Grandma couldn't help but feel curious. “With your grandmother here, no one in this household will bully you. Your father may not like you, but after all, you are his own son—how could he possibly harm you? Don’t be fooled by how loud and blustering he is... In the future, your father’s official rank will only get higher, and then there will be even fewer people who dare to bully you. Mildred, tell Grandma, what are you afraid of?”

Helen Brooks certainly couldn’t say that his father would meet a bad end in the future, and that even his grandmother would be implicated.

The longer he stayed in this era, the more he understood how people here thought. If you went around talking about chaos in the world, at best people would think you were crazy, at worst you’d be wanted by the authorities. Grandmother was very shrewd—how could he possibly explain it to her?

Helen Brooks thought for a moment and said, “Grandmother, what I’m afraid of is that Father’s official rank will only get higher and higher.”

Grandma exclaimed in surprise, “Child, that’s an interesting thing to say. Everyone else wishes for their official rank to rise as high as possible—why are you afraid of it?”

Helen Brooks said, “Grandmother, the higher the rank, the greater the ambition. You once said that Father’s greatest dream was to become a Xusi Colonel. But after he became a Xusi Colonel? He started aiming for an even higher position. One day, if he becomes Grand Commandant or Minister of Works, what will he want next? When the The Brooks Family is at the height of its glory, I fear that will also be the day disaster strikes us.”

Grandma drew in a sharp breath and was speechless for a long time.

What Helen Brooks said sounded laughable at first, but on closer thought, it made perfect sense.

Human desire is endless, so people keep climbing higher. But one day, when you reach the very top, that’s when the danger comes.

It’s a simple truth, but many people just can’t see it.

Grandma couldn’t help but look at her grandson with new eyes. It seemed she had underestimated Mildred.

But if these words were spoken now, would George Brooks even listen?

Grandma pondered for a long time. “Mildred, you’re not wrong. Then tell Grandma, what is your ambition?”

“Grandmother, I want to become a match for ten thousand men!”

“A match for ten thousand men?”

Helen Brooks, regardless of whether Grandma could see it or not, nodded solemnly and replied, “That’s right. As long as Mildred has the ability to stand against ten thousand, I can protect Grandmother from harm, and make sure Sister can be happy for her whole life.”

Chapter Six: The Lost Treasure of Fubo (1)

No one in the entire The Brooks Family knew about this conversation between Helen Brooks and Grandma, and of course, it would never be recorded in the annals of history.

The news that George Brooks had been promoted to Governor of Hedong quickly spread throughout the The Brooks Family.

Everyone was delighted. As the saying goes, when one person attains the Dao, even his chickens and dogs ascend to heaven. When the master rises, so do those in his household. But when Grandma heard the news, she did not smile. On the contrary, she sat dazed on a stone stool, and after a long while, let out a deep sigh, leaning on her dragon-headed cane as she shakily walked back into her room.

A few days later, the imperial envoy arrived in high spirits and left just as happily.

George Brooks then announced the court’s arrangements, and took Brian Ford with him to the Qiang people’s settlement, where he stayed for more than thirty days.

After returning from the Qiang tribe, George Brooks barely paused before taking Edward Thompson, Evelyn Brooks, and other close confidants to Hedong.

Brian Ford stayed behind in Lintao; Grandma and Helen Brooks also remained in Lintao, as did Mrs. Brooks and Grace Brooks.

George Brooks did not notice that, when he left Lintao, there was one more person in the household—a person who always stood by Helen Brooks’s side.

……

After the incident at the martial training ground, Helen Brooks returned to his usual life.

His family members were even more afraid of him, so much so that even when they spoke, they did so timidly and nervously. Helen Brooks knew that, in their eyes, his reputation as a reincarnated monster was now firmly established. But it didn’t matter—life would go on as it should. In his previous life as a forest ranger, every time he patrolled the mountains and forests, wasn’t he always alone?

The feeling of loneliness isn’t scary; what’s scary is being afraid of it.

Helen Brooks still got up early every day to build his strength and practice martial arts. Grandma had hired several teachers to teach him reading and writing. During this time, Edward Thompson also visited twice, but the two of them just sat facing each other for half a day without saying a word.

Helen Brooks knew that his wild outburst and the little song he sang at the martial training ground that day had already caught Edward Thompson’s attention.

If you’re not living in the Three Kingdoms era, you can never truly understand how people thought back then.

That song—which was neither quite a poem nor quite a lyric—contained things that, for people of that time, were explosively subversive. Ever since Emperor Wu of Han had established Confucianism as the state orthodoxy, even if people didn’t constantly quote Confucius, in the eyes of the world, Confucian thought was sacred and not to be blasphemed.

And Helen Brooks’s song was precisely a blasphemy against Confucianism.

Fortunately, most of the people who heard that song at the martial training ground had died; Charlotte Brooks was still in a daze and likely wouldn’t recover anytime soon. As for Edward Thompson, who is even mentioned in the Romance of the Three Kingdoms, he was definitely not a stick-in-the-mud, rule-bound kind of guy. The fact that he came to see Helen Brooks meant that there was something in that song that intrigued him.