Chapter 4: The Miserable Castle Lord
In the end, tickets are required to enter and leave the Castle! Zhang Tie let out a bitter smile as he sat on the floor, the sudden feeling that caused his mind to go blank and caused his body to experience the feeling of collapsing into darkness has left a terrifying impression on him.
In that few seconds, a feeling of death welled up inside of Zhang Tie, if this is what it feels like to overexert his mental energy then even if he is to be beaten to death in the future, he will not want to experience that another time.
Now awake, Zhang Tie noticed that in just a few minutes, cold sweat covered his body and a weak feeling is throughout his body. It looks like mental energy exhaustion is not something you can fool around with.
After giving his head a good shake, Zhang Tie still felt something like a lingering darkness weighing in his mind and is unable to completely erase that feeling.
There must be something wrong somewhere, this is not right!
Although his brain is feeling uncomfortable but it did not hinder Zhang Tie’s ability to think. He got a feeling the Castle is hinting that to repeatedly enter and leave the dimension just to water plants, is a d.a.m.n b.l.o.o.d.y dumb method.
This Castle of Black Iron is definitely not as simple as it seems. Since the owner of the Castle acc.u.mulates “Spirit Energy” by planting more plants and building more “potential energy”, the owner will eventually face an issue when maintaining the plants, therefore there must be a method other than his dumb idea within the Castle that can help him with the task.
Okay, even if he takes a thousand steps back and the ground is very fertile and does not require him to water or maintain them and does not need him to repeatedly enter and leave the Castle, a scenario where the plants will grow to maturity if left alone.
How about “Basic Energy” or the “Lake of Chaos”, to generate basic energy, that incineration plant requires him to constantly dump stuff into it, converting matter into energy right? If he wants to get basic energy, does it mean he needs to be a “laborer” and constantly bring stuff into the Castle to dump?
When he remembered that some of the Castle’s functions requires him to gather tens or even hundreds of thousand units of basic energy, Zhang Tie began to feel even more frustrated. d.a.m.n it, it can’t be, what kind of Castle Lord is this, might as well call him a porter instead like those working in the train stations.
If he can only enter the Castle five to six times each day, after thirty or fifty years, is he even able to reclaim an acre of land? Isn’t this a scam*?
(Cuppa: The word used is 坑爹 or “ke~ng di~e” which literally means ‘pitfall father’. It is a commonly used slang when referring to being cheated or got tricked, the first word ‘keng’ can be used as a short version of the word in a sentence to mean getting cheated or tricked while the second word means ‘father’, why fathers because it is deemed audacious and bad to trick or cheat fathers who are symbols of breadwinners of the family. I chose ‘scam’ to suit our novel.)
No, this cannot be true, he must have missed out something somewhere, there might be some sort of mysterious function in the dimension that he has yet to discover.
With such high-cla.s.s functions, the Castle of Black Iron should be a model example of user friendliness, how can there be such a cheap mistake. If not, won’t this be like a rich person in Black Flame City being invited to a Black Gold cla.s.s restaurant for a meal but was asked to strip, dig for the vegetables and rise a fire to cook a meal for himself?*
(Cuppa: Pl
var infolinks_pid = 2003024;var infolinks_wsid = 13;
ease spare me from explaining about this a.n.a.logy…)
After thinking over and over, Zhang Tie is still unable to find an answer, feeling setback that his intelligence seems to be lacking, Zhang Tie swear in various colorful terms silently in his heart before throwing the problem to the back of his head – f.u.c.k, I am not thinking about it anymore, let it be, I will just treat it as a d.a.m.n joke by the Castle’s creator, so what if I have to be a porter, many people who wants this role do not even have the qualifications for it.
Isn’t there a saying “imperfection is perfection”, this is it, The Handsome and Stalwart Castle Lord will be a miserable porter in the future, the Castle is finally perfect, is there anything more perfect than this?
This is Zhang Tie’s character, although he can be overly sensitive and will tend to become a little negative when encountering setbacks but sometimes he can be rather thick in the skull, once he has decided to let things go or to do certain things, he will find all sorts of reasons to console himself and make himself feel good before charging onward.
One second he feels that Ms. Dinah is the love of his life, the next second his mind will think that having a harem is the right way of life for a man; The love he has never experienced can only be considered perfect when it is an earth-shaking relations.h.i.+p that moved the heavens and went through many trials and tribulations; Those big soft b.r.e.a.s.t.s and bouncy yet firm b.u.t.ts, the various body types, all sorts of beautiful faces, the variety of tastes each will give, the different types of flirtatious girls, beauties and mature ladies, it is only correct that the more you have, the merrier it is…
Humans, might just be an organism formed from a bundle of contradiction.
After placing the problem to the back of his mind, another unavoidable urgent issue is placed in front of him – How to recover mental energy? How long does he need to rest?
What if it takes a long time and his parents discovers that he isn’t home or they noticed the bathroom door is locked but no one is inside, how big of a matter will it create, how will he explain. Or what happens if he appeared out of nowhere in front of his parents when they are home?
This problem is something that Zhang Tie cannot solve with his intelligence, d.a.m.n it, a step at a time then. When the time comes, if need be, he will just be honest and tell them, at most his b.u.t.t will feel the cane, it is not as though he has not been caned before, on top of that, it is not like his parents will sell him out right?
After thinking through the worst scenarios that could happen, Zhang Tie felt that all of them are not as bad as it seems. He stood up from his resting position, after walking a few steps, he paused and remembered something, he turned back to collect the two buckets before walking towards the small tree, the half bag of seeds given by Granny Theresa is laying on the ground beside it, Zhang Tie did not have the chance to check it earlier, now there is time.
As he reached the small tree, Zhang Tie placed the buckets down and squatted. He picked up the bag and undid the rope knot, with a shake of his hand, he poured the contents onto the ground.
It could be noticed that Granny Theresa is a very attentive person, within the bag are eight smaller paper bags, each paper bag has the name of the plant written on it.
The smallest bag has the name “Green Leaf Gra.s.s” written on it, while the other bags are slightly larger, namely “Morning Glory”, “Olive”, “Privet”, “Red Tip Photinia”, “Asian Pear”* and “Carrot”.
As he saw the carrot seeds, Zhang Tie scratched his head and wonder if Granny Theresa has made a mistake. He understands that the “Olive” is the symbol of the Greenpeace Religion so it is not strange to find them but what about carrots? Including “Olive” and “Asian Pear” there are three plants that can produce food, if the last one is the same than half of the seeds will produce edible stuff.
(Cuppa: Here’s the link for the plants, I gonna skip carrots for obvious reasons look for bugs bunny instead. Morning Glory: Olive: Privet: Photinia: Asian Pear:
What is the meaning of this? Zhang Tie scratched his head, can it be that Granny Theresa is using these “seeds” to repay the many years of contributions by the Zhang Family, this logic seems a bit too strange though.
Looking at the last package that is the size of a head, the bulky look seems to contain something impressive. Zhang Tie did not check its name and tore the package open as a bunch of walnuts fell onto the ground. Zhang Tie is speechless – another edible plant.
So be it, he is not going to think about it anymore, this dimension will produce spirit energy regardless the type of plant in it. If the plant produces food then great, it is killing two birds with one stone.
There is lots of s.p.a.ce in here, planting the seeds will require some careful planning. This plants can become natural landmarks after being planted, therefore Zhang Tie decided to plant them in the four directions, north, south, east and west.
With the small tree as the center, Zhang Tie used the default position of the map when he opened the display to establish the direction of the land. From a bird’s eye view, the top part of the map will be North, this is where he will plant the Olives. On the bottom part, this will be South, he will plant the Red Tip Photinias here. The left area or the West, will be where the Asian Pear be planted while the East will be where the Walnut is to be planted.
As for the remaining seeds, he will plant the edible carrots together with the corns and potatoes to make it organized and easier to manage while the remaining three seeds, he will randomly plant them in the four directions and let nature takes its course.
Once the plan is set, Zhang Tie went into action. He opened the bags of the three easiest to plant seeds, the green leaf gra.s.s, morning glory and privets.
After mixing the seeds, he circled the land and randomly scatter the seeds on the ground as he walks. Zhang Tie is unsure on the exact methods to plant these seeds but he has seen them growing abundantly in the wild before and they seem to be hardy plants, therefore he decided to keep things simple and scatter the seeds as they would in the wild.
Zhang Tie lightly jogged while making sure to maintain a distance of at least twenty meters away from the small tree. Within three minutes, he completed his task.
After planting the first three seeds, the next part will require more attention from Zhang Tie, about fifty meters north of the small tree, Zhang Tie used the reinforced sc.r.a.p metal to create a row of holes and planted the olive seeds inside them.
He continued to the west and south areas, planting the designated seeds about the same distance away from the small tree by repeating the method.
When Zhang Tie it is time for the walnuts at the East, due to their size, Zhang Tie must put in more effort to create a deeper and wider hole. After applying more force to stab it, he made a stirring action to widen the hole before dropping a walnut in. Zhang Tie is not sure if he is doing it right but that’s the only method he can think of right now, whether the walnuts will sprout, only G.o.d knows.
Nuts such as the walnut are deceptively expensive, even at his age, Zhang Tie only manage to eat it a few times. That is the reason why when he planted the walnuts, Zhang Tie is unable to resist the temptation and ate one of them, in the end, of the eight walnuts given by Granny Theresa, only seven are planted.
After planting the walnuts, Zhang Tie went to his ‘vegetable’ patch and randomly picked an area beside the corns to plant the carrot seeds before returning the sc.r.a.p metal to its landmark position, a satisfied look can be seen on him as he dusted his hands.
To Zhang Tie, this round of planting is his biggest reward today. As for whether to water the plants, Zhang Tie decided to wait for a month, if the seeds did not germinate and sprout after a month, he will just treat the lost as school fees for future experience. He will just have to use more effort to take care of the next batch when the time comes.
After finis.h.i.+ng his tasks, Zhang Tie opened the castle attribute panel in pa.s.sing. Although only half a day has pa.s.sed but the attributes of the Castle displayed a jaw dropping change that stunned Zhang Tie.