Advancing to knight had not changed Zhang Tie's cultivation in the Time Tower in any way. Becoming a knight, in a sense, had merely allowed him to leap out of a deep well—to see the world outside more clearly. The patch of sky above the well's mouth was not the entire world; it was only a window. This world was far larger than he had imagined from the bottom of the well. Nor was the well's mouth the highest place; it was merely the distance from the bottom of the well to the ground. That ground had a name: the Black Iron Era. Those who could stand firmly upon this era with both feet were the people who had climbed out of the well. They shared a common name—knights! Black Iron Knights! They were the people of this era who could truly grasp their own fates, and who could also grasp the fates of countless others still trapped in the well.
But that was only the beginning. Black Iron Knights were those standing on the ground outside the well's mouth. At that height, they could naturally look down upon every living thing in the well, upon all those still struggling to leap upward and claw their way toward the mouth. Yet for Black Iron Knights already standing upon that patch of ground, that height was not merely for looking down from. When they gazed into the distance from where they stood, they could naturally see loftier peaks farther away. There was more than one such peak, and they could only be looked up at. Every peak represented the pinnacle of power of a civilization that had once appeared upon this land millions upon millions of years ago. The highest peaks plunged into the clouds, pierced the firmament, and reached into