The North American Gourmet Demon Handbook

However, Li Shanze's laughter stopped abruptly the next second.

His smile froze instantly, as if frozen by frost. His eyes suddenly turned cold and sharp, like two unsheathed blades, piercing Vikram's heart. The lightheartedness and playfulness he had felt earlier vanished, replaced by a suffocating sense of oppression.

"Enough." Li Shanze's voice was low and hoarse, and every word carried unquestionable weight, like a heavy hammer hitting Vikram's heart.

"Your performance was brilliant, Vikram Chandrasekhar. But my patience is running out."

He slowly raised the gun in his hand, and aimed the black muzzle precisely at Vikram's eyebrows.

"If you dare to say one more word of nonsense, or act stupid again—"

Li Shanze's index finger gently rested on the trigger. The subtle sound of the touch was infinitely amplified in the silent dungeon, like a countdown to death.

"I promise you will meet your Lord Shiva sooner than you think."

The color drained from Vikram's face in an instant, and his eyes, once filled with cunning, were now filled with pure fear.

He knew that Li Shanze was not joking this time.

His pupils dilated in surprise, and cold sweat instantly covered his forehead. He watched helplessly as Li Shanze turned the gun and slowly pulled the trigger.

Then, there was a loud bang of a gunshot.

The bullet whizzed through the air and hit Vikram's right knee accurately.

An intense, heart-wrenching pain suddenly erupted from his knee, as if being branded by a red-hot iron, or as if his bones were being crushed alive.

Vikram let out a shrill scream, his body twitched violently, and he curled up in the iron cage like a squashed insect.

Blood immediately gushed out from the torn trouser leg, staining the cold floor of the iron cage red.

He was breathing heavily, and the cold sweat mixed with tears on his forehead blurred his vision.

The severe pain made it almost impossible for him to think, and he could only tremble and groan instinctively.

He covered the wound tightly, but warm liquid continued to seep out from between his fingers, and the touch made him feel dizzy.

"Ah...ah! My legs! My legs!" Vikram's voice was hoarse and desperate with tears in his eyes.

He never imagined that this "uncivilized" barbarian would actually shoot without hesitation.

He thought Li Shanze was just bluffing, and that his "useless" strategy would allow him to escape unscathed. Now, he paid the price of his arrogance in blood.

Li Shanze looked at him coldly, smoke still coming out of the muzzle of the gun, and a pungent smell of gunpowder filled the air.

There was no mercy in Li Shanze's eyes, which were extremely indifferent.

This indifference actually made Vikram Chandrasekhar particularly frightened.

Li Shanze paused, as if waiting for Vikram to taste fear, then he turned his gun slightly again and pointed at Vikram's other leg.

"If you want to keep your other leg, or your hands, or your tongue... I suggest you start telling the truth now. My patience is very limited, Mr. Chandrasekhar."

Facts have proved that Vikram's strategy of "non-violent non-cooperation" is so pale and powerless in the face of absolute violence.

Vikram just nodded desperately, with big beads of sweat rolling down his pale face. He tried hard to show that he would cooperate, unconditionally.

Li Shanze felt that Vikram looked much more pleasing to the eye than the one who was full of flattery just now.

"Very good, let's go through the questions one by one." Li Shanze smiled. "Thank you for your cooperation, Mr. Chandrasekhar."

329 Legacy

After being shot hard and his leg was almost broken, Vikram Chandrasekhar finally calmed down.

But perhaps it was the confusion caused by the severe pain, or perhaps he had to complain about something to relieve the pain. His words were somewhat incoherent and his thoughts were very erratic.

"Those white men who seethe with wisdom, like Theodore Lancaster or Ms. Barnum, love America almost as much as I despise it!"

This was Vikram Chandrasekhar's formal opening remarks in response to Li Shanze's question. His expression was twitching, cold sweat was rolling down his forehead, and he was crying.

"These white people may take it for granted that they are the rulers of this continent. This kind of unthinking optimism is crazy!"

"But the essence hidden beneath this happy innocence is cruelty. All innocence is built on cruelty!"

"And of course Barnum's naiveté!"

"She naively thought she could heal the conflicts within the Seething Sage! She thought those out-of-nowhere transaction figures in Chicago were alchemical miracles!"

"Ah! On the glittering electronic altar of the Chicago Board of Trade... innocent people sang hymns celebrating the endless flow of gold! As if it were eternal alchemy!"

"They convert other people's land, mines, and even lives into abstract capital elements! What is the essence of financial alchemy? It's to abstract the entire material world, abstract people's hard work, and pretend that these abstract elements are created out of thin air! They are endless! They are endless!"

Although Vikram continued to chatter and complain, considering that he had already started to get to the point, Li Shanze patiently listened to him continue.

"What is the organizational structure of the Seething Sage?" Vikram's mouth, spitting blood, twitched as he sneered. "After Barnum's death, the Seething Sage was effectively split. There's no such thing as an organizational structure."

"The alchemists in Medicine Valley, who insisted that the principle of alchemy was equal exchange, were already very dissatisfied with the location of their holy place on the Chicago Board of Trade. Barnum was forced to establish the Grand Wizard's office in Medicine Valley to maintain this precarious balance."

"However, this triggered protests from the Chicago faction, who believed that the Grand Sage's permanent presence in New Jersey would not help bridge the divide within the school."

"Chicago is 1100 kilometers away from Medicine Valley. To balance the two, after several arguments, Barnum was forced to buy a house in Cleveland, a place almost equally distant from both places. He then lived there and used witchcraft to travel to New Jersey every day."

Li Shanze now understood why he had first met Xia Li in Cleveland. There was actually a spatial balance consideration involved.

It seems that the internal division of the Seething Sage is a big problem.

"A big problem? It's more than a big problem! It's simply... a cancer! It's the evil consequences of these white people's own actions!"

Vikram roared hoarsely, his voice filled with suppressed anger and pain. He struggled to raise his head, but fell back due to the severe pain in his leg. He could only lie on the ground, staring at Li Shanze with his bloodshot eyes.

Li Shanze felt that at least this undisguised hatred made this Indian much more genuine than his previous flattering appearance.

"At least Yaogu still knows what equivalent exchange and the law of conservation of matter mean! They also believe that alchemy requires a price! But those guys in Chicago...those damn charlatans!"

He suddenly spat out a mouthful of blood foam, as if to spit out the nausea in his heart.

"They're nothing more than vampires in alchemist's guise! They've turned the blood and sweat of innocent people, the very life of this land, into numbers jumping on their computer screens!"

"They seem to naively believe that the vitality of this land will never be extinguished! That's why they exploit it so cruelly!"

"They call that financial alchemy? Pah! That's called pulling something for nothing! That's called fraud!"

As expected of an alchemist from Medicine Valley, he was very prejudiced and even bluntly called his colleagues in Chicago charlatans.

Li Shanze nodded slowly.

Vikram's body was shaking with convulsions. He pointed at his bleeding leg, his eyes full of resentment.

"They think they are gods, able to create wealth out of thin air! They portray those futures, options, derivatives, those ethereal things, as alchemical products more precious than gold!"

"They even want to turn the whole world into a giant casino and make everyone crazy about their fake numbers!"

"They simply don't understand that true alchemy requires dedication and sacrifice! It requires a profound dialogue with nature and the elements! It's not about sitting in an air-conditioned room, tapping away on a keyboard, and expecting gold to conjure up!"

"That stupid woman Barnum is still trying to bridge this divide! She thinks that by running back and forth, she can make peace between those conservatives in the Pharmaceutical Valley and the lunatics in Chicago!"

"She simply doesn't understand that this isn't a dispute between schools of thought at all; it's a fundamental conflict of ideologies!"

"The people in Pharma Valley regard those in Chicago as blasphemers and heretics! And what about those in Chicago? They regard those in Pharma Valley as old-fashioned and obstacles to progress!"

"They're even arguing over whether to use traditional crucibles and alchemical furnaces to refine magic power, or to use those damn 'data flows' and 'algorithmic models' to 'simulate' the flow of witchcraft!"

"Simulation? What the hell is simulation? Witchcraft is alive and needs to be felt! It can't be summarized by those cold numbers!"

Vikram's breathing became rapid and he seemed to remember something that made him even angrier.

"They even want to use blockchain technology to encrypt and share those ancient alchemy diagrams! Encrypt? Share? They want to turn all secrets into public commodities and profit from them!"

"Barnum's death... Humph!" Vikram suddenly sneered, and a complex light flashed in his eyes, with pain, resentment, and a little bit of gloating.

"She was consumed by this division! She thought she could be the savior, but what happened? She's just a puppet being torn apart by both sides! Running for her life!"

"After her death, the Seething Sage completely fell apart! If it weren't for her trying to keep it together, Chicago and Medicine Valley would have hated each other! They would have long since stopped wanting to live together!"

"There's no such thing as a supreme authority these days! There's just a bunch of lunatics acting on their own, and a bunch of... a bunch of unfortunate people like me who were used and then abandoned by them!"

He coughed violently, and the coughing irritated the wound on his leg, making his expression even more distorted.

Perhaps due to the unbearable pain, Vikram seemed to want to say something else, but then he fainted.

I haven't asked the key point yet, how could you just fall asleep like this?

Li Shanze had no sympathy for Vikram. He stood up and went to fetch a bucket of water.

However, when he opened the door, Li Shanze saw Xia Li standing outside with a complicated expression.

Charlie stood there quietly, her figure looking a little thin in the dim corridor, but her eyes were unusually deep.

Her eyes, which usually showed curiosity and vitality, were now covered with a layer of faint sadness, as if she had just experienced a silent storm.

Vikram's heart-wrenching accusations and his comments about Ms. Barnum had apparently fallen on her ears.

"Xia Li?" Li Shanze's voice was filled with surprise, and his movements stopped. He had thought she would avoid such a bloody and dirty interrogation.

Xia Li did not answer immediately. Her eyes passed over Li Shanze's shoulder and looked at Vikram who was curled up in the dungeon and had fallen into a coma.

Her eyes were complicated.

"I...I heard it." Charlie said.

Li Shanze didn't want to experience any melodramatic events, so he spoke before Charlie could, "Whatever you heard, it's just Vikram's one-sided account. How and why Ms. Barnum died, who did it, and what her ambitions were are still unclear."

"I know Ms. Barnum is like a mother to you, but until everything is clear, it's premature for you to make any decisions."

"Vikram is now seriously injured and delirious. It is impossible to judge how much of his words are facts and how much are fantasies distorted by pain and resentment. He hates white people and the Chicago faction, which makes his evaluation of Ms. Barnum full of prejudice."

He took a step forward, blocking Charlie's view of Vikram and forcing her to look directly at him.

"I understand your feelings for Ms. Barnum. But it is precisely because of this feeling that you need to calm down."

"A person's legacy cannot be fully outlined by a few complaints from a dying person. What was her true goal? What did she sacrifice for it? Who harmed her? Vikram cannot answer these questions for you, at least not now."

Li Shanze's eyes were sharp and cautious, and he tried to penetrate the confusion and sadness in Xia Li's eyes.

"What you feel now is more of an inspired impulse, a strong desire to do something for your mentor."

"That's good, but impulse often leads to wrong judgment. The contradictions within the Seething Sage may be far more complicated than Vikram said."

"The conflict between Pharma Valley and Chicago may be just the tip of the iceberg. If you intervene rashly without sufficient information, you will only put yourself in danger."

He paused, his tone slowing down, but still retaining an undeniable rationality. "What we need to do most now is to stay awake and gather more solid evidence. The cause of Ms. Barnum's death, her true plan, and the deeper secrets within the Seething Sage—these are what we truly need to explore."

"Aren't we getting closer to the truth? Be patient, Charlie."

"Only when we truly understand the full picture can we know what her true legacy is and how you should inherit it. Otherwise, you are just blindly following a distorted phantom."

Li Shanze's eyes grew more serious. He stared directly at Xia Li, his tone filled with a firm promise: "I will help you, Xia Li. I will help you get to the bottom of this. We will uncover the cause of Ms. Barnum's death, the truth within the Seething Sage, and her true ambitions bit by bit."

"This isn't about Vikram's complaints, nor about anyone's prejudice, but about you, and the truth itself. Only the truth can allow you to truly carry on her legacy, rather than being blinded by hatred and misunderstanding."

Li Shanze stretched out his hand and pressed Xia Li's shoulder. Although the action was not heavy, it made Xia Li feel as steady as a mountain.

"Xia Li, you are not alone. We will face this together. But the premise is that you must remain calm and believe that we can find the answers."

Xia Li's body trembled slightly, and her originally tense shoulders relaxed a little under Li Shanze's palm.

She raised her head, and her eyes, which were originally shrouded in sadness and impulse, gradually regained clarity under Li Shanze's firm gaze.

"Thank you, Li Shanze." Xia Li's voice was still a little hoarse, but it was no longer trembling. She hadn't called his name so formally in a long time.

She smiled gently but sincerely at Li Shanze.

That smile carried a hint of fatigue, but also carried a glimmer of hope, like a ray of sunshine that finally came through after the haze had dissipated.

"I understand. I'll stay calm," she said softly, a determined light rekindled in her eyes. "Let's get to the bottom of this together."

Author's words: Thanks to Wukong for the monthly ticket

Thanks to Qianxiao Anran, Xiaopingguo112633, and Shi Aji for their recommendations

I'm not feeling well, so there will only be one update today. Please forgive me.

330 Battle of Wits and Courage

The cold metal floor, like a giant millstone, crushed Marco Giuseppe Romano's consciousness.

He struggled to the surface from his deep coma, and the first thing he felt was a tearing pain, as if someone was hitting his skull repeatedly with a hammer.

There was a subtle sound of metallic friction in his ears, heavy and cold, like a poisonous snake coiling around his wrist.

He groaned in pain, his throat dry as if it had been rubbed with sandpaper.

Romano forced his eyes open, blurring his vision to take in the surroundings: cold walls, no windows, dim light, and a heavy iron door.