The humiliating days of being a helpless, squirmy potato were officially behind me.
At just over a year old, my vocal cords and hand eye coordination had finally developed enough for me to communicate like a somewhat functional human being, or at least a highly articulate toddler.
I could walk without looking like a drunk penguin, and my hands could actually grasp objects without dropping them three seconds later.
Grandma enthusiastically took on the role of my private tutor.
Every morning, after a breakfast of rice porridge that I was finally allowed to feed myself, she would sit me down at the low wooden table in the living room.
She started me off with basic picture books and simple, oversized Chinese characters printed on thick cardboard.
What she didn’t know was that bringing a children’s book to a guy with an eidetic memory and a twenty six year old consciousness was like bringing a plastic water gun to a raging wildfire.
I breezed through the basic characters in mere days.
The Chinese language is famously complex, relying on intricate strokes and contextual meanings, but for me, it was just a matter of unlocking the linguistic files already stored in my reincarnated brain.
Within weeks, I was stringing complete, coherent sentences together.
By the end of the nineteenth month since my birth, I was gently correcting her pronunciation of more complex, archaic words found in the older folklore books.
“He is a peerless genius!” Grandma gasped one Tuesday afternoon.
She was clutching her chest dramatically as she watched me seamlessly read a thick paragraph from a historical mythology book without stuttering once.
“A heaven defying talent!
The heavens have opened their eyes!
Our ancestors have truly blessed the Zhang family with a dragon among men!”
I felt a sharp, heavy twinge of guilt settling in my stomach.
I was a grown man trapped in a toddler’s body, using a literal mental cheat code to impress a sweet old lady who thought she was witnessing a miracle.
But I played along, putting on my most innocent, chubby cheeked smile and clapping my tiny hands together for the greater good.
I needed them to believe I was a prodigy.
If I was a genius, they would keep buying me books.
If I was a genius, they would give me access to information.
Knowledge was power, especially in a world where teenagers could casually hurl fireballs and summon tornadoes.
Word spread quickly.
Before I knew it, our small, comfortable house became a tourist attraction for the neighborhood aunties.
Still, the performance was worth it.
Every time I entertained the neighbors, my parents beamed with a pride so radiant it warmed the entire room.
I had never been the source of such pride in my past life.
Back then, I was just “average.” Here, I was their shining star.
As the months passed, my reading comprehension reached a high school level, but my physical body was still frustratingly small.
Worse, my magical progress was at a complete standstill.
At this point, I had learned a lot about magicians from the newspapers.
A mage’s journey begins with Awakening, which usually happens around the age of fifteen or sixteen during high school.
My System explicitly stated my Magical Cultivation was [LOCKED (Awaiting Awakening)].
I couldn’t exactly start blowing up the backyard or practicing spells just yet.
I never found out how magic is actually cast or if any incantations are required, but I figured I could at least start building my mental focus.
If cultivation was all about exploring the spiritual world and expanding mana capacity, there was no harm in getting a head start on the meditation aspect.
So, whenever my parents left me alone in the living room or my bedroom, I would push my wooden blocks and stuffed animals aside.
I would sit perfectly cross legged on the woven floor mat, rest my tiny hands on my knees, close my eyes, and breathe deeply.
It was intensely grueling work for a toddler’s brain.
Over a few days, I managed to improve my concentration from a few seconds to a few minutes, though the mental strain meant I rarely slept soundly.
I would sit there for an hour, furrowing my tiny brow, sweating bullets as I tried to force my undeveloped mind to sense the magical elements drifting in the air around me.
I tried to feel the heat of the Fire element, the sharp chill of Ice, the erratic buzz of Lightning, or the free flowing current of Wind.
I got absolutely nothing.
Just a headache and a stiff back.
One hazy afternoon, I was deep in the zone, absolutely convinced I finally felt a slight, mystical breeze of the Wind Element brushing against my consciousness.
I held my breath, focusing all my mental energy on that single sensation.
Then, I heard a distinct *click*.
Followed by a poorly stifled snort.
I snapped my eyes open.
My parents were peeking around the doorframe.
My dad was holding a heavy, crystal powered magic camera, the lens pointed right at me.
“Look at him, he really thinks he’s an ancient martial arts monk!” my dad whispered loudly, his broad shoulders shaking violently as he struggled to contain his laughter.
My mom was covering her mouth with both hands, her eyes crinkling with sheer amusement.
“He’s so adorable!
He looks so serious with his little eyebrows scrunched up.
Make sure you print that one for the family album.
We can show it to his future wife.”
I sighed internally, my shoulders slumping as I uncrossed my chubby, aching legs.
‘My dignity is nonexistent.
I am a joke to these people’
Realizing that early magical awakening through sheer willpower was a bust, I pivoted my strategy.
Since I couldn’t cultivate magic yet, I decided to aggressively exploit the System’s mundane skills.
I needed to raise my physical and mental base stats before the brutal high school years arrived.
This led to the most intense, unhinged toddler workout routine in human history.
While my mom cooked in the kitchen, chopping vegetables and boiling broth, I stood by the edge of the sofa doing intense, wobbly baby squats.
One.
Two.
Keep your core tight.
Three.
Don’t fall over, you idiot.
Four.
My tiny leg muscles burned with the effort of lifting my disproportionately large head, but I pushed through the pain.
Whenever we went for a walk to the local market, I refused to be carried.
I demanded to walk on my own two feet, marching down the paved streets with the intense determination of a soldier going to war.
The market itself was a constant source of fascination.
This world was a bizarre blend of modern infrastructure and mystical energy.
Instead of electrical power lines crisscrossing the sky, the streetlights were powered by glowing, embedded magic crystals that hummed with a low, resonant frequency.
Back at home, when my dad worked in our small, fenced in backyard garden, I waddled over to “help” him, hoping to level up my [Farming] and [Physical Fitness Theory] skills simultaneously.
I aggressively pulled weeds with my tiny hands, grunting with raw effort, dirt smearing across my cheeks and forehead.
Unfortunately, my botanical knowledge was still severely lacking.
In my furious attempt to grind experience points, I accidentally uprooted three of my dad’s prized cabbages and a row of carefully planted radishes.
I froze, holding the mangled cabbage leaves, waiting for the inevitable scolding.
Instead of getting angry, my dad just threw his head back and laughed.
He scooped me up under the armpits, hoisted me into the air, and patted my dirt covered head.
“Look at this strong boy!
Clearing the whole field in one day!
We have a little beast on our hands!”
Being a toddler equipped with the [The Good Boy] passive title was an absolute cheat code.
The System hadn’t lied: ‘You will always be a favorite and easily receive goodwill from strangers.’ And apparently, that goodwill extended tenfold to my parents.
I literally couldn’t do anything wrong in their eyes.
Still, the daily, exhausting grind paid off.
> [SYSTEM ALERT]
> [Physical Fitness Theory has leveled up: Lv.
14 —> Lv.
15]
It was a tiny improvement, but it was tangible proof that my hard work was actively altering my reality.
Eventually, the seasons cycled through, and my third birthday arrived.
Unlike my first and second birthdays, this time, I was prepared.
I had successfully negotiated for a significantly larger slice of the birthday cake.
As I sat in my high chair, I savored the rich chocolate frosting like fine, aged wine, keeping a vigilant, narrowed gaze on my parents and grandmother to ensure they didn’t attempt another pastry heist like last year.
But the real prize wasn’t the cake.
It was my main birthday gift.
Since I was the established, undeniable “peerless genius” of the household, the boy who could read middle school level texts at the age of two, my parents had pooled their savings to buy me an expensive, incredibly thick encyclopedia of the country.
It was a massive, leather bound tome complete with detailed geographical history, provincial maps, city layouts, and ecological data on monster zones.
This was exactly what I had been waiting for.
I had spent three years in this world completely blind to my exact location on the macro map.
That evening, while my parents were sitting on the sofa watching a magical duel on television, I retreated to the center of the living room rug.
I spread the heavy book open on the floor, the glossy pages smelling of fresh ink and binding glue.
I flipped directly to the national map of China.
My eyes rapidly scanned the intricately drawn borders.
I saw the green shaded Safe Zones, the massive walls that guarded human civilization, and the terrifying, vast red shaded areas labeled as Monster Territories.
I found the Ancient Capital, Xi’an, far to the north.
I found the massive, sprawling, heavily fortified metropolis of Shanghai on the eastern coast.
Then, following the political borders, I traced my tiny, chubby finger down to our specific southern province.
I scanned the winding blue lines that represented the major rivers, looking for the specific dot that represented our home.
When I found the name printed in neat, bold black ink next to a small river, my blood ran completely, horrifyingly cold.
“Bo City.”
The air instantly left my lungs.
The cheerful sounds of the television broadcast faded into a dull, high pitched ringing in my ears.
The warmth of the living room suddenly felt suffocating.
Bo City.
I live in Bo City.
“Mom, what is the city we live in called?” I asked, just to be absolutely sure.
“Bo City,” my mom replied.
I couldn’t remember every single detail of the web novels from my past life, but the major arcs were burned into my memory.
And Bo City was unforgettable.
It was the starting city in Versatile Mage, one of the few stories I had read all the way to the end.
Bo City wasn’t just some random, peaceful starting town where the protagonist leveled up in peace.
It was ground zero for one of the absolute worst, most devastating tragedies in the entire early story.
It was the site of the Blood Alert.
It was the target of the Dark Beast Monster invasion.
It was the location of the horrific, city wide experiment orchestrated by the psychotic cult known as the Black Vatican.
They were going to use the Underground Holy Spring and the violent rain to drive the monster tribes insane, sending thousands of bloodthirsty One-Eyed Magic Wolves and Colossal Bone Magic Wolves crashing through the city’s defenses.
In roughly fifteen years, this peaceful, quiet, beautiful city was going to be completely overrun.
The military would be pushed to the brink.
Thousands of innocent people would be slaughtered in the streets.
The safe zones would run red with blood, the sky would turn gray with ash, and the wails of the dying would echo for days.
I slowly looked up from the heavy, damning book.
My dad was laughing heartily at a joke in the movie playing on the TV, his arm casually thrown over the back of the sofa.
My mom was leaning against his shoulder, sipping a warm cup of jasmine tea, a gentle, content smile gracing her face.
Grandma was sitting in her wooden rocking chair in the corner of the room, humming a soft, traditional tune while slowly knitting a tiny, overly colorful winter sweater for me.
They were my family.
They had taken me in.
They had loved me unconditionally.
They were the only light, the only warmth I had experienced after five years of crushing darkness, grief, and isolation in my past life.
And the name ‘Zhang Xiaohou’…
I finally remembered it.
It was the name of the protagonist Mo Fan’s loyal sidekick.
I remembered the original Zhang Xiaohou from the novel.
He was loyal, brave, and fast.
But I couldn’t clearly remember if his parents survived the Bo City disaster.
Given the sheer casualty rate of that arc, the odds were horrifically stacked against them.
The comforting illusion of my peaceful, quiet, beige life shattered like cheap glass hitting concrete.
My dream of just finding a nice, powerful girl, settling down, watching my grandchildren grow up, and slowly learning magic in a safe backyard dissolved into ash.
Going with the flow was no longer an option.
Hiding in the background as an average NPC was no longer a viable survival strategy.
I looked back down at the map, my tiny fists clenching the edges of the glossy page so hard my knuckles turned stark white.
A heavy, dark pressure settled over my small shoulders.
I am a commoner, so I can’t awaken my magic without the help of an Awakening Stone.
I couldn’t just rely on Mo Fan, the protagonist, to magically save everyone I cared about.
I had a ticking clock.
Fifteen years sounded like a long time, but to prepare for a literal, city wide apocalypse engineered by a global terrorist cult?
It was barely a blink of an eye.
At that moment, a system alert appeared in front of my eyes, hidden from everyone else.
> [SYSTEM ALERT]
> [Host’s Mental Fortitude has increased]
> [New attribute added]
> [Mental Strength Level 2 / Level 10]
I stared at the blue translucent screen hovering in the air before me.
I didn’t care what laws of magic I had to break.
I didn’t care how much I had to abuse this System, or how much pain I had to put my body through to grind my physical limits.
I was going to protect the people in this room, even if I had to tear the impending monster horde apart with my bare, bloody hands.