie and the wolf continued to fall inside that cave...

Even Zhang Tie himself didn’t know why he was currently extremely calm despite the critical situation. Although he was also afraid of death, Zhang Tie currently felt no emotions and was precisely like a machine that was calculating and outputting data… Interestingly enough, at that moment, Zhang Tie was not thinking about life or death, but rather right or wrong...

At this moment, when Zhang Tie raised his head to look at the mouth of the tunnel from within, he had already calculated within 0.1 seconds that he was just 10-15 away from it, meaning that he had already been falling inside the hole for 1-2 seconds. He even thought of the formula he had learned at school: D=D’(2t-1), where D is the distance he had fell in the cave and D’ was the free falling distance within the first second, which was 5m on the Kun’ang Continent. Using this formula, Zhang Tie could easily calculate the time which was safe to land. He would fall 5 meters in the first second, 15 meters in the next second, 25 meters in the third second, and 35 meters in the fourth second. He gave up calculating the falling distance for the fifth second. Even if there was a turn or a slope less than 90° after four seconds, on the premise that his bones were not as hard as stones, he would definitely become heavily wounded or die the moment he hit the ground or the walls inside.

“Will I be the first person to die during this survival training? I’m still a virgin, f*ck!”

A thought flashed by in his mind. Zhang Tie, who was free falling, used his feet to clamp onto the wild wolf that was under him, using it as a cushion, and tightly clasped the hoe...

Zhang Tie’s fate depended on the next three seconds. Although three seconds would pass by very fast for someone else, for Zhang Tie, three seconds would feel as long as thirty seconds when he concentrated his spiritual energy.

As a matter of fact, god didn’t abandon Zhang Tie. Between the third second and the fourth second after he had fallen in—to be precise, right after the third second—that critical turn finally arrived, and the inclination became about 70 to 80 degrees. Certainly, Zhang Tie had no time to measure the concrete inclination. As he fell, when Zhang Tie felt the wild wolf beneath him hit something, he instinctively stabbed the hoe into the rocks, causing the sparks flying from the friction between the hoe and the rocks to illuminate Zhang Tie’s serious face, one which showed his desire to survive. He felt as if his arms were breaking, but he also felt his speed decreasing. Finally, his legs hit a surface. To soften the impact, he instantly began to roll along the steep walls like a ball of meatball, rolling times within a short span of time.

Even Zhang Tie himself did not know how long he had been in the darkness. His body continued to roll several times and collided with many things before finally a huge collision came, causing Zhang Tie’s consciousness to fade into darkness.

……

When Zhang Tie lost consciousness, the news of a black-haired miner being attacked to death by seven wild wolves 3.5km away from Wild Wolf Castle had already spread and shocked many people.

The news was first brought back to Wild Wolf Castle by the students who had witnessed Zhang Tie’s “heroic” actions before he jumped into the deep hole. Hearing the news, everyone in Wild Wolf Castle was shocked.

……

“I heard that a male student was bitten to death by wolves...”

“That’s right! But I heard he was really brave and had killed three wolves before being killed!”

“Where were his partners? Which team did he belong to? How could a brave male student like him face those wild beasts alone?”

“He’s alone and did not belong to any team. I heard he’s a black-haired miner”

“What a pity...”

In a room with many girls in the inner castle of Wild Wolf Castle, two female students were talking about the event that had transpired. Without paying too much attention to their surroundings, one of the two girls described the guy who was killed by the wolves as a “black-haired miner”. Hearing her words, a girl who was quietly eating dried rations in a corner of the room suddenly became stiff all over. Then, along with her pearl-like tears, the dried rations fell from her hands, and she lowered her head as she hugged her knees as tightly as she could before finally hiding in a dark corner in the room.

“Pandora, could you not stay in the corner all day and scare everyone? If you like that corner that much, why not directly move your quilt over or just move out of this room? That way, we wouldn’t have to stay with a hapless woman like you...”

“That’s right! How could we be so unlucky to have been assigned to stay with this unlucky star? These past few days when I went out to search for wild vegetables, I was almost bitten by a poisonous snake...” Another two girls entered the room and began to fiercely curse the moment they saw the figure in the corner, not caring in the least about how that girl in the corner felt.

Hearing their criticism, Pandora, the curled up figure in the corner, didn’t utter a single word. She simply just stretched out her hand from the shadow and picked up the tear-stained dried ration on the ground and continued to eat it silently...

……

As for the other members of the Hit-Plane Brotherhood, it was time for supper, yet they realized that Zhang Tie had not yet returned. After waiting for him for a while, they started to realize that something bad had happened to Zhang Tie, thus while two of them remained to keep watch of the tree base, Barley, Leit, Doug, and Bagdad left the tree base. Agreeing with Leit’s suggestion, they lit torches and began to search for Zhang Tie along the route he usually took when walking to the mine while Doug, who carried the terrifying machine bow, walked at the front. About halfway to the mine and about several hundred meters from where Zhang Tie had encountered the seven wolves, they saw many jumping lights, as many people were gathered there with burning torches, causing them to stare at each other in confusion. Barley’s group of four rushed over and pulled one of the student’s hand, asking about what was happening.

“Haven’t you heard the news?” that male student even curiously asked Barley.

“What news?”

“In the evening, a student who did mining work was mauled by seven wild wolves to death. He was a really great guy. It’s said that he had killed three wild wolves before being killed...”

Hearing this news, the faces of the group of Barley instantly turned pale. Thinking that Zhang Tie was not powerful enough to kill three wolves at once, Barley asked in a quivering voice, “Do you know that miner’s name?”

“The castle officials had verified it just now. He’s a Chinese student called Zhang Tie!”

“Bighead...” Doug growled like a wolf as he rushed towards the most crowded place with the most burning torches. In his opinion, Zhang Tie’s corpse must have been too horrible to see.

When the four of them rushed ahead with red eyes, they gaped at the scene as the site was surrounded by a group of on-duty students who were wearing red armbands with torches in hand. Nobody was allowed to get any closer, but through the crowd, they were able to see a terrifying, jet-black hole and the corpse of two wild wolves. Several teachers were standing over there, discussing something, while Zhang Tie’s corpse could not be seen.

“Zhang Tie, Zhang Tie, he’s our brother. We want to see him!” Barley shouted...

“Quiet, I heard Zhang Tie already rolled into the hole with a wolf. Captain Kerlin and the other teachers were talking about how to scoop him out of there...” a student who was responsible for keeping order and protecting the scene warned them.

“Bighead fell into that hole...” Seeing that terrifying hole, a slight bit of hope could be seen shimmering in the eyes of Barley and Doug...

“Mr. Zerom...” Seeing a teacher coming over here, many on-duty students greeted him. Nodding towards them, the teacher entered the site and walked towards several teachers from the Temporary Supervision Committee and Captain Kerlin...