So after all that, he still had to buy a ticket to get in and out of Castle of Black Iron! Sitting on the ground, Zhang Tie gave a bitter smile. That feeling just now, when his mind had suddenly been emptied and his body had "collapsed" into some dark passage, had been absolutely terrifying. For a few seconds, Zhang Tie had wondered if he was about to kick the bucket. If that was what it felt like to overdraw his mental energy, he'd rather die than go through it again.
As soon as he came to, Zhang Tie realized that in just a few minutes, he was already drenched in cold sweat, and his body even seemed a little weaker. This mental energy overdraft was no joke. He shook his head hard, but still felt that terrible, groggy sensation of being swallowed by darkness hadn't completely faded from his mind.
Something had definitely gone wrong. This wasn't right!
His head felt a little uncomfortable, but it didn't stop Zhang Tie from using it to think things through. He figured that going in and out to carry water back and forth to irrigate the land might be an incredibly stupid way to use Castle of Black Iron. This place clearly wasn't ordinary. Since the "Spirit Qi Value" required the owner of this place to keep expanding the land and planting vegetation to release so-called "life potential," there was no way it hadn't accounted for the water plants needed to grow. It couldn't expect the owner to water them by such a stupid method. All right, even if the land here was so fertile that it didn't need irrigation, and all the plants could grow just fine without him hauling water in from outside, what about the "Basic Energy Reserve"? What about the "Pool of Chaos"? Didn't that garbage processor need things constantly tossed into it to convert matter into basic energy? If he wanted to build up his "Basic Energy Reserve," did that mean he'd have to become a "porter" all over again, constantly hauling things back and forth?
When he thought of how some functions in Castle of Black Iron casually consumed tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, or even vast amounts of basic energy, Zhang Tie grew furious. Damn it, there was no way this was how it worked. If it was, what kind of fortress master was he? He'd be even more of a porter than one at a train station! If he went in and out five or six times a day, hauling things for thirty or fifty years straight, could he expand the land here by even one mu? Wasn't this a total rip-off?
No, it definitely couldn't be like this. He must have gotten something wrong, or there had to be some mysterious function of this space he hadn't discovered yet. Castle of Black Iron looked high-tech, and that damn system had a real swagger to it. How could it make such a low-level mistake? If it really worked that way, it'd be like the rich people of Black Flame City having to go to the Black Gold Hotel for a meal, only to find they had to strip off their clothes, dig up a patch of ground, plant vegetables, mine coal, and start a fire themselves before they could eat.
Zhang Tie thought and thought, but couldn't find an answer. Feeling like his intelligence had taken a hit, he simply cursed inwardly a few times and shoved the problem to the back of his mind. Damn it, he wasn't going to think about it anymore. Whatever happened, happened. He'd just assume the bastard who created Castle of Black Iron was playing a joke on him. So what if he was a porter? Some people wanted to haul things and didn't even have the chance. Wasn't it true that flaws were what made something perfect? Well, now the handsome, imposing Fortress Master would become a miserable porter in the future. Castle of Black Iron was finally perfect. Could anything be more perfect than that?
That was Zhang Tie's nature. Sometimes he was a little neurotic and became somewhat pessimistic when he ran into setbacks. But other times, his nerves and his mind were rather thick-skinned. Once he decided to let something go or do something, he could find countless reasons to comfort himself, then become smug and even throw caution to the wind. One moment, he thought Teacher Daina was the love of his life; the next, he felt that a man's life was only truly exciting if he had a harem. The love he'd never experienced had to be earth-shaking, lasting until the seas dried up and the rocks crumbled, with the whole world trembling, to count as perfect. And the busty, curvy girls, beauties, mature women—of every shape, every face, every scent, and every flavor—the more the merrier...
People were perhaps contradictions in human form.
As he pushed that problem to the back of his mind, another pressing issue that he couldn't avoid appeared before Zhang Tie: how exactly was he supposed to recover his mental energy? How long would he have to rest before he recovered? If it took too long, his parents might come home and find him gone, the bathroom door locked from the inside and no one answering. Who knew how much trouble that would cause? And what would he say then? Or what if he suddenly appeared out of thin air right in front of his parents after they got home?
This question was just as impossible for Zhang Tie to solve. Whatever, he'd take things one step at a time. If it came to that, he'd just confess and take a beating on the backside. It wasn't like he hadn't been beaten before. His parents weren't going to sell him, were they?
Once he stopped caring, none of the problems seemed so frightening. Zhang Tie brushed off his pants and stood up. He walked a few steps, then turned back, picked up the two empty buckets, and headed toward the Little Tree. The half-bag of seeds Mother Theresa had given him was still over there. Zhang Tie hadn't had time to open it and take a look, but now was the perfect time.
When he reached the Little Tree, Zhang Tie set down the buckets, squatted on the ground, and picked up the cloth bag full of seeds. He untied the drawstring and gave it a shake, spilling all the seeds inside.
It was clear that Mother Theresa was a very thoughtful person. The cloth bag held eight little paper packets, each labeled with the name of the seeds inside.
The smallest packet was labeled "Green Leaf Grass." The next few were a little bigger, and bore the labels "Morning Glory," "Olive," "Privet," "Red Tip Photinia," "Honey Pear," and "Radish." When he saw the word "Radish," Zhang Tie scratched his head in puzzlement, wondering if Mother Theresa had made a mistake. Why had she even brought radish seeds? "Olive" made perfect sense; it was the symbol of the Gripis Sect, so Mother Theresa giving him some was understandable. "Honey Pear" was not only edible, but its flowers were also gorgeous, so that made sense too. But what was the deal with radishes? Counting the "Olive" and "Honey Pear" seeds, three of those first seven kinds could already be eaten. With one more, half of them would be edible.
What did that mean? Zhang Tie scratched his head. Could it be that Mother Theresa had specially used these "seeds" to repay the Zhang Family for the rice gruel they'd sent to the Orphanage of Compassion all these years? That logic seemed a little strange.
He saw one last packet, the biggest of them all, lying on the ground. It was round and bulging, as if it were packed full. Zhang Tie didn't even bother to check the label. He picked it up and tore it open. Several walnuts came rolling out and landed at his feet, leaving him completely speechless. More food!
Forget it. As long as they could grow and provide Spirit Qi for this space, any seeds would do. And edible ones were even better—a two-for-one deal! Anyway, there was such a huge stretch of land here. He could plant anything he wanted. But with so many kinds of seeds and so much space, where should he plant them? Looks like he'd have to plan things out. These seeds could serve as natural landmarks. Once he planted them, Zhang Tie figured he could divide Castle of Black Iron into four directions: east, south, west, and north.
With the Manjusaka Karma Myriad Fruit Tree as the center, and using the default orientation he'd seen on the Castle of Black Iron map last time as a guide, the top of the map was north. He'd plant the olive trees there. The bottom of the map was south, where he'd plant the Red Tip Photinia. Honey Pears would go west, and walnuts east. As for the rest—Green Leaf Grass, Morning Glory, and Privet—he'd scatter them wherever, in any direction. Whatever they grew into was fine. The radishes were edible vegetables, so he'd plant them next to the Potato and corn field, in neat rows, where they'd be easier to manage.
Once Zhang Tie had made up his mind, he got to work. He first opened the packets of Green Leaf Grass, Morning Glory, and Red Tip Photinia, the easiest ones to plant, shook the seeds together into a pile, then tossed them out by the handful. Zhang Tie knew nothing about planting these things. He simply thought that they were everywhere in the wild, and nobody seemed to do anything special to grow them. As long as he let nature take its course, they'd grow. Why make things so complicated? He'd just treat this place like the wilderness.
About twenty meters from the Little Tree, Zhang Tie jogged in a circle, scattering the seeds as he went. In less than three minutes, he'd sown all three packets.
After planting those first three packets, Zhang Tie took a more serious approach with the rest. About fifty meters north of the Little Tree, he used a steel rebar to poke a row of small holes in the ground, then buried the olive seeds. He did more or less the same thing in the south, east, and west. When he planted the walnuts, though, he saw how large they were and made their holes a little deeper than the others. Calling it "digging" wasn't quite right. For Zhang Tie, it just meant pushing the rebar deeper into the soil and twisting it around to make a hole. Then he buried the walnuts. He didn't know if he'd done it right, but that was that. Whether anything came of it was up to the heavens.
Walnuts were ridiculously expensive, so Zhang Tie had rarely gotten to eat any in his life. As he buried them, he looked at the tempting walnuts in his hand and couldn't resist. Shamelessly, he stole one and ate it. In the end, of the eight walnuts Mother Theresa had given him, only seven got planted.
After planting the walnuts, he ran over to the edge of the "vegetable patch." In no time, Zhang Tie had casually found a patch of empty ground next to the cornfield and planted the radishes. Then he stuck the steel rebar into the ground and clapped his hands with satisfaction.
For Zhang Tie, this seemed to be his biggest accomplishment of the day. As for whether he should water them again, his thought was to wait a month first. If none of the seeds he'd planted today had sprouted by then, he'd just count it as paying tuition and gaining experience. Next time he planted something, he could always work a little harder and water it.
After he finished all that, Zhang Tie casually opened Castle of Black Iron's basic attributes panel. It had only been one day, but the enormous changes to several of Castle of Black Iron's attributes left him staring in astonishment.