The North American Gourmet Demon Handbook

"This life in America is nothing more than exchanging one big cage for another, even bigger, invisible cage."

He closed his eyes, and the forced calmness appeared on his face again, but a turbid tear slipped from the corner of his eye, silently telling the tragic story of his "burning without stopping" life.

No, why is your tragedy ancient Greek?

It's a completely self-fulfilling prophecy of fatalism.

So you finally succeeded in spiritual improvement. Your life is not a classical Chinese tragedy, but an ancient Greek tragedy. You should be happy for your successful conversion and for enjoying a life like Oedipus, Agamemnon, Medea, and Creon.

Li Shanze didn't say this out loud.

Anyway, the old man won’t live long. It would be bad if he died of anger because of these words. So I’d better not say anything unpleasant. Just treat it as hospice care.

After Bai Ligen calmed down a lot, Li Shanze continued to ask, "You came to America to become a wizard, right? But why can you see Ella?"

Li Shanze pointed at Ella who was sleeping soundly on his shoulder and asked curiously.

This is indeed what Li Shanze is most concerned about at the moment.

Even Charlie, a witch who possessed fragments of the Buchaska godhead and had received a good classical education, only became aware of Ella's existence after hearing her words in her consciousness space.

But Bai Ligen could still see Ella even when he was crazy.

Li Shanze really wanted to find out the reason.

"Are you referring to this little elf lady?" Bai Ligen calmed down and replied.

"Although I haven't been officially recognized by any wizard school and am just a wild wizard, wizards rely on the power of consciousness after all. Isn't it natural for me to be able to see fantasy creatures like elves?"

Li Shanze frowned.

"So, thirty years ago, it was normal for wizards to be able to see elves, right?"

Hearing Li Shanze's question, Bai Ligen obviously realized something and nodded: "Yes, thirty years ago, any wizard who had left the level of witchcraft trainee could see elves."

Bai Ligen looked overwhelmed with emotion. "This is even a simple way to pass the witchcraft level certification. As long as you can see the elf, you can leave the witchcraft trainee level and advance to the witchcraft assistant level."

Ahaha, interesting.

What had these wizards done to the elves in the past thirty years? Even Dillon McGee, the Grand Wizard of the Brotherhood of Time, could no longer detect Ella's existence.

Only Bai Ligen, an old man from thirty years ago, still retained some wizard instincts and was able to see Ella directly.

It can even be said that if the current wizards in the United States were to undergo advanced assessments for witchcraft interns according to the standards of thirty years ago, wouldn't the crazy Bai Ligen be the only one who could pass?

Could it be that the elves have also been "genocided" to a certain extent?

Killing fantasy creatures, how is this done? Is it through mind control again?

The more Li Shanze thought about it, the more he felt that the situation in the United States was becoming increasingly muddy.

Although doubts piled up, this was all Bai Ligen knew about the elves.

Li Shanze chose to stop here on this issue. He still had many things to clarify - especially those that were right in front of him.

"Mr. Bai, tell me about Kaguya Town. How much do you remember about it?"

290 Memories and the Kidnapper

There is a reason why Li Shanze pays attention to Kaguya Town.

After learning from Enzo and Al that Kaguya Town was a small town that could not be found on Google Maps, he immediately thought of the reality show crew of "The Amish".

Moreover, the protection of Kaguya Town is much stricter than that of the crew of "Amish". There is even indigo fog at night, and people are not allowed to enter.

Li Shanze immediately thought that this was another secret industry belonging to wizards.

Considering what Cyrus Morton had mentioned before, that the core container where Archibald Drummond stored his soul must be destroyed, Li Shanze instinctively suspected that this Kaguya Town might be the place where the core container was stored.

"Mr. Bai, tell me about Kaguya Town. How much do you remember about it?"

"Hyuga Town?" Bai Ligen asked in confusion.

"Oh, this is the town where you met the brothers Enzo and Al. Do you remember them?" Li Shanze explained.

Seeing Bai Ligen's reaction, Li Shanze became a little pessimistic. After all, that was the place where his soul stayed after it was shattered. He had become crazy, so how much useful things could he remember?

Sure enough, as soon as Li Shanze finished speaking, a look of pain and confusion appeared on Bai Ligen's face.

He closed his eyes tightly, veins bulging on his forehead, as if he was trying to grab something from the chaos.

"Kaguya Town..." He muttered to himself, his voice hoarse and broken, as if chewing on a distant and vague nightmare. "Kaguya Town... that place... was it originally called Kaguya Town? I remember... no, I can't remember..."

He suddenly opened his eyes, his eyes full of struggle and fear, but also with a hint of emptiness.

"Just some fragments... some scattered images... like old photos that have been torn up and can't be put together."

"There's fog... yes, there's fog! Indigo blue... very thick, very cold... like a living thing, wrapping itself around you, making it hard to see where you're going. I'm always running... hiding... hiding from what? I don't know... I just know I can't stop, I can't get caught."

He was breathing heavily, as if he was back in the nightmare that had chased him for countless nights.

Is there something in that indigo mist? Or is this just an illusion caused by Bai Ligen going crazy?

Li Shanze always felt that the indigo mist, judging from Enzo and Al's description, did not seem to contain anything.

"The people there... their eyes... are very strange. They don't look at you, they see through you, like looking at an... an object."

"They don't talk, no, it's not that they don't talk, or rather, I can't hear what they are saying. There is only whispering, like insects crawling... buzzing, it gives me a headache." He pressed his temples in pain.

Aren't all the people in Kaguya Town Japanese old men and women? Since Bai Ligen dislikes Japanese people so much, can't he recognize them?

Li Shanze frowned.

But the same thing goes, since Bai Ligen had already gone crazy when he went to Kaguya Town, it is questionable how much of his rationality was still effective when he recalled that past.

Maybe he was just too crazy to recognize it.

Bai Ligen's eyes were a little out of focus, as if they had penetrated the air and fallen into the sticky, turbid past that smelled of rotten leaves and soil.

His throat rolled over, as if he had swallowed something ominous.

[It’s not a smooth concrete road...it’s a stone slab...or an old compacted dirt road?

On either side stood low houses, their eaves like drooping, flattened hats. Beneath the eaves...a wooden corridor?

There is always someone sitting quietly on the edge.

The gaze... the cold, animal-like gaze, without any warmth or emotion, stuck tightly to his middle-aged yellow skin.

Although the people in his memory also had yellow skin, they seemed to have a special hatred for him.

He didn't remember talking, perhaps never really talking. Perhaps he was considered the silent stone of the town.

What he could clearly recall was the smell and the sound: the dampness of cold rain, mixed with the subtle bitter smell of burning wood. The sole of his shoe touched something sticky... moss, perhaps the moss that covered the lakeside.

Bai Ligen's narration was disorganized and fragmented.

Li Shanze frowned, not understanding what Bai Ligen was saying at all.

Maybe Ella hadn't fully healed him? Or maybe a broken soul simply saw the world differently from a normal, rational person?

"It hurts, it hurts so much! Blood is splattering! It should be blood splattering!" Bai Ligen suddenly shouted.

[Suddenly, a chaotic darkness appeared. A narrow alley?

The smell was suddenly pungent.

Sweat mixed with rage and the sour smell of cheap liquor hit him in the face.

He couldn't make out faces or words—all the sounds were twisted into a buzzing, meaningless howl.

Being forced against the damp and cold wall.

Something hit me head-on, causing a dull pain in my shoulder! I instinctively struck back... like a taut, broken vine, striking back fiercely.

My limbs were tangled in a turbid mess. The pain from fists, kicks, and rough fingers digging into my flesh was like a nail piercing a tongue of fire. Until—

“…something red is spilling out!”

"Hot!"

"Where did it splash?"

A dim light: something made of paper?

It was round... When it was applied to its rough surface, it was briefly absorbed by the oily fire inside and heated up... Ah, what kind of lamp is that hanging on the street!

Something warm and wet, slightly sticky and thick against the skin of my fingertips... and tinged with trembling, pulsating heat?

He shook something off.

A dead silence suddenly fell... heavier than the club that had struck him.

What remains is a heaviness so heavy it bursts through the lungs like a bellows... and someone else's shrill scream, like someone being skinned alive and piercing their eardrums...

Useless air. The emptiness carved into the eyes.

Li Shanze frowned and listened patiently for a long time, thinking while listening.

Only then did I understand what had happened.

Bai Ligen has always been ostracized and ignored as a foreigner in Kaguya Town. At the same time, this "Chinese madman" is also bullied by the local Japanese.

During a bullying incident, he instinctively fought back and killed the bully.

"I, I did kill someone, is that right?" Bai Ligen said with a evasive look, seeming a little guilty. "Did I kill him?"

It seemed that after regaining consciousness, he was barely able to piece together the fragmented images from a bystander's perspective.

"If this is really your memory and not some kind of imagination, I think so." Li Shanze nodded.

Seeing Bai Ligen looking particularly uneasy, Li Shanze sighed.

It seemed that this man was another East Asian test-taker, used to following the rules all his life. When he thought about having killed someone, he felt uneasy beyond words - completely different from the vast majority of wizards who treated human life as worthless.

So Li Shanze comforted him: "Don't worry, even if you really killed someone, it was only a Japanese who bullied you. It was self-defense."

But it seemed that Bai Ligen was not comforted at all.

"No wonder, no wonder I've been like a transparent person in Kaguya Town since then..."

"They... no one comes close to touch them anymore..." Bai Ligen closed his eyes, as if his old skin could feel the long-lost empty gaze again.

Those gazes pierced through him and landed in nothingness. There was no cursing, accusation, quarreling, or clamor...

There was only the all-pervasive, suffocating, and heavy silence, formed from the dense raindrops of taboo, disgust, hatred, and fear, which poured down densely, soaking him completely.

The air also has an unpleasant smell, like blue mold.

"...I...have become nothing but air." The last few words shattered and dissipated like mist.

After saying this, he was like a damp lump of wood just pulled from the bottom of a cold, suffocating pond, silent and empty.

So this is the standard of not being able to integrate into the Japanese circle. Someone bullies you, you fight back and kill the bully, and then you are collectively ostracized by the Japanese with cold violence.

Li Shanze looked at Bai Ligen and felt that there was a reason why he couldn't integrate into the American wizard circle.

The experience of traveling through time and interacting with white people allowed Li Shanze to sum up his own experience.

The less you treat white people as human beings, the more they will respect you.

Once you show respect to them, well, they will automatically treat you as a Dalit.

Obviously, Bai Ligen made this kind of empiricist mistake. He mistakenly thought that the social atmosphere in the United States was the same as that in China, where if you give me an inch, I will give you a yard. Of course, this tacit social consensus is also rapidly disappearing with the spread of neoliberalism.

Li Shanze kept having wild thoughts, and this was also to wait for Bai Ligen to calm down again - Ella was sleeping soundly at the moment, if Bai Ligen was overly stimulated and went crazy again, he really wouldn't be able to get anything useful out of her.

Finally, Bai Ligen's eyes regained some vitality, and Li Shanze continued to ask: "Do you remember anything about Kaguya Town?"

The fragmented things that Bai Ligen had said before were not useful information at all. At most, Bai Ligen was just retelling his miserable later life.

Although Li Shanze lacked sympathy for the old man, he was not so bad as to make fun of his tragedy.

"Yes! I remember! It was the kidnapper! It was the kidnapper who sent me to that Kaguya Town!" Bai Ligen suddenly became emotional.

Kidnapper? If I remember correctly, you once called Theodore Lancaster that in the Philadelphia Police Department—well, Saturday, to be exact.

Kaguya Town...is there anything about him here?

Li Shanze narrowed his eyes, he felt that Kaguya Town was becoming more and more suspicious.

291 Human Trials

To be on the safe side, Li Shanze confirmed with Bai Ligen again: "The kidnapper you're talking about is the one who was previously at the Philadelphia Police Headquarters?"