The Seventh National School of Blackflame City

The Seventh National School of Blackflame City was a typical all-boys school. As the name suggested, there wasn't a single girl on campus. This was because the curriculum for boys and girls differed greatly. It was said that after five years of co-educational compulsory elementary school, boys and girls were separated to save resources and increase teaching efficiency. All the courses in boys' schools served one purpose only—survival. Every young man who entered the school had to accumulate enough resources to ensure they could survive in this era as quickly as possible and at the lowest cost.

No one graduating from this school received a diploma. Surviving in the world after leaving the school was the only proof of success. Every class and subject taught here was directly tied to the student's ability to survive in the real world. It was rumored that girls' schools offered a softer curriculum, with subjects like music, literature, cooking, art, and dance. But none of that had anything to do with the boys' schools. Besides the basics like language, law, and mathematics, every other subject was a survival skill essential in this world. For example:

How to care for a seed and turn it into food.How to craft basic survival tools from available resources.How to build a simple shelter.How to avoid dangerous creatures in the wild.How to create basic medicine using plants.How to treat common diseases.How to fight with weapons.How to strengthen one's body.

After the eight years of compulsory education, 99% of the students, mostly ordinary people, would leave the school and begin their lives in the world. If they had paid attention, their education would give them the skills to take up a hoe and become farmers, work in a factory as laborers, or join the military, where they were essentially fodder for the frontlines. The spirit of national education in the Black Iron Age was about producing survivors at the lowest cost and the highest efficiency, not a bunch of useless decorations or sources of waste.

Of course, as it was before the Cataclysm, compulsory education in any era was not the pinnacle of learning. After completing their eight years of schooling, a few elite students—those from powerful families or those with extraordinary talent—would move on to higher levels of education. Blackflame City, being built by merchants and factory owners, didn't have any prestigious academies, just a regular business school, which was still highly sought after by the general populace.

The true elite academies existed in the other human cities or core settlements with deeper foundations, where the selection criteria were harsh—one in ten thousand might make it. The Seventh National School of Blackflame City graduated over a thousand students every year, but for eight years straight, not one had qualified for an elite academy. Eight years ago, a Chinese genius named Li Shizhen was selected by the Continental Pharmacists' Guild and taken away after graduation. His success became the pride of the school. Li Shizhen's photo had been hanging in the school's exhibition room for eight years. During every assembly, the headmaster would tirelessly talk about him, to the point where everyone was tired of hearing it. Li Shizhen's photo hung alongside two other legendary figures from the school's past.

Higher education in this era was truly for the elite. The stories of millions being admitted to higher institutions before the Cataclysm now seemed like myths. Knowledge in this age was incredibly expensive and controlled by a few families, sects, temples, and churches. Only the true elites had the opportunity to access it.

Although Zhang Tie felt he was working hard in school, his efforts had not made him into an elite or a lucky one in this era where everyone was striving to survive. He didn't have powerful connections, and his performance was average—not the worst, but certainly not exceptional either.

If life proceeded without surprises, Zhang Tie figured he would likely follow in his father's footsteps: after military service, he would seek a stable job, try to squeeze into a city factory, become a worker, marry a hardworking woman who wasn't ugly, have a few children, and work like an ant to feed his family. Eventually, he would lie on his deathbed, reflecting on his insignificant, bleak life as a small cog in the machine of this era. As he breathed his last, he would imagine the beautiful women he had seen but never touched, like the goddess Dina, and in his final act of defiance, he would shakily lift his hand and flip off the world before dying.

This thought made Zhang Tie shudder as he walked into the classroom. He didn't want to live such a life. He had made up his mind long ago, but today, as he entered the classroom, he reminded himself once again: I must live long enough, have enough gold coins, and sleep with enough beautiful women. If there ever came a day when he left this world, Zhang Tie wanted the scene to be like this: a group of beautiful women mourning his death, while a horde of ungrateful descendants greedily eyed his wealth and estate, secretly overjoyed, laughing up at the heavens, saying, "That old bastard finally croaked…"

Maybe one day, Zhang Tie thought, he could live like those important people, with stacks of underwear and new shoes in the closet, eating meat for every meal, and having a seductive maid by his side...

Zhang Tie often imagined this. To him, this was how all the big shots lived. But the distance between that dream and his current reality was as vast as a mud-stuck duckling dreaming of becoming a dragon.

There were still about ten minutes left before class. The morning's lesson was a mechanics class. When Zhang Tie arrived at the workshop, he saw a group of boys standing by the window, their heads sticking out, with their hands quickly moving below their waists. Some were even quietly moaning. Zhang Tie looked out the window and saw the figure of the goddess Dina gracefully walking past the flowerbed below.

Zhang Tie swallowed hard.

These bastards!

"Hey, Big Head, want to join us?" one acne-covered boy asked, still moving his hand suggestively while turning his head towards Zhang Tie.

"No thanks, I just saw Captain Colin heading this way. You guys enjoy yourselves."

At Zhang Tie's words, everyone immediately stopped. The acne-covered boy's face turned pale, and all the boys'... well, parts… deflated as quickly as a punctured balloon. The classroom erupted in chaos as they scrambled to pull up their pants, several yelping in pain as they got caught in zippers or tangled in their underwear. Zhang Tie could only wonder if some of them would end up impotent. He could swear that if Captain Colin knew what was happening in the workshop, he would have marched in and crushed each of their balls.

The classroom quickly fell silent as everyone returned to their stations, looking straight ahead. Zhang Tie took his place at his workbench, wiping off the dust and checking the tools. Ten minutes passed quickly. When the bell rang and the mechanics teacher walked in with a bunch of supplies, there was still no sign of Captain Colin. As the other boys sighed in relief, they glared at Zhang Tie, but no one dared to act up during class.

The mechanics teacher was a balding man in his fifties, lethargic and grumpy. He rarely spoke during class, but no one underestimated him. This man once demonstrated his skill by using a few basic tools and a pile of junk to build a small single-cylinder steam engine in front of Zhang Tie and his classmates. It took him just one morning, and when he lit a fire beneath it, the machine began to turn. In this era, no one became a teacher without real expertise.

As usual, the bald man wrote "Handcrafted Coil Springs" on the blackboard and began to explain. After writing down some formulas for spring compression ratios, wire diameters, and tensile strength, he handed out three steel wires to each student. Today's task was to handcraft any three types of coil springs. Everyone immediately got to work, including the rowdy boys from earlier, now completely focused on their survival.

Zhang Tie took the steel wires, glanced at the formulas on the blackboard, and measured the wires in his hands. After a few calculations, he decided on his springs: a basic cylindrical compression spring, a concave compression spring, and a cylindrical torsion spring.