At night, in the bell tower of Kassel College, this small room was cleaned up, and the blood-soaking posters that were once posted on the wall were covered up.
There was a round table and a copper pot. Ander and the others were sitting around the hot pot, enjoying the tenderness of the mutton.
Professor Manstein was sitting on a Chinese-style armchair, holding chopsticks in his hand and twisting his body uneasily.
The white bald head was covered with sweat beads, which looked particularly eye-catching under the indoor light.
Luli beside her was enjoying Ender's feeding, and her eating style had a wildness that was inconsistent with her petite body, like a young dragon tearing apart its prey.
Fingel sat aside and also transformed into a cook. He unceremoniously threw the whole plate of mutton that had been cut aside into the pot. After about ten seconds, he took out the mutton that was still bloody, like noodles.
Breathe it into your mouth as well.
Opposite Manstein, sat his father, the vice-principal of Kassel College and the alchemy instructor nicknamed the Night Watcher:
Nicholas Flamel.
This afternoon, after Manstein had just finished teaching two students who violated school rules, his irresponsible father came to the door and said that there was a family banquet and he must be invited to attend.
Manstein's birth was an accident. It was probably the product of his romantic father's drunkenness. It was not easy for a high-blooded mixed race to have a child, and the night watchman at the time didn't even think about it.
I will have more children in the future.
Later, Manstein's mother, a first-generation German immigrant, gave birth to a child. As he grew up, a special kind of loneliness followed him, and he felt that he was incompatible with other children.
What bothered him even more was the ubiquitous voice. A rock concert was playing in his head every day, just like Superman's awakened super hearing in the comics.
This is his speech spirit, the snake, crawling around, collecting information for his master uncontrollably.
But the sad thing is that Manstein did not awaken the superhuman power, but was driven crazy by the complicated sounds, and the golden pupils were too eye-catching, so in the fall of that year, the American St. Elizabeth Psychiatric Hospital
There is an additional schizophrenia patient in the hospital.
St. Elizabeth's Mental Hospital was a notorious slaughterhouse, and patients who entered it had little chance of escaping intact.
After the U.S. military saw the powerful power of hybrids during World War II, they also started to study it, and the location was this mental hospital.
At that time, it was the period of the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union, and the madness from World War I and World War II had not subsided. Some psychiatrists conducted experiments on patients without scruples, including pontine separation, anterior lobe removal, etc.
"Increase the current!"
That painful feeling and the doctor's cold voice still appear in Manstein's nightmares.
But fortunately, Manstein was still young at the time, and perhaps in order to allow the experimental subject to live longer, those guys did not do anything too excessive to him.
During those dark days, the only thing that accompanied him was the longing for his mother and the child in the room next to him, his good friend: Guderian.
Later, Angers found them, and after a series of twists and turns, they came to study at Kassel College and stayed at the school to teach after graduation.
Manstein had just celebrated his fifty-fifth birthday that day. After the birthday party, he put on a clean nightgown and prepared to sleep for the day.
But the doorbell rang, and a man holding a wine bottle stood at the door. He looked to be in his forties, younger than Manstein.
He roughly stuffed a teddy bear into his hand, burped with the smell of wine, and stammered:
"Happy birthday……"
"my son!"
A child born into a single-parent family suddenly had a father on his fifty-fifth birthday.
Manstein didn't know how to get along with this unexpected father, and Nicholas was equally unaccustomed to this child, but he hoped to make up for the debt he had owed him over the years.
So Nicholas found Ender, who was the most relatable among the people he knew. Angers was a madman full of revenge, and he was a debauched gangster. But Ender, a dragon from another world, was the most human-like.
"Then ask him to come and have a meal with us!"
That's what Ander said, and he also told him that in China, there is nothing that a hot pot meal can't solve. If that doesn't work, add barbecue.
So Nicholas called Manstein and his apprentice Fingel, and Ander brought the hot pot and Luli. Together, the two families held a hot pot banquet in the bell tower of Kassel College.
As soon as Fingel swallowed the meat, he saw the vice-principal staring at him with a murderous look. He looked around and realized that he was sandwiched between the vice-principal and Professor Manstein, so he hurriedly got up.
"Hey, excuse me."
Fingel picked up the bowl and slipped out of the bell tower with agility that was not commensurate with his stature, while Nicholas moved his position and was next to Manstein.
The water mist rising from the copper pot blurred Ander and Luli on the opposite side, and they could only be seen consuming the meat on the cart beside them at a terrifying speed.
"Son, I'm sorry."
A deep voice sounded in Manstein's ears, so low that only he could hear it clearly.
Nicholas picked up the sesame paste on the side, scooped a spoonful of it into Manstein's mixing bowl, and added a little red fermented bean curd and green chive sauce into it. His face was serious, as if he was performing some special alchemy ritual.
.
Pour a little soup from the hot pot to dissolve the sesame sauce in the bowl. Nicholas placed the bowl in front of Manstein, grabbed a few slices of lamb from under Ander's chopsticks, and put them into the bowl.
"Try it? The secret recipe I got in China back then."
Manstein hesitated for a long time. Even though Kassel College started teaching Chinese language five or six years ago, Manstein still didn't know much about Chinese food.
He hesitantly picked up a piece of mutton and put it into his mouth. Mixed with sesame sauce and the milky aroma of the mutton, he, a German-American who grew up eating sausages and elbows, couldn't help but admire it.
"It's delicious...father."
Nicholas smiled, picked up a paper towel and wiped the corners of Manstein's mouth, pointed at the hot pot and said:
"Then eat more."
Manstein turned his head and saw Ander holding a tissue to wipe Lu Li's mouth. The little girl had eaten so wildly just now that her face was covered with yellow sesame sauce.
But why does this action look so familiar?
Manstein secretly glanced at his father, who was staring at Ander opposite him, taking out a small notebook and recording something.
"Mix some seasoning for him,?"
"Add food to him,?"
"Wipe his mouth,?"
A line of words was written on the cover of the notebook: