A Life That Cannot Be Escaped

The aftereffects of being beaten to a pulp at the Iron Thorn Combat Hall on Wednesday only began to manifest slowly on Thursday morning.

After getting thrashed yesterday, Zhang Tie had still been in the mood to take a comfortable hot shower in the combat hall's staff bathroom before heading home. There were some bruised marks on his body, but fortunately, his face was fine, so Zhang Tie didn't have to worry about his parents noticing anything.

After dinner, having chatted for a while with his parents and his future sister-in-law, Zhang Tie finished washing up and snuck two sweet potatoes and a handful of soybeans from the kitchen, returning to his little nest.

What followed was, naturally, the grand reclamation plan for the Castle of Black Iron. Beside the already sprouting corn and potato patches, Zhang Tie quietly buried two sweet potatoes in the soil and planted a row of soybeans, just as he had done with the corn.

Sweet potatoes need to be divided into pits once the shoots grow more vines, just like planting potatoes—the teachers at school had explained this. As for the soybeans, the planting method was similar to corn: use a steel bar to poke a hole, drop them in, and you could leave them be.

The Spirit Qi Value of the Castle of Black Iron continued to rise, having already broken through 13. Aside from the corn sprouting one after another, Zhang Tie discovered on Wednesday that the grass seeds Mother Theresa had given him, which he had scattered randomly on the ground, also seemed to be germinating. In the area where he had sown them, patches of green, tender sprouts were poking out from the soil.

There was a little over a day left until the first Flawless Fruit matured. On another branch of that small tree, a tiny silver fruit had appeared. Zhang Tie reached out to check it and found that the maturity progress bar for the Iron Fetus Fruit had reached a little over a quarter. It seemed that if he endured another four or five such beatings, this fruit would be about ready to ripen.

Flawless Fruit... Iron Fetus Fruit... Hehehehe...

After completing his scheduled cultivation, Zhang Tie drifted off to sleep while muttering these two names...

Thursday morning, when Zhang Tie's internal clock woke him from a deep sleep at exactly 6:15, he went to roll out of bed, but his face turned pale, and a fine layer of sweat instantly appeared on his forehead. That feeling could be summed up in one word: pain! Every part of his body hurt! Everywhere he had been beaten yesterday, especially his two hands used for defense and blocking, felt as if they were broken. This bone-deep, piercing pain stemmed partly from the body's natural delayed reaction to external trauma, and partly because yesterday's exertion had been truly excessive; after a night of rest, his muscles began to ache in retaliation. When these two types of pain combined, Zhang Tie suffered.

Grimacing and sucking in cold air, Zhang Tie put on his clothes with slow, careful movements. At this moment, even the slightest motion felt excruciating.

Only then did Zhang Tie realize that yesterday's beating wasn't so easy to endure, and this Iron Fetus Fruit wasn't so easy to get his hands on.

It took Zhang Tie twice as long as usual to get from his bed to school. He performed every action in slow motion; no matter how he moved, even the slightest gesture brought a wave of pain.

When Zhang Tie arrived at school, he saw the imposing One-Eyed Dragon standing at the school gate, slapping an iron rod against his palm with a rhythmic thwack-thwack-thwack. The "animals" arriving for school lowered their heads like quails, walking in through the gate furthest from One-Eyed Dragon.

"Kid, I heard you did well yesterday. You didn't lose face for me!" Before Zhang Tie could even greet Captain Colin, he was surprised to hear the captain praise him upon seeing him.

Zhang Tie twitched the muscles in his face into a smile, looking somewhat shy. At this moment, even Zhang Tie didn't know whether he should be grateful or hateful toward this One-Eyed Dragon.

Arriving at the classroom, he found many of the "animals" whispering among themselves. They weren't discussing the fact that the desks and chairs hadn't been wiped today; rather, some classmates had "laid an ambush" in the classroom next door early this morning, hoping to see which "dumbass" came in every morning to wipe their classroom's desks and chairs clean. Unfortunately, those who had been lying in wait to break the news hadn't expected that even though they arrived at school before dawn, they waited until more than half the class had arrived without ever seeing the mysterious person appear, causing their plan to be a complete failure.

Damn it, looks like I need to be more low-key when doing good deeds in the future, Zhang Tie thought to himself. The curiosity of his classmates was too intense; this path to earning Merit Value wouldn't work.

Perhaps out of a guilty conscience, Zhang Tie, having obtained the Castle of Black Iron, didn't want to become a topic of conversation in the school or his class. It was too strange for a student who usually performed averagely to suddenly become keen on doing good deeds. Although it was hard for anyone to link Zhang Tie's good deeds to something as ethereal as Merit Value, given Zhang Tie's consistently cautious attitude, being low-key when he had something good was never a mistake.

The morning classes were the same as usual, with nothing worth mentioning; everything went according to plan. Perhaps because Zhang Tie and the others would be leaving school forever in two weeks, the teachers lectured less on theory and more on experience. Sometimes, the students were simply sharing the teachers' life experiences and insights.

Next month, according to the custom of all schools in Black Flame City, from June 1st to July 31st, all graduating students would have a two-month Survival Class in the wilderness. These two months were a grand inspection of all the knowledge and skills the students had learned over the years. The school held no exams, because this era would eliminate everyone unfit for survival. Every year, the graduating class's Survival Class in Black Flame City had a certain casualty rate. Last year, five students from the Seventh National Boys' Middle School were eliminated—four died, and one was crippled. It was said that in the most brutal year in history, the Seventh National Boys' Middle School lost over 20 students during the one-month Survival Class. For all the graduating "animals," this month of Survival Class was everyone's coming-of-age ceremony in this era!

A coming-of-age ceremony that required blood, or even life, to welcome! A ceremony that meant leaving the protection of Black Flame City's high walls to face the truest side of this era head-on.

After the two-month Survival Class, everyone's student days would be effectively over, followed by a three-month vacation. After the vacation, what awaited most people's restless puberty was a long period of military service. During those three months of vacation, before the official military service notice arrived, a lucky few with outstanding talent would have the chance to soar to great heights after receiving a school recommendation, going to higher-level institutions to study and becoming the era's elites cultivated by major powers and organizations. Many people's life coordinates were fixed right there. The duration of military service was equal to the time spent in compulsory education; one was a right, the other an obligation. This was reciprocal, and no one had any objections. Eight years later, when the average person's military service ended, they would find that they were standing on two completely different rungs of life compared to those who had the opportunity to receive a better education—those who were once their classmates.

After the four morning classes ended, the graduating "animals" swarmed toward the cafeteria. Naturally, when everyone was lining up to get their trays, Gelis and his group, who were always late, swaggered in. After driving away a few unlucky guys who didn't dare to make a sound, they stood at the very front of the line.

Watching the behavior of Gelis and his group these past few days, Zhang Tie often asked himself what he would do if one day this kind of bad luck happened to him. He had a vague answer in his heart, but every time he lined up for food, he intentionally chose to stand in the middle or toward the back, trying to avoid the arrival of that choice. For a 15-year-old boy, that was not an easy choice to make.

While eating, Barry, that fat guy, told Zhang Tie that next week would let Zhang Tie complete another kind of coming-of-age ceremony in his life.

"From now on, all the brothers of our Airplane Brotherhood have lost their virginity!" Listening to Barry's grand declaration, the "animals" of the Airplane Brotherhood laughed lewdly at the dining table.

To be honest, although Zhang Tie was still fantasizing about his future "wonderful life" and "passionate love" with the goddess Teacher Daina yesterday, after Barry announced that they would complete their "coming-of-age ceremony" next week, Zhang Tie's heart still skipped a beat. He felt a faint longing. When that longing transformed into images in his mind, and those images finally turned into a small tent rising high on Zhang Tie's pants, Zhang Tie had to admit—fine, he was also a member of the school's "animal" army, no higher than the other animals in the Airplane Brotherhood. But his love for Teacher Daina remained sacred! Zhang Tie comforted himself.

The second half of the meal was filled with the Airplane Brotherhood's various taunts, sarcasm, and attacks on the "tent" Zhang Tie had pitched. Zhang Tie was already completely immune to these guys' attacks. After dinner, the "animals" went to the classroom to play cards—that was their noon entertainment project—while Zhang Tie went to the Small Woods next to the cafeteria to find a place to sit and practice Abacus Mental Calculation. According to the requirements in that book, the first step of "small success" in Abacus Mental Calculation was to be able to instantly complete the visualization of that three-deck abacus, and then instantly use the abacus in his mind to get the result of any four-operation arithmetic within three digits.

Zhang Tie was still some distance away from the "instant" required for the first step of small success in Abacus Mental Calculation. He had managed to compress the visualization time of the three-deck abacus to under 15 seconds, but he still had a delay of over 4 seconds for three-digit arithmetic. Thinking of the words on the book's cover—"Extracurricular Tutoring Material for Elementary Students"—Zhang Tie couldn't help but feel ashamed. This seemed to be a skill an elementary student should master, yet he had been struggling for so many days and was still at this level. How shameful...

Just as Zhang Tie was feeling ashamed, as if someone wanted to make him feel even more so, one of Gelis's lackeys appeared before him. Just as Zhang Tie was wondering why this guy was standing in front of him, the slightly gloomy guy threw a stack of trays he was holding onto the grass at Zhang Tie's feet with a "thwack."

"Wash these trays clean and take them to the cafeteria!" The guy dropped the trays, didn't even look at Zhang Tie, and turned to leave, as if he never imagined that this unremarkable guy sitting by the tree would refuse.

Looking at the four messy trays in front of his feet, Zhang Tie scratched his head, feeling somewhat depressed to find that in life, some difficult choices aren't things you can just avoid if you want to...

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I will strive to update another chapter tonight. Thank you all for your support!