Toddling

Douluo Calendar Year 2592, mid-spring.

Breathing in the rich herbal fragrance filling his nose and feeling the warm sunlight spilling in through the window, Ling Yi woke lazily.

"A year already..."

Ling Yi lay in his little bed. In the corner of his eye, blue light and shadow filled the space around him as he murmured softly.

Last month, accompanied by his parents, grandparents, maternal grandparents, uncle, aunt, and other relatives, Ling Yi had celebrated his first birthday on Douluo Continent—his one-year-old birthday.

Over the past month or so, Ling Yi had also begun advancing from rolling over and crawling to standing and walking.

Perhaps because he had transmigrated and been reborn, an adult soul growing up again from infancy, Ling Yi's Infant Sleep Regression Period had arrived especially late. At least so far, it had not appeared.

Normally speaking, when babies reached three to four months old, most would begin alternating between deep sleep and light sleep, suddenly going from sleeping normally to sleep disturbance. Symptoms like early waking and frequent night waking would appear, exhausting the parents who cared for them.

In addition, newborns mostly slept for around eighteen to twenty hours. Babies two to three months old slept around sixteen to eighteen hours. Babies five to nine months old slept around fifteen to sixteen hours. By one year old, babies slept around fourteen to fifteen hours.

But Ling Yi was different. From birth until now, one year and one month later, his daily sleep time had basically stayed above twenty hours.

If not for the fact that he was in especially good spirits when he woke, and that eating, drinking, relieving himself, and everything else were all normal, the Ling and Zhang families might have pooled money together and taken Ling Yi to a large city over a hundred li away to find a soul master to take a look.

In one year, although Ling Yi had spent most of his time asleep, he had still observed carefully when awake. And when he was four or five months old, as his vocal cords gradually developed, he used sporadic words to guide the direction and content of the conversations of the people around him. In this way, he had still gained a rough understanding of his family's situation.

Of course, just like learning to walk, although he could have tried standing and walking early on, Ling Yi still chose to prioritize safety. He only mainly moved his body by crawling and rolling over, so as not to injure his tender bones. His speech, too, had only progressed step by step, keeping roughly in sync with the growth of ordinary children.

Back to the information Ling Yi had grasped.

First was the time. Right now, it was Douluo Calendar Year 2592. In other words, the time Ling Yi had been born last year was the early spring of Douluo Calendar Year 2591.

As for what stage of the Douluo Continent he had read in his previous life this point in time fell into, Ling Yi currently did not know.

In his previous life, he had read the original novel in high school and watched the anime when he was nearly thirty. To be honest, Ling Yi really had not paid much attention to the years of the Douluo Calendar. He had been watching the dazzling martial souls and the exquisite character models. Who would pay attention to details like that?

And the village where the Ling Family lived was in a true remote village, with far too little contact with the outside world. Trying to judge by famous people and events currently on Douluo Continent was nothing but wishful thinking.

Next, the geographical location.

The Shan Hai Village where the Ling Family lived was located roughly one hundred and sixty li east of Waterwood Principality's capital city, "Mu Zhi City."

As for Waterwood Principality, it was a vassal state of one of Douluo Continent's two great empires, the Heaven Dou Empire. It was located in the eastern part of Heaven Dou territory, and its land area was not even half that of the Heaven Dou Empire's smallest province.

Within Waterwood Principality, there were only three proper cities, including the capital city, "Mu Zhi City." The rest were basically small towns surrounded by villages one after another.

Returning to Shan Hai Village, the village was just as its name suggested: it had some connection to both mountains and sea.

To the west of the village was the dirt road leading to the capital, Mu Zhi City. On both sides of the road stretched flat farmland. South of the village was a river that flowed down from farther south, passing through quite a few villages along the way. It wound around the outskirts of Shan Hai Village in a looping curve, then rushed another seventy or eighty li eastward into the boundless sea.

North of the village, behind a stretch of woods over twenty li in both length and depth, was a mountain range that stretched on for who knew how far.

Finally, there were Ling Yi's family relationships in this life.

On his paternal side, his grandfather, Ling Changqing, was thirty-nine this year. His grandmother, Yan Hong, was the same age as his grandfather. His father, Ling Xiaoshan, was eighteen this year, and his mother, Zhang Xiaoyu, was one year younger than his father.

In grandfather Ling Changqing's generation, there were four people in total. Eldest Uncle Ling Changshan had gone deep into the woods north of the village over ten years ago and never returned; he had basically been determined to have died. Third Uncle Ling Changshui was in the same village, and Fourth Aunt Ling Changxiu had married out to the neighboring village. As for the great-grandfather and great-grandmother of the generation above, two years before Ling Yi was born, they had developed chronic illness from long years of labor and had already passed away.

Maternal side: maternal grandfather Zhang Qiang, maternal grandmother Lu Yun, uncle Zhang Dahe, aunt by marriage (father's elder sister) Ling He, and cousin Zhang Lei. Second granduncle Zhang Meng had moved to his wife's village to settle down after marriage.

The above was the network of relationships Ling Yi could currently come into contact with in this life.

As for things like the protagonist group, Spirit Hall, the two great empires, the Upper Three Sects, the Lower Four Sects, and so on, they were all far, far too distant from Ling Yi.

The relationship network of the Ling and Zhang families, which had some kinship ties throughout the surrounding ten miles and eight villages, told Ling Yi that in the place where he was, aside from a Spirit Hall deacon coming down every year to go through the motions and awaken martial souls for children of appropriate age, they could not come into contact with a single soul master with soul power!

They could not even come into contact with soul masters, let alone further understand that world belonging to soul masters.

Between the Ling and Zhang families, young and old, there were several dozen people in total, but only a mere three or four had been to "Mu Zhi City" one hundred and sixty li away. They counted as existences who had seen the wider world.

As for others, such as his father Ling Xiaoshan and his mother Zhang Xiaoyu, the farthest they had ever been was North River Mouth Town over forty li away to go to market.

If Ling Yi wanted to further understand his location and the timeline, the most convenient way would be through the Spirit Hall branch in North River Mouth Town.

But if the timeline happened to be around the time when Spirit Hall collapsed, then going up to it right now would be "Lighting a Lantern in a Latrine."

After thinking it over, Ling Yi looked again at his small body, which had only just turned one year and a little over one month old. He pressed down that tiny bit of urgent heart from just now and began pondering today's food.

As the saying went, food is paramount.

The world is big, but eating is most important.

No matter how long the road ahead might be, every bowl of rice right now was of utmost importance.

If he did not eat his fill, how would he have the energy to move his body and engage in divergent thinking?

It had been just about four hundred days since he transmigrated. Right now, the thing Ling Yi most needed to resolve was not whether he could awaken a powerful martial soul in the Martial Soul Awakening Ceremony five years from now, nor whether he could awaken innate soul power.

Instead, the living standards of Ling Yi's small family of three urgently needed improvement!

After his first birthday had passed, Ling Yi, who had long since stopped feeding on breast milk for nearly three months, was deeply worried about his family's two and a half meals a day.

He did not have the "Mysterious Heaven Skill" the original protagonist had carried from the womb, yet he ate almost the same every-meal thin porridge as the protagonist. The nutrition such a diet could provide really did not seem like the kind of template that could awaken innate soul power.