It suddenly stood up on its hind legs, facing Jason Brooks. First, it raised its two front paws high and brought them together, just like a person cupping their hands in greeting, then bowed respectfully to Jason Brooks. After bowing, it lowered its whole body, knelt down, and its clever little head respectfully knocked against the ground with a resounding thud.

As it bowed, it chirped softly, as if saying words of thanks.

Seeing this, Jason Brooks was utterly shocked, frozen like a wooden statue, his mouth dry and tongue parched, not knowing what to do for a moment.

After finishing its kowtow, the little white fox got up and began to limp away in another direction. But after taking just over ten steps, it suddenly stopped, turned around, and once again faced Jason Brooks, repeating the same bowing and kowtowing gesture.

This happened three times in total, each time earnest and solemn, so serious that Jason Brooks began to feel as if he was seeing things, thinking it wasn’t a little fox at all, but a grateful little girl. In the end, its petite figure was swallowed by the forest, slowly disappearing until even the sound was gone.

“Fox spirit?”

Only after a while did Jason Brooks come to his senses. Hearing the mountain wind rustling through the surroundings, he couldn’t help but feel a chill down his spine. This was not a place to linger. The thought flashed through his mind, and he dashed down the mountain path as fast as he could, eager to get home.

Chapter Two: The Kind Mother

Rushing nervously to the front of the mountain, Jason Brooks finally relaxed a little after encountering other tourists. He spotted his runaway donkey grazing by the roadside, grabbed it, and hurried down the mountain to go home.

Jason Brooks lived in Jingyang Village, not far from Maple Mountain, only about five li away.

Jingyang Village was under the jurisdiction of Jiangzhou, with fifty-eight households and a population of two hundred and twenty-six. A clear stream flowed gently around the village, making the scenery appear fresh and full of spiritual energy.

On the way, Jason Brooks couldn’t shake off the image of that “out-of-the-ordinary” white fox. He vaguely felt that this world was not as simple as he had imagined, but he couldn’t quite put his finger on what was going on. After all, the previous owner of this body was just a bookworm who “paid no attention to anything outside his window and devoted himself solely to the classics,” rarely leaving home, and had barely even visited Jiangzhou City, so his experience of the outside world was pitifully limited.

“Could it be that there really are demons and monsters in this world?”

Jason Brooks suddenly thought of a terrifying possibility: “If there really are demons and monsters, does that mean there are also immortals? Ha, I must just have too much imagination…”

The more he thought about it, the more absurd and nonsensical it seemed, so he forced himself to put the thought aside.

About the time it takes to burn an incense stick later, Jason Brooks returned to the entrance of the village, leading his donkey straight home. The villagers who saw him all bowed respectfully and addressed him as “Mr. Brooks.” After he passed by, the village girls and women whispered to each other with envy, admiring how “Olivia Morgan” had finally made it, and with such a promising son, prosperity was just around the corner.

Olivia Morgan was Jason Brooks’s mother.

Jason Brooks lost his father at a young age and was raised solely by his mother, who worked hard to support him and endured countless hardships to send him to school. The two of them depended on each other for survival. But on the very day Jason Brooks passed the scholar’s exam, when the results were posted, he was so overjoyed after reading the list that he clapped his hands, shouted “Wonderful!”—and then collapsed to the ground, eyes rolling back, foaming at the mouth, acting out a real-life version of “Fan Jin Passing the Exam.” When he woke up, everything had changed—his soul had been replaced. The earthling who had just crossed over naturally dared not reveal himself, quietly digesting everything unfamiliar, including accepting the presence of a kind mother.

On Earth, he had lost both parents early and had no relatives, so he didn’t resist this great motherly love in a different world. He quickly accepted it. After some time together, he truly accepted Olivia Morgan as his mother and was very filial.

……

Returning to their simple home, as soon as he entered the yard, he saw his gray-haired mother struggling to chop firewood, sweat streaming down her forehead, too busy to wipe it away. She was only thirty-six this year, but her once-beautiful face was already lined with wrinkles, prematurely marked by the hardships of life.

Jason Brooks rushed forward and said, “Mother, didn’t I tell you? Leave the firewood for me to chop when I get back.” He reached out to take the axe.

But Olivia Morgan held on tightly and wouldn’t let go. “Liuxian, how can you do such heavy work? Besides, you’re a scholar now, with a title. You shouldn’t do hard labor. If others see, they’ll laugh at you.”

Jason Brooks ignored her protests and snatched the axe away. “Scholar or not, at home, I’ll always be your son. It’s only right for a son to help his mother with chores. Who could say anything about that?”

—In the Tiantong Dynasty, scholars were considered noble. This so-called nobility was both self-proclaimed and recognized by others. As the saying goes, “All trades are lowly, only studying is high,” which implied that “scholars basically don’t do housework,” hence the abundance of “bookworms who are clumsy and ignorant of farm work.”

The former Jason Brooks was also someone who never got his hands wet.