After his initial shock, Theodore wanted to evaluate the people around him and the new environment, but the ordeal he just experienced left him exhausted. Theodore's eyes refused to focus and his body only barely listened to his commands as he tried to move his limbs.
When his mother began to feed him, Theodore just ignored the situation and ate knowing that he needed to survive.
For the first few weeks Theodore stayed inside with his mother, everyday turning into a routine of sleeping when tired, eating when hungry, and gaining control over his body when he was awake.
After some time, Theodore had gained some control over the movements of his arms and legs, as well as the ability to firmly hold his head upright. He naturally became curious about his surroundings and began to make observations of his environment. His eyes were mostly able to focus normally and as he looked around, he noticed that his new home was not particularly big. It seemed to be constructed with the most available materials in the area, such as clay, stone, and straw, but in Theodore's eyes, it was very shoddy. He thought back to his previous life and realized that his perfect memory was still intact and he still remembered everything he had studied then.
Now that Theodore's body was strong enough, his mother would create a sling with cloth and would go out with him to perform tasks required by the village. This was very boring to him but since he had no choice, he started counting the seconds. At first, counting kept his mind occupied and occasionally he would sleep or look at his mother's work. After a while, a discrepancy in the position of the sun and his counting would confound him and thought to himself, "According to the numbers of seconds that I counted, the sun hasn't moved as much as it should have. How interesting!" Theodore initially calculated that a full rotation of the planet would take about 35 hours. Unfortunately, until he was able to walk, he would not be able to confirm his findings.
Theodore's mother mostly worked on a farm, tending the plants or going out into the forest, to gather herbs. Theodore would observe what she harvested and strangly found that he recognized about 85% of the vegetables, fruits, nuts, and berries in the basket. He also found a few herbs and spices growing, but it seemed that the people of the village were unaware of their existence. Occasionally, when observing the flora in the forest, Theodore would discover a plant or herb that he had never seen before in his past lifetime and yet, there was a familiar feeling when he saw it, as if the name was on the tip of his tongue. He found he couldn't explain this odd feeling but since there wasn't anything he could about it, he assigned it a low priority on his to do list.
Theodore or Mo Hu, as he is now known as, is now three years old. His parents were named Mo Feng and Lui Xiaoyue. With his Eidetic memory and the many languages he learned in his previous life, learning to speak was simple, but what surprised him was that the language of the villagers was a mix of several dialects of Chinese. Most villagers were illiterate and scrolls and books were rare, so he had to take upon himself to learn how to read and write, though he did this out of sight to not draw attention to himself. Using a very basic sundial, he created a clock and a calendar. His clock displayed 35 hours and the calendar went up to 627 days. This surprised him greatly because it would show that the rough calculations he did as an intact were correct.
Mo Hu would often accompany his mother during her work and she would teach him the names and uses of the plants and herbs that they encountered on the farm and in the forest. He would collect seeds and clippings when he could and bring them home. The seeds he saved, but the clippings he tried to grow, often in failure. As customs dictated, his father would regularly train him in basic sword combat, scouting, survival skills, and the rituals of the village.
Mo Hu learned that boys would follow the hunting parties starting at age eight and would be proclaimed adults in between the ages of 12 to 16. More motivated boys would complete the hunting ritual at 12, while the boys who turned 16 would automatically become men but had a lower status. This would affect families when it came time to arrange marriages. Mo Hu was troubled, he had experienced marriage, children, grandchildren, and death in his past life and wasn't in a rush to experience all this again.
Over the next five years, Mo Hu predominately trained with his father and his skills with the bow and arrow, sword, saber, and spear didn't resemble a boy his age. His father began to teach him about the beast of the forest. He was taught to carefully study his prey as there were several types of beasts and a rash decision had ended the lives of many hunters. The first type of beasts were were the normal beasts that he was familiar with and the easiest targets to hunt. The second type were magic beast, it was unknown why but occasionally beasts could be strengthened somehow and these magic beast were bigger, faster, more intelligent, and stronger than normal beast and often had physical differences than their supposed cousins. For example, there once a wolf who became a magic beast and his fur was like rows of steel needles and many hunters were lost in the confrontation. The third and last type were called Beastkin and they were humanoid beast but there had been many instances of people hunting them which contributed to an environment of mistrust between humans and beastkin.
Mo Hu's father tells him that if there are any problems, the village chief and his forces would handle it as they had practiced the ancient ways and developed a strong body to fight the beasts. For four years, Mo Hu would often follow the hunting parties, collecting different materials to experiment on. He often found that many scientific interactions were the same as earth, such as friction creating heat, static electricity in the air, etc.
A few days after his twelfth birthday, his mother Lui Xiaoyue approached him and asked, "Mo Hu, your father tells me that you are preparing for your coming of age hunt soon."
Mo Hu, "Yes, mother that is correct."
Lui Xiaoyue continues, "Excellent, once you have completed the hunt, we will celebrate and make arrangements with the Xiao family. Xiao Maomao is of age and should be a good match with you."
Mo Hu was quiet for a minute and then said, "I understand."
His mother walked away happy and Mo Hu realized he had out grown the village and it was time for him to seek his fortune.