"Hey, Mom and Dad, just leave me be. Look, the weather's so nice outside. Why don't you two go for a walk? The parks in the city and the reservoirs on the outskirts are sure to be packed today. Get out and enjoy some fresh air. I'm out and about every day, so I've had my fill of fun. I'll stay home and watch the shop today, and get some rest while I'm at it. Training this and that at school every day has worn your son out!"
After lunch, Zhang Tie busied himself tidying up the house, then ushered his parents out the door. His father worked six days a week, spending every day in the factory workshop, where even the air he breathed was full of dust. His mother had it worse, minding their family's rice wine shop every day in that tiny space, where there wasn't even room to turn around. So every weekend, Zhang Tie, not wanting his parents to feel that life was too bleak, would find a way to "kick them out of the house" for some fresh air. As for him, he'd stay home and help mind the shop today.
Naturally, his parents were pleased to see how sensible and well-behaved their son was. But before leaving, his mother still reminded him anxiously, "Remember, don't raise the price of the rice wine yet. When regular customers come in, explain first that the price of rice and ingredients has gone up. Tell them that if our wholesale prices haven't come back down by next week, then we'll raise the price of the rice wine in our shop. They're all regulars, so don't let them think we're greedy and offend them!"
"I know, Mom! You've said it more than thirty times. Do you really think I'm that inconsiderate?" Zhang Tie complained. He was already fifteen, but whenever it came to something minor, his mother always nagged him endlessly as if he were a little kid or an idiot. It was pretty insulting.
"When have I said it more than thirty times? Five at most!" His mother glared at him in mock anger and pretended to reach for his ear. Zhang Tie quickly slipped out of reach, made a face at her, and dashed into the rice wine shop. Then he hollered, "Fresh rice wine, just made by the Zhang family! Fragrant, sweet, and delicious! Makes men strong and women beautiful! Don't walk past without stopping! Six copper coins a bowl, generous portions for a great price..."
"That boy..." His father chuckled and shook his head.
Watching his parents walk hand in hand until they disappeared down the street, Zhang Tie rubbed his barely fuzzed chin with one hand. It took him a long while to drag his strange gaze away from them. He didn't know why, but even though his parents had been married for decades, whenever they went out together, the way they naturally held hands never looked to him like an old married couple. They looked more like a young couple in love, which always gave him an indescribably strange feeling.
Was this what it meant to be devoted to one another? Zhang Tie didn't know. To be honest, he hadn't experienced enough of life to truly understand or appreciate it. But looking at his parents filled his heart with a strange sense of happiness.
Once his parents had left, Zhang Tie sat listlessly in the rice wine shop, holding a feather duster and occasionally shooing away flies. Rice wine was sweet, which made it irresistible to flies. That was especially true when the weather turned hot. In a few months, when summer arrived, they'd have to hang a bamboo curtain outside the shop just to keep those annoying pests from buzzing in their ears. But the curtain would hide the carefully arranged displays on the shop counter, and business would fall off a little. It happened every year without fail.
It was midafternoon. The sun blazed over the street, and the birds that had been quiet in the parasol trees all winter seemed to have emerged from their nests, hopping about and chirping merrily. Speckled sunlight and shadows fell from the mottled parasol tree leaves onto the bustling street.
A sign Dad had written the night before was already hanging outside the Zhang family's rice wine shop: "Due to the recent increase in grain and raw material prices, our shop expects to raise prices next week. We ask our new and regular customers for their understanding..."
Dear old Dad. If it had been that fellow Tang De, he would've raised the price the very first day the price of rice went up. He certainly wouldn't have waited a whole week.
After sitting bored in the shop for half an hour, he made a few small sales, selling seven or eight bowls of rice wine. He put the handful of scattered copper coins in the drawer, then soaked the used bowls and spoons in the wash basin. As he watched the sun climb higher, the hand waving his feather duster grew weaker and weaker. Zhang Tie couldn't help getting bored. He was at an age when he couldn't sit still; who could stand spending a big weekend alone, shooing flies here? But the more bored he felt, the more he admired his mother. He'd been sitting there only a little while and was already fed up, while she had sat there for twenty years straight.
When people were bored, they always found something to do. The thing Zhang Tie found to do was practice Abacus Mental Calculation. It had many levels. The lowest was like what he had practiced the previous night: close his eyes, spend a long time visualizing an abacus in his mind, then work its beads. The second level was to visualize the abacus in his mind almost in the blink of an eye, without closing his eyes, and then work its beads. After all, it was a mental arithmetic technique meant to be practical. What good would it be if it took hours to visualize an abacus every time, and he couldn't even keep his eyes open? The third level was when the abacus in his mind seemed to exist and not exist at once. The moment he saw a calculation, the answer would come to him naturally. That was the true essence of Abacus Mental Calculation. From there, the imagined abacus could grow from three rods to twelve, or even more. In the end, he could even split his attention, visualizing several abacuses at once, or dividing a many-rodded abacus into different sections and solving many different addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division problems at the same time, getting the answers in a blink. That was the highest level of Abacus Mental Calculation. Once mastered, a person could be called a human supercomputer.
Zhang Tie was doubtful that anyone could reach the highest level described in the book, where one could split one's attention and become a human computer. But whenever he thought of the blurry words "Recommended Extracurricular Reading for Primary School Students" printed in the book, he felt deflated. It made him feel as if comparing himself to others could drive him to death. What kind of incredible primary school had recommended this? In the end, Zhang Tie even began to suspect that the old bookseller might have been telling the truth—perhaps Abacus Mental Calculation really had come from a pre-Cataclysm ruin. The era before the Cataclysm had been strange and wondrous, and the things found in its ruins were all kinds of peculiar. The expensive crystals used for cultivation in this era had been nothing more than inconspicuous decorations back then, and many people hadn't even thought much of them. Maybe this strange book really had been an everyday extracurricular read for primary school students before the Cataclysm.
Whatever. He'd practice first and worry about it later. It seemed that practicing Abacus Mental Calculation could also restore his mental energy along the way. Zhang Tie wanted to confirm whether it really had that effect, but at the thought of the words "along the way," his mind instantly became a mess, and the two-rod abacus he had visualized collapsed...
Mental energy was already so hard to cultivate, and now he was supposed to restore it along the way...
It was really hard to accept.
Just as Zhang Tie sat in the little shop with his eyes half-open and half-closed, repeatedly cutting the time it took him to visualize a three-rod abacus from over ten minutes down to five or six, two people he hadn't expected appeared in front of him.
The fatso Barry and Doug were riding a bicycle. Doug, big, dark, and burly, was pedaling hard, sweating all over and grinning like a fool. The cunning fatso Barry was sitting on the back. As Zhang Tie spotted them, Barry, who had been scanning the street on both sides, noticed him too.
"This is the place. Brake!" the fatso Barry called, then nimbly hopped off the back of the bicycle, landing on both feet.
Doug, who had been riding with a blissful look on his face, suddenly cried out in panic after Barry got off. "Ah! The brake! Where's the brake? How do I stop? Ah... Help!"
Bam...
"You idiot, that's the new bike my damned old man just bought me!" Barry cried out in distress.
Zhang Tie helplessly covered his forehead with one hand and closed his eyes in pain...
Two minutes later, Doug and Barry were standing in front of Zhang Tie's little family shop, grinning and rubbing their bruised backsides. Seeing Doug gulp down his saliva as he smelled the rice wine and the downright infuriating smile on Barry's face, Zhang Tie cursed under his breath. He took two sets of bowls and spoons from beneath the counter, opened the crock, and scooped a bowl for each of them with the big ladle he used for serving rice wine. He shoved the bowls in front of them.
The two boys immediately broke into smiles. Without so much as a word of thanks, they picked up their bowls and slurped every last bit down in a few gulps. Seeing Doug stick out his tongue and run it around the bowl, Zhang Tie wanted to slam the ladle in his hand down on his head. Could he be any more disgusting? No, he'd have to disinfect any bowl that fellow ate from with boiling water.
Seeing their ingratiating smiles after they'd finished, Zhang Tie quickly collected their bowls and spoons, then put on a stern face. "I treated you just now. Now it's six copper coins a bowl. Do you still want any?"
Doug immediately looked to Barry for help. The fatso Barry patted his waist, and a handful of copper coins clattered onto the table. "That was delicious. One more bowl each!"
Zhang Tie didn't fuss. He swept the money into the drawer and gave each of them another bowl. After that bowl went down, Zhang Tie collected their bowls and spoons into the wash basin while Doug looked on reluctantly. When Doug looked to Barry for help again, Barry ignored him and turned to chat with Zhang Tie.
"Cough... cough... What's this called, rice wine?"
"Yeah, rice wine! What is it?"
"Heh, home visits are one of the fine traditions of the Airplane Brotherhood!" Barry grinned.
"Enough. Get to the point. I'm making hundreds of thousands every second here..."
"Have you heard of the Red Scarf Bandits?"
Zhang Tie was genuinely surprised to hear Barry mention the Red Scarf Bandits. "I've heard of them. What about it?"
Barry glanced left and right, lowered his voice, and quietly repeated what he'd heard from his older brother: "I only found out last night, and I came to tell everyone today. I figure not many people know yet. In any case, be careful for the next while. Don't wander around at night, and don't leave the city unless you have to. The Red Scarf Bandits are all butchers who kill without batting an eye. Doesn't your Hua Clan have a saying? Whenever the city gates catch fire, a few unlucky fish in the moat get caught up in it. I don't want anyone in our Airplane Brotherhood to be one of those unlucky fish!"
"So you came all this way just for that?"
"Of course. What did you think? That Doug and I came out under this blazing sun for fun? After telling you, I still have to go warn Shavin and Sista. All right, I won't interfere with your business that's making hundreds of thousands a second..."
Looking at the fatso's face, Zhang Tie felt a little moved. "Thanks, brother!"
"Then treat us to another bowl!" Barry said with a shameless grin.
Zhang Tie held out his hand and rubbed his fingers together, making a gesture everyone understood.
"Ha... ha... We're off, there's another stop to make!" Barry patted the back of the bicycle, urging Doug to hurry up and get on. Doug pushed the bike a few steps, then turned to look at Zhang Tie, hesitating to speak. "Barry said... learning to ride a bike would help me pick up girls!"
"Don't worry, I won't tell anyone. You're really good at riding!" Zhang Tie gave him a thumbs-up.
Doug was satisfied. He nodded, then huffed and puffed as he got back on the bike and rode off with Barry.
Zhang Tie hadn't expected news of the Red Scarf Bandits to spread so quickly. In just two days, it had left the people of Black Flame City in a state of panic...
Why bother thinking about useless things? He might as well honestly practice Abacus Mental Calculation. What did the Red Scarf Bandits have to do with a nobody like him? They weren't worth a single copper coin's concern. Zhang Tie smiled wryly.
In the evening, his parents came home with news: the curfew restrictions in Black Flame City had tightened, and people entering and leaving the city at dusk now had to show their identification.
After dinner, the district constable Gregory came to the Zhang family's door carrying a lantern and went from house to house handing out notices. No one was allowed to put up strangers for the night. Any suspicious person had to be reported at once. Also, starting at midnight tonight, Black Flame City would be under curfew...
Less than half a day after the fatso Barry had left, news of the Red Scarf Bandits had finally spread throughout Black Flame City. A current of unease began to stir.
But none of that had anything to do with Zhang Tie. After dinner, once the constable left and he'd washed up, Zhang Tie returned to his little room and entered Castle of Black Iron. After tossing in a bag of garbage left over from cleaning the house and cooking in the kitchen into the Pool of Chaos, Zhang Tie dusted off his hands and opened the basic attribute panel of Castle of Black Iron, looking with satisfaction at its latest attributes—
--Castle of Black Iron --Length: 1 Krosha --Width: 1 Krosha --Spirit Qi Value: 1.8 --Merit Value: 43 --Basic Energy Reserve: 0.5 --Special Products: None
He'd sent his parents out to have fun and minded the shop for a day, earning five Merit Value. Add in cleaning the house and cooking, and he'd scraped together eight Merit Value in total today. The potatoes had continued to sprout, increasing the Spirit Qi Value by 1.1. One bag of garbage had given him 0.3 in Basic Energy Reserve. Those were his gains for the day...
Then he looked at the Manjusaka Karma Myriad Fruit Tree.
The first Flawless Fruit would ripen in 103 hours...
Wide awake, Zhang Tie took out the crystal that had been sitting in the sun all day. He sat cross-legged inside Castle of Black Iron and began cultivating the Divine Palace Bright Point. From his experience over the past few days inside Castle of Black Iron, he'd discovered that watching the colorful, palette-like mists move through it could somehow calm the mind and make it very easy to enter a state of cultivation...
It was Zhang Tie's first time cultivating the Bright Point inside Castle of Black Iron, but he quickly settled into the practice. Coordinating with his breathing, and with the combined effects of the crystal and his mental energy, the blue light on Zhang Tie's Divine Palace Bright Point soon began to shine...
Only by constantly improving his strength could he hope to survive in this era. And to improve his strength, there was no shortcut—only putting in hard work, then more hard work, and still more hard work. That was the belief Zhang Tie had lived by for the past fifteen years.
Even after obtaining Castle of Black Iron...