A Family Feast

Blackbeard sat on the throne. Lin Qi perched on the upturned tail of the Black Tiger throne, while Enzo was at a loss. Iron Hammer and Butcher Knife were both rough sorts, and Blackbeard was hardly a man of manners. No one had even brought Enzo a stool or anything of the kind. So Enzo struggled to carry an oak chair from the dining table up onto the dais, where he sat knee to knee with Lin Qi and his father.

Only when he tried to move the oak chair did Enzo realize how heavy it was. Carved from a single block of oak, it weighed several hundred pounds. But to make the chairs last longer, Lin Qi's ancestors had fitted a one-inch-thick iron plate beneath each one, so friction with the floor wouldn't wear them out.

That brought the chair's weight to seven or eight hundred pounds. Even Enzo had to strain mightily to shift it.

Yet while he struggled to move the chair, Iron Hammer and Butcher Knife—both strong enough to lift it with ease—stood by and laughed maliciously. Blackbeard and Lin Qi were laughing so hard their eyes had narrowed to slits. Enzo's face burned red. He felt like the biggest fool under heaven. Why had he followed Lin Qi here?

Not one person in this family seemed normal!

Blackbeard was running for mayor of Dunkirk and planned to become the province's administrative governor one day, yet his main targets were the annual administrative budget and tax revenue! A bandit was a bandit, after all. Enzo could hardly imagine the state that province would be in once Blackbeard took charge.

Perhaps the servants of the Black Tiger Family would be transformed into regular imperial troops. Then the Dragon Cavalry and Copper Hats roaming the streets and alleys would all be Lin Qi's murderous, arsonist bravos. They'd shout, "In the name of the Imperial Family!" as they kicked down doors and robbed people blind!

At the thought of that dreadful scene, Enzo shuddered from head to toe.

It was all so thrilling, so explosive. If Blackbeard really did manage to secure a noble title, and eventually take his place at court, that would be quite something. It was hard to imagine what the Empire would become if a man like him rose to become a high-ranking imperial official.

Pots and pans clattered outside, while the rich scents of spices and roasted meat drifted in. The Lin family's servants were preparing a welcoming feast. Lin Qi had returned home just in time for the Feast of the Kitchen God. According to the customs of the Western Continent, it was a major day for worshipping the Kitchen God, and the whole family, young and old, gathered to eat and drink their fill.

It also marked the beginning of the people's "winter endurance." From that day onward, blizzards from the northern Odin Icefield would sweep across most of the continent, and ordinary folk would rarely venture outside. Everyone would hunker down at home and endure the long, bitter winter. For any family with a bit of wealth, the Feast of the Kitchen God also marked the start of a whole season of winter banquets.

After all, there wasn't much to do during the long winter. Besides eating and drinking at home, what else was there?

Setting aside the matter of the mayoral election for the moment, Blackbeard carefully asked Lin Qi what he'd been up to over the past three years. Blackbeard had his own channels for gathering information, and the Cripple's Shop sent word about Lin Qi to Dunkirk every now and then. But there were plenty of things about Lin Qi that even Cripple couldn't uncover, so Blackbeard questioned his son about every detail of his life over the years.

Lin Qi dodged his father's questions, never letting up about how "poor," "down on his luck," "short of money," and "desperate for cash" he was. Blackbeard's face turned purplish black. Watching smoke puff from his nostrils, Lin Qi could tell his father wanted to slap him to the floor and give him a hard kick or two.

As the three of them—father and son, with Enzo—carried on their pointless conversation, the preparations for the banquet were nearly complete.

Since the family's young master, Lin Qi, had come home for the first time in three years, this year's Feast of the Kitchen God banquet at the Lin residence was especially grand. And that was without even counting all the other food and wine: the main course alone included thirty whole roasted lambs! Their heads and tails still attached, their skins roasted golden, fat dripping down, and generous amounts of spices from the East sprinkled over them!

At an upscale tavern in Berely, a single roast lamb like that could fetch the astronomical price of two hundred gold coins. The lamb itself wasn't the only thing worth a fortune. The spices sprinkled over it were even more precious. Shipped from the East and carried across tens of thousands of miles of ocean to the Western Continent, each handful cost more than a dozen gold coins!

Besides the roast lamb, there were great slabs of tender, fatty beef. Roast geese and chickens lay neatly arranged on large silver platters, while plump suckling pigs were propped up by silver forks in a neat row, as if they were marching in formation.

There were all sorts of rare birds, too.

The Empire's nobility were especially fond of rare waterfowl, such as black swans, white swans, mallards, and skylarks. At the Lin family's feast, at least forty different kinds of waterfowl were served. The rich fragrance was so intense it seemed to gather into clouds visible to the naked eye.

Hundreds of hulking, fierce-looking bravos attended the banquet. They were old hands of the Lin family, men with the status to be admitted to the banquet hall. Elsewhere in the ancestral residence stood more than a dozen smaller banquet halls, where everyone else—including the servants and maids—feasted to their hearts' content.

More than three thousand people attended that single banquet, a gathering on a scale almost equal to the state banquet the Emperor held at Victory Palace.

And even that wasn't all. While everyone feasted, hundreds of tough, seasoned men stood guard at checkpoints all around the ancestral residence. Calling the Lin family estate a den of dragons and tigers would hardly be an exaggeration.

After Blackbeard ceremoniously recited a prayer to the Kitchen God, he raised a massive solid-gold goblet and declared the banquet open.

The hundreds of hulking bravos in the hall raised their goblets and roared in unison, "Long live Blackbeard!" Then they shouted together, "Welcome home, young master!" Amid a storm of jeers and laughter, they downed every drop in their cups.

Among them, several dozen burly, pure-blooded beastmen stood out. Elsewhere on the Western Continent, beastmen were hunted relentlessly. But here in the Lin family's ancestral residence, beastmen and humans linked arms and drank together. They gathered to eat and drink, their revelry so warm and cheerful they might as well have been one family.

Lin Qi and Enzo each carried a barrel of wine and went around toasting the Lin family elders. Uncle So-and-so, Uncle So-and-so, Aunt So-and-so, Auntie So-and-so... Every elder was a fearsome brute, scarred from head to toe and grim-faced. Yet the moment they saw Lin Qi, they all broke into kindly smiles.

They only ever made Lin Qi take a small sip. But when it came to Enzo, they showed no mercy, making him down a huge bowl every time.

So less than fifteen minutes after the banquet began, Enzo collapsed in a daze.

An hour later, Lin Qi, too, was dead drunk and sprawled on the floor.

Blackbeard shook his head, picked Lin Qi up, and carried him out of the banquet hall.