NOVEL WEB Chapter 5: Chapter 5: Taking the First Steps
-----------
This high quality machine translation is powered by: https:// geriatrictranslations.com/
Special Permission was given to upload the novel on WebNovel.
Geriatric Translations can be supported on patreon (https://www. patreon.com/geriatricvibes) where additional chapters can be enjoyed.
You can also join the Geriatric Translations Community on Discord to connect with other readers: https:// discord.gg/NSWvfN7vua
-----------
Year 2592 of the Douluo Calendar, mid-spring.
Breathing in the fresh scent of grass and trees, feeling the warm sunlight streaming through the window, Ling Yi lazily woke up.
"It's been a year~"
Ling Yi lay on his small bed, the blue light around him gently shining, and he murmured softly.
Last month, Ling Yi celebrated his first birthday on the Douluo Continent, surrounded by his parents, grandparents, great-grandparents, uncles, aunts, and other relatives.
In the past month, Ling Yi had progressed from just rolling over and crawling to standing and walking.
Perhaps due to his reincarnation, with an adult soul growing from infancy again, Ling Yi's regression in infant sleep came much later than usual, and it hadn't even appeared yet.
Normally, infants around three to four months old would experience alternating deep and light sleep, suddenly transitioning from a regular sleep pattern to a disrupted one, with early sleep and frequent nighttime awakenings, exhausting their parents.
Moreover, newborns typically sleep for about eighteen to twenty hours a day, infants two to three months old sleep for about sixteen to eighteen hours, infants five to nine months old sleep for about fifteen to sixteen hours, and one-year-old infants sleep for about fourteen to fifteen hours.
But Ling Yi was different. From birth to now, at one year and one month old, he slept for more than twenty hours each day.
If it weren't for his exceptionally good spirits upon waking and his normal eating, drinking, and other activities, the Ling and Zhang families would have pooled their money to take Ling Yi to a big city over a hundred miles away to see a Soul Master for a check-up.
Over the past year, although Ling Yi spent most of his time sleeping, his keen observations during his waking moments, and the gradual development of his vocal cords around four to five months old, allowed him to guide the conversations and content around him with a few scattered words, giving him a general understanding of his situation.
Of course, just like learning to walk, although he could try standing and walking early, Ling Yi still chose to be cautious, mainly moving by crawling and rolling over to avoid injuring his young bones. His speech also progressed gradually, keeping pace with the typical development of ordinary children.
Returning to the information Ling Yi had gathered.
Firstly, the time. It was Year 2592 of the Douluo Calendar, which meant that Ling Yi was born in early spring of Year 2591.
At this point in time, Ling Yi was unsure where it fell in the timeline of the *Douluo Continent* he had read in his previous life.
In his previous life, he read the original novel in high school and watched the anime when he was approaching thirty. To be honest, Ling Yi hadn't paid much attention to the timeline of the Douluo Calendar, focusing more on the splendid soul power and the detailed character models. Who would bother with these details?
Moreover, the village where the Ling family lived was in a remote and isolated area, with very little contact with the outside world. Trying to judge the current time by famous people or events on the Douluo Continent was just a pipe dream.
Next, the geographical location.
The Ling family's village, Mountain Sea Village, was located about 160 miles east of the capital, Wood Plant City, in the Waterwood Principality.
The Waterwood Principality was a vassal state of one of the two major empires on the Douluo Continent, the Tian Dou Empire, located on the eastern edge of the Tian Dou territory. Its land area was less than half of the smallest province of the Tian Dou Empire.
Within the Waterwood Principality, there were only three major cities, including the capital, Wood Plant City. The rest were mostly small towns surrounded by villages.
As for Mountain Sea Village, it lived up to its name, being close to both mountains and the sea.
To the west of the village was a dirt road leading to the capital, Wood Plant City, with flat farmland on both sides. To the south was a river, flowing from the south, passing through many villages, and winding around Mountain Sea Village in a shape similar to the character '辶' before flowing east for about eighty miles to the vast sea.
To the north of the village, behind a forest that stretched over twenty miles in both directions, was a mountain range that extended for an unknown distance.
Finally, Ling Yi's family relationships in this life.
On the paternal side, his grandfather, Ling Changqing, was thirty-nine years old, and his grandmother, Yan Hong, was the same age. His father, Ling Xiaoshan, was eighteen, and his mother, Zhang Xiaoyu, was one year younger.
In Grandfather Ling Changqing's generation, there were four people. Uncle Ling Changshan went into the forest to the north of the village over a decade ago and never returned, presumed dead. Uncle Ling Changshui (in the same village), and Aunt Ling Changxiu (married into the neighboring village). As for the great-grandparents, they had passed away due to illness two years before Ling Yi was born.
On the maternal side, his maternal grandfather, Zhang Qiang, and maternal grandmother, Lu Yun, his uncle, Zhang Dahé, and his aunt (eldest sister), Ling He, and his cousin, Zhang Lei. His second uncle, Zhang Meng, had moved to his wife's village after marriage.
This was the network of relationships Ling Yi could currently interact with in this life.
As for the main characters, the Soul Temple, the two major empires, the Upper Three Sects, the Lower Four Sects, and so on, they were all too far away from Ling Yi.
The relationship network of the Ling and Zhang families, who had connections in the surrounding villages, told Ling Yi that in their area, apart from the annual visit by Soul Temple officials for the soul awakening ceremony of eligible children, they had no contact with any Soul Masters with soul power!
Without even being able to meet a Soul Master, it was even more impossible to understand the world of Soul Masters.
Out of the dozens of people in the Ling and Zhang families, only three or four had been to the capital, Wood Plant City, 160 miles away, and they were considered to have seen the world.
Others, like his father, Ling Xiaoshan, and his mother, Zhang Xiaoyu, had only been to Beikouhe Town, about forty miles away, for the market at most.
If Ling Yi wanted to understand his current location and timeline better, the most convenient way would be through the soul temple branch in Beikouhe Town.
However, if the timeline was around the collapse of the Soul Temple, approaching it now would be like 'lighting a lantern in a toilet.'
After some thought, Ling Yi looked at his small body, just over one year and one month old, suppressed his eagerness, and began to think about today's meal.
As the saying goes, food is the first priority of the people.
In this vast world, eating is the most important thing.
No matter how distant the future road may be, every bowl of rice now is crucial.
Without a full stomach, how could he have the energy to move his body and think?
It had been nearly 400 days since his reincarnation. The most pressing issue for Ling Yi now was not whether he could awaken a powerful soul power in the soul awakening ceremony in five years, nor whether he could awaken innate spiritual power.
What needed urgent improvement was the quality of life for his small family of three.
Having passed his first birthday, Ling Yi, who had been weaned from breastfeeding for nearly three months, was deeply concerned about the two-and-a-half meals a day his family provided.
Without the Xuantian Technique that the protagonist was born with, and eating the same thin porridge as the protagonist, the nutrition intake from such a diet did not seem conducive to awakening innate spiritual power.
(End of Chapter)