The North American Gourmet Demon Handbook

Author's words: Thanks to Qianxiao Anran and Xiaopingguo112633 for their recommendation votes

333 Romano's Position

"Go on." Li Shanze's tone was cold.

He had no idea that as the leader of the school, Barnum could lose the support of the people to such an extent.

"Why does everyone in the Boiling Sage want Barnum to die?" Li Shanze narrowed his eyes, his finger as if he was about to slowly pull the trigger.

"Do you think... do you think she's still that high-and-mighty leader of the alchemy school?! She's long been a thorn in the eyes of both sides who want to get rid of her!"

Romano was breathing rapidly and speaking at an alarming speed, fearing that Li Shanze would pull the trigger at any time.

"The Boiling Sage...is no longer the same Boiling Sage it once was! It's completely divided! Those financial alchemists in Chicago think Barnum is biased towards Medicine Valley and those old-fashioned material alchemy!"

"They say she's hindering the 'progress' of alchemy, hindering their ambition to turn alchemy into a pure money game!"

Romano's eyes flashed with madness, and he pointed at the air, as if accusing his invisible colleagues.

"And those in New Jersey's Medicine Valley, those who adhere to traditional alchemy, think she's too soft and permissive toward Chicago!"

"Yaogu believes she's allowed those heretics to taint the purity of alchemy! Both sides are becoming increasingly extreme, and both think she's in the way! She's like a thorn stuck in the throat, and everyone wants to pull it out!"

"I... I just followed the trend and did what they all wanted to do! I just... just gave it a push! Please... please believe me! I'm not the mastermind! I'm just... just an executor!"

Tears streamed down his face, and his fat face was filled with despair and begging. He tried to portray himself as an innocent pawn, a victim swept away by the tide of the times.

He put all the blame on the conflicts and divisions within the alchemy school, as if this could alleviate his sins and buy him a glimmer of hope.

But Romano was overthinking it. Li Shanze would certainly not kill him.

Because revenge is something that should be done by Charlie herself.

Li Shanze will leave Romano's head to Xia Li.

However, Li Shanze also understood why Barnum did not introduce the school of Boiling Sage to Charlie - it was obviously a volcano, and even after Barnum tried his best to cover it up, he still couldn't avoid being ambushed. Perhaps she didn't want Charlie, whom she had trained with all her heart, to be involved in this mess.

"Oh? What about you, Mr. Marco Giuseppe Romano, which faction are you from? Are you from the Medicine Valley faction? Since you are so eager to stand out, I wonder what benefits you have gained?" Li Shanze squatted down and pointed the gun at Romano's head.

Romano's body stiffened suddenly, and he could even feel the cool metal coming from the gun barrel.

The threat of death was so imminent that his fat body began to tremble violently and he spoke as fast as a machine gun, fearing that if he was a second slower he would be shot through the head.

"I... Of course I'm from Medicine Valley! I... I always have been!"

He was breathing rapidly and saliva was spurting out.

"I just... I just want alchemy to return to its proper track! Get rid of those... those lunatics who only know how to play with numbers! I... I just want to maintain the purity of alchemy!"

Li Shanze raised his eyebrows and almost couldn't help laughing out loud.

"Maintaining purity? You, Marco Giuseppe Romano, are a wizard from the 'Society of the Delusional Heart,' right? As a spiritual wizard, what are you talking about with the purity of alchemy?"

"Logically, you should be more inclined towards those people in Chicago who rely on the financial market to create gold out of thin air, right? After all, spirit and vanity always have something in common."

Romano's face turned pale in an instant. He shook his head violently, his fat flesh trembling like a cat whose tail was stepped on, and his voice was filled with extreme disgust and fear.

"No! No! You're wrong! Absolutely wrong!"

Romano felt as if a bucket of ice water had been poured over his head. In an instant, his heart was gripped by even greater fear, and his fat body was shaking uncontrollably.

That tearful face was now filled with extreme disgust and deeper fear for being in the "wrong camp".

"I, I secretly joined the 'Delusion Society'! That's right!" He spoke faster, almost shouting out like a machine gun, his saliva splashing in the air due to his intense emotions.

"But at least I'm a fucking doctor! A brilliant psychiatrist! I can tell the difference, the difference between real psychiatric research and pure, incurable madness!"

He stiffened his neck, his eyes twisted with extreme contempt and a fear that seemed to tear him apart.

"Listen up! Those... Chicago financial alchemists! They... they're ten thousand times crazier than our entire Delusion Society combined! Crazy!"

"We manipulate the mind, yes! We manipulate the mind, yes! We confuse right and wrong, yes! But we... at least we have some logic!"

"There's a pattern behind the madness! Just like, just like the brain waves of a mental patient have ups and downs, understand? We are creating structure out of chaos!"

"We know that those who play with fire will get burned, and we know that those who manipulate others' minds will pay the same price ourselves! Look at our existential crisis!"

Romano's chest heaved violently, his breathing like a broken bellows.

Li Shanze automatically ignored Romano's self-glorification of the Delusion Society.

"But those people in Chicago...oh my god...they have no rules in their heads! They ignore everything, they're making up illusions out of thin air!"

"They threw the whole world into their cauldron of nothingness and stir-fried it! Gold? Silver? Elements? Conservation of matter? They mean nothing! They don't even need any of it!"

"They're making gold at the gambling table!"

He roared, spittle spraying on his trembling chin.

"Their 'alchemy' is based entirely on illusions like air! Yesterday it was a bar of gold blown by the wind, today it's just bubbles bursting in the sun! This is not alchemy at all!"

His voice was sharp and raspy with fear.

"Those sons of bitches... they're completely insane! There's not even a cliff to climb! They're almost there, or have already! Dragged our once-good capital into the abyss of madness!"

Li Shanze almost laughed out loud when he heard this: "Good capital?"

Li Shanze found it so ridiculous that he couldn't help but repeat it sarcastically.

"Those Chicagoans even tore down the cliffs! They're going to take everyone straight into the fire!"

"Lehman Brothers' year! What a year full of irony! Of course it was Lehman Brothers' year! Of course it was Lehman Brothers that collapsed! Wasn't that disaster that spread like a plague caused by those lunatics in Chicago?!"

"Lehman Brothers! That massive name was shattered to smithereens by those geniuses from the Chicago School... It was a standard demonstration!"

"How is it performed?" Romano's eyes were wide open, but a frightened grin appeared on his face.

"Where did you throw away the IOUs of a bunch of poor guys—those subprime loan agreements that are as sticky as mud and can't even pay off their debts?!"

"Throw it into their giant furnace! Use their sacred ground to brew it! Label it with fancy jargon like 'secondary' and throw it in there to stew! It's like refining waste ore!"

"And they're adding even more stuff to the mix... Leveraging it? Yeah! Using leverage to turn a small pot of useless soup base into a greasy mess floating in the pots of hundreds of thousands of people?"

"But who guarantees it?" he roared. "Nothing! No gold, no silver in the bottom of the box. Just these huge numbers piled up out of thin air and confidence that floats like bubbles!"

"When a little bad wind gets in—the bad loans themselves can't hold up—crack!"

His voice was like a rubber band that suddenly broke, and there was a certain morbid excitement in it, as if talking about the misfortunes of "Chicagoans" gave him an indescribable pleasure.

"...The furnace collapsed! Lehman Brothers collapsed, Wall Street collapsed, as if cast under the most vicious blood curse, and the whole world vomited blood together!"

"Those falling from the chasm created by the economic collapse are real people! They are souls bleeding real blood, thousands of ordinary people who have gone bankrupt, including quite a few wizards, people who have jumped from rooftops, and the army of unemployed people swirling in the air like vengeful spirits!"

"What have they come up with? All they have come up with is destruction!"

He coughed violently several times, his face flushing the color of liver. The cold barrel of death still pressed against his head, and at this moment, he seemed like a ghost from the past, possessing his words.

However, after hearing Romano's sincere contempt for "Chicagoans", Li Shanze began to believe Romano's position.

It is often difficult to deceive people about what kind of ideas a person holds in his heart, and various details can reveal them.

"Aren't you also a lackey for James Drummond? How come the financiers in Philadelphia are better than the financiers in Chicago?" After listening to Romano's accusation, Li Shanze asked slowly, with a tone of sarcasm.

"James Drummond... He... He's in the pharmaceutical business at least!"

Romano's body trembled violently again and he argued urgently, his voice sharp with fear.

"He has a pharmaceutical factory! He has a laboratory! He has real products! He produces drugs that can save lives! Alchemical products that can transform matter!"

"That's not... that's not some number made up out of thin air by some crazy guy in Chicago! He... he has a solid foundation! He has real wealth! I... I work for him, at least I know I'm working for something real! Not some bubble that could burst at any moment!"

Li Shanze's eyes narrowed slightly. He looked at Romano's face, which was distorted by fear and excitement, but his mind suddenly became clear.

It seems that there is a distinction between industrial capital and financial capital.

It seems that Romano, a wizard from the idealistic and delusional society, actually attaches great importance to real things.

The same is true for Jennifer. She attaches great importance to truth. She even despises her own school with some self-hate - is this a common problem among spiritual wizards such as the Delusional Society?

This would explain why Romano particularly disliked "Chicagoans".

Li Shanze nodded slowly.

He pressed Romano's motives: "So, you teamed up to murder Ms. Barnum to declare war on those Chicagoans?"

334 Confessions

In Li Shanze's opinion, the split of the Boiling Sages is probably not just a dispute over alchemical concepts, but more like a projection and conflict between two completely different forms of capital in the wizarding world.

New Jersey Medicine Valley represents wizards who are rooted in material things, production, and industry, and who seek to accumulate wealth and power through practical alchemical products.

The Chicagoans, on the other hand, distorted the essence of alchemy, turning it into a pure financial game, creating the illusion of wealth through empty numbers and leverage.

It was these two fundamentally opposing forces that Barnum attempted to reconcile.

As the leader of the school, she was caught between the conservatism of industry and the radicalism of finance, unable to please either side, and eventually became a thorn in the eyes of both factions.

On the surface, this seems to be a pure dispute over alchemy, but in fact, it is clearly a game between industrial capital and financial capital in the wizarding world.

And Barnum was the pawn sacrificed in this game.

But after Barnum's death, why didn't the school of the Seething Sage immediately erupt into civil war?

One of them has a lot of resources and connections in the pharmaceutical complex, while the other simply controls the Chicago Board of Trade.

Both sides have neither lack of resources to mobilize nor lack of motivation to completely overwhelm the other side. However, it seems that even though Barnum died a few years ago, the civil war between the two sides, which has long been incompatible, has not broken out. Why is this?

Romano sneered and said, "Yes, that's what I thought at first. That's why I chose to deliver the medicine to Mr. Barnum instead of exposing Vikram Chandrasekhar's tampering with the medicine."

"So the civil war among the Boiling Sages has indeed broken out?" Li Shanze frowned. He didn't think Romano was either the winner or the loser.

Romano's smile became more sarcastic, "No! Of course not!"

"Why not?" Li Shanze was surprised by Romano's matter-of-fact attitude.

"Because Mr. Barnum's management and training are so successful." Romano said simply.

Li Shanze was not sure whether Romano's answer was ironic.

"Under Mr. Barnum's careful training, this group of Seething Sage wizards has become highly knowledgeable and possesses unique refining techniques. Each one is capable of independently supporting a small-scale modern alchemy matrix."

"This is a virtue. But in personnel management, it completely turned into poison hemlock. Unfortunately, I realized it too late."

Romano sighed.

"Under Mr. Barnum's suppression and camouflage, the two factions were able to maintain a superficial peace - which in itself meant that Mr. Barnum could suppress everyone."

"Therefore, there has always been a spirit of advocating freedom within the school, viewing any rules as a constraint on one's soul and creativity, and feeling that constraints are an insult."

"In order to fight against the Great Wizard, many people like to shout the slogan of equality for all. What this really means is that no one will submit to anyone else, and no one will obey anyone else's orders. At most, it's 'temporary cooperation for common interests.'"

"After Mr. Barnum's death, without the great wizard who could truly suppress all these evil spirits, the school immediately fell apart, completely unable to form any united force!"

At this point Romano laughed out loud at himself.

"It's not that neither side wants to fight, nor is it afraid of casualties or spilled bottles and jars. The problem with the Seething Sage lies in its rotten internal structure—it simply can't support the weight required to fight a proper war! The wizards are too 'advanced'!"

"Every respectable alchemist in Medicine Valley thinks he's the boss and he's the second in command."

"They're willing to set up their own research labs and tinker with high-end magical drugs in exchange for astronomical checks."

"But who will command and lead the charge, tackle the tough battles, and bear the risk of losing research inspiration?"

"It would be much more satisfying to ask him to give his brain to the Delusion Society for dissection!"

“As for the Chicagoans, they’re even more leveraged in playing with money.”

"Everyone has real money piled on their plate through hard power! Everyone is a god in their own little circle, the king of a small financial kingdom!"

"Who can command whom? The chain of command is countless times more chaotic and unstable than those complex financial derivatives!"

"Calling for destruction of Medicine Valley? They're just lip service. Really, they just want to continue to have fun and make money. Using alchemical terms to launder money is a more convenient way. And they'll find a way to bring down the old stubborn guy. But investing all their wealth to fight on the front lines? Forget it!"

“It’s ridiculous to think about it!”

"How many years have these two opposing, explosive mountains of fire stood side by side? Hating each other? Cursing and swearing they'll kill the other side sooner or later? And yet, even if I lit a fire, I couldn't even make it explode!"

"The arrogance of freedom and the inertia of chaotic anarchy in everyone's heart make it so that even if they sit next to a pile of gunpowder, they can't ignite the fire of real war!"

Li Shanze finally understood at this point.

In fact, liberalism and chaotic anarchism are all fake.

To put it bluntly, it's because these wizards live too well. They are all wealthy and rich. They are either pharmaceutical executives or financial tycoons. Why would they risk their lives for no reason?