Through the first few monotonous months, Yang Qing learned the name of his caretaker, the mother of the body, his new body: Melissa. They spoke a different tongue in this new world, something that he could not quite understand yet, but his newform brain exceeded all of his expectations and he was learning the language much faster than he ever expected, despite the little attention he ever paid to it outside the times Melissa directly spoke to him or read him a scripture before she went to sleep. Her scriptures contained pictures and were not the scrolls that he was so familiar with but were pieces of paper binding with colored drawings and annotations at the bottom into one story. He could understand basic glimpses from the pictures, but all these images were unfamiliar. Humans, after all, were the rulers of his kingdom and any animal was either domesticated or trapped within such areas to raise.
Here, it was different. Humans fought valiant beasts with little more than a sword and shield in hand, often to their own peril, but when they did succeed, they were rewarded with beauties, money and fame. These stories would give him some food for thought, as he tried to understand the world with his limited vocabulary and knowledge, but the food was hardly ever digested before his household's own valiant beast demanded her own peace offerings. The monster was what a female child, who was possibly his older sister, a few years bigger than him, and more than a few heads bigger as well. She had beautiful sapphire colored eyes and platinum colored hair. Melissa, this female monster, and him slept on the same bed; this female monster slept against the wall, he slept in the middle and Melissa slept on the outside.
By the time he was a year old, he had understood the spoken word and could read the written one, but speaking was still difficult. Although he understood them in his head, when he spoke them, it was little more than gibberish. He knew of his maids: Martha, an old woman with dark blue hair, though some of her hair had starting whiting, and Silva, a girl who had started working around the house recently, though she still occasionally screwed up, she did every chore with vigor. It was around the Annual Imaru Festival, that lasted the entire first month of the year, that he met someone new in his life: Amber. Amber was a bit bigger than him and his fiancee. She could not yet walk yet, though she often tried. Unlike his older sister, which he now knew as Amelia, but, after numerous of failed attempts, could only call as Amy. Amber stayed for around a month and could almost walk properly when she had to go. After she had left, the naming ceremony had started, granting him a new name: Louis. He hardly ever reacted to his name in the first few months and only half of the time for the first year, for although he accepted this foreign tongue and the people, he could never fully give up his past, his history, his life. But as he grew more and more familiar with the language and his name, he could not help accepting his new name. His past could never disappear and he would find his family, but that would have to wait. He was now Louis but the man once known as Yang Qing would never truly disappear, immortalized in the corner of his mind and soul, carefully reviewed and protected until he found an opportunity to truly find his family. He was only the baby named Louis now, although he reached the sixth layer already, his technique made him no stronger in the first two realms, only strengthening his soul and qi, but the amount of qi an one year old could contain in his body was truly pitiful, only making him understand each day what a disparity he was now compared to Yang Qing, the alchemy emperor. And, this disparity, was what made him accept his new name, this new life. Honestly, it was not bad. He had a mother, a sister, and a fiancee. Just like his old life. They loved him and he loved them. Just like his old life. This time, however, he could protect them, with his newfound strength and knowledge, instead of relying on his family to compensate for his burdens and weaknesses.
Times passed and Louis' world slowly grew bigger. When he was two, he met his two older sisters: Shea and Carla, helping them by modifying their clay orb that contained a simple array into a rank six array that he had spent ten years mastering when he could not break through in either cultivation or alchemy. He met his final older sister when he was three: Nia, who had chestnut hair and blue eyes. She was just a year older than he was and always hid behind Shea and Carla, only visiting because Shea had dragged her over. It was that year he started visiting the family's library, then the public library with his maid Silva after he finished those books.
When he was four, Louis fused all nine hair thin strands of wind elemental qi into a single strand, though it became much bigger and more impure after doing so. He had to revolve his qi a few more times before that strand became razor thin. Then, he had to open his middle dantian, which took him twelve whole years during his teenage years to complete. He went from genius to trash during that saga, since the middle dantian held his mental demons. With each attempt after the second try, the mental demon became stronger, preying on his fear and his depression from his constant failures, until he finally cleared his mind the day his first daughter, Qing Guiying, was born and he tackled the now weakened mental demon with renewed vigor.
This time, he understood the principle behind the mental demon and a hasty start would not be the cause of his downfall. Louis easily revolved his qi, spinning it faster and faster in his body before crashing it into his middle dantian. His subconscious, where his fears and worries laid, came out in full force, but he crushed them with overwhelming qi and kept his mind clear and focused. He smashed it once, twice, and thrice, before a gap opened in the middle dantian, allowing him to see his flame of a child. The small ember that had grown as he grew out of his toddler years and into his childhood, and the sea of life essence had depleted just a bit.
Upon opening it, however, Louis reached the second realm and much of his remaining qi poured into that sea of life essence, overfilling the sea, almost threatening to extinguished his flame of life, but his soul kept the sea at bay and the fire grew bigger and stronger with the newfound fuel, rising up in the middle dantian until the sea would no longer harm it. His qi was now exhausted and no more of his qi would become his essence of life, but he had now passed one of the three biggest hurdles of the Nine Revolution Spirit Body technique.
Much like when he was born, his upper dantian summoned him once more, but, this time, his upper dantian was neat and tidy, having the six orbs fly around him. The giant orb that contained an ocean of water qi, poured into him this time and he was once more baptised with the water element before he was kicked out of his upper dantian. Within his meridians, a hair of wind elemental qi was present with a five strands of water elemental qi surrounding it. Although the widths were the same, the strand of wind elemental qi was much purer and contained much more qi than he had.
When he was five, he gave the Nine Sun Yang Emperor technique to Amber when she could not properly control her flames and had required arrays to control her flames. She immediately broke through to the second realm that night and her interest in him blossomed more than he could ever imagine. She slept a lot of that month, but during her waking hours, she stayed close to him, reading quietly.
When he was six, all his sisters had started school and skipped various grades after the constant books he had read to them, since his mother had to work and the maids were making meals. He had also helped them with their cultivation and while his help was nowhere near the help he received from the Yang Ancestral Pavilion, all of them had reached the second realm over the past few years. He had initially helped his two older brothers, but their pride after entering school prevented them from listening to him, so he had to resort to various tricks to cajole them into practicing properly.
And now, this year, it was his turn to attend school and it would be the first time his sisters would be living away from home. Amelia refused to stay at school unless Louis was dragged with her, but his age prohibited him, so she commuted. Shea and Carla would have liked to stay, but her mother, despite her kindness, was strict in this regard, allowing them to visit only on the weekends and the three one month vacations during the year. Nia simply followed whatever Shea and Carla did, so she left for school without a whimper. Jack and Calvin, his older brothers, ran to school the first opportunities they got, not even sparing a glance to him nor their own fiancees.
Although he needed not to study to skip grades, for he had already read all the alchemy and array books within the library in the past four years, he wanted to consolidate his notes and prepare himself. He wanted to reach the fourth grade, when he graduate from a child and enter the more advanced classes and, most of all, gain the chance to learn a profession and the necessary resources to do so. However, Amelia went out of her way to request him to teach her the necessary information so he would not surpass her, while Shea wanted tutoring so she could graduate (four years early), Carla did not want to lose to Amelia and Amber, although did not ask, her sweet, begging eyes told a different story. Louis found solace with staying with Nia, who studied either by herself or read his notes, and Silva, who would always stay by his side and treat him as an equal. He was not fit for the cramming life, especially when the tests were designed for ten year olds in mind.