The North American Gourmet Demon Handbook

After a tiring trek, they finally saw hope that this long journey would reach its end.

As the salty winter sea breeze blew in our faces, a three-masted sailing ship that looked desolate and dilapidated slowly entered the harbor.

The hourglass of time finally fell vertically to the starting point four hundred years ago.

"This is... the Mayflower! 1620!" Charlie was excited.

At this time, Li Shanze finally felt that Xia Li was an American, not a French person.

This shows the difference between Li Shanze, a mediocre history enthusiast, and Xia Li, an American.

Even though Charlie was of French descent and even though she had not received much American general education, she could still recognize the Mayflower from England.

Li Shanze felt that there was no way he could recognize this wrecked ship as the Mayflower, nor could he accurately report the year he arrived in North America.

"We're very close to the exit, Li!" Charlie said excitedly, "I can already use my magic to detect the direction of the exit. It's right behind us!"

So the witch turned around.

"Let me take a look at the back first... What is this?" Charlie looked confused.

At the location of the "exit" that Charlie mentioned, there was nothing there, only emptiness.

"Did Calvin succeed? Did he erase the 1619 anchor?" Charlie frowned.

"No, I think Alessia is not lying about this. As long as I am in the Paradox Clock Tower, Calvin will not be able to do anything to history with his time witchcraft." Li Shanze shook his head.

To be more precise, Li Shanze did not believe in Alessia, but believed in his own identity as a time traveler and believed that his timeline would interfere with these time-related witchcrafts.

Li Shanze sneered, "So, the answer is simple. The creator of this paradoxical clock tower believes that before the Mayflower arrived in North America, American history did not exist; it was just a void."

"No, that's not the case." Charlie shook her head. "England's first colony in North America was established in Jamestown in 1607. North American colonial history began at that time, not with the Mayflower in 1620..."

After a pause, Charlie continued, "This means that the builder of the Paradox Clock Tower was on the Mayflower. After all, the Mayflower was a ship that exiled wizards."

"Ah?" Li Shanze was surprised. "Mayflower, wizard?"

"Li, have you ever thought about where the earliest wizards in North America came from? The first batch of wizards were exiled by the church from all over Europe."

"There were more than 20 witches and wizards on the Mayflower, and more than 80 other heretics who opposed the Anglican Church. Now they are collectively called 'Pilgrims'."

Li Shanze pondered for a moment, "Now it seems that Alessia's explanation wasn't that accurate. She said the Paradox Clock Tower was the time wizard's anchor point for history, but now it seems it's only an anchor point for American history. And the earliest it can be anchored is only to the Mayflower's arrival in North America in 1620."

Of course, for the United States, American history is world history.

Especially in the current situation where "history has ended", it is good enough that someone is willing to acknowledge the existence of history.

Charlie wasn't surprised by this at all. "Because anchor points also require the establishment and maintenance of time wizards, they don't just exist naturally. 1620 was the year the first time wizard to arrive in North America established the first anchor point."

Li Shanze nodded in understanding.

"Okay, now that we understand the current situation, let's move on to the next question. How did Calvin get to 1619? How did he intend to change history, which doesn't even have a historical anchor? How can we find him?"

Charlie looked at the nothingness in front of her and couldn't help but shudder.

"It seems like we have to move forward, right?" Looking at Xia Li's reaction, Li Shanze already understood the answer.

"No, there seems to be nothingness ahead. It is essentially time turbulence without an anchor. It is very dangerous."

Xia Li shook her head, her face pale as she persuaded Li Shanze, "Let's leave here, Li. Don't take any risks. Calvin and others can't change the history that 'doesn't exist.'"

"No, Calvin is our friend. How can we sit idly by and watch our friend being caught up in the turbulence of time and space?" Li Shanze smiled and rejected Xia Li.

"Also, I really don't like this confusing chronological system of 'history has ended'. Even the Amazon Year six years ago had to be counted on my fingers."

"In order to change all this, I also need to protect the Paradox Clock Tower from being destroyed. Isn't that right?"

Charlie sighed, "But there's a vast wilderness ahead, with no time anchor. How are we supposed to find 1619 in this turbulent flow of time?"

"Hahahaha, what a joke!" Li Shanze laughed out loud.

"You're talking about wilderness with the Chinese? That wasn't just four hundred years ago. The Chinese were already repairing the Yellow River four thousand years ago!"

"In 1619, the 47th year of the Wanli reign, Xiong Tingbi was appointed governor of Liaodong, and Yang Hao was imprisoned. The Ming Empire was already in its final years, in a state of precariousness. It would still be another 25 years before Chongzhen hanged himself, shattering the country."

"It's not some wild wasteland!"

Amidst Li Shanze's loud laughter, the Corridor of Time began to tremble violently.

In the tremor, the chaotic nothingness in front of the two people suddenly gathered together and condensed into a real scene.

The glowing exit is right in front of you.

The only difference is that the road leading to the exit is no longer a solemn and magnificent corridor displaying Western art, but has become a country road full of oriental charm.

Li Shanze was very pleased to see that Xia Li did not continue to fall into a coma because of the element of "China" as he expected, but looked at him in shock.

"Is this your origin, Lee?"

"No, I'm not from the Ming Dynasty." Li Shanze shook his head and laughed, "I'm going to go and dissuade our friend Calvin. What about you, Xia Li? Or you can stay here and wait for me to come back, and then we can leave?"

Xia Li reached out, held Li Shanze's hand, and took a step forward.

"Don't try to get rid of me, Lee."

Her smile seemed to light up the entire void.

Author's words: Thanks to Silver Thirteen for the monthly ticket and recommendation ticket

Thanks to book friends 30600563, Fenghua brother, and Polar Bear for their recommendation votes

178 War begins

Li Shanze and Xia Li walked carefully on the narrow path, and every step created ripples in the void.

When the last ripple dissipated in the void, they finally passed through the corridor that symbolized time and walked into the glowing exit.

What appeared before them was a wasteland.

This desolate wilderness was not so flat, with scattered hills and gullies, like parchment crumpled and flattened by a giant.

The wind blew through the waist-high feather grass and also lifted the cloak of the black man not far in front of them.

"I didn't expect that you finally found this place." Calvin Hope sighed and turned around.

His attire looked out of place.

Calvin Hope's charcoal gray Brooks Brothers suit was crisp and pressed, perfectly tailored to his figure.

At the same time, he was wearing a strange cloak, and his cuffs, which originally showed his elite taste, were no longer watches, but brass arm rings.

The various accessories on his body looked strange, and combined with his well-fitting suit, they looked particularly out of place.

Calvin Hope sighed. "Please forgive me for appearing before you in this strange appearance. I don't know how you managed it. But if I didn't rely on these things, I wouldn't be able to find this wilderness that represents 1619."

He smiled wryly, and then began to list all the bits and pieces of his possessions in detail.

The cloak was made of kente, a traditional Ghanaian textile—the Ashanti patterns on it had been distorted by the heat of the iron.

The seemingly ordinary pin that holds the cape to the collar is actually a relic melted down from a brass dog collar found at a Virginia slave auction.

The brass armband is engraved with the epic of the Akan migration.

The most interesting thing is the tie clip. The elf mask on the Congo River was forcibly welded with horns similar to those of the bronze bull on Wall Street.

"I believe you've noticed the problem, right?" Calvin sighed after concluding his long speech. "I relied on this messy hodgepodge of historical anchors to find this place. This shows that African Americans have no idea who they are."

"Is it the Akan? Is it the Ashanti? Is it from Ghana, the Ivory Coast, or the Congo? Are they freed slaves? Or are they the vanguard of cultural appropriation from their ancestral continent, domesticated and bribed by capital?"

Calvin Hope's self-deprecating voice grew louder and louder.

“We African Americans have no origin, no roots, no anchor.”

"I've actually been thinking about this a lot, and I want to know why."

Calvin looked distressed.

"Even though our ancestors were slaves brought here by white people."

"But it's been 400 years since the first shipload of slaves landed in North America in 1619, and 150 years since the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863."

"As a result, it's still a mess, and this can't be simply attributed to white oppression."

"I don't have a high level of education, but that doesn't stop me from studying."

"Anthony D. Smith, a scholar of the ethnic symbolism school, proposed the idea that myths shape nations."

"And President Theodore Roosevelt, referring to the Spanish-American War, said, 'This war has made Americans realize that we are one nation, indivisible.'"

Li Shanze was not surprised by Calvin Hope's reading ability. After all, he was a real wizard. If he had no interest in reading and learning, he probably would not be able to be promoted to a wizard.

"I also had an in-depth conversation with a German-American who had a deep understanding of philosophy and was proud of a series of German philosophers such as Kant, Nietzsche, and Schopenhauer, and he would often talk about 'we Germans'."

"At the same time, he also admired Bismarck's victories over Franz Joseph I and Napoleon III, believing them to be victories for the German nation."

"But when I talked about Germany's defeat in World War II and asked him what he thought as a German, his expression changed."

"Guess what he said? He rolled his eyes at me and said, 'I'm an American! I'm a winner!'"

(Note: This is a true story, based on the author's real experience dealing with a German-American colleague about ten years ago. At that time, the author naively thought that this colleague was just very hypocritical and did not realize that this was the nature of Americans.)

At this point, Calvin Hope burst into laughter, laughing so hard that he fell backwards and even bent his thin body.

His laughter was very hearty, as if it had dispelled all the confusion in his previous words.

He wiped away the tears of laughter, straightened up, and then continued: "I think what Theodore Roosevelt said was not accurate. It was not the war itself but the result of victory that made Americans realize that they are an indivisible nation."

Very good, no wonder you, Calvin, came from a humble background but became a time wizard. Even the puppet has the hope of running for senator.

It turns out that you have already grasped the essence of German winning theory.

"The white man was able to enslave us because he won. He defeated our ancestors, loaded them onto slave ships, and shipped them across the Atlantic."

"We black people were able to obtain the status of free citizens not because of our resistance, which forced the white people to recognize our freedom, but because of the dog-eat-dog fight between white factory owners and farmers, so we were lucky enough to gain freedom."

"This is a top-down handout, which is why they always have a psychological sense of superiority, and we always think of ourselves as the weaker ones."

To simply summarize what Calvin Hope said, in the final analysis, to survive in America, you have to win.

Li Shanze felt that Calvin Hope had indeed grasped the main contradiction.

"So, what is your ultimate purpose in coming to the Paradox Clock Tower?"

"It is to erase the history of black slavery since 1619 and make white people think they have no victory over black people. This is the foundation of racial equality!"

Calvin Hope raised his arms and spoke passionately.

?

? ?

???

Everything I said before was good, so why did you poop so big in the end?

I thought you concluded you were going to win with black people? How come you ended up erasing the history of white people winning?

No, man. Aren't you running for Senate? Didn't you rise from the bottom of the gang?

Where's your ruthlessness? How did you become such a saint?

"You can even change history. You've spent so much effort and time on it, but you don't want blacks to enslave whites? Don't you have any personal ambitions?" Li Shanze asked in disbelief.

"The unscrupulous me has been killed!" Calvin Hope raised his thumb and smiled heartily, revealing a row of white teeth.

Yeah, I fired the gun myself!

For people with schizophrenia, could killing one personality have such a side effect?

Li Shanze opened his mouth in surprise.

Although Li Shanze's shot killed the ambitious Calvin, it also turned the remaining Calvin into a naive naiveté.

Before, Li Shanze often said "our friend Calvin", which seemed to be a performance for Calvin Hope.

Li Shanze was not sure whether Calvin Hope could monitor what was happening in the Paradox Clock Tower.

By now, this Madonna Calvin Hope is definitely a guy that people can trust to be friends with.

"Lee, Butner, you've traveled through time tirelessly to help me, right? Come and help me eliminate racial oppression in America! Come and fill America with love again!"

Calvin Hope extended an enthusiastic invitation to Li Shanze and Xia Li.

Friends are friends, but if they want to do something together, Calvin Hope is definitely not reliable now.

So Li Shanze shook his head: "No, Calvin, on the contrary, I'm here to stop you."