Chapter Three: Rescuing a Little White Fox

The sound of the corpse-eating hounds chasing after the white fox gradually faded into the distance.

Beneath the tree, all that remained were puddles of foul-smelling blood and the ravaged skeletons of the hounds, gnawed nearly beyond recognition.

Ning Cheng let out a sigh of relief and crouched on a branch, inspecting the black staff in his hand.

True to its description, the staff possessed the quality of “immortality.” Even after the fierce battle, after Ning Cheng had wielded it with all his might and crippled three of the massive corpse-eating hounds, the staff was neither stained with blood nor bent or cracked in the slightest. It proved to be a weapon both reliable and indestructible.

Suddenly remembering something, Ning Cheng quickly summoned the staff’s faint gray, translucent attribute panel.

At the bottom of the display, it read:

[Available Soul Power: 257.3]

This soul power had been painstakingly accumulated by Ning Cheng as he harvested wheat in the fields. In other words, although he had crippled the three hounds, because they were ultimately killed and devoured by their own kind, he had gained nothing from the encounter.

“What a loss. Now I’ll have to use my own soul power just to recover,” Ning Cheng muttered to himself.

He truly had no alternative—already frail to begin with, he had nearly exhausted his strength and didn’t even have the energy to climb down from the tree.

After expending five points of soul power, the familiar warmth flowed from the staff into his body. Strength and comfort returned, a wave of energy washing over him like soaking in a hot spring. The blissful feeling vanished in an instant, fleeting as a man’s moment of pleasure.

Easily climbing down, Ning Cheng was about to head back to the village when he heard a faint whimpering from the wheat field not far away—like a small wild animal hiding in the earth.

A thought struck him: that white fox, which could easily have escaped, had instead drawn the hounds away for no apparent reason.

“Could it be the white fox’s cub?”

He walked to the edge of the field, parting the wheat, and found a tiny creature nestled within.

It was a small white fox, its hind leg injured and unable to walk properly.

The little fox’s fur was soft and smooth, pure as if spun from sun-bleached cotton.

“What a beautiful little thing. Let me take you home,” Ning Cheng said, falling in love with it at first sight. Once he held the cub in his arms, he couldn’t bear to let go.

Though he’d grown up in a well-off family, he’d never been allowed a pet due to his family’s objections. Now, by chance, he’d found such an adorable little white fox—surely it was fate.

Cradling the fox, Ning Cheng hurried back to Nanpo Village—the place where he and his sister Ning Xin lived.

From a distance, he saw a crowd of villagers gathered at the entrance, armed with sickles and hoes, shouting as if preparing to leave.

Among them were familiar faces: the farmers who had earlier fled from the fields. Seeing Ning Cheng running back with the little fox, they stared in disbelief and rushed over.

“Chengzi, why are you only just coming back from the fields? What about the corpse-eating hounds? Were you bitten?”

They kept a cautious distance of several meters as they spoke, stepping back whenever Ning Cheng approached.

“Uncles, I wasn’t hurt. I climbed up the big tree at the edge of the field and avoided the hounds. There’s no need to worry,” Ning Cheng explained, noting their wariness and suspecting the hounds harbored more danger than he realized. Clearly, monsters here were no simple matter.

“You’re sure you weren’t bitten?” the farmers pressed.

“No, really. Look for yourselves—there’s not a tear on my clothes.”

Only after a thorough inspection, when they found no wounds, did the villagers finally relax.

As for the fox, its injury was not a bite, so no one objected to Ning Cheng bringing it into the village.

With the farmers gone, Ning Cheng returned to his small, draughty mud house.

His sister Ning Xin was crouched by the stove, coughing as she fed damp leaves into the flames. The fire sputtered, the pot atop the stove still and cold.

Ning Cheng quickly set the fox down and said, “Let me handle this. You’re still unwell—get some rest.”

His sister was lovely and spirited, but sadly, she was hopeless in the kitchen. In the three days since Ning Cheng’s arrival in this world, she had tried several times to cook, each attempt resulting in nothing but clouds of black smoke.

With their food supplies dwindling and the last old hen simmering in the pot—their only meal for the next two days—he couldn’t risk letting her ruin it.

By the time Ning Cheng finished preparing the thin chicken porridge, Ning Xin had already lovingly wrapped the fox’s leg. Her bandaging skills, he had to admit, were first-rate—though he had no idea where she’d learned them.

Watching his sister laugh and play in the yard with the white fox, Ning Cheng’s mind drifted to thoughts of their future.

This world was ancient, with three realms: heaven, earth, and mankind. Merely scraping by as a peasant posed too many risks for survival. Natural and human disasters aside, even a handful of monsters like today’s hounds could wipe out the whole village and feast on every last farmer.

They had been lucky this time: few hounds had come, and some were wounded and devoured by their own kind. The rest were lured away by the white fox. Next time, they might not be so fortunate.

Clearly, the path of quietly farming was a dead end. They would have to find another way to survive.

The white fox that had drawn off the hounds gave Ning Cheng inspiration. In this dangerous, complex world, only the fittest survived.

He decided to seize the opportunity, while most of the villagers were out hunting hounds, to gather supplies and flee with his sister under cover of night in search of a new life.

Even becoming a wandering priest would be a thousand times better than waiting to die as a tenant farmer, never knowing which day would be his last.