The Miserable Fortress Lord

After all that, it turns out you still have to pay a toll to enter and exit the Castle of Black Iron! Zhang Tie sat on the ground and gave a wry smile. The sensation from just a moment ago—as if his brain had been suddenly hollowed out and his body was "collapsing" into some dark tunnel—was truly terrifying. For a few seconds, Zhang Tie had actually wondered if he was going to die. If this was what it felt like to overdraw his mental energy, then Zhang Tie would rather die than go through it again.

Once he regained his senses, Zhang Tie realized that in just these few short minutes, he was already drenched in cold sweat, and his body felt noticeably weaker. It seemed that overdrawing his mental energy was no laughing matter. He shook his head vigorously, yet he could still feel that horrifying, dark, suffocating sense of lethargy lingering in his mind.

Something must be wrong; this isn't right!

Though his head felt uncomfortable, it didn't stop Zhang Tie from using it to ponder a few things. He felt that his current method of running in and out to fetch water to irrigate the land was probably a very, very idiotic approach for the Castle of Black Iron. This place was clearly no ordinary object. Since the "Spirit Qi Value" required the owner to constantly expand the land and plant vegetation to release so-called "Life Potential Energy," it was impossible that the designers hadn't considered the water source needed for plant growth. They wouldn't force the owner to use such a moronic method to water the plants here. Well, even if one took a step back and assumed the soil was so fertile that it didn't need irrigation or manual water hauling to make the plants thrive, what about the "Basic Energy Reserve"? What about that "Pool of Chaos"? Didn't that waste processing plant require one to constantly throw things into it to convert matter into basic energy? If he wanted to acquire "Basic Energy Reserve," did the current situation mean he had to act as a "porter" again, constantly running back and forth to haul things in?

At the thought that some functions in the Castle of Black Iron consumed tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, or even massive amounts of Basic Energy Reserve with a single use, Zhang Tie became furious. Damn it, it couldn't be like this. If it were, what kind of Castle Lord would he be? Wouldn't he be even more of a porter than the ones at the train station? If he ran in and out five or six times a day, hauling for thirty or fifty years, would he even be able to expand a single acre of land? Isn't this just a scam?

No, it absolutely couldn't be like this. He must have misunderstood something, or there were mysterious functions of this space he hadn't discovered yet. The Castle of Black Iron looked very high-end, and that damn system had such an arrogant air; how could it have such a low-level flaw? If it were really like this, wouldn't it be the equivalent of the wealthy in Black Flame City going to the Black Gold Hotel to eat, only to have to strip off their clothes, find a patch of dirt, plant vegetables, dig for coal, and build a fire themselves just to get a meal?

He thought and thought, but Zhang Tie couldn't find an answer. Feeling his intelligence had been insulted, he simply cursed a few times in his heart and pushed the problem to the back of his mind—Damn it, I'm not thinking about it anymore. Whatever happens, happens. I'll just assume the bastard who created this Castle of Black Iron is playing a prank on me. So what if I'm a porter? Some people want to be porters but don't even have the qualifications. Isn't it said that perfection only exists through flaws? Well, now it's perfect: the handsome and heroic Castle Lord has become a miserable porter in the future. The Castle of Black Iron is finally perfect; could there be anything more perfect than this?

This was Zhang Tie's personality. Sometimes he was a bit neurotic, and when encountering setbacks, he was slightly pessimistic, but at other times, his nerves and brain were quite thick. Once he decided to let something go or commit to a task, he could find countless reasons to comfort himself, then start feeling smug or even act recklessly. One second he felt Teacher Daina was his one true love, and the next second his mind was filled with the thought that a man's life was only truly brilliant if he had a harem; that the love he had never experienced had to be earth-shattering and eternal to be perfect, and that the more big-breasted, big-bottomed, varied-figured, varied-faced, varied-scented, and flirtatious girls, beauties, and mature women he had, the better—that was the only logical path...

Humans, perhaps, are inherently a collection of contradictions.

While pushing that problem to the back of his mind, another imminent and unavoidable issue appeared before Zhang Tie—how exactly was he supposed to recover this mental energy? How long would he need to rest before he could recover? If it took too long, and his mom and dad came home to find him missing, the bathroom door locked from the inside, and no answer to their calls, he didn't know what kind of trouble that would cause, or how he would explain it. Or what if he suddenly appeared out of thin air right in front of his parents who had already returned home?

This problem, too, was unsolvable for Zhang Tie's intellect. Screw it, I'll take it one step at a time. If it really comes to that, I'll just confess and take the punishment; it's just a spanking, it's not like I haven't had one before. It's not like Mom and Dad are going to sell me off, right?

Once he felt carefree, all the problems seemed less terrifying. Zhang Tie dusted off his backside and stood up. He walked a few steps, then turned back, picked up two empty buckets, and headed toward the small tree. The small bag of seeds Mother Theresa had given him was still there. Zhang Tie hadn't had a chance to open it and look, and now was the perfect time.

He walked over to the small tree, set down the buckets, squatted on the ground, picked up the cloth bag containing the seeds, untied the string at the mouth, and gave it a casual shake, spilling all the seeds out.

It was clear that Mother Theresa was a very meticulous person. There were eight small paper bags in the cloth bag, each with the name of the seeds written on it.

The smallest paper bag had "Green Leaf Grass" written on it. The subsequent bags were slightly larger, labeled "Morning Glory," "Olive," "Privet," "Red Tip Photinia," "Honey Pear," and "Radish." When he saw the words "Radish," Zhang Tie scratched his head in frustration, wondering if Mother Theresa had made a mistake. Why would she bring radish seeds? "Olive" was easy to understand; it was a symbol of the Gripis Sect, so it made sense for Mother Theresa to give it to him. "Honey Pear" was not only edible, but the tree's flowers were also breathtakingly beautiful, which he could understand. But what was up with this radish? If he included the "Olive" and "Honey Pear," three of these seven types of seeds were basically edible. If he added another one, half of them would be food.

What was the meaning of this? Zhang Tie scratched his head. Could it be that Mother Theresa was specifically using these "seeds" to repay the rice soup the Zhang Family had sent to the Orphanage of Compassion over the years? That logic seemed a bit strange.

Seeing the largest paper bag lying on the ground, which felt quite full and round, Zhang Tie didn't even look at the name. He grabbed it, tore it open, and several Walnuts came rolling out to his feet, leaving Zhang Tie completely speechless—more food.

Forget it, whatever. As long as they could grow and provide Spirit Qi to this space, any seed would do. Edible ones were even better; it was killing two birds with one stone. Besides, with such a large plot of land here, what did it matter what he planted? But with so many seeds and such a large space, he would need to plan where to plant them. These seeds were natural landmarks. Once planted, Zhang Tie felt he could divide the Castle of Black Iron into four directions: North, South, East, and West.

Taking the Manjusaka Karma Myriad Fruit Tree as the center, and using the default perspective he saw when he opened the Castle of Black Iron map last time as the standard, the top of the map was North, where he would plant the Olive trees. The bottom of the map, the South, would be for the Red Tip Photinia. The West would be for the Honey Pear, and the East for the Walnuts. As for the rest—the Green Leaf Grass, Morning Glory, and Privet—he would just scatter them wherever in the four directions; they could grow however they wanted. As for the radishes, since they were edible vegetables, he would plant them next to the Potato and Corn fields to keep things neat and easier to manage.

Once he made his decision, Zhang Tie took action. He first opened the bags of Green Leaf Grass, Morning Glory, and Red Tip Photinia, which were the easiest to plant, shook the seeds together, and scattered them with a casual handful. Zhang Tie had no expertise in planting these things; he just instinctively felt that since these plants were seen everywhere in the wild and no one seemed to cultivate them, they would grow as long as he let nature take its course. Why make it so complicated? He would just treat this place like the wild.

About twenty meters away from the small tree, Zhang Tie jogged in a circle, scattering the seeds as he went. In less than three minutes, he had sown the seeds of the three types of plants.

After finishing the first three bags, Zhang Tie became more serious. About 50 meters to the north of the small tree, he used a steel bar to poke a row of small holes in the ground and buried the Olive seeds. He followed the same method for the remaining South, East, and West sides. However, when planting the Walnuts, seeing that they were relatively large, Zhang Tie dug the holes a bit deeper than the others. Actually, "dug" wasn't quite accurate; for Zhang Tie, it just meant pushing the steel bar deeper into the soil and giving it a stir to create a hole, then burying the Walnut. Zhang Tie didn't know if it was right, but that was that; whether the rest would grow or not, he would leave it to the heavens.

Because Walnuts were so expensive, Zhang Tie had rarely been able to eat them in his life. While burying them, looking at the tempting Walnuts in his hand, Zhang Tie couldn't resist the temptation and shamelessly stole one to eat. In the end, of the 8 Walnuts Mother Theresa had given him, only 7 were planted.

After finishing the Walnuts, he ran to the edge of the "vegetable patch," quickly found an empty space next to the Corn field to plant the radishes, then stuck the steel bar into the ground and clapped his hands in satisfaction.

For Zhang Tie, this seemed to be his greatest harvest of the day. As for whether he needed to water them, Zhang Tie's current thought was to wait a month and see. If none of these seeds sprouted after a month, he would treat today's efforts as tuition fees for gaining experience; if he needed to plant anything in the future, it wouldn't be too late to work hard and haul water then.

After finishing all this, Zhang Tie casually opened the basic attribute panel of the Castle of Black Iron. After just one day, the massive changes in several of the Castle of Black Iron's attribute values left him dumbfounded.