Today would be Arthur’s first day with his tutors. A few days back his father had returned from the Lightning Dragon Sect with three people. They all looked young but cultivators aged significantly slower than mortals so there wasn’t much to glean from their looks. He also couldn’t see their realm, he wasn’t a cultivator yet, and even if he was it was unlikely that they would be weak enough for him to discern their realm.

Arthur was a little nervous, his parents had told him nothing about the three or what they would teach. He had tried to meet them in the past few days but his parents seemed set on waiting till his teaching officially began.

And it would soon be time, Arthur finished his breakfast, it had been bland porridge today which was odd. Usually, he would have an assortment of bread, fruits, and even meat but today he felt like he was eating soldier's rations. This did not inspire enthusiasm.

But it was what it was, maybe they were planning a big lunch and didn’t want him to fill up on breakfast. Yeah, this was his first day of private tutoring as a five year old in an estate, not boot camp, it will be fine. Reassuring himself once again Arthur was led to a part of the estate he hadn’t been allowed to enter before now, the library.

The library was impressive, more than it had any right to be given the modest nature of the rest of the estate. Bookshelves lined each of the walls filled to the brim with different texts. The walls looked to be around fifteen meters tall with the bookshelves reaching all the way to the ceiling. How many books were in here? A few thousand at least. Arthur was honestly shocked, books tended to be expensive in the mortal planes, especially in medieval worlds like this one. Either this room was more valuable than the rest of the estate or this world was a lot farther along in printing technology than Arthur originally thought.

“It’s amazing isn’t it” Betty, the one escorting him, chimed in, “The mistress really loves books, even so, I think this is a bit overboard, there must be enough books in here to pay a king's ransom, oh but don’t tell your mother I said anything about it, she gets really defensive about her library”

That made sense, Arthur thought. Well not really, just liking books shouldn’t drive someone to build this, and Arthur was pretty sure his family wasn’t rich enough to waste a “King’s ransom” on a bunch of books that would likely never be read. Back when he was Alex, Arthur had been frivolous with money, but he had money to spare, this just seemed irresponsible.

But what did he know, Arthur had been kept in the dark about nearly everything regarding his family, the empire, or the planet as a whole. It was annoying but who talked politics with a child?

Interrupting his thoughts Betty spoke again, “Alright young master I’ll leave you here, your tutor should be in shortly, don’t touch anything in here without asking or your mother will throw a fit you hear me”. After that, Betty left him alone in the overly large home library. So Arthur waited.

It wasn’t long before the door to the library opened again. The person who walked through was a young-looking man, maybe in his late teens, he had dark brown hair, brown eyes, tan brown skin, and wore gray combat robes with blue lining. This was not at all the type of person Arthur expected to be his tutor. Normally a tutor would be an older cultivator who had reached a barrier in their cultivation that they couldn’t pass, instead deciding to pass on their many years of accumulated knowledge to the younger generations. But this boy was just that, a boy. If he had stalled in cultivation he would have been kicked out of the sect so they wouldn’t waste resources, and if he wasn’t a failure the kid should be out cultivating not teaching a five-year-old who hasn’t opened a single meridian. This was just strange.

The boy was not the only one to enter the room, behind him came a much older-looking man in the same robes as the first boy, he had short-cut gray hair, blue eyes, and a scarred face. This man was more in line with Arthur’s expectations.

Finally behind him was a young-looking girl, possibly in her twenties, she had long dark red hair, red eyes, and pale skin. She kind of reminded Arthur of a vampire, which wasn’t impossible but incredibly unlikely. Unlike the first two she wore white robes that wouldn’t allow for much freedom of movement, they were probably scholars' robes which would mean she was responsible for his noncombat-related lessons. But would that mean the other two were there to tutor him on cultivation, it seemed a bit overkill to have two cultivation tutors while only one general studies tutor, especially for a five-year-old.

Just once Arthur was about to lose himself in his thoughts the young boy spoke curtly. “Greetings young one, I am Grand Elder Kang of the Lightning Dragon Sect, to my left is Elder Armin also of the Lightning Dragon Sect, and to my right is Amina Redthorne, a librarian from the Drakonhart Library. The three of us have been hired to instruct you in the basics of cultivation, history, politics, mathematics, science, literature, etiquette, and other things required of a young noble. I will be your instructor in cultivation, Elder Armin will instruct you in politics, and Ms. Redthorne will assist you with the other subjects. From today onward you will be on a strict schedule of training and studying, now you have been sitting for long enough, follow me and we will begin your lessons in the training grounds''

Well, that was brief. The other two didn’t even get a chance to speak, and why did he come to the library if they were just going to move to the training grounds? Also, he hadn’t even known they had training grounds. He had expected they would start slow, with a bit of time to acclimate to his new schedule, but that didn’t appear to be the case.

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Arthur followed the Grand Elder through the estate and was having to jog to keep up. The man was walking so fast you would think he was late for some important meeting or really had to use the bathroom. Arthur wouldn’t consider himself out of shape but he was still a five-year-old mortal, but at this speed, he was starting to run out of breath.

As Arthur was mulling over whether it was pathetic to lose his breath on the way to the training grounds or not, they arrived. The grounds were basic, sand covered the entire floor with benches along part of the fence. It was outdoors and had no shade besides a small awning that hung over a few of the benches. It was plain but what could he expect from a training ground in the Mortal Plane.

He kept looking around as the Grand Elder spoke again, “Before we can start with proper cultivation training you will first need to open your meridians to allow chi to flow throughout your body, once you have a little chi you will begin extensive physical training to increase your chi reserves and strengthen your meridians”

Well, this isn’t good, Arthur thought as he listened to the Grand Elder go over what chi and meridians were. What he was saying wasn’t completely wrong but it wasn’t correct either. Physical activity did increase chi reserves but it was slow compared to meditation, also, it wouldn’t strengthen your meridians. Meridians grew in strength naturally as the chi inside them advanced along with your cultivation. While there were ways to strengthen your meridians but they all involved rare treasures or difficult rituals.

This wasn’t to say there was no benefit to physical training, he would need a strong body once he reached the Body Realm so he would have a good base to work with, he even believed a good physical routine would be necessary if he wanted to advance quickly but the way the Grand Elder was talking made it seem like exercise was all he would be doing.

If he doesn’t let me meditate here then I’ll just have to squeeze it in at some point, hopefully, he will at least teach me a cultivation method that I can use.

“Alright that’s enough lecturing for now” the Grand Elder finally finished blabbering about chi, “we can discuss more about chi later, for now, you still need to open your meridians. It is wrong to say that you have no chi, all things have chi, you just don’t currently have a way of absorbing or using any of that chi. To remedy that you will need to open a meridian to allow chi to flow throughout your body. You will need to look inside yourself and sense the little bit of chi you already have and guide that chi to one of your meridians using it to open up that meridian. Now, this will probably take you a while but I will walk you through how to guide your chi for an hour each day, then we will spend four exercising before you go off to your other tutors”

This was ridiculous, if the point of the training was to increase his chi reserves why bother training until he had opened a meridian, and one hour a day, at that rate the average person would take years to open a single meridian. Most sects would have their disciples working on this from dawn to dusk until they opened a meridian. If he didn’t want to stand out he would have to wait a while before he could open a meridian.

Arthur was confident he could open a meridian within an hour, he had already played around with the little bit of chi in his body. While he couldn’t remember any chi flow patterns to open them in the most efficient ways, brute forcing them open wouldn’t cause any issues that couldn’t be fixed. But how long should he wait to not be suspicious? He could try and guess but there was a simple way to find out.

“How long does it normally take for someone to open a meridian” Arthur asked looking up at the young-looking cultivator.

“Hmmm, everyone is different so there is no set amount of time it should take, though you should have it open before your eighth birthday”

Kang responded like it wasn’t a long time, but OVER TWO YEARS. That was ridiculous, anyone who took that long in the higher planes would be kicked out of their sect for lacking any semblance of talent. There was no way Arthur was going to wait two more years before he started cultivating, five had been hard enough. He needed to figure out how fast he could go without looking too odd. So he asked another question.

“How long did it take you to open a meridian?”

“Me huh, well I wouldn’t use myself as a benchmark, the vast majority of people take much longer than I did to open a meridian, but if you really want to know it took me three months. Now I don’t want to see you getting upset when you haven’t opened a meridian that fast, the speed you go is not truly indicative of your future potential, now enough questions, we are wasting your hour of cultivation”

Arthur was a little relieved, he knew that Kang was an exception and probably considered a prodigy within the sect, but this gave him confidence that it wouldn’t be too suspicious if he didn’t take two years to open a meridian. Four months should be a good amount of time, longer than the Grand Elder but still very fast, now all he needed to do was act like he was struggling for the next few months and it would all work out.

The two sat down in the sand and Kang began to explain how to direct your chi and the patterns you want to direct it in. Arthur didn’t know how good this technique was, but considering it was from the Mortal Plane it was safe to say it wasn’t great. It wasn’t like he could remember anything better though so he listened.

He wanted to practice the patterns for when he decided to open his meridians but someone with the title Grand Elder should be able to sense if his chi started moving which wouldn’t be good. For now, he would wait, pretending to struggle and asking a pointless question here and there. It would be a couple of months before he would show any “progress” so there was no rush. He would take this hour to relax, Arthur was guessing he would need that for the next four hours of training.

He had been right, the training was brutal. He was a five year old but this crazy man was having him run laps with weights. if he slowed down he would get yelled at, When he threw up he got scolded for stopping, and that was just the first hour. The rest of the time was spent lifting weights and punching a wooden pole until his knuckles bled, it was brutal.

By the end of it all he could barely stand. How was he supposed to study anything after all of this? He didn’t have much time to think about it before the old-looking elder arrived to take him away to what was probably going to be more suffering.