The Youth's Ambition

For Zhang Tie, the two days of the weekend passed in a flash. Since his father still had to work on Saturday, Zhang Tie spent the day at home helping his mother make rice wine. Their small shop sold about five or six jars of rice wine each week; the income wasn't much, but for the Zhang Family, who had always lived frugally, it was a helpful supplement.

Rice wine is a traditional delicacy of the Hua Clan. The method is not complex, and the main ingredient is rice. The process is simple: first, wash the rice thoroughly, boil it in a pot until it is about seventy percent cooked, then drain and air-dry it. Next, steam it in a steamer, air-dry it again, and pack it tightly into ceramic jars. During the packing process, mix in sugar and honey, and finally, sprinkle on the starter liquid—the yeast culture. Seal it up and let it ferment naturally; after a month, it is ready to be opened and consumed. The finished rice wine retains the sweet, soft, and glutinous flavor of the rice, is rich in nutrients, and carries a comforting sweetness. It is both filling and possesses a pleasant, mild alcoholic tang that never makes one drunk. It is refreshing, cooling, and nourishing to the stomach—extremely delicious. Zhang Tie and his older brother grew up eating the rice wine their mother brewed.

Although the process of making rice wine is simple, every step requires meticulous attention to detail and heat control. The reputation and popularity that the Zhang Family's rice wine enjoyed among the neighborhood and regular customers had been painstakingly accumulated, bit by bit, over the past decade.

The result of a busy Saturday was seven jars of finished rice wine. After finishing, Zhang Tie moved them to the storeroom behind the shop. He then took the family's modified cargo tricycle out for two trips. The first was to the rice shop; the rice jar at home always tended to hit the bottom after a batch of wine was made, so Zhang Tie had to make this trip every weekend. After buying the rice, he also picked up two pounds of sugar. This time, Zhang Tie noticed that the price of rice had risen slightly. Last week, a 25-kilogram bag of ordinary rice cost 4 silver coins and 45 copper coins. Today, he found that the same bag had quietly risen to 4 silver coins and 58 copper coins. In just one week, the price had increased by nearly 3%.

Zhang Tie was taken aback. As a commoner, he was extremely sensitive to price fluctuations in daily necessities. He remembered that the price of rice in Black Flame City had remained basically unchanged for the three years since he started middle school. It had been 4 silver coins and 45 copper coins last week, so how could it have risen so much in just one week?

"Oh, Zhang Tie, there's nothing we can do. The price went up when we restocked the day before yesterday, so we have no choice but to raise our prices too. We can't run a business at a loss!" The rice shop owner was an acquaintance, and when the topic of rice prices came up, he began to vent his frustrations. "Seventy percent of the rice in Black Flame City is brought in from outside. The few farms and planting zones outside the city can't guarantee the food supply for this city. What can we do? The prices of these things are decided by the big merchant groups above. It's not just the rice; flour has also gone up in the last two days. If you don't believe me, go check elsewhere. It's the same price, and some places are selling it even dearer..."

The rice shop owner was a long-time acquaintance, so Zhang Tie wasn't foolish enough to actually go check elsewhere. Grain prices in Black Flame City were generally uniform; for the same bag of rice, the price difference between shops was at most one to three copper coins. If the difference exceeded five, they wouldn't be able to sell it. Having dealt with them for many years, and knowing this rice shop was run by a hardworking and shrewd Hua Clan owner, he still had that bit of trust.

At the price of 4 silver coins and 58 copper coins—or 458 copper coins—Zhang Tie bought three bags, totaling seventy-five kilograms of rice, and loaded them onto his tricycle. The tricycle was a second-hand bicycle modified with a cargo bin and an extra wheel; not only was it ugly, but its load capacity was limited. Three bags of rice plus Zhang Tie himself was just about its limit. While loading the rice, Zhang Tie carefully checked the needle holes and thread ends on the sacks to ensure there were no signs of tampering or re-stitching. Some unscrupulous rice shop owners and grain merchants would use tricks to short-change customers, sell inferior goods, or, even worse, add sand to the rice, all of which required unpicking and re-sewing the sacks. Therefore, if one was careful, checking the needle holes and thread ends could reveal if a bag had been tampered with. The children of the poor take charge early; this was the experience Zhang Tie had gained from buying rice over the years.

After buying the rice, he stopped at a general store not far from the rice shop to buy two pounds of sugar before pedaling home. As expected, after the rice price rose by 3%, the sugar price had followed suit. However, the sugar price had jumped even more; the raw sugar that cost 91 copper coins per kilogram last week had risen directly to 1 silver coin per kilogram. Seeing that the surrounding shops were the same, Zhang Tie bought two pounds of sugar, put them in a cloth bag, and hung it on the handlebars. He then wobbled his way home on that ugly, modified second-hand tricycle.

Upon returning home, he told his mother about the price hikes for rice and sugar and handed over every last copper coin of the change. Watching his mother take the money, he thought for a moment, and she counted out ten copper coins to give back to Zhang Tie as pocket money.

Receiving the ten copper coins, Zhang Tie beamed and said, "Thanks, Mom!" His mother was much more generous today; usually, she gave him at most five.

His mother sighed, her brows furrowing. "With the prices of rice and sugar both up, I'm afraid the price of our rice wine will have to go up too. The profit margin is already thin; if we don't raise prices, we can't keep the business going. But if we do, we might lose some regular customers! Sigh..."

Looking at his frowning mother, Zhang Tie felt a surge of emotion, and the words slipped out. "Mom, don't worry. I will definitely make sure you and Dad live a good life in the future. I'm different from before now!"

"Mom knows, our little Guoguo has grown up, of course you're different from before!" His mother laughed, reaching out to stroke Zhang Tie's head.

Hearing the underlying meaning behind the word "grown up" in his mother's tone, Zhang Tie felt embarrassed and flustered. "Mom, it's not what you're thinking. I mean I..."

"Alright, alright, Mom knows our Guoguo has grown up and is a filial, good child. Let's not talk about this anymore. You hurry up and take this rice wine to Mother Theresa at the Orphanage of Compassion. If you're too late, you won't make it today!"

Zhang Tie's words were interrupted by his mother, and he couldn't finish what he wanted to say. He lowered his head again and loaded the remaining jars of rice wine onto the ugly pedal tricycle. Zhang Tie felt a bit depressed as he pedaled toward his next destination. Thinking about how he had almost blurted out the secret of the Castle of Black Iron in his moment of impulse, he blamed himself slightly for being too reckless. If his family knew about this secret now, he couldn't think of any benefit it would bring them, other than causing his parents worry and introducing many unpredictable risks. While riding, Zhang Tie secretly made up his mind to let this secret rot in the bottom of his heart. If he had the ability, he would simply let his family enjoy the benefits brought by the Castle of Black Iron without needing them to worry about it for him. Whether for himself or for this family, the fewer people who knew the secret of the Castle of Black Iron, the better.

Black Flame City was an emerging industrial city with little historical depth. One of the benefits of a new city was that when it was planned, the convenience of urban traffic was fully considered. Many roads were very spacious, especially on the main thoroughfares, where sidewalks, non-motorized lanes, and motorized lanes were clearly separated. Zhang Tie rode his modified second-hand tricycle, ringing his bell, and darted quickly through the non-motorized lane. He looked with envy at the cars passing by on the motorized lane from time to time, fantasizing about the day he could get a car of his own, take his family, or perhaps a beautiful woman like Teacher Daina for a drive around the city.

Before the Great Cataclysm, the steam engine was a technology that humanity had discarded for nearly hundreds of years. It was said that humans at that time had invented all kinds of advanced mechanical equipment and technologies, throwing the steam engine into the dustbin of history, never to be looked at again. Among those advanced technologies, some seemed like myths to Zhang Tie—such as machines that could fly in the sky, ships that could sail for hundreds of years without refueling, methods to send people to the stars, devices that allowed people to talk and see each other from millions of miles away, and devilish weapons that could wipe out an entire city or even a country by planting a single mushroom. When the school teachers spoke of these, they were filled with sighs, while Zhang Tie listened with stars in his eyes. The human society before the Great Cataclysm was truly unimaginable. After the Great Cataclysm, humanity lost all this glory. With no other choice, humans dug the steam engine out of the dustbin of history. From the simplest condensing steam vacuum pump to the most complex high-pressure steam turbine, these various outdated, old-fashioned things dug out from history began to glow with youth again, supporting humanity as it stood up and began to run in an era different from any that had come before—just like those small cars equipped with high-quality reciprocating two-stage steam engines that sped through the city.

In Black Flame City, the transportation for ordinary people was their own two feet or public transit. Some working-class people might buy a bicycle; for instance, Zhang Tie's family had modified this strange-looking second-hand tricycle for the convenience of delivering goods. But for the truly wealthy, the only mode of transport was a car. A car, costing thousands of gold coins, was no longer just a means of transport for them, but a symbol of status and power. In all of Black Flame City, after so many years, the number of private cars remained under 1,000. Those who could sit inside were either rich or noble. At the very least, in Zhang Tie's school, he hadn't found any student or teacher whose family could afford such a car. Even for Captain Colin, as the most terrifying One-Eyed Dragon in Black Flame City, even though his salary was not low compared to ordinary people, if he wanted to buy a car relying solely on his salary, he might have to go without eating or drinking for 50 years.

From childhood to adulthood, almost all the superficial knowledge about machinery and tools Zhang Tie learned in school was related to various steam engines. As a 15-year-old man born with a desire to conquer the world, Zhang Tie once had two greatest extravagant hopes for the future: one was Teacher Daina, and the other was a beautiful private car. Combining these two hopes gave birth to the heaven-like life Zhang Tie dreamed of—driving a car every day, taking Teacher Daina with him, finding a scenic, undisturbed place, and communicating with Teacher Daina about the human piston movement related to steam engines, while incidentally testing the shock-absorption performance of the car's tires and seats.

Immersed in his unknown "wild ambition," the young man pedaled the tricycle with all his might, racing through the city. Thirty minutes later, he finally arrived at Mother Theresa's Orphanage of Compassion before six in the evening...