The rain that had poured all night had just stopped, washing the unbearable coal dust from the air in an instant. Breathing in the rare fresh air, Zhang Tie walked alone toward school. If not for the columns of black smoke billowing skyward from the factory district in the distance, the sky would have been bluer, wouldn't it? Zhang Tie thought idly as he walked, carefully avoiding the black puddles scattered across the concrete road. Because the city lay in an industrial district, the puddles after rain were dark and smelled of coal dust. The city gave people safety, but it also brought confinement and crowdedness.
Zhang Tie glanced into the distance. Beneath the washed-blue sky, the towering chimneys stood out painfully.
The teacher said those chimneys were symbols of human civilization and the guarantee of humanity's survival and continued existence. Looking at the factory's towering chimney, Zhang Tie thought it resembled what he'd been doing a lot lately: the black smoke it belched out was just like the liquid he shot out. The smoke polluted the air, the liquid stained his underwear—same difference. He could barely remember who'd been in his dream last night, only that when he got up this morning, his underwear had been sticky and uncomfortable. That made three times this week. It had been raining for the past few days, and the underwear from the first two times still hadn't dried. In this age of extreme shortages, Zhang Tie owned only four pairs. Two had been made from undershirts his father had worn through, and the other two were hand-me-downs his older brother had saved for him. So this morning, Zhang Tie had no choice but to report to school wearing a pair of underwear that was half wet and half dry.
Coarse cloth felt especially stiff when it was half wet and half dry, and wearing it under his trousers was unbearable. As he walked, it chafed his little brother until it hurt, and it was cold, too. A gust of wind blew past, and Zhang Tie couldn't help shivering. The little brother of the fifteen-year-old lad went limp, too. It felt like total crap.
He'd heard that before the Great Cataclysm, human society had enjoyed an abundance of goods. Back then, underwear was sold by the dozen. And it wasn't just underwear: all sorts of things—even precious cigarettes, liquor, meat, and all kinds of strange and wonderful goods—could be bought with ease in stores or in places called supermarkets, where, supposedly, merchandise was piled as high as mountains. At the time, an ordinary man's pay for a day's work, converted into food such as rice or wheat, amounted to forty to seventy kilograms—enough to feed one person for half a month, even a whole month, or more. He'd also heard that people of that era could harness a mysterious energy called "electricity" to do all sorts of unbelievable things, and make all kinds of powerful weapons. With those things, humanity had become the sole ruler of the planet: arrogant, ignorant, and utterly supreme. Truly, those had been humanity's final years of happiness!
Zhang Tie often wondered if the Great Cataclysm had happened because Heaven itself couldn't stomach humanity's insatiable greed amid all that boundless happiness. That was why Star of God had appeared, and why Heaven had knocked humanity from its peak overnight, sending it back to the Stone Age and robbing it forever of the many forms of magic brought by what people called technology. No electricity, no nuclear energy, no explosives, none of those miraculous weapons. According to the explanation most widely accepted today, some particle in the mysterious rays carried by Star of God had caused every substance on the planet to undergo a reversal at the most microscopic level. The planet had once been like a pot of plain boiling water. One day, God—or some mighty immortal, who knew which—had taken a dislike to humanity and, out of boredom, tossed in a handful of salt or chili powder. The water was no longer plain, and the planet was no longer the same planet.
Perhaps the one thing that offered people some comfort was that after the Great Cataclysm, everything and every rule had changed, but steel remained just as hard. It could still be forged into swords, blades, and armor to equip human armies, and black coal could still burn, bringing humanity light, heat, and energy. Everything made possible by those two things—swords and blades, armor, heat, and steam engines—had become humanity's greatest support in surviving this era...
The walk from home to school took more than forty minutes. After passing through the poor neighborhoods in western Black Flame City and the barren land on the edge of its industrial district, Zhang Tie would reach the school. Black Flame City took its name from the nearby Black Flame Mountains. Supposedly, before the Great Cataclysm, the Black Flame Mountains had been one of the longest mountain ranges on the Kun'ang Continent. Humanity back then had built machines that flew through the sky faster than sound. Even so, before the Great Cataclysm, it would have taken months to fly from one end of the Black Flame Mountains to the other in one of those incredibly fast flying machines. Black Flame City, for instance, lay near only a small southern branch of the Black Flame Mountains. Even that little branch stretched more than twenty thousand kilometers. For many people living in this era, it was possible they'd never travel that far in their entire lives.
During the Great Cataclysm, the planet's earth-shaking geological and tectonic movements had split the boundless Kun'ang Continent—whose expanse had been countless billions of miles—into several pieces, like a loaf of bread fought over by a group of children. Countless other fragments had scattered everywhere, while some parts had simply vanished. The world had changed beyond recognition. People today could no longer imagine the former grandeur of the Black Flame Mountains or the majesty of this continent. Even so, the world remained far too vast for everyone. Even now, on the school map, everything more than eight hundred kilometers west and north of Black Flame City was still an unexplored black region. No one knew what lay there. The human settlements south of the Black Flame Mountains, where Black Flame City stood, covered more than four hundred million square kilometers and were home to over nine hundred million people. Made up of numerous nations, city-states, and Lineages, this human-inhabited region was just a narrow strip on the map of the entire continent. Its northern and western borders were endless mountains, and its southern and eastern borders were boundless oceans. This relatively densely populated human region had just one name on the map: the Blakerson Human Corridor.
After the Great Cataclysm, it took humanity nearly a hundred years to figure out what had happened to the planet. Then it took the surviving humans nearly another hundred years to slowly regain a little strength. But once humanity had recovered somewhat, it discovered with horror that it was no longer the planet's sole master. What's more, the strange Devil Beasts that had appeared only after the Great Cataclysm, along with the Dark Races from beneath the earth, all regarded humans as tasty morsels and suitable slaves. The planet had grown more dangerous than ever, and humanity's survival faced unprecedented challenges.
Today was the year 889 of the Black Iron Calendar, after the Great Cataclysm. The surviving humans had flourished and multiplied, once again establishing themselves on the Kun'ang Continent. With countless steelworks and steam engines driving them forward, they had rekindled their ambition to conquer the world and explore the entire planet.
As proof that humanity was recovering and its ambitions were rekindling, Black Flame City had been built less than forty years ago. Among the many human nations and city-states south of the Black Flame Mountains, Black Flame City was a relatively young city—a city founded by merchants and factory owners, an industrial city with a seat in the Andaman City-State Alliance's assembly. Like most of the new human cities emerging in this era, which had grown around some kind of resource, Black Flame City had been built where coal and mineral resources lay in vast quantities. Nearly all of the more than three million people in the city and its surrounding areas made their living off the abundant underground resources nearby. The Black Flame City Coal and Steel Association ruled the city. Every day, a steady stream of steam locomotives carried coal, steel, and the swords, armor, weapons, and equipment made in its factories out to the world, bringing other goods back in.
The factory where Zhang Tie's father worked stood beneath the thickest chimney. It was a steel mill, running almost nonstop, twenty-four hours a day. From the day Zhang Tie was born until now, that factory's chimney had never once stopped spewing black smoke. In this era, humanity's resolve to rise again was proven by that steadfast chimney.
As usual, when Zhang Tie arrived at school, the school's military representative and head disciplinarian, Captain Colin, stood at the entrance, his body towering like an iron pagoda. He stared sternly at every student entering Black Flame City Seventh National School with one eye as big as a bull's egg. A half-meter-long iron rod, heavy enough to make anyone wince, went smack, smack against his broad, slightly terrifying palm like a toothpick. Every student passing before him avoided looking at his scarred face and eyepatch, hurrying by with their heads lowered.
"Stop!" Captain Colin called out to an unlucky boy walking not far ahead of Zhang Tie. The thunder of Captain Colin's voice made everyone nearby shudder. Once they saw he wasn't calling them, they quickly lowered their heads and hurried through the school gates, silently praying for the poor fellow who'd been stopped.
The unlucky boy's face turned white with fear. As Captain Colin approached, his legs shook so badly he could barely speak. "C-Captain C-Colin..."
The most terrifying man in the whole school—and possibly all of Black Flame City—was the One-Eyed Dragon, who liked people to call him Captain Colin rather than Head Disciplinarian. That was a hard-earned lesson passed down by generations of students at this school, with plenty of blood and tears. Against this man, who was supposedly capable of fighting terrifying monsters, any resistance or rebellion was a futile struggle. It would only give him an even greater thrill.
Captain Colin said nothing. He simply pointed the iron rod at the unlucky boy's school trousers. For some reason—probably the rain—a small streak of mud had splashed onto them on the way to school. Looking untidy was a crime in Captain Colin's eyes.
"I... I'll go scrub it clean right now?"
Captain Colin raised his wrist and expressionlessly, slowly glanced at the shiny watch peeking out from his sleeve. He struck a pose, focused silently for more than ten seconds, then began smacking the iron rod against his palm again.
Captain Colin's watch-checking made Zhang Tie suspect the man was just showing off his expensive watch. His smacking the iron rod, meanwhile, reminded Zhang Tie of a big gray wolf wagging its tail.
"If I see you looking like that when school's out, you know what punishment you'll get!"
"Y-yes... yes..." The unlucky boy, as if granted a pardon, fled into the school. Zhang Tie had been wondering why Captain Colin was being so easy on him today, when the One-Eyed Dragon turned to look Zhang Tie's way. Then he quickly straightened his lush, lion-mane-like hair, stood up straight, puffed out his well-developed chest, and struck a heroic pose. Like some flirtatious woman, he even made his chest muscles quiver twice. A smile crept across his ferocious face, and it startled Zhang Tie.
"Good morning, Teacher Daina!"
A fragrant breeze swept past Zhang Tie as a mature, beautiful figure walked by. He didn't need to look to know who it was. The dream from last night seemed to come into focus all at once. Just seeing the exaggerated curve where her waist rose and dipped into her hips from behind made Zhang Tie feel as if he'd stopped breathing. Under the admiring gazes of every male beast at the school gate, the goddess Daina, with her beautiful curly brown hair, walked into the school. The proud goddess merely nodded to the One-Eyed Dragon, who had greeted her, and his face flushed with excitement. Without noticing, he bent the iron rod in his hand with his strength, revealing the terrifying power he possessed.
At Black Flame City Seventh National School, Teacher Daina—a widow whose newlywed husband had died at the front—was every boy's dream girl and the one they fantasized about when they masturbated. She was a goddess, the school's sole source of beauty, a flower blooming on a sheer cliff. She was also the girl Zhang Tie secretly loved. With her around, life seemed a little less dreary for the beasts prowling through adolescence at the school...
"In two more years, I'll have saved enough to buy a house in the city center!" the One-Eyed Dragon shouted after the goddess. He sounded like a lion in heat—or no, a wild boar. What an obnoxious boar. Thinking of Zhang Tie's goddess Daina groaning in pain beneath this beast, Zhang Tie couldn't help wishing... That it were me instead...
"What are you looking at?" The One-Eyed Dragon, back to his usual self, swept his vicious gaze over the crowd. At his furious shout, everyone—including Zhang Tie—scattered, clutching their heads as they rushed through the gates. A faint fragrance still lingered in the air. Zhang Tie greedily breathed it in a few times. That beautiful, mature figure always made him feel so inferior that he didn't even dare look her in the face. If the goddess Daina was a noble, beautiful swan gliding gracefully over a quiet lake, Zhang Tie felt he was just a duckling whose feathers hadn't even grown in yet—one that had fallen into a muddy pit full of coal dust. Head lowered, Zhang Tie looked at the old leather boots his older brother had outgrown. A strange sadness welled up in him. Even Captain Colin was working hard to win the goddess Daina's heart. What could a poor student like him offer her? My little brother? By the time he'd saved enough to buy a house in a safe city with towering walls, by the time he qualified to live in one, how many years would have passed? Thirty? Forty? Zhang Tie's spirits plummeted. But the enticing fragrance in the air, filled with the scent of a mature woman's body, made the thing in his trousers shamefully hard again.
Just inside the school gate, a stone wall stood before them, bearing several large characters: WELCOME TO THE BLACK IRON ERA.