The Twelve Zodiac Animals Protect the Living? I’m the Patriarch of Spirit Mediums

The day I was born was an afternoon in the height of summer. It was unbearably hot, and the neighbors all gathered beneath the thousand-year-old pagoda tree in front of my house to escape the heat.

With a deafening crash, a bolt of heavenly lightning split the great tree in two. In the hollow lay a dead golden fox. Its fur was brilliantly golden, and, strangely, a tuft of white fur shaped like a heart grew on the back of its head. The village elders said that foxes turn white after a hundred years, black after a thousand, and golden only after ten thousand.

This novel and its characters are entirely fictional. Any resemblance is purely coincidental. Do not imitate.