The road conditions were getting worse and worse, and Mr. Clark had no choice but to lower the car a bit more.

Suddenly...

"Huh?" Staring blankly out the window, Mr. Bennett seemed to see something in the fog. He suddenly turned his head and pushed up the glasses on his nose. "Brother Clark, I think I just saw someone by the side of the road."

"What?" Mr. Clark responded after thinking for a moment, "How come I didn't see anything?"

"I just caught a glimpse of a human-like shadow standing in the fog," said Mr. Bennett.

"Damn, don't scare me," Mr. Clark immediately got a little nervous. "Was it really a person?"

"Damn it, if it wasn't a person, would it be a ghost?" Mr. Bennett's rhetorical question actually made sense.

The two discussed it for a bit and decided to turn around and check it out. If there really was someone, maybe they could ask for directions.

After all, there were no real traffic rules on this mountain road; you could turn around anywhere, so they immediately made a U-turn.

As a result, Mr. Clark drove the car back to the spot and stopped. The two of them rolled down the windows and looked carefully, only to find that it really wasn't a person, but a stone statue.

Perhaps because of its age, the statue's head and body were both damaged, so only a rough outline could be seen. It was impossible to tell whether the statue depicted a human, a demon, an immortal, or a Buddha.

"Hey, look, there's a path behind it," Mr. Bennett's sharp eyes spotted something after a few seconds of peering. He vaguely saw a forked path behind the statue.

"So... should we drive in and take a look?" said Mr. Clark.

"Come on, we're already lost anyway, let's just check it out," said Mr. Bennett. "There's a statue here, which probably means this path leads to some temple or something. Maybe we'll run into someone and can ask for directions."

"Now that you put it that way... it does make some sense," Mr. Clark muttered as he started turning the steering wheel.

So, they drove into the forked path behind the statue, and then both disappeared into the misty forest at dusk...

===Chapter One: The Fish Market Tycoon===

In countless parallel universes, there is a place very similar to the world we know, yet not quite the same.

Here, there is a dynasty called "Ming" (朙), which is very much like the "Ming Dynasty" we are familiar with, but the fate of this "Ming Dynasty" (朙朝) has clearly lasted much longer; since its founding, the Great Ming has continued for over three hundred years, with more than twenty emperors. In this generation, the throne has passed to an emperor named Zhu Zhi.

Emperor Zhu Zhi's reign title is "Yongtai," and our story begins in the early years of Yongtai.

That year, just after the Spring Festival, it started to rain in Hangzhou Prefecture.

The rain lasted for five days, from the first day of the lunar new year all the way to the fifth, when people welcome the God of Wealth. The rain only got heavier, drenching the people so much that they couldn't even leave their homes. As a result, that year's Spring Festival in Hangzhou was so quiet that not even the sound of firecrackers could be heard in the streets and alleys.

It was as if the heavens were telling the people of Hangzhou to "shut up."

As the saying goes—extraordinary children are born under extraordinary circumstances.

Coincidentally, it was also from the first day of the new year that the wife of Squire Clark in Hangzhou Prefecture, who had been pregnant for twelve months without giving birth, suddenly began to feel labor pains.

The pain lasted five days, tormenting everyone in The Clark Residence, especially Mrs. Clark, to the point of exhaustion.

It wasn't until the fifth day, after who knows how many midwives had been changed and how many maids had collapsed from exhaustion... finally, at a moment when thunder roared, winds howled, and rain poured outside, there was a ripping sound, and Mrs. Clark gave birth.

Incidentally, the "ripping" sound was Mrs. Clark accidentally tearing a piece of silk by the bed.

As soon as Young Master Clark was born, the rain outside stopped, and the sky immediately cleared, with not a cloud in sight.

Even more astonishing, after five days and nights of labor, Mrs. Clark was not only unharmed, she didn't even faint from exhaustion. Instead, she had a huge appetite, ate a big meal, nursed the baby twice, and then fell asleep with her son, leaving the midwives and wet nurses Squire Clark had hired completely dumbfounded.

Within a few days, the news had spread throughout Hangzhou.

Everyone in the streets and alleys was talking about it, with all kinds of rumors: some said Squire Clark's son was an immortal come down to earth, some said he was the reincarnation of the Monkey King, and others claimed he was actually Nezha, and that the Dragon King tried to drown him with rain during his birth.

Of course, these rumors didn't last long and faded away after a while.

Long story short, Young Master Clark grew up day by day, and outsiders couldn't see anything unusual about him, but he himself knew there was something wrong.

This Young Master Clark was, in fact, the very same "Mr. Clark" mentioned earlier, who had transmigrated here.

His last memory was driving in the fog, then he suddenly felt dazed and lost consciousness; when he came to, he had become a newborn baby, wailing loudly.

When he first regained consciousness, Mr. Clark tried to speak, but no matter what he tried to say, all that came out was crying; he tried to gesture with his hands, but his fingers were tightly clenched and wouldn't open... It wasn't until half a day later, when he finally managed to open his eyes, that he roughly understood the situation.

Mr. Clark was familiar with the concept of transmigration stories, so he gradually gave up resisting and accepted the fact that he had become an "ancient newborn."