Castle of Black Iron
Castle of Black Iron - Chapter 23: The Poor Lord

“It turns out that I have to pay a price to access the Castle of Black Iron!” cried Zhang Tie while sitting on the ground. The feeling of his brain suddenly going blank and the feeling of falling into a dark tunnel was really horrific. Moments before, Zhang Tie even thought that he would kick the bucket in this manner. If this was how excessive consumption of spiritual energy felt, Zhang Tie would never try it again.

He recovered at this moment and noticed that his body, within a few minutes, was covered with cold sweat. He became weaker. “It seems that excessive consumption of spiritual energy is serious,” he sharply shook his head and felt that the buzzing sense of being engulfed by darkness in his mind was not fully eliminated yet.

There must be something wrong!

Although there was some discomfort in his mind, Zhang Tie could still think about some things.

He realized that his behavior towards the Castle of Black Iron was really stupid. Obviously, the Castle of Black Iron was immortal. Even now, the increase of “spiritual energy” required the “potential life energy” from plants. Zhang Tie had to solve the lack of a water source problem. The Castle of Black Iron would never let the lord of the Castle of Black Iron water the plants here in such a foolish fashion. Even though the soil here was fertilized and didn’t need to be irrigated, what about the “Basic Energy Storage” and the “Pool of Chaos”? Didn’t the rubbish disposal plant need something inside to convert matter into basic energy? Would it require Zhang Tie to access the Castle of Black Iron to gain the “Basic Energy Storage”? Did he have to move things inside?

When he thought of the huge amount of basic energy storage that needed to be consumed to realize some functions inside the Castle of Black Iron, Zhang Tie became irritated. Motherfucker, it shouldn’t be like that. What a motherf*cking castle lord he was! He was just a porter in the railway station! He had to access the Castle of Black Iron five to six times a day for thirty to fifty years to expand to 666 square meters of land. What the hell!

No way! It’s not like this! There must be something wrong or he hadn’t yet discovered some mysterious function in the space. The Castle of Black Iron looked like a very senior system. How could it make such a low level mistake!? It would be like the tycoons in Blackhot City heading for Black Gold Hotel, only to take off their clothes, grow vegetables, prepare coal, and cook food for themselves.

Thinking for quite a while, Zhang Tie still couldn’t find the answer. Feeling like he was insulted, Zhang Tie cursed inwardly and decided to leave it alone. “Motherfucker. Whatever, just be a porter! So what? Others are unqualified to even be a porter. It’s more perfect now with the defect. The Handsome and Magnificent Castle Lord will be a poor hardworking porter in the future! The Castle of Black Iron is finally perfect now! Is there anything better?”

This was Zhang Tie’s temperament. He was sometimes a lunatic and always became pessimistic when encountering frustration. Sometimes, he was simple and would do that once he made the decision. He would then find numerous reasons to comfort himself and strive to reach his goal. Previously, he regarded Miss Daina as his beloved, but moments later, he felt that a man who had a multitude of concubines is successful. He believed that the love he had never experienced should be great and dreamed about sexy younger sisters, beauties, and mature ladies with sexy figures…

Human beings — perhaps just be a contradictory group.

When he left the problem alone, another urgent and unavoidable problem also appeared in front of Zhang Tie. Namely, how does he recover his spiritual energy? How long will it take to recover? If it took too long, and dad and mom found nobody home while the door to the washing room was locked from the inside, and they shouted but got no response, then it would be a big problem. How would he explain it then? Otherwise, what if he abruptly appeared in front of dad and mom who had already returned home?

This problem couldn’t be solved by Zhang Tie. Whatever, if this happened, he could tell them a little bit of the truth. The worst case scenario would be beaten by slabs fiercely. However, he had always been beaten by slabs before. Though, they would never beat him to death!

Once he thought it through, he felt that it was nothing terrible. Zhang Tie then patted his butt and stood up. He walked a few steps, and then returned. Lifting the two empty barrels, he moved towards the small tree. The small bag of seeds, which Zhang Tie had not opened yet, given by Grandma Teresa still laid there. It was the perfect moment to open it.

Moving to one side of the tree, Zhang Tie put down the barrels in hands, squatting on the ground, he picked up that cloth bag of seeds. He undid it and poured all the seeds inside out.

Moving to one side of the tree, Zhang Tie put down the barrels that he held in his hands. Squatting on the ground, he picked up the cloth bag of seeds. He undid the bag and poured out all the seeds.

It could be said that Grandma Teresa was a caring person. The cloth bag was composed of eight small paper bags, and on each bag was the name of the seed.

“Hygrophila polysperma” was written on the smallest bag, while the names on the bigger paper bags were: “Morning glory”, “Olive”, “Ligustrum obtusifolium”, “Photinia fraseri”, “Honey pear”, and “Radish”. Seeing the word “radish”, Zhang Tie scratched his head gloomily. He doubted that Grandma Teresa made a mistake. Why would she give me radish? “Olive” was understandable because it was the symbol of the Grepis School. “Honey pear” was edible and could bloom into nice flowers. Why radish? Including “olive” and “honey pear”, three of the seven seeds were edible. With one more, half of them could be eaten.

What does it mean? Zhang Tie scratched his head. Was Grandma Teresa using these “seeds” to give thanks for the soup given by the Zhang family all these years? It seemed a little bit weird.

Seeing the biggest paper bag, that laid on the ground, was filled with something, Zhang Tie ignored the name and directly opened it. Several walnuts rolled towards Zhang TIe’s feet, which made Zhang Tie utterly started. Another edible.

What the fuck. Whatever, once they grow, they could provide spiritual energy to this space. Whatever seeds they were, it was better if they were edible! No matter what, he had to sow something in such a huge piece of land; however, he would have to sow the seeds in separate pieces of land. These seeds could also be natural landmarks. When they grew, Zhang Tie might be able to distinguish the four directions in the Castle of Black Iron.

With the Manjusaka Karma Fruit Tree at the center, according to the preset view of Zhang Tie when he opened the map of the Castle of Black Iron, the upper part of the map was north, where he would plant the olive trees. The lower part of the map was south, where he would plant the photinia fraseri. In the west, he would plant honey pears, and in the east, he would plant walnuts. Other seeds like the hygrophila polysperma, morning glory, and ligustrum obtusifolium would be scattered in each direction, which would not be planned. Though, edible vegetables like radish could be planted beside the potatoes and niblets for the sake of collective management.

Once he made the decision, Zhang Tie acted on it. First, he opened the bags of hygrophila polysperma, morning glory, and ligustrum obtusifolium, which were easily sown. He gather them together and casually poured them out. Zhang Tie was not good at planting these seeds. Instinctively, he felt that those plants were seen everywhere in the wild. They grew naturally and wildly, thus he didn’t want to waste time on them, treating them as they would in the wild.

More than twenty meters away from the small tree, Zhang Tie trotted one circle and spread the seeds casually. In less than three minutes, he had finished sowing the three bags of seeds.

After finishing the first three bags, Zhang Tie became much more serious. He made a row of pits by the steel bar about 50m away from the small tree in the north, then he buried the olive seeds. He did almost the same thing in the south, east, and west. As he found the walnuts to be large, he dug holes that was especially deeper than those of other seeds. Zhang Tie didn’t know if this was correct or not. The rest is up to God.

As walnuts were very expensive, Zhang Tie had rarely eaten them since he was young. As a result, when he was burying the walnuts, he couldn’t help but eat one. In the end, there were only seven walnuts left.

After he finished sowing the walnuts, he ran towards one side of the “vegetables” land and found a piece of land beside the niblets to sow the radish. He inserted the steel bar into the soil and clapped his hands in satisfaction.

For Zhang Tie, this was the most he could achieve today. As for whether to water them or not, Zhang Tie planned to make the decision in a month. One month later, if the seeds didn’t sprout by then, he would learn from this experience and water the new seeds.

After these tasks, Zhang Tie opened the basic attributes panel of the Castle of Black Iron. With his mouth gaping, Zhang Tie was startled by the huge changes.