Castle of Black Iron

Standing in the void, Zhang Tie watched that demon knight’s flesh falling into the ocean, gradually disappearing in the bloody ripples.

This was the terror of close combat of knights. If it was a long-distance combat, given the agility and maneuvering ability of knights in the air, Zhang Tie sensed that their battle might not come to an end for a whole day. However, facing such a bayonet-charge, the combat had come to an end in a few hours the moment the demon knight’s protective battle qi was broken through. No matter how majestic was the demon knight before and how many difficulties had it experienced on the road towards a knight, all of its honors and brilliant bygones became bygones the moment its protective battle qi was broken through by Zhang Tie.

At the critical moment, the demon knight wanted to escape or just intended to enlarge the distance between them so that its protective battle qi could be fixed. But how could Zhang Tie allow that to happen?

As a combat between two species, mercy didn’t exist.

’What if my protective battle qi was broken through by a demon knight one day?"

Through this battle experience, Zhang Tie realized the cruelty of the combat between knights. He had to consider about counter-measures in the critical situation. ’What if my opponent was the Demon General?’ Zhang Tie had to consider it as it was related to his life during the critical situation.

The Chakra slowly rotated in Zhang Tie’s body, which offset the gravity from the core of the planet, enabling Zhang Tie to suspend in the void.

Various thoughts occurred to Zhang Tie’s mind. Those basic elements in the combat of knights revolved in Zhang Tie’s mind like burning lanterns. Each distinctive battle element would develop into different battle styles and be used to respond to different dangers. Zhang Tie felt that each whim was either right or wrong...

Finally, watching the clear ocean, Zhang Tie let out a deep sigh as he forgot all the whims. ’As I’ve just promoted to a knight, in Knights’ ranks, at this moment, I’m nothing. There’s a long way to go and many things to learn in the future. Just take it easy.’

After thinking it through, Zhang Tie started to fly around this underground space to discover the situation. Since he came to this underground space, he had not made a complete investigation of this space yet.

After a few hours, Zhang Tie finally had a general recognition of this underground space.

The entire underground space was about 250,000 sq km. The entire underground ocean covered about 500 sq miles, 1/5 of the entire area of the underground space. In the big island where the tower of time rested, there were 13 waterfalls. All the water that flew into this space penetrated into the earth naturally. Some plants and woods in the island were severely destroyed while many animals had been killed. At the sight of the scene, Zhang Tie had already realized that who did it. ’What a mad!’

The entire underground space was like an isolated underground bubble, which had no exit at all.

After flying to the dome, Zhang Tie picked off some stones that were radiating glow. It was a special, pure ore. Given its luminosity, it might be a fluorite. However, it was not as icy as fluorite; instead, it touched a bit warm. Zhang Tie didn’t know its name, neither did he know whether it was valuable or not. As there were so many such ores on the dome, with the great ability as a knight, Zhang Tie casually dug about 7-8 tons of them and threw them into Castle of Black Iron.

After doing all this, Zhang Tie returned to Castle of Black Iron.

...

"Congratulations, castle lord, you’ve promoted to a knight!"

Watching Zhang Tie appearing in the palace of the palace tree, Heller greeted Zhang Tie as if he had long expected that Zhang Tie would come in.

The palace was actually a hollow on the palace tree. However, it was really a magnificent hollow. The entire palace tree was natural, which was full of exotic natural aesthetic feelings. The ground of the palace was paved with a layer of natural, crystal material which was similar to quartz. A string of exotic fruits like huge grapes hanging off the top of the half-round dome about dozens of meters. Of course, they were not grapes, but an exotic nestle of fireflies which were naturally carried by the palace tree. Fireflies drilled into the nestle and danced around the nestle while the string of huge grapes started to radiate tender light and brightened the entire palace like a string of huge crystal lamps.

No artificial traces such as right angle, squares, cubes and strictly symmetric geometric patterns could be seen in the entire palace tree. Everything here complied with natural rules. Everything here carried a harmonious, natural aesthetic perception. Even the front gate of the palace was in the shape of a tree leaf. At the sight of it, Zhang Tie felt a bit strange; however, the longer he looked around here, the more comfortable he would find everything here to be.

In the daytime, the fireflies didn’t come out. Two sea-tortoise-sized cute beetles were cleaning all the wastes inside the palace tree with a terrifying appetite.

The few cabins had now become more than 300 rooms in the palace tree. All the houses were distinctive as they all distributed on the trunk and twigs of the palace tree. Bigger rooms were on the trunk while smaller ones were on the twigs. However, due to different spatial locations, the rooms were not interconnected. The palace tree grew out those rooms naturally along with odd-looking types of furniture and utilities. Zhang Tie’s big bed was a huge shell while Zhang Tie’s costume room was a huge pumpkin that was completely hollowed out and was divided into some layers. All the rooms had different sceneries both inside and outside.

The palace tree rooted deep in the hinterland of the immortal mountain. Being crisscrossed, they formed an underground maze, there was also a tunnel towards the underground space.

There weren’t any magnificent ornaments inside here. Everything here could only be seen in fairytales for kids, which was out of humans’ imaginations. Each time Zhang Tie came back would he feel relaxed. If he built such a building in the shape of the palace tree in the outside world, he would arouse a great shock for sure.

The most marvelous thing was that this palace tree was alive as it could constantly grow out new rooms...

Zhang Tie felt that he had not come here for 15 years.

After greeting Heller, he threw a deep glance around before walking towards the small tree.

The small tree was in the middle of the palace while being tightly surrounded by pedal-shaped stairs, which indicated a sacred aesthetic.

Zhang Tie walked upstairs and came to the small tree.

As was imagined by him, due to the great time torsion, the connection between him and the small tree was cut off; although he had passed 15 years in the tower of time, he only got three leakless fruits on the small tree, one of which just became ripe today.

One iron-body fruit might come into being when he escaped from the demon knight in the subterranean torrents.

The iron-armored demons’ fruit of source had already grown ripe.

One trouble-reappearance fruit was also hanging over the small tree.

The fruit of brilliance of the 287 b*stards of Three-eye Association in the hunting castle of Angus Clan also became ripe. At the sight of the fruit of brilliance, Zhang Tie had felt the surging spiritual energy inside. Although the greater part of the 287 b*stards were below LV 6, the total of their spiritual energy became very considerable.

There were two fruits of judgment, one contained medium "soul consolidating rune", the other contained medium "tracing rune".

Zhang Tie blinked his eyes twice as he thought that he had a blurry vision. After circling around the small tree, he didn’t see any more fruits. ’These fruits should be formed before I promoted to a knight. But what about the later fruits? After promoting to the knight, I killed a demon knight. Why is there no fruit?’

Zhang Tie became hopeless when he found no more new fruits on the small tree.

"Sorry, castle lord, manjusaka karma fruit tree could not produce any fruit concerning the demon knight!" Heller’s voice sounded.

Zhang Tie turned around and watched Heller, "But why? When I killed that knight of Three-eye Association last time, I was also rewarded with some kinds of fruits, including the rare fruit of bloodline."

"Any demon, once they became a knight, would follow some powerful rules. Each fruit of manjusaka fruit tree is the result of a rule. It confirms to the rules when there are fruits; it also confirms to the rules if no fruit is produced!" Heller watched Zhang Tie with a kind and wise look, "Manjusaka karma fruit tree won’t create rules; it only comply with and display rules!"

"What are the rules?"

"Castle lord, if you grew powerful enough that even the manjusaka karma fruit tree could not produce any fruit for you one day, you would know what are the rules!"

’If you grew powerful enough that even the manjusaka karma fruit tree could not produce any fruit for you...’ Zhang Tie became stunned after hearing Heller’s words. He had never heard this before. Therefore, the moment he heard this, Zhang Tie felt terrified inside.

"Of course, any existence has its own limit in strength. Nothing could break its limit in strength. A person could only raise an item as high as his height plus the length of his arm. There was no exception. Certainly, manjusaka karma fruit tree also has its limit. However, the limit is still far away from your current ability, castle lord. Therefore, castle lord, you don’t need to worry about this problem for a long time. It’s my great honor to see you reach that limit!" Heller explained respectfully.

"You mean I would not get any fruit no matter how many demon knights could I kill in the future?"

"You got that!"

Zhang Tie drew in a deep breath as he accepted this fact...

After that, Zhang Tie accepted another fact, namely, he felt the small tree could provide him less assistance abruptly.

The 3 leakless fruits soon integrated into that sun in the void of his qi ocean silently in the form of three strands of energy, making the battle-qi luster to radiate from the sun a bit brighter.

After eating the iron-body fruit, Zhang Tie didn’t have any special feeling.

Zhang Tie knew that this was the necessary stage in the process of his growth. After promoting to the knight, those things which had a remarkable effect on improving his battle force turned trivial. When he was in the school of Blackhot City, with 3 leakless fruits, he could light one surging point and become outstanding among his classmates.

Among those fruits, only iron-armored demons’ fruit of source and that fruit of brilliance could remarkably increase Zhang Tie’s battle force.

After eating the iron-armored demons’ fruit of source, Zhang Tie felt that his energy, being triggered by his surging points, increased by 1/12 once again while his Chraka rotated in a more powerful way. After eating that fruit of brilliance, Zhang Tie felt that his spiritual energy increased by almost 1/10.

’It seems to be the last supper. Although I could still have a chance to take fruits of brilliance in the future, it’s less effective to me. Because the base of my spiritual energy has been very huge at this moment, the spiritual energy being increased by the fruit of brilliance becomes relatively less. As for the other fruit of source, it depends. I’ve already eaten the fruits of source of wing demons and iron-armored demons, which are the most popular species of demons and the main arm of services among demons. Other demon species are relatively fewer in quantity. As for rare species such as shadow demon, I could barely eat their fruit of source. There might even not be 360 shadow demons in total in this world.’

With medium "soul consolidating rune" and medium "tracing rune", Zhang Tie gained a new high in the two skills.

The trouble-reappearance fruit also became useless. The trouble-reappearance situation was that Zhang Tie chased after demons outside Upton City. Over 1,000 demons existed in the trouble-reappearance fruit. Before Zhang Tie promoted to a knight, such a trouble-reappearance fruit would be very useful for Zhang Tie; however, after Zhang Tie promoted to the knight, the trouble-reappearance fruit became useless to him.

"Knight" was a new platform, starting from which everything was new.

It took Zhang Tie 1 day to digest those fruits.

On the next day, Zhang Tie took a bath in Castle of Black Iron for the first time after staying in the tower of time for 15 years. After that, he laid in his huge bed and had a sound sleep. When he got up, he put on a set of clean warrior’s clothes that he plundered from Upton City and left Castle of Black Iron in a refreshing way.

...

Zhang Tie then came to the tower of time.

He moved the two giants’ skeletons, their weapons and the two huge crystal chairs into Castle of Black Iron completely. He put them outside the gate of the palace tree. The moment he put them there, the entire palace tree became majestic. Those items were much better than any ornaments.

As for the tower of time, although Zhang Tie dreamed to put it away in Castle of Black Iron, he finally gave it up after making attempts for a while. Even though he had become a knight, it was also out of his reach to move such a mountain-sized item.

After glancing at the marvelous crystal tower hundreds of times pitifully, Zhang Tie finally left this underground space.

There was no other exit in this underground space except for that cave behind the waterfall where he fell off. Therefore, Zhang Tie could only return to the cave while lifting against the current.

It was out of others’ imagination to do this; even knights could barely overcome such turbulent current. Not every knight could accept such a challenge. However, it was easy for Zhang Tie who had just promoted to a knight.

Zhang Tie opened the tunnel leading to Castle of Black Iron in front of him. As long as the speed of sucking water flow in Castle of Black Iron was greater than that of the water flow flushing downward, Zhang Tie could be easily pushed upward by the great thrust.

As Zhang Tie walked in the underground tunnel, he kept leaving marks that could only be identified by himself. When he came down here, he didn’t have time to leave marks. As it was a watercourse at the beginning which was twisted and familiar in many places, even with knight’s consciousness, he could still not remember it clearly. Therefore, when he returned, he had to leave marks. ’As the tower of time would open again after 6 decades, I might come here again then.’

After promoting to a knight, Zhang Tie felt that he should go back to Huaiyuan Palace and clearly explain everything. ’As Huaiyuan Palace is benevolent to me, I should be grateful...’