Castle of Black Iron - Chapter 78

Chapter 78: Trap Game
Translator: WQL Editor: Geoffrey
In any country, region, or time, education would have its natural defects and weaknesses.
Education was designed for the interests and demands of the rulers. Since the rulers of
Blackhot City required the schools to raise soldiers, farmers, and workers to support the
operation of the city, most of the courses at school reflected this; they were related to and
taught the basics required for those jobs, thus the students would never have the opportunity to
learn to create traps that could capture low-level beasts.
Even in the eyes of many teachers, creating and setting traps was not a skill that was necessary
to be imparted at school, as the beasts that could be trapped were just worthless, low-level
beasts like tigers and wolves. People above LV 5 could already easily deal with those low-level
beasts, even to the point of just tearing them by hand. Therefore, there was no need to set traps
at all. If they had free time, it would be better spent in practicing cultivation, striving to ignite
as many burning points in their body as possible. Not to mention that hunting was not a skill
that was of importance in the eyes of the rulers of Blackhot City. In this age, personal fighting
strength was king, while the other skills were not worth mentioning.
As a result of their education, almost no student in Blackhot City, perhaps even in the Andaman
Alliance, placed much importance to it. In fact, most of them knew nothing about traps. From
Zhang Tie’s memories, throughout his entire time at school, it seemed that it was only in last
year’s survival class did the teacher casually mention that it was sometimes effective to set
traps in the wild; however, this was something that few students would pay attention to.
Using traps was something used by those low-level pioneers who explored the wild. Naturally,
they would not catch too many people’s eyes. Had Zhang Tie not worked at the grocery store, he
too would not have learned about traps. Coming to Wild Wolf Valley this time, Zhang Tie
realized that he could really put the traps to use here...
If he had not caught those golden threadfin breams earlier, Zhang Tie wouldn’t have the
confidence to encourage the others to set traps. Those golden threadfin breams made Zhang Tie
realize that the knowledge imparted unto him by Donder was rather valuable, at the very least
during this survival training. Although they could learn a lot from the education provided in
Blackhot City, they could learn much more from outside the high walls of Blackhot City.
In the eyes of the other members of the brotherhood, who had never learned about trapping
skills, trapping was a difficult and mysterious skill that would only be used in boring knight
novels, where they were all brimming with killing tricks that would frighten people and cause
them to be muddleheaded. However, in the end, knight novels were completely fabricated by
guys with too much time. After hearing Zhang Tie’s explanation, everybody understood. In fact,
everybody could grasp a powerful trapping skill——digging a hole! A 5 m deep pit was already
able to trap most of the fierce beasts and common animals in Wild Wolf Valley. If any beast falls
into the pits, they would become live targets for the brotherhood, as any member of the
brotherhood could just use the “Iron Gate T21” that Barley had brought to shoot it to death.
……

As usual, Zhang Tie woke up a bit later than 6:00 am the next morning. The entire Wild Wolf
Valley was still fast asleep, with the exception of a couple chirping birds and insects. Sharwin
was still on duty. Zhang Tie climbed off the tree and walked to the stream to wash his face and
rinse his mouth. Afterwards, Zhang Tie replaced Sharwin, letting him go sleep. Sitting by the
tree hollow, he took the “Iron Gate T21” and waited for the other members to wake up.
It was the fourth day since they had arrived here. Zhang Tie carefully stared at the “Iron Gate
T21”. Compared to the various portable bows that were created by the people before the
Catastrophe, “Iron Gate T21” was much more powerful. Zhang Tie had learned that the era
before the catastrophe was a time when people used weapons with gunpowder and had too
many powerful weapons to choose from, thus they did not pay much attention to the
development of weapons that did not utilize gunpowder. However, in this age when weapons
that did not use gunpowder became prominent in wars, development that once had nothing to
do with weapons with no gunpowder were applied to them, resulting in them gradually
becoming extremely powerful.
Using a light, complex pulley-based bow as an example, when compared to the traditional
manual bows, the largest advantage it had was the hydraulic sliding rod, which was used to pull
the string back into the proper position. Although it was similar to a jack[1], it was much more
complex than it. Using this hydraulic device, a commoner would be able to pull the string back,

putting it at the position for launching the arrow; in contrast, without the device, a strong
person would have to use more than 200 kg of force to do the same thing. The addition of the
hydraulic device and the standard arrow container, which was developed based on the cartridge
holder used in gunpowder-driven weapons before the Catastrophe, caused this bow to be about
30 kg, making it much heavier than common machine bows; however, this increase in weight
also meant that it was more powerful. Theoretically, if the “Iron Gate T21” was in the hands of
someone with great strength, he could possibly shoot well over 120 arrows a minute.
In contrast, people like Zhang Tie and the other members of Hit-Plane Brotherhood could only
shoot out at most ten arrows a minute using this bow. In the previous two nights, although he
had adjusted the tension to be ⅛ of the original, Sharwin still needed to pull the hydraulic
sliding rod eight times for it to succeed. And even Bagdad felt pain in his hand after two
attempts when he had adjusted the tension to ⅕ of the maximum. This morning, Zhang Tie had
stealthily adjusted the tension to ⅕ of the maximum, and like Bagdad, he only succeeded after
two attempts with his left arm and hand feeling pain after.
After two attempts of using the “Iron Gate T21”, Zhang Tie confirmed two things. First, his
strength was almost equivalent to the dark-skinned Bagdad. Second, The Iron Gate series of
bow were amazing killing machines. As this bow was just a light one, Zhang Tie found it
difficult to imagine the strength of a heavy bow of the same series.
Before the other members woke up, Zhang Tie played with the bow, trying to get used to it as he
practiced <Mental Arithmetic by Abacus> by visualizing an abacus. Ever since Zhang Tie could
visualize an abacus that was capable of doing seven digit calculations, he began to practice
visualizing one for eight digits. Recently, whenever he had free time, he would practice eight
digit calculation. If he wasn’t disturbed, he would spend two minutes to visualize an eightcolumn
abacus in his mind and would slowly carry out eight digit calculations...
After Zhang Tie’s spiritual energy surged seven times, all of his senses had become sharper.
After each time he practiced <Mental Arithmetic by Abacus>, Zhang Tie was able to see a slight

increase in spiritual energy that had been brought about by visualizing that golden abacus.
Although he didn’t know the reason, it still made him really excited. He had even begun to think
about how he should share this method with his elder brother and Donder. After that incident
about Huck and Snade, Zhang Tie always felt that he owed Donder. He could probably return
the favor by telling him this secret, an effective method to increase spiritual energy. As Zhang
Tie had never heard about this before, he believed that this was a great gift to show his sincerity
to Donder. Since Donder had told him not to share the abacus skill with foreign clans, Zhang Tie
didn’t want to violate Donder’s rule; therefore, he could not temporarily share this method with
the other members of the brotherhood.
About 1 hour after Zhang Tie got up, Barley and the other members climbed out of tree hollows
one by one. Having not even washed his face, the moment Barley saw Zhang Tie sitting in that
pit, Barley was pretty surprised. “Wasn’t it Sharwin’s turn to keep watch last night? Where’d he
go?”
“I got up early and couldn’t go back to sleep, so I let Sharwin go back and get some nice rest!”
Hearing Zhang Tie’s words, Barley became silent and rapidly climbed off the tree. He then went
to the stream and washed his face and mouth. Followed by Barley, the other guys also woke up
one by one...
After everyone made preparations, with the exception of Sharwin, who was staying in the base,
the others all went to see how Zhang Tie trapped the golden threadfin breams.
Ensuring that nobody followed them, the group of five carefully followed Zhang Tie up the
stream to the place where Zhang Tie had set the traps. Before arriving at the location, they were
already stunned by the sight before them—there was a shoal of fish bigger than the size of an
adult’s palm surging in the water 2 m away from the mouth of the stream. This scene was also
somewhat out of Zhang Tie’s expectation. Zhang Tie hurriedly approached the pond and
silently uncovered the twigs on it...
Like a bowl of treasure, the number of fish in the pond had increased over the night. Inside the
pond, there were at least five golden threadfin breams that were not smaller than the ones from
yesterday and at least ten other fish that varied in size. At the sight of the fish, everybody
became excited...
Barley felt that his decision of having Zhang Tie join the Hit-Plane Brotherhood was the best
decision he has every made. Although Bighead looked pretty average at school, but at the
critical moment, he was reliable and brought many surprises; he really makes people admire
him...
[1] Jack - A device used to lift heavy objects