After school, Zhang Tie hurried to the station again. He quietly watched Teacher Daina board the bus, unable to tear himself away. Only after it vanished from sight did he leave the little alley behind the station and run toward Mingguang Street.
Though he could only watch her from a distance, Zhang Tie still felt time fly by. If he could, he would have been content to spend his whole life watching Teacher Daina's back. But the heavens didn't bend to human wishes. Teacher Daina still left, and after she was gone, Zhang Tie realized his stomach was growling.
These past two days, he had been getting hungry especially quickly. Before, he could make it through the end of the school day, but now his stomach was already protesting by then. Zhang Tie muttered helplessly and patted his sunken belly. "You had braised pork for lunch today!"
Thinking of braised pork naturally reminded him of the part-time job Captain Colin had recommended. There was a bus stop in front of him with buses to Mingguang Street, but the fare was four copper coins. Zhang Tie was determined to earn that money himself. As he ran, he reassured himself: young people were full of energy, and a little extra running couldn't hurt.
This wasn't Zhang Tie's first visit to Mingguang Street, but every time he came, every corner of the street seemed to make him feel inexplicably inferior and out of place.
There were countless shops along both sides of Mingguang Street, their windows filled with an dazzling array of goods. Just now, as Zhang Tie passed a shoe shop, he couldn't help stopping to look at the leather shoes displayed in the window. Their price tag had left him stunned for a long time: sixteen gold coins! Heaven have mercy, his father's year of work, together with his mother's year of selling rice wine at home, brought in about sixteen gold coins in total. Sixteen gold coins—1,600 silver coins, 160,000 copper coins, nearly seven tons of grain. Zhang Tie had thought about it for ages, but he still couldn't connect seven tons of grain with a pair of shoes on someone's feet. He knew this was how rich people lived, but it was still more than he could bear.
After seeing the price of those shoes, Zhang Tie became immune to the things displayed in the shops along the street. The more he looked at them, the more pointless life seemed, and the more inferior he felt. So he walked down Mingguang Street with his eyes fixed straight ahead.
Beautiful cars were parked along the roadside, their uniformed chauffeurs diligently polishing them until they gleamed. Zhang Tie swallowed and walked by without looking.
All kinds of tempting aromas drifted out of the high-end restaurants along the road. Zhang Tie swallowed and walked by without looking.
At the entrances to upscale clubs, a line of tall, sexy beauties stood waiting. Their skirts were slit high, revealing snow-white thighs and every bit of their allure. Zhang Tie swallowed and walked by without looking.
At the hotels along the roadside, doormen and attendants in bow ties, tailcoats, and white gloves served the guests coming and going with warm attentiveness. Zhang Tie glanced at the pretty angel sculptures beside the hotel doors, swallowed, and walked by without looking.
Handsome young men and beautiful young women his age passed him on the street. Zhang Tie looked at their refined clothes, then at his own old-fashioned school uniform, swallowed, and walked by without looking.
Gentlemen and ladies chatted and laughed in the cafés along the road. Zhang Tie glanced at the menu board outside, swallowed, and walked by without looking.
To the sharp-eyed attendants standing at the entrances of the many shops and hotels on Mingguang Street, Zhang Tie looked like a country bumpkin who had come to broaden his horizons—a nobody. Hardly anyone even spared him a second glance.
After drifting like a ghost down Mingguang Street for half an hour, Zhang Tie finally followed the street numbers to No. 18. No. 16 was in front of it and No. 20 behind. Looking at the sign hanging from a pillar beside the dozen or so steps—it was made of reddish brass and bore the words "No. 18 Mingguang Street" in large letters—Zhang Tie was dumbstruck. What caught the eye even more than the sign was the lettering above the doorway at the top of the steps: Iron Thorn Combat Hall.
A combat hall? A combat hall... a combat hall!
The job Captain Colin had found him was actually a part-time position at a combat hall. Zhang Tie nearly burst into tears. He had truly wronged Captain Colin. Captain Colin was a thoroughly good man!
In this era, force was the greatest asset, and combat halls were the best places to improve one's strength—at least, that was how things were in Black Flame City.
Taking a deep breath and trying to square his shoulders, Zhang Tie felt the letter of introduction in his pocket, then strode toward the entrance of Iron Thorn Combat Hall.
Gold coins, beauties, here I come! Zhang Tie shouted in his heart.
"Stop! State your business." Four guards stood at the entrance of Iron Thorn Combat Hall, dressed in full armor with swords at their sides. Their imposing appearance was intimidating. As soon as Zhang Tie approached the gate, one of them immediately raised a hand to stop him.
Looking at the huge man in front of him, two heads taller than himself, and at his flashy suit of polished steel armor, which gleamed like a mirror and reflected Zhang Tie's distorted image, Zhang Tie suddenly felt a little uneasy. "I... I'm here to apply for a job. Captain Colin sent me!"
"Colin sent you? Do you have proof?"
"I do, I do..." Zhang Tie hurriedly took out the letter of introduction Captain Colin had given him. Only after taking it out did he notice the thorn emblem in the upper-right corner on the back of the envelope. It seemed to be connected to this place.
The big man took the letter and examined it, then looked at Zhang Tie. At last, he handed it back. "Hold on to that. Don't wander off. Follow me!"
Holding the letter, Zhang Tie followed the big man through the gates of Iron Thorn Combat Hall. It was nothing like he'd imagined. He'd expected that the moment he stepped inside, he would see a group of brawny men fighting in a frenzy, blood flying everywhere. Instead, the first thing he saw was a lobby with a fountain and polished marble floors that gleamed like mirrors. The space around it was spotless, with no unnecessary decorations—not a flower or a plant in sight. Everything looked clean and orderly, rather like the lobbies of the upscale hotels he had just passed. The only things that gave the place the feel of a combat hall were the armor and weapons displayed along the corridors. Some were new, while others were scarred and battered, exuding a murderous aura.
The lobby was very quiet. Apart from footsteps, the only sound was the fountain's rushing water.
There really were beauties here! The armored man led Zhang Tie around the fountain, and then he saw them—not just one, but a whole line of them standing behind the reception desk. Zhang Tie was dazzled. As each woman in the line turned her eyes on him, he grew a little flustered. Before he could get a proper look at them, the armored man casually pointed to one of them. "He's applying for a part-time job. Take him to Manager Hans's office!"
As soon as the man mentioned that Zhang Tie was applying for a part-time job, he felt the women's curious gazes leave him. In an instant, he seemed to have become someone unimportant.
"Come with me." The woman came around from behind the reception desk, said a few words to Zhang Tie, then headed down a nearby corridor. Zhang Tie hurried after her.
The woman in front of Zhang Tie wore her hair in a pretty ponytail. She looked to be in her twenties and wore a tight black athletic top and white track pants that showed off her youthful figure. A pleasant fragrance drifted from her. Walking behind her, Zhang Tie was closer than ever before to a beautiful woman. Watching the way her figure moved as she walked, he suddenly felt his face grow hot and awkwardly shifted his attention elsewhere.
The carpeted corridor was empty. The woman walked ahead of him, her figure swaying gracefully. Zhang Tie felt that, as a man, he ought to say something. After taking more than ten steps, he finally worked up the courage to ask her a foolish question from behind.
"Y-you... hello. I... I'm Zhang Tie. May I ask what your name is?"
The ponytailed woman stopped and turned around. Her eyes swept over Zhang Tie, and she raised an eyebrow. Then a mocking smile touched her lips, cold and distant. "My name is Mary. You don't actually need to know it. We may both be here to earn money, but you only need to understand that our lives will never have anything to do with each other. Don't be a toad dreaming of eating swan meat..."
Zhang Tie's face paled after his first attempt at striking up a conversation was crushed. He forced a smile that made his facial muscles feel stiff. He was aggrieved and didn't understand what he had done wrong. He had only asked her name—was that really necessary? How did he look like a toad? At the same time, anger at being ignored and insulted surged through him.
When Zhang Tie was insulted, his instinct was to return the insult twice over. And as a male student, his childhood experiences and the all-boys school environment had taught him a lesson he deeply believed in: when someone bullied or insulted you, you had to strike back at once—not tomorrow, not the day after, and not after you had prepared yourself, but right then and there. Those who ignored this principle of striking back at once inevitably became wretched cowards whom anyone could bully.
So at that moment, Zhang Tie didn't even know where his courage came from. He stepped forward and stared hard into the eyes of the woman named Mary. As she looked at him in alarm, he grabbed her bare shoulders. "Woman, do you believe that one day you'll take off your clothes and crawl in front of me, begging me to sleep with you? Just like this..." Then Zhang Tie made the crude gesture he had often seen Sista make, thrusting his hips twice.
The two sudden thrusts seemed to leave Mary stunned. She had never imagined that anyone in the world would do something so outrageous in broad daylight, on a first meeting, in the corridor of a combat hall—least of all a poor kid with no hair on his chin who had come to apply for a part-time job.
Before Mary could scream, Zhang Tie let go and stepped back. He raised his chin provocatively, putting on a shameless air. "Show me the way, woman!"
Zhang Tie's heart was pounding too. He couldn't believe he had actually done it—harassed a beautiful woman he had just met, right there in the corridor. Remembering the brief contact, he felt a strange thrill rising through his nervousness, making him so excited that his hair stood on end.
Mary's face flushed, then went pale, then flushed again. She seemed about to speak, but held back. Pointing at Zhang Tie and shaking with anger, she glared at him for more than ten seconds before finally turning away furiously and leading him onward without a word.
Zhang Tie breathed a sigh of relief. He had already decided that if the woman really started shouting, he would run for it at once...
Iron Thorn Combat Hall was huge. The two of them walked for nearly a minute down a corridor deep as a well before Mary finally led Zhang Tie to a door marked "Manager Office"...
"This is Manager Hans's office. I've brought you here, so go in yourself!" After saying this, Mary lifted her head like a swan and walked away without even looking at Zhang Tie.
Zhang Tie knocked on the door.
"Come in!" a man's voice came from inside. For some reason, the moment Zhang Tie heard it, he thought of that stingy fatso Tang De. Then he pushed the door open and really did see a fatso: he sat like a mountain of flesh behind a luxurious sandalwood desk, one eye pressed to a crystal lens as he huffed on a gleaming brass button on his coat and vigorously polished it with a piece of green velvet.
Manager Hans was definitely stingier than Tang De, who never even invited Zhang Tie to stay for dinner. That was Zhang Tie's first impression of him.