"Dear, you really don't believe me? Would I ever lie to you?" Linda looked at Harrison's skeptical face and expression.
After more than ten years of marriage, she understood his every glance and mood perfectly.
"Come on, Linda, don't joke around. Our son is still so young — how could he possibly perform those tricks you're talking about? What kind of street magician could teach him that?"
Harrison didn't believe a word of it — he'd sooner believe in ghosts than think his son could do magic tricks!
Linda sighed.
"Dear, I'm not joking! If you don't believe me, just let our son show you. I really saw it myself earlier — it was incredible!"
Harrison looked fixedly at his wife. She didn't look like she was teasing.
They often joked to lighten the mood, but she had never used their son to make up a story.
If this wasn't a joke… could his son really do magic? That just didn't sound possible.
"Tommy, your mother says you can do magic? What kind of trick is it? Can you show Dad?"
Milo looked at his parents' curious yet serious faces. He wasn't actually capable of performing real magic, nor was he any kind of stage magician.
Since he had decided to tell them about his secret space, he thought he might as well describe it the way his mother had said — a magical bag given by a deity.
"Dad, it's not really magic, and I can't teach you. I'm not that kind of magician," Milo explained.
Harrison looked from his son to his wife, then sighed. "So the two of you are teaming up to tease me now? One says it's a magic trick, the other says it isn't. Enough already — time for bed!"
Linda rolled her eyes.
"Son, tell your father about the magic bag — how the immortal gave it to you, and how you can make things appear and disappear."
Harrison blinked. "An immortal's bag? Now this is getting ridiculous. Talking about ghosts and fairies now?"
So Milo patiently repeated what he'd just told his mother.
"It can only store things?" Harrison asked. "How much can it hold? It won't suddenly disappear one day, right? Will that immortal come back and take it away?"
Milo thought for a moment. His pagoda-shaped space was about several dozen square meters — enough to hold a lot, especially if it were filled with grain.
Roughly the amount that could fit in a few freight wagons. He could definitely use it for storage — maybe even valuables, though he wouldn't risk bulky items.
"Dad, the immortal said this bag can hold about ten wagonloads of goods for now," Milo said carefully. "But he also told me that if I complete more tasks and grow older, the bag will expand, and I'll unlock more features."
Harrison and Linda exchanged glances. They weren't naïve enough to believe in free miracles. If such blessings truly existed, there had to be a reason — or a price.
Still… if their son had really been blessed by a celestial being, maybe that explained why his long illness had suddenly vanished.
"What kind of tasks did the immortal mention? You're too young for anything dangerous. Let us handle it instead," Harrison said quickly.
"Yes," Linda added, frowning in concern. "And this bag — it won't be taken away, will it? Are the things you put inside still there afterward?"
"Dad, Mom," Milo said earnestly, "my tasks are simple. Every time you praise me, I earn points. Once I reach a thousand likes, I'll unlock another function — a larger space that can hold even more things."
He paused, watching their expressions, then continued,
"The current space is about as big as our living room. I can store grain and goods. I'm not sure if living things can survive in there — I only tested with ants once. They seemed to fall asleep inside but came out alive."
Harrison and Linda exchanged another look. Their family, like their ancestors, had hidden valuables before — some buried underground, some hidden in the mountains.
But if they had a moving storage space that no one could ever find, wouldn't that be safer?
Harrison then asked Milo to demonstrate. The boy placed some items inside and brought them back out effortlessly. When the parents themselves were stored inside the pagoda space, they seemed to instantly fall asleep, only to reappear standing exactly as before.
Milo also tried putting them in the smaller "spring space," which had grown thanks to the praises he'd received recently. What was once a single cubic meter had now expanded to over ten!
The old jade bowl that once held the spring water was gone — replaced by a large basin filled with shimmering liquid.
He wondered if the space would evolve even further after upgrading — perhaps even turning into a complete world with mountains, rivers, and lakes, as the system once described.
But for now, it was all just theory. He had shared this secret with his parents only because he truly trusted them — they loved him dearly, their only son.
If not for that trust, he would have stayed quiet and waited until adulthood.
Yet time was running out — only a month remained before the locust swarm arrived.
When Milo explained that he needed "likes" from his family to strengthen his abilities, his parents quickly understood. Praising their son was a small price to pay for such blessings.
They had lived in fear these past years — afraid of losing their savings or starving to death.
Their wealth had been passed down for generations, along with Linda's dowry.
Linda gathered all her jewelry — leaving only a few pieces for daily wear — and placed them in a box. The rest, too valuable to risk wearing, she handed to Milo.
"Put these inside your space," she said quietly.
When the jewelry vanished safely, Milo let out a breath of relief. His parents finally believed him — the first major step was complete.
He then told them what the immortal had warned him — that a swarm of locusts would arrive in a month, devastating crops and villages, and that they must stockpile food to survive.
"Locusts?" Linda gasped, frowning in alarm.
"Son, this must stay between us three," Harrison said firmly. "No one else can know. I'll take care of it."
If disaster was coming, he would quietly buy as much grain as possible, turning over only the required share to the commune. The rest would be hidden away.
They could always plant the next season's crops later — survival came first.
Milo nodded. "I won't tell anyone. After the locusts pass, growing food will be difficult. We must store enough to last for years."
He didn't dare mention that the hardship would last nearly a decade — that their land wouldn't be redistributed until the 1980s.
Why had he ended up in this kind of historical novel world anyway, instead of something modern?
That mysterious old monk…
(End of Chapter)