She took out the ‘Qing Shen Talisman’ worth twenty thousand yuan that Ethan Brooks had sold her. Emily Foster felt a bit dazed. Although she knew this talisman was probably a scam, she just couldn’t suppress her inner excitement, as if after using this talisman, her mother would really wake up.

Looking at his somewhat self-deceiving daughter, John Foster shook his head but didn’t say anything further. He wanted to wait until his daughter had used the talisman before having a proper talk with her.

Suddenly, Emily Foster stood up, took two steps back, raised her hand, and threw the ‘Qing Shen Talisman’ toward the woman lying on the bed, while softly chanting ‘Lin’.

Watching his daughter act like some kind of charlatan, John Foster didn’t find it funny at all; instead, he only felt uneasy and guilty. For the sake of her mother, his highly educated daughter had even started to believe in this sort of thing.

But then John Foster immediately thought his eyes must be playing tricks on him. The yellow talisman his daughter had thrown, after she uttered the word ‘Lin’, actually turned into several streaks of white light, which all entered his wife’s body, while some gray ash drifted down all around.

If the whole room hadn’t suddenly become cool, and if his eyes hadn’t been stung by the bright light, he would have thought it was just his imagination. What on earth was going on?

Emily Foster was also stunned. She had thought that after throwing the talisman and saying a word, it would simply land on her mother’s quilt, and then she would continue calling out to her mother.

But things turned out far beyond her expectations. The talisman she threw turned into several cool, white beams of light, which then entered her mother’s body, and the talisman itself disappeared, replaced by tiny bits of ash drifting down everywhere.

Emily Foster felt her scalp tingle. She knew that many charlatans used chemical tricks to deceive people, but she was a top science student, and she couldn’t explain this phenomenon with any chemical reaction she knew. Could it be… could this really be a genuine talisman?

The thought that this talisman might actually work made Emily Foster's hands tremble. If what the talisman seller had said was true, her mother should be waking up soon.

Thinking of this, Emily Foster could no longer contain her excitement and rushed to her mother’s bedside.

Chapter 7: Super Homebody

“Mom, it’s Jingwen. Can you hear me? Mom…” Emily Foster excitedly grabbed the hand of the woman sleeping on the bed, calling out to her again and again.

The woman on the bed moved her hand, then furrowed her brows, and actually slowly opened her eyes. She looked blankly at her daughter, whose eyes were already brimming with joyful tears, and was about to speak. But Emily Foster threw herself into the woman’s arms, crying, “Mom, you’re finally awake, I…”

“Wenwen…” The woman on the bed was gradually regaining consciousness. She felt a faint, fresh current slowly flowing through her body, gradually restoring her spirit.

“What happened to me, Wenwen?” The woman on the bed was now fully awake and tried to sit up, but after being bedridden for so long, her limbs were numb and she couldn’t sit up right away. She even felt that fresh current was still restoring her limbs.

John Foster stared wide-eyed at the unbelievable scene before him, forgetting to speak. For the first time, he realized that there really were inexplicable things in this world. Was this an illusion?

……

Ethan Brooks was very satisfied with his new place. He still had tens of thousands of yuan on him, so for now, he didn’t need to go out and earn more money. Every day, he just stayed in the courtyard to cultivate, and carefully transplanted that ‘Silver Heart Grass’ into a separate flower bed.

After a month, James Bennett also learned that the person living in the west room was a woman in her twenties. But Ethan Brooks cultivated every night and practiced martial arts in the courtyard every morning. As for the woman across from him, she seemed to leave for work very early every day, and by the time she returned, Ethan Brooks was already cultivating in his room. So after a month, the two of them had never even met.

Ethan Brooks didn’t care at all what kind of woman lived in the west room. Although his life was monotonous, he never had enough time for cultivation, so he had no time for gossip.

Yvonne Green knew that the landlord had rented out the east room as well, but didn’t know who the new tenant was—only that he was a young man about her age. But she left for work at six every morning and didn’t get back until nearly seven in the evening, and had never seen him. This month, because the provincial health bureau leaders were coming to inspect, she hadn’t even had a single day off on the weekends.

And this young man had never come out after she got home from work or before she left in the morning. If it weren’t for the changes in the flowers and plants in the courtyard flower bed every day, she would have thought he didn’t exist at all. After a while, she realized that the guy living across from her was a homebody—an extreme one at that.

There were still half a month before the new semester started. This month of cultivation had only made Ethan Brooks's true energy a bit more refined, and he was still far from reaching the second level of Qi training. This showed just how much the world’s spiritual energy affected cultivation. However, he hadn’t neglected his secular martial arts, which were becoming more and more proficient.