A fox spirit repaying a favor by red sleeves adding fragrance, washing clothes and cooking—that was a tale of romance and elegance. But what if the fox spirit took things from her own home to repay someone else???
Yes, that was right! The fox next door was repaying a favor, but what was with stealing my rice and flour to "repay" it?
Inside a shabby thatched cottage, a sallow, emaciated youth dressed in coarse linen lay pressed against the wall, peering secretly through an almost imperceptible crack at the house next door.
The young woman next door wore white, so beautiful that fish would sink and geese would fall, like Xi Shi reborn. She held an empty bowl and muttered under her breath. The next moment, a bowlful of coarse rice appeared from thin air inside it.
Delight flashed across the young woman's face when she saw the coarse rice in the empty bowl. She hurriedly poured it into a basin beside her, then continued muttering.
On the other side of the wall, the youth peeping through the crack suddenly sprang up and rushed to his own rice jar. His eyes fixed fiercely on the nearly empty jar. Only a thin layer of rice remained at the bottom, and before the starving youth's very eyes, every last grain of coarse rice vanished one by one.
Not a single grain remained! It was cleaner than a bowl licked by a dog!
Then Zhang Chen rushed back to the crack in the wall. Through that barely visible hole, he saw that the young woman's empty bowl was indeed filled to the brim with coarse rice again!
"Damn it! She really means to starve me to death, not leaving me even a sliver of a way out!" Zhang Chen stood before the wall, grinding his teeth in fury, yet he did not dare curse aloud for fear the girl next door might hear him.
Before Zhang Chen could finish cursing, he suddenly felt a tug at his side. Before he could react, the cured meat hanging on the wall vanished without a trace as well.
Not long after, the fragrance of rice drifted over from next door. After the young woman finished making a steaming pot of rice with cured meat, she transformed into a snow-white fox and obediently hopped into a cage nearby.
Zhang Chen pressed his eyes to the wall, staring fiercely at the fox next door, his gaze brimming with rage. He was not even particularly surprised that a woman could turn into a fox, because he had watched this scene for a full three months.
Three months! Did you know how he had survived these three months?
"Damn that Wang Wu! If he'd just turned this fox into a fur coat back then, would there be such trouble today?"
Zhang Chen cursed inwardly. To trace the root of it all, they had to go back five years.
On a rainy night five years ago, Wang Wu, the hunter next door, had gone up the mountain to hunt and caught a White-Haired Fox in a trap. Wang Wu had planned to make a fur collar from it, but the impoverished scholar next door lived on coarse bran and wild vegetables meal after meal. Yet for some reason, that night he sold all two mu of his meager farmland just to buy that fox.
Ever since the fox next door began repaying a favor, Zhang Chen's miserable life had begun. He had become a heaven-chosen laborer, painstakingly enduring hunger as he supported the man and beast next door. Until three months ago, the original owner of this body had nearly starved to death. With one foot stepping through the Gates of Hell, he shattered the Mystery of the Womb and recalled his life on Earth.
After awakening his innate wisdom, Zhang Chen's twenty-first-century consciousness took the lead. At first, he did not think much of it and simply continued going into the mountains to hunt.
Yet over the three months since shattering the Mystery of the Womb, Zhang Chen had finally realized something was wrong. The coarse rice in his jar was dwindling far too quickly, and his cured meat often vanished without a trace.
At first, he thought he had been robbed. But after lying in wait for several days without seeing a thief, the rice and meat in his home continued disappearing. Then he thought of the poor scholar next door, who did no work yet ate coarse rice and meat every meal, with money left over to study. Zhang Chen grew suspicious and assumed the scholar was stealing from him. He secretly ground a hole into the wall, and from there things spiraled out of control, leading to today's scene!
Smelling the rice from next door, Zhang Chen quickly stuffed the crack shut with sand and dirt, afraid the Fox Spirit would discover his spying.
"That damned Fox Spirit deserves ten thousand cuts! Even if she doesn't kill me, I'll starve to death sooner or later. If this goes on, won't I be working for next door every single day?"
After a long while, Zhang Chen rubbed his rumbling stomach, bitterness and indignation filling his eyes. How hard was it to earn money these days?
He pinched pennies and saved every morsel, only for it all to go toward supporting that poor scholar next door.
Counting the time the original owner had been exploited, it had been a full five years!
Did you know how he had made it through those five years?
But as for how to get rid of the Fox Spirit, his mind was in chaos and he had no plan at all. That was a Fox Spirit who wielded demonic arts. It would already be a blessing if she did not harm him—what ability did he have to kill a demon?
Just as he angrily turned to leave, he suddenly froze and looked back toward where the cured meat had vanished. There lay a pigeon-egg-sized bead, crimson as fire, glowing with a warm red radiance like a Night-Shining Pearl. It was especially eye-catching.
More importantly, a "+40" floated above the bead. It looked very much like the Experience Points dropped by a major boss in a game.
At that moment, Zhang Chen's vision blurred, and an interface popped up:
Name: Zhang Chen Skills: None Points: 0 An anomalous point drop has been detected. Collect it?
"Collect!"
Without a moment's thought, Zhang Chen answered.
As Zhang Chen's words fell, the crimson bead on the ground disappeared, and the Golden Finger Interface flickered:
Name: Zhang Chen Skills: None Points: 40
"Golden Finger? This is my Golden Finger!" Zhang Chen looked at it, his eyes overflowing with wild joy. Now that he had awakened a Golden Finger, did he still need to fear subduing a mere Fox Spirit?
Suppressing his excitement, Zhang Chen began studying the Golden Finger. Before long, he had figured it out completely.
The Golden Finger was simple. Wherever anomalous beings had passed, "points" and "skills" could drop. By collecting the dropped points, he could directly add them to skills, allowing those skills to level up without limit.
Yet Zhang Chen's gaze fell on the empty "None" under skills, and resentment shot to the heavens. "What use is a Golden Finger with points but no skills? I might as well not have it!"
As for how to obtain skills, he had some ideas. Since the Fox Spirit could drop Experience Points, she might also drop skills. At present, the Fox Spirit was the only anomalous being he could come into contact with. In other words, there was an overwhelming chance that his hopes of unlocking skills rested entirely on her.
Countless thoughts flashed through Zhang Chen's mind. Unable to think of a way to fight the Fox Spirit, he could only invoke the spirit of Ah Q and comfort himself. "I've endured five years already. A few more days won't matter. Once I find a way to unlock skills, I'll settle the score with this Fox Spirit. Besides, she can provide me with Experience Points, so it's not entirely a loss."
He had no way of dealing with the Fox Spirit right now. It would be a stroke of luck if she did not eat him. What more could he hope for? He could only resign himself to his misfortune and endure it!
At worst, he would support her a little longer. So long as he did not starve to death, he would endure for now. Since he now had a Golden Finger, the day would come when he rose above it all.
He stroked his endlessly rumbling stomach and instinctively looked toward the rabbit he had caught yesterday. Sure enough, the rabbit had been "purchased for zero yuan" again. Looking at the empty rack, Zhang Chen dared to be furious but not speak of it. He swiftly grabbed a rope and shovel and headed into the mountains. The people next door were full, while he was still starving!
Ten li into the forest, Zhang Chen carefully checked his traps. Today, he had caught a wild chicken and a muntjac. The harvest was quite good.
Zhang Chen roasted the chicken and ate it on the spot. After looking at the muntjac and pondering for a while, he decided to take it home.
Before he developed any skills, he had better not offend the Fox Spirit. He had to make himself useful to her! Otherwise, when the time came, what the Fox Spirit ate would not be prey, but him!
By the time Zhang Chen finished eating, the sky had already darkened. When he reached the village entrance, his steps halted. From afar, he saw a man in coarse linen walking toward him beneath the setting sun, holding a snow-white fox in his arms. The man's skin was smooth as jade, and his looks rivaled Pan An and Song Yu.
The man was tall and slender, his bearing polished like jade. He was exceptionally handsome, like the male lead stepping straight out of a television drama.
But when Zhang Chen saw the man's smooth, snowy skin, his eyes turned red. It had all been cultivated by his family's rice, flour, cured meat, chickens, and ducks. How could he not be angry?
That was Zhang Chen's sworn enemy: Zhang Chen, the poor scholar next door.
Both came from poor families, and Zhang Chen was nothing more than a bookworm who could not distinguish the five grains. Yet he was living a more comfortable life than Zhang Chen himself. Wasn't that infuriating?
He was simply the template for a novel's protagonist!
But when Zhang Chen thought of how that fox could take human form, it was highly likely to be one of the great demons from the legends of his previous life. Thinking of all those stories of fox demons draining people's essence, cutting open bellies, and digging out hearts, Zhang Chen shuddered. He no longer envied Zhang Chen's good fortune.
Could this Fox Spirit be treating Zhang Chen as food, fattening him up until he's plump and tender, then crunching him down one bite at a time without a sound? Zhang Chen secretly wondered.
"Well, if it isn't Zhang Chen? Why are you so sallow and skinny? You haven't starved to death yet?" Zhang Chen stopped in front of him, looking at him with teasing eyes.
Zhang Chen gave a cold snort. Wary of the fox demon's power, he did not know whether he should retort, but Zhang Chen had already walked past him. With disdain in his eyes, he cursed, "Mud-legged peasant!"
The Little Fox in his arms also looked at Zhang Chen with eyes full of mockery. Her lively gaze held the wisdom of a human being.
Watching the pair's retreating backs, Zhang Chen spat viciously onto the ground. "Just you wait! One day, I'll make myself a fox-fur coat..."
As Zhang Chen muttered to himself, his vision suddenly blurred. A clump of red light had dropped from the Fox Spirit's body, standing out especially clearly beneath the dimming sunset.
Neither Zhang Chen nor the Fox Spirit seemed to notice the red light at all.
"What's that?" Zhang Chen froze, then was overcome with delight. "Another equipment drop?"
Let me recommend the author's old work, "In a Strange World, I Can Confer Gods." The link is below.
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