The National Middle School Heartthrob

Black Flame City Seventh National School is a standard all-male institution. As the name implies, there isn't a single female student in the entire school. This is because the curricula for boys and girls differ vastly. It is said that to conserve resources and improve teaching efficiency, boys and girls are separated after completing the five-year primary compulsory education stage. Every course in the boys' school serves one single purpose: survival. It aims to ensure that every young person entering these gates can accumulate the capital necessary to survive in this era as quickly as possible and at the lowest possible cost. No one graduating from this school receives a so-called diploma; the fact that you can continue to survive in this world after leaving is the best proof of your education. Therefore, every course offered and every lesson taught is inextricably linked to your ability to stay alive. It is said that the education in the girls' school is softer, featuring subjects like music, literature, culinary arts, fine arts, and dance, but these are alien to the boys' school. Aside from the most basic language, law, and mathematics, every subject taught here corresponds to a skill that allows humans to survive in this era—for instance, how to tend to a seed so it grows into food in the fields;

How to use every resource at hand to process and craft the most basic survival tools;

How to use available resources to construct the simplest of shelters;

How to identify and evade the attacks of dangerous wild creatures;

How to use wild plants to concoct basic trauma medicine;

How to treat several common illnesses;

How to use weapons for combat;

How to exercise to strengthen one's body...

Once the eight-year national compulsory education stage is completed, over 99% of ordinary students leave school to step into society and begin their lives. If you have been diligent, with just a little bit of training, you can pick up a hoe and become a farmer, enter a factory to become a worker, or join the army to become a soldier—or, to be more precise, cannon fodder and rations for the alien races. The spirit of national education in the Black Iron Era is to cultivate people who can best survive in this age using the least cost and most efficient means, rather than producing a bunch of useless softies or sources of beast excrement.

Of course, just like humanity before the Great Cataclysm, compulsory education in any era is never the highest level. After the eight years are up, every school will have a handful of true elites, those with powerful backgrounds, or lucky geniuses who show extraordinary talent in certain areas, who can move on to higher and more mysterious places to learn professional knowledge and receive a true elite education. Black Flame City, established by a group of merchants and factory owners, naturally lacks high-level elite academies; it only has an ordinary business school, which is already highly sought after by commoners.

True elite academies, I hear, only exist in other human cities and core settlements that possess deeper foundations. The conditions for entering those elite academies are strictly one in ten thousand. To put it this way, Black Flame City Seventh National School graduates over a thousand students every year, yet for eight consecutive years, not a single student has qualified for a true elite academy. Eight years ago, a Hua Clan genius student named Li Shizhen was selected by the Continental Alchemist Guild and taken away immediately after graduation. As a result, that person became the pride of the entire school. A photo of Li Shizhen has hung in the school's exhibition room for eight years, and every time there is a school assembly, the principal brings him up to lecture us tirelessly until our ears have grown calluses. Hanging alongside his photo are two others—legendary figures who also emerged from this school. Higher education in this era is strictly for the true elite. The scale of enrollment in human national higher education institutions before the Great Cataclysm, which reached tens of millions annually, now seems like a myth. Knowledge in this era is expensive—exorbitantly so—and it is held by a minority, a few families, and powerful sects, temples, and churches. Only the true elite have the opportunity to access it.

Although Zhang Tie felt he had worked hard in school, in an era where everyone is struggling for their own survival, his efforts hadn't turned him into an elite or a lucky one. Zhang Tie's family had no influential figures, so his performance in all areas was average—not the worst, but unable to stand out. He was neither an elite nor trash.

If life went according to plan, Zhang Tie felt that in the future, he might end up like his father: after military service, he would seek a safe and stable job, rack his brains to find a way into some factory in the city as an ordinary worker, marry a diligent woman who wasn't ugly and could manage the household, have a few children, and then work hard like an ant every day for the family's food until the day he lay on his deathbed. He would look back on his miserable, gray life as an insignificant cog in this era, thinking of those beautiful women he had seen but never touched—like the goddess Daina—and before closing his eyes in unwillingness, he would tremblingly raise his hand to give the middle finger to this screwed-up era, and then kick the bucket...

This thought made Zhang Tie shiver as he entered the classroom. He was truly unwilling to live such a life. Although he had made up his mind long ago, he reminded himself fiercely again as he walked in today: My life must be lived long enough, I must have enough gold coins, and I must have been with enough beautiful women! If there really came a day to leave this world, Zhang Tie hoped to see a scene where a crowd of beautiful, alluring women would weep and mourn his passing, perhaps even threatening to commit suicide for love, while at the same time, a crowd of unfilial descendants would be unable to hide their inner glee, or even laugh out loud, thinking, This old guy has finally kicked the bucket...

Perhaps one day, he too could live the life only the big shots enjoyed: closets full of dozens of pairs of underwear and new leather shoes, meat at every meal, and a gorgeous, sultry personal maid with a big chest and wide hips...

Zhang Tie often thought this way. In his mind, the life of every big shot should be one free from worries about food and clothing, but the distance to this dream was as unreachable as an ugly duckling rolling in a mud puddle dreaming of becoming a dragon.

There were about ten minutes left before class. The morning session was mechanics. When Zhang Tie arrived at the workshop, he saw several of the animals in his class standing in a row by the window on one side of the room. Each of them had their heads poked outside, while their other hands were moving rapidly beneath their waists, some even letting out low moans. Zhang Tie looked out the window; down below, the figure of the goddess Daina was strolling gracefully past the flower beds. From this angle, the breasts on the goddess Daina's chest were magnificently imposing...

Zhang Tie swallowed a mouthful of saliva...

These bastards!

"Big Head, how about it? Come join the fun..." the guy next to him, covered in acne, said while stroking the thing he'd pulled out of his pants, turning his head to offer a "sincere" suggestion.

"No thanks. I just saw Captain Colin walking toward our classroom. You guys enjoy yourselves!"

Upon hearing Zhang Tie's words, everyone stopped instantly. The acne-faced guy's complexion turned pale, and the things everyone had pulled out shrank rapidly like punctured balloons. The classroom erupted into chaos; several people were in such a hurry to zip up that they caught their skin or pulled their hair, leading to another round of wailing. Who knew if they'd become impotent later? God forgive me, Zhang Tie would bet his life that if Captain Colin knew what was happening in this classroom, he would really want to come over and crush the balls of these animals one by one...

Everyone quickly returned to their positions, standing before their workbenches with eyes fixed on their noses. The classroom fell silent instantly. Zhang Tie also arrived at his workbench, wiped away the dust, and began checking if the rows of tools laid out were in good condition. Just like that, ten minutes passed quickly. By the time the bell rang and the mechanics teacher walked in carrying a pile of items, Captain Colin's figure still hadn't appeared. While breathing a sigh of relief, the group of bastards from earlier glared at Zhang Tie, though they dared not act out during class.

The mechanics teacher was a man in his fifties, bald and looking lifeless and dull. He never spoke much in class, but no one dared to underestimate him. This old man had once, in front of all of us, used a few simple tools and a pile of junk to tinker together a small single-cylinder steam engine in a single morning; once a brazier was placed under it, the engine began to turn. In this era, no one who could serve as a teacher was simple.

As usual, the bald man entered the classroom, wrote "Hand-crafting Coil Springs" on the blackboard, and began to lecture to himself. After finishing, he left several formulas and data points on the blackboard regarding spring winding ratios, compression slenderness ratios, mandrel diameters, and tensile strength, then had someone distribute the steel wire he had brought—three pieces per person. For us, this morning's lesson was for everyone to hand-craft three types of coil springs. After receiving the wire, everyone buried their heads in their workbenches and got to work. Even those bastards from earlier seemed like different people, striving for their own survival capital. The bald man then walked out of the workshop with a cup of water.

The greatest difference between humans and those powerful wild beasts or the alien races that only knew how to slaughter is the ability to use and create tools. Although springs are inconspicuous, they have the widest range of uses, and being able to craft them by hand undoubtedly became a survival skill.

After Zhang Tie received the steel wire, he thought for a moment and had a plan. After memorizing the formulas on the blackboard, he measured the three pieces of wire, which varied in length and thickness, and grabbed a writing board to start calculating at his workbench. Finally, he decided to make three types of springs: the simplest cylindrical compression spring, a concave compression spring, and a cylindrical torsion hook spring...