(Chapter 251 has been completed, let's go to that chapter first.) ）

Two months before Christmas, their estate was overrun by a group of retreating soldiers, the cook and groom were driven away, and Anthony and his sister Sasha were imprisoned in a warehouse, that is, a cellar.

They stood in front of a building that had been abandoned for nearly half a century, its roof devoid of tiles, the straw mats and planks beneath the tiles, the windows and doors hollow in their original positions, like an old man on the verge of death opening his tongueless mouth and eyeballless eyes to them, and weeds reaching into the room and growing unbridled on the walls and floor.

A nest of quails screamed in rage and abandoned their nests, flapping their wings from the feet of two humans, and ran out.

"Look, this is the fireplace." Anthony said, directing Sasha to touch inside, and the bricks were all removed.

The fireplace really came in handy, the hearth was huge, and when Anthony's sister Sasha discovered the secret, she often got up at night when she couldn't sleep hungry, and went in to lick the bricks, and she couldn't figure out whether it was real, and often licked her tongue to the blood, and the cook always woke up in time, found her, and then secretly used the remaining candles to heat her a little sweet soup - a sweet soup made of thatch roots and water.

She also nursed Sasha behind her husband's back and Anthony, and it was strange that she had never had a child, but there was still milk in the room, perhaps because of the few mouthfuls of poor milk, and the mouthful of corn or rat meat that Anthony and the groom had given her in private, that Sasha was not as thin and terrible as the other children.

They loved her so much.

Anthony went upstairs with Sasha on tiptoe, but luckily the staircase in the manor was made of cement and then laid with planks, and after a few decades, the planks that had not been pried away rotted like a dry sponge, but the base remained.

The railing was made of lattice, so it was also removed.

The hallway was originally covered with walnut and oak wainscoting, with a golden carved glass sconce. There are small oil paintings hanging before the children are born, and the paintings are beautiful flowers and landscapes, after the children are born. It was replaced by a pony and a puppy.

Now they're all gone.

The doors of the rooms were demolished long before the manor was completely abandoned, they were oak, oiled, dry, easy to burn, it was easy to unload, each room was empty, in the third year after the start of the war, the owner of the manor discreetly took the children to live in one large room, the furniture of the other rooms, lamps. Curtains and ornaments were sold or stored in cellars, servants lived in kitchens, and the doors and windows of both places were crooked and unsightly by reinforced iron bars.

When the man and woman died, the cook and the groom lived in the big room. The two children slept in bed and they slept on the floor.

When the rout came, they split open the great bed and threw it into the rudimentary stove, and the curtains, the quilts, and the pillows were taken and used.

The former owner of the place took his son down the stairs at the end of the corridor, and he and Sasha walked down hand in hand. The staircase is narrow, Anthony. Hopkins put his hands behind his back and put them behind his back for his sister to hold, Sasha's little finger pinching his fingertips.

The staircase leads to the rooms where the servants lived, the entire wing of the building. On the ground floor, near the kitchen and barn, which had been intended for servants to walk on, the rout occupied the place, and they broke through the wooden wall that served as a partition. Many rooms were integrated into one, quilts and pillows were thrown haphazardly on the floor, and planks removed from elsewhere were nailed to the windows and doors, nailed so that there were no gaps, leaving only two exits—a window and a door, with many strips of wood nailed to them, but which could be opened.

From the surviving window, they could see lush vegetation and a bright sky, but in Hopkins's eyes, all they could see was white, thick snow, snow buried in blood, a strand of blonde hair, baby teeth, and a black walnut stepping stool.

He could see how his little sister, stripped of all her clothes, was dragged down in front of the stool, and he prayed to God, sincerely hoping that she had fainted or did not understand what was going to happen, and they had her turned to one side, and the warm, tearful rosy cheeks were pressed against the still icy walnut stool, and one of them was very good at using an axe, and he had cut off the triangular head of the only old horse left on the estate.

The skillful executioner cut off the head of the sand, and the little head rolled to the snow with a gurgling, and the blood melted the snow, and in the process of falling, her face hit the foot of the stool, and the baby teeth were knocked out, did she feel pain, did she scream? Her eyes, reflected in the color of eggplant, still contained transparent and hot tears and the blank innocence that the most innocent angel can bestow, and the axe still rested on the stool, and the blood of the old horse, and the blood of the fawn, and the blood of the sand, and the sun-like blonde hair.

They used their knives to divide the bodies of the sands, the soft, white and tender bodies, the yellowish fat, the peachy offal, and the flesh—the children raised by Anthony's parents, Anthony, the cook, and the groom with all sorts of delicious food, chocolate, cream, honey, sausages, and small bread, were turned into meat, like the meat that the butcher in the bazaar had on his board, which was drained of blood and sorted, and around which the hungry soldiers were like silent flies and vultures.

Right next to the slaughterhouse, they set up a fire, and the only iron pot that was retrieved from the kitchen was hung on the shelf. Hopkins remembers that the last time his parents measured Sasha's weight was before they went to the city, Sasha's weight was forty pounds, and how much meat did they take out of her? They were cooked with the bones attached, and they ate the meat, sucking the marrow from the thigh bones, leaving the remaining small bones in the soup.

What a rich aroma of that soup, Anthony. Hopkins will never forget it in this life, it has long legs, and it walks from the top of the campfire to the snow, and from the snow to the room, and from the room to the cellar.

He followed.

In his fantasy, the door of the cellar is opened, and the real cellar is no longer doorless, it is a semi-underground cellar, which is also a warehouse, in which people put things that are not used for the time being, and also store food and wine that are not perishable.

The routs also stored their "food" in it, and they gave the children a little bit of what they had leftovers. Because the dead meat is sour and bitter, it will be poisoned when eaten.

There wasn't much left, a wooden spoon for each child, about half a bowl. The horse meat is sour, the venison is sassy, but the meat of the companion is very fragrant.

The soldiers took turns feeding the children, because the soldiers in charge of this work were able to take the opportunity to peel another mouthful of hot soup from each child's mouth, as long as the "food" did not die and did not lose meat quickly, this is not the north, and the blizzard will not last long.

There were originally seven children in the cellar, and Anthony's little sister was the fourth to be taken away, and Anthony would be the next. His father was a fighter who had consciously trained Anthony while he was still learning to walk, and he had fed better and grown stronger than the other children, and had been able to withstand fear and hunger more than the others. In terms of weight, he is the best.

The scent ran into the cellar without a sound, and in the darkness the breathing became louder, and the children instinctively opened their nostrils, for they were all starved and had no strength, or they would have sniffed vigorously against the crack in the door.

The soldiers were eating his sister. Anthony could hear them chewing, smacking their lips and drinking soup, his arm was broken, and he felt no pain at all.

The soldier who brought them soup came in, and when he fed Anthony, he said, "Taste your sister." "Anthony ate it. Greedily, not a drop left, that's the taste of chocolate, cream, honey. There were tiny broken bones at the bottom of the spoon, his teeth bit the spoon, licking each small bone and sending it into his mouth, he bit the spoon and didn't let go, the soldier with the spoon looked at him with eyes shining in the dark, the force from the spoon made him shudder, he was like fighting with the demons in hell for food.

It took a great deal of effort for the soldier to pull out the spoon, and he sweated, angry and frightened.

He went back and told the others and they agreed to eat Anthony tomorrow. Hopkins.

That very night, another army came to this small estate, they came from a large country, they had plenty of rations, and they had doctors with them, and most of the rout had died in the battle, and a few had surrendered, and the blizzard was at its end, and it was no longer so violent, but it was still a dead end to escape alone.

Among the victors, the highest rank was a lieutenant, who led his soldiers to open the door of the cellar and rescue the children, and the doctor examined the children and fed them a little sugar water.

Anthony. Hopkins closed his eyes, and he could hear the doctor talking, in a thick Saxon accent, "Kill all the captives." He calmly proposed to the lieutenant, "they can't let them out—they're all beasts who have eaten the 'best' things, and even when the war is over, and the trees are full of fruit, and the fields are full of crops, and the walls are full of bacon and sausages, every night they still remember the delicacies they've eaten in the past few days—there's nothing better than what they've eaten when they're about to digest themselves, and they won't forget, and they'll find a way to eat again, except this, Nothing satisfies them, they are no longer human. ”

The lieutenant did not speak, and later Anthony . Hopkins heard a dense burst of gunfire.

They stayed with the army for two days, until the blizzard was completely gone, and the lieutenant and the doctor were generous, and all the cream, butter and chocolate they had brought with them went to the children, who never looked at Anthony, who knew them, who were the children of the peasants in the neighborhood.

The army sent them to the city, where they were placed in an orphanage, and the other two children soon found other relatives and they were picked up.

Twenty years later, Anthony. Hopkins found them and ate them into his stomach, and anyway, they ate his little sister too, and he couldn't let Sasha stay in a strange place.

He also went to the field behind the manor, and after the gunshots had gone out that day, he went out quietly, and he saw that the soldiers were buried next to the chestnut woods, and he went to look for them, and there was only dirt left in it, and he planted potatoes on it, and ate them.

The stool was gone, and the vegetation grew so vigorously in its place that he remembered picking up the sandy blonde hair, the baby teeth, and the ice of blood that had solidified into sauce.

Anthony. Hopkins sat in the cellar, thick dust on the slate floor, light shining in through the cellar door, and he smelled the aroma of cream, honey and chocolate.

The "ghoul" poked out his fingers and groped the child's face, neck and shoulders, his eyes were red, the skin he touched was delicate and warm, the slender gray fingers were pressed together at the back of Sasha's neck, he pulled the boy towards him, hugged him in his arms, and wept bitterly.

(To be continued)