Silvervale Province, north of Notting City, Crescent Moon Village.
"Hey, Kiritsugu, did Wu Ling run off into the woods again?"
A middle-aged man driving a wagon loaded with goods called out to the village chief at the entrance to the village.
"That brat Wu Ling? When doesn't he go? I tell him not to, but he never listens. A few days ago he even brought back a few rabbits. Honestly, does he not know the woods are dangerous? That boy never lets me stop worrying."
Chief Kiritsugu, already past sixty with hair half gone white, stopped in his tracks and started grumbling about his adopted son, the child named Wu Ling.
His mouth was full of complaints about how disobedient Wu Ling was, but anyone could hear the heartfelt pride underneath his tone.
The wagon driver only smiled. Everyone in the village knew how much the chief doted on that child. Normally, he would have listened patiently until Kiritsugu ran out of words. This time, however, he cut him off.
"Wait, wait, Chief. Listen to me. Recently, you should keep Wu Ling from going out too much."
Hearing the change in address, Kiritsugu's expression turned serious.
The middle-aged man's name was Kirei. He owned the village shop. When he was younger, he had worked as a head cook in a hotel in Notting City thanks to his cooking skills. Later, age caught up to him, and the former shopkeeper, Tokiomi, died in an accident. Kirei returned to the village and opened the shop himself.
Thanks to the contacts he had made as a cook, his business grew larger and larger. He even established ties with nearby villages. Apart from a few villages to the south of Notting City, almost every settlement in the area had done business with him in some way. Around here, he counted as a man with some reputation.
If Crescent Moon Village had not been his birthplace, he could have settled directly in Notting City without trouble.
Most of the time, Kirei called Kiritsugu "old brother." Only when something serious happened did he address him as "Chief." That was why Kiritsugu had grown solemn.
"What happened, Kirei? You're being awfully serious. Did something happen?"
"Chief... no, old brother, I went into the city this time and ran into an old Spirit Master customer of mine. While we were chatting, he complained that something happened in Spirit Hall. He said the entire Spirit Hall is uneasy now.
"I don't know the details, but with something like this, it is better to believe there might be trouble than to pretend there cannot be. No harm in telling Wu Ling to be careful."
Kiritsugu frowned.
"I felt something was off too. In half a month, it should have been time for the annual Martial Soul awakening, but this afternoon someone suddenly delivered a letter saying this year's awakening had been moved up to the day after tomorrow.
"That was why I was going to find Wu Ling and tell him to rest properly tomorrow. Now that I've heard what you said, it seems something really did happen..."
The two men looked at each other. Each saw the same weight in the other's eyes. Spirit Hall was a colossus that loomed over the entire continent. If it so much as trembled, countless ordinary people might lose their futures.
Yet no matter how much they thought about it, the two of them were only ordinary men. In the end, that heavy silence turned into two helpless sighs and two backs walking away from each other.
As the sun set, a six-year-old boy stood in horse stance inside a rushing river.
Anyone unfamiliar with him would have been shocked. In a current this strong, an ordinary six-year-old child would have struggled just to stand, yet this boy not only stood firm, he was squatting steadily in stance.
That would have been impressive enough, but he also had two fist-sized stones tied around his waist, and each of his upturned palms held another fist-sized stone.
His face had already twisted in pain, but his breathing remained almost perfectly even.
A rustle in the grass drew the boy's attention. He stood carefully and untied the two stones from his waist.
A pair of hands pushed aside the grass, and Chief Kiritsugu of Crescent Moon Village stepped out. The boy relaxed when he saw who it was.
"Wu Ling, I had to look all over for you. Come on, let's go home and eat!"
This boy was none other than Kiritsugu's adopted son, Wu Ling, the child he praised endlessly in front of others.
"All right, Uncle Kiri."
Although the man before him had raised him for six years, Wu Ling still had twenty years of memories from his previous life. He could not make himself call him "Dad."
That was right. Wu Ling was a transmigrator in the traditional sense. In his previous twenty years of memory, he had been born on Blue Star, in China, into a martial arts family.
In that life, his grandfather and father had driven him to train hard from a young age. What he practiced was not flashy performance martial arts, but killing techniques once called ancient martial arts.
However, that had been a society ruled by law. Other than keeping him from being bullied at school, those techniques had no real use.
When he was eighteen, his grandfather died. Only then did his father sigh, bow to the pressure of ordinary life, and let him enter university as he wished, giving him a life of his own.
Then, when Wu Ling was twenty, his father died. He died at the hands of someone named Fung Yu-sau. Wu Ling immediately asked for leave and rushed home to bury his father. Unfortunately, on the way, he ran into a car accident. He closed his eyes, opened them again, and found himself in this world as an infant. Kiritsugu took him in.
Soul Land. Wu Ling knew it. He only had a few hobbies: anime, novels, and good food. If he had to add one more, it would be Fate/Grand Order, which had caught his interest after he got into Fate. He did not play the usual mobile battle royales or arena games. FGO was the one he loved.
So, after reading countless fanfictions, Wu Ling accepted the fact that he had transmigrated into this world rather naturally once he realized where he was.
As for the current timeline, he more or less knew it was before Tang San's birth, because he had once seen a newspaper. The current pope of Spirit Hall was still Chihiro Ji.
"The Martial Soul awakening has been moved up to the day after tomorrow?"
"That's right. So tomorrow, stay home and rest. Get ready."
"Fine, no problem. Then tomorrow I'll reduce my training by three... no, by a quarter," Wu Ling said with a grin after recovering some of his strength.
Perhaps it had something to do with his experiences. During training and serious fights, Wu Ling became frighteningly focused. In daily life, however, he was cheerful and lively, as if the two sides balanced each other out in his mind.
"No. At most, you train for one quarter of the day."
"Come on, then five eighths."
"Half. For the remaining time, I will let you use the young walnut sprouts from our tree for a medicinal bath. That settles it."
"The young sprouts from that walnut tree? Deal! You can't go back on your word, Uncle Kiri."
"A man keeps his word. Who would go back on a promise to a child like you? Honestly..."