Zhang Tie, of course, had no idea that those two terrifying men had come back. By the time they were groping around on the ground, Zhang Tie had already returned home.
With one more person in the house—and possibly another one joining them ten months from now—Zhang Tie's parents had stayed home in the evenings these past couple of days instead of going out. The meals had also become noticeably more lavish. Judging by the taste, Zhang Tie could tell that some of the dishes had been made with help from his future sister-in-law. He had to admit, she was a pretty good cook.
When Zhang Tie got home, he found only his mother and future sister-in-law there. His father was nowhere to be seen. It wasn't until after Zhang Tie had finished eating, when he saw his father come back drenched in sweat with a ham slung over his back, that he understood what his father had been up to.
He helped his father prepare the ham, which weighed more than twenty kilograms, and hang it in the kitchen. Taking a deep breath of its rich, meaty aroma—a smell he hadn't enjoyed in a long time—Zhang Tie joked, "Dad, you and Mom are way too biased! I've been craving ham for ages, and you never bought any. But as soon as Big Brother's wife-to-be shows up, you buy one. Does a son really count for less than a grandson?"
"You little rascal!" His father laughed and rapped him on the head. "Just you wait. Once your mother's cooked it, you'd better not eat any!"
"Heh... heh..." Zhang Tie grinned, but thought to himself, Your son did something pretty gutsy at school today. But telling his parents about what had happened at school would only make them worry, so he would never bring it up. "By the way, Dad, how much did the ham cost?"
"Fifty-eight silver coins and sixty copper coins. Almost sixty silver!" His father said with a pained look. "It never used to cost this much!"
Zhang Tie was taken aback too. That was almost a month's wages for his father. It looked like his parents were really sparing no expense for their future grandson. Seeing his father still wincing over the price, Zhang Tie leaned in and whispered, "You should get some fruit too. That way he'll get enough nutrition, and the future Zhang family baby will be nice and healthy!"
"That's right, your mother said the same..." His father suddenly realized he'd fallen into Zhang Tie's verbal trap. Humiliated and furious, he rapped Zhang Tie on the head a few more times, sending him scampering around the house.
After his future sister-in-law came to live with them, Zhang Tie realized his plan to earn Merit Value at home had gone up in smoke. The whole house was being kept spotless and tidy, so he couldn't even come up with an excuse to sweep the floor. He could only smile helplessly. It seemed he'd have to find another way to earn Merit Value without drawing attention.
After dinner, his mother and sister-in-law sat together doing needlework. How could women from a family of tailors be anything but good with a needle? Watching her future daughter-in-law's deft hands, his mother smiled until her eyes nearly disappeared. Zhang Tie helped them for a while, snipping scraps of cloth for insoles with a pair of scissors as he chatted casually with his mother and future sister-in-law.
His days in this home were growing shorter and shorter. As he cut the scraps of cloth, Zhang Tie thought that he had only a few more chances to spend time with his parents before he left. And after graduation, under Black Flame City's and the Andaman Alliance's Primogeniture Act and Urban Residency Act, everything belonging to the family—as well as the household's urban residency rights, secured by the house his parents had spent their lives working to afford—would pass to his big brother. As the younger son, he would have to leave the city and his family and make his own way in the world.
When wolf pups grew up, they had to leave their parents' den and face the loneliness of growing up alone. When eaglets' wings were strong enough, they had to leave their cliffside nests and soar through wind and rain. Even ants, once they grew wings, had to leave their nests and venture into a wider world to establish new colonies. In this age, the laws and customs of humankind had begun to learn from the ways of nature, and from animals and races with greater powers of survival. The Primogeniture Act and Urban Residency Act were examples of that. If humanity wanted to survive in this age, more and more people had to bravely leave the high city walls, carrying ambition and blades, and keep expanding humanity's territory, fighting other races, eliminating dangerous creatures, and building new cities and settlements where more people could live and multiply. That was the survival law of this age. It had nothing to do with morality; it was simply a matter of reality and the survival of all. Cities were safe, but each could only hold so many people. It was impossible for everyone to crowd into one. In a family like Zhang Tie's, with only two sons, the Primogeniture Act and Urban Residency Act automatically took effect when the younger son finished compulsory education and began his military service. And now that his future sister-in-law was living with them, with his big brother's wedding fast approaching, there were fewer and fewer circumstances in which a young man about to enter society could comfortably stay at home. His time there was running out.
These days, Zhang Tie had deliberately avoided the subject. He simply tried to spend as much time as he could with his parents, often cracking jokes and doing silly things to make them laugh, hoping to ease the sadness of their imminent separation. His parents seemed to be avoiding the subject too, deliberately trying not to bring it up. Meanwhile, as the final two months of the semester—and the wilderness survival trial—approached, Zhang Tie knew that the families of some of his classmates in the same situation were already preparing their younger sons for the long journey away from home.
The time he spent with his family seemed to be passing faster and faster. Before he knew it, the basket of cloth scraps in his hands was empty. It was already getting late, and his mother's eyes were drooping with sleep. After chatting a little longer, Zhang Tie found an excuse, yawned, washed up, and returned to his little room in the attic.
Back in his room, Zhang Tie took out the wooden plaque he'd picked up, the one with a triangle on it, and examined it from every angle, tapping it over and over. At last, he was sure: the plaque was indeed made of Red Thunder Pine. There was no miracle or hidden mechanism, no secret compartment. Aside from the natural, lightning-like grain on its surface, it had nothing special about it. If it were thrown into a pile of children's toys, you could tell people it was a toy building block, and no one would doubt you.
Remembering Hark's raised foot and the snake-like man's hands groping all over his body, Zhang Tie broke out in goosebumps again.
"Damn those two perverts. Did they have no childhood or something? They're old enough to know better, and they're still carrying around a thing like that!" Zhang Tie cursed, shoved the plaque into a cloth bag, and tossed it into the box where he kept odds and ends. He couldn't be bothered with it anymore.
After tossing the plaque away, Zhang Tie took a deep breath, closed his eyes, found the Mysterious Archway between his brows, and locked onto it. Then he said in his heart, "Enter!"
--Welcome, handsome and imposing Fortress Master, to the Castle of Black Iron!
This felt damn good. Zhang Tie took a deep breath of the air in the Castle of Black Iron. Maybe it was just his imagination, or maybe it was all in his mind, but although only a few tiny plants could sprout in the castle and its Spirit Qi Value was still low, the place seemed to grow livelier each time he came. Even the air felt fresher than the air in Black Flame City.
As usual, Zhang Tie first checked the basic attributes of the Castle of Black Iron.
--Castle of Black Iron --Length: 1 Krosha --Width: 1 Krosha --Spirit Qi Value: 23.5 --Merit Value: 56 --Basic Energy Reserve: 0.5 --Special Products: None
The basic figures were still nothing new. The Spirit Qi Value brought by the growing plants continued to rise, and seemed to increase a little more each day. As for Merit Value, he'd earned none today. There had been nothing to gain at home or at school.
After closing the basic attributes window, Zhang Tie went to inspect his little plot. The potatoes were growing vigorously, and all the corn shoots had emerged from the soil. The sprouts on the germinated potatoes had begun to branch out, and the longest were already nearly ten centimeters tall. As for the potatoes in "Pit Number One," which he'd spent three Merit Values to mutate and evolve, they still showed no sign of anything unusual. Zhang Tie guessed that the results of mutation and evolution might depend on the plant's growth cycle. It had only been a week, so it was probably normal that nothing had come of it yet.
After checking on his plot, Zhang Tie went over to Little Tree. The Flawless Fruit had changed from pale green to dark red, grown from the size of a grape to the size of an egg, and taken on an egg-like shape. It was almost ripe. Zhang Tie swallowed hard a few times and checked its status. Four hours remained until it was fully ripe. He started fidgeting. He forced himself to crouch beside the tree for a while, staring fixedly at the fruit until his legs began to go numb. Then he stood up and started pacing around the tree. In the meantime, he couldn't help checking the ripening time several more times. Every time, it still said four hours.
The last time he was about to check the fruit's ripening time again, Zhang Tie suddenly caught himself. Zhang Tie, Zhang Tie, do you have so little patience? How can a man who can't even wait this long, who loses his composure at the slightest thing, ever hope to be worthy of Teacher Daina? A blade of wheat withers and renews itself in a single year, while a diamond takes hundreds of millions of years to be sculpted by nature. A bean sprout soaked in water takes two days to grow, while, they say, the Almighty took ten thousand years to create the king of trees, the olive! In the end, all blades of wheat turn to ash, and all bean sprouts become the waste of humans and animals. But diamonds become treasures, and the olive tree becomes a sacred symbol. That's the difference patience makes. What do I want my life to be—a blade of wheat, a bean sprout, or a diamond and an olive tree?