The good thing about being raised to a strict schedule was that your body was very sensitive to the rising of the sun. Now, instead of rising to feed cows and chickens, you were rising to become a cultivator. With a little effort, you felt that warmness moving slightly inside your body.

  Qi.

  A short series of chime-like bells sounded out, almost lost in the gentle breeze. Five in total, signaling that it was early. According to the map, the teachers of the classes did not turn up until at least seven chimes.

  They had duties beforehand that were 'vital' to the continued life of the compound. You took yourself to the public restrooms and washroom, finding it untouched so far. A few of the other kids around from the village, but none of the ones below rank six.

  "Did you hear? The huts for the top five students have their bathrooms and washrooms," a jealous girl told her friend as they left the female side, hair still damp.

  "Did you go peeking at the cute boy in the first hut? You're going to get in trouble!" her friend said with a grin as they vanished around the bend, ignoring you. Someone walked past you while you were listening.

  He was a pale teen with hooded eyes that looked you over once as if evaluating you then mentally seemed to sort you into some group before he went inside the bathhouse. He didn't look excited or nervous, but deadly serious.

  This place had some characters.

  You washed up quickly and decided to do something to pass the first hour. The feeling of Qi was exciting and you couldn't stop making it shift inside you. You wondered if you could perhaps channel it into something and form a kingly heaven sword or something?

  You didn't have a sword in the hut but it did come with eating utensils so you grabbed a spoon and played with the Qi in the hand holding the spoon, trying to coax it into doing more than just sitting there.

  What happened was you got a cramp in your hand that wasn't quite muscle, but something deeper, but once it stopped tensing, you found it was a little easier to move the Qi in that part of your body.

  Stone-Rank 1 training found: Qi Flow: Circulate your body's energy to improve your Dantian. Can give a max of five points. Two points are earned.

  Your body felt a bit achy after making your energy flow so you stood up, doing stretches and some light shifting before you settled on an exercise you despised but your father insisted would 'sculpt you like the rain does the mountains'.

  It was a lot like sitting in thin air and it hurt after a while but you did your best with it.

  Soon, you were standing with your legs bent and your back straight, feeling the burn in your body but your Qi seemed to almost like the burn.

  You nodded and embraced the burn!

  Stone Rank 1 Body exercise found: Mountain Glutes: Automatically gain 4 points towards body. Due to dedication, this exercise can be repeated for another three points (d3+1), afterwards it becomes a habit that Dei does automatically as character development

  As you washed once more, the bells chimed seven times and you knew exactly where you wanted to go.

  ---

  This felt a bit weird.

  Traversing the North Compound was amazing but you felt like anyone could tell you were new aside from your white robe. You gaped at everything and had a map in your nose the whole time but when you arrived at Instructor Kie Gayun's lecture hall, there was only the teacher, one of the girls from the carriage... and a cat that was fast asleep.

  "Ah, Student Nhatz, welcome!" Kie said brightly and she saw the confusion on your face.

  "This time is for below Stone Rank 5 students. Most of your classmates seemed to have wandered over to the weapons class or perhaps the general element class instead of my class," she said but oddly did not look upset or worried.

  "This always happens. In the coming weeks, more and more will drift in when they grasp that basic terms we learn today are going to be thrown around in the other classes with no explanation. Your seniors prefer afternoon as this is a relaxing class so they can recover energy between high stress classes," Kie explained as she gestured for you to take a seat next to the nervous girl who looked ready to vomit her breakfast up if someone looked at her funny.

  "Please, take a seat next to Student Hayori," Kie instructed.

  "Is that a cat?" you asked oddly as you moved to the front. Kie smiled.

  "That 'Cat' is a copper-rank beast. Quite docile as my familiar but don't pet him. He doesn't like strangers," she warned.

  You sat down and the girl next you bowed a little.

  "Hello, I'm Pola Hayori, please to meet you! I live in hut 18 and I hope I'm not... rambling and forgetting to breathe..." she said, taking a deep inhale of air as if she was going to faint.

  "Hello, I'm Dei Nhatz, pleasure to meet you," you said as Instructor Kie pulled down a chart that covered a black board covered in chalk dust.

  "Today we'll be going over the basics of the basics. These are things you'd learn naturally but having them mastered here and now will save you no small grief in all your other classes," Kie said with a stern nod.

  Instructor Kie began to explain that anyone that was using a means to train their Qi and body were called Cultivators, but in many places could be called monks, martial artists, or a number of other titles.

  You asked if the Azure Lotus were called anything aside from Cultivators.

  "Monks of the Forest and Daoists of the Trees are common titles," she offered.

  A group of cultivators could be a sect but they would not be official unless one of their members, usually the leader, was in the mid-power of Beast rank. This is where she tapped her chart.

  "This is where we define clear divisions amongst cultivators based on how developed their cultivation is," she said softly, her tone taking on a more reserved voice.

  "All people are born with Qi and solid flesh then develop a sense of self. Once all three are done, in the years of a toddler. We call that Stone-Rank 1. The beginning of a person, of all people," she said and you were hooked on every word.

  "As they grow from child to adult, a person with a strong healthy mind and body will naturally progress from rank 1 to rank 3 in their lifetime if they do not train or encounter auspicious events," Kie said and he passed out a copy of a list.

  "For being wise enough to seek more wisdom before the others," she smiled and you saw it was a defined chart of the three 'mortal' realms. Only the first realm, stone, had any additional details on it.

  Each realm had ten ranks, which started at rank one. Stone Rank simply listed the first three ranks as healthy mortal and then started getting more specific on rank 4 and above.

  "Instructor?" Pola raised her hand and Kie nodded at her to speak.

  "Does... well I was wondering if... people are born... higher rank..." she trailed off, sounding like the question had died in her throat but still escaped her lips.

  "Children of strong cultivators can easily be born in the higher stone rank with natural abilities, but they can only enjoy such a period for a time before their lack of knowledge restricts their ability to grow. However, a good family will supply their child with means to continue to grow. So, it's not always enough to just be born talented but to also be born lucky," Kie said simply then gestured to the lecture hall.

  "Hard work must go double the distance but it is in that work that the ability to cultivate can be found. Make no mistake, you will encounter monsters who out-rank you but are younger than you. That is simply heaven and earth, but do not feel despair when you see them," she advised you both.

  "Feel motivated, impressed that the heavens would dare to put such a rival before you knowing only in time you will step on them to reach higher," she smiled oddly.

  Then she wrote out three words, with an arrow point to each in an order.

  Mortal>Beast>Spirit

  Each rank demanding more and more of you. Each realm held thirty ranks. This alone would require all your effort to simply grasp and it wasn't until much later that you understood something.

  Instructor Kie never said cultivation stopped at Spirit Realm.

  Knowledge of how vast the world was before gives your next roll a +3.

  Kie's sheet slowly reveals what you need until the end of Stone-Rank.

  Stone-Rank 5: Requires 1 stat in any skill or element.

  ---

  The next thing you decided to check out was a means to understand what this 'thing' in your body that regulated your Qi actually was. The dantian seemed important and after this morning with your Qi flow test, it felt key to know how and why it worked.

  Unauthorized usage: this tale is on Amazon without the author's consent. Report any sightings.

  The class was headed by a man who looked relaxed as he held a massive scroll across his lap and a pipe to his lips. The smoke that came out didn't smell of anything but a few of the older students that joined the class in the palest of blue robes were eager to get close to the front row.

  You tried to do so, just to see what the fuss was. You snatched a seat like a sparrow grabbing a piece of meat between hawks.

  ...Damn it, your dad was making you think in weird phrases. The moment you sat down and the teacher exhaled, you felt relaxed but also your Qi went from a weird sluggish energy to something closer to water.

  +2 to all dantian rolls to stat rank 2 or under.

  "Qi is life but to use it requires mastery of oneself, to intake natural ambient energy and process it inside yourself to grow as a cultivator," the teacher said in a smooth voice, looking clean shaven and relaxed.

  "This class, 'Qi control' will not teach you to unleash devastation or teleport great distances," he said with a snap of his fingers.

  "It will teach you how to take in deadly energy from the world and purify it for your own use. To not only strengthen your dantian, but learn how to mold its walls into iron, to enhance your healing and ward off sickness," he said, breathing out that weird smoke again.

  He began by making you all flow your Qi. You were surprised because it was almost the same thing you did this morning but this version was more precise. This one had a method to it that involved swirling your Qi at certain parts of your body, making it more effective.

  Dantian Proper Flow: Stone-rank 3. Flows and swirls your Qi to improve flow and your dantian. Improved from the discovered method. Can reach 8 points, 2 already mastered from previous exercise.

  You spend the rest of class flowing and swirling, finding the method getting better each rotation of your Qi. It eventually reached a point that you could complete a flow in a minute and more, but the feeling of 'stretching' in your lower gut had stopped completely as if adapted to the movement.

  Dantian: 8/10

  The teacher noticed this and suggested you should study the Azure Scroll to round out your understanding as the next technique he could teach required a solid foundation in the Dantian or you would risk injury.

  Still, he put his finger to your robe and you felt your sleeve grow a little heavier.

  Merits: 5>10.

  "I shall see you soon," he smiled and walked over to help Kika who was turning red again. As you turned, you spotted that blond guy from before staring at you with an unreadable expression.

  He turned away and you felt like something had occurred but you hadn't a clue as to what. Your father's voice filled your mind.

  'A brilliant white mouse may be envied by his peers, but is beloved by the cat'

  You didn't have time for mice or cats or blond brats.

  Not today or tomorrow.

  ---

  The image of mice would not leave your mind and you were pretty close to another class that was starting up. You hesitated, thinking of how to make the most of your time, then remembered that you were no longer bound to a hundred years, according to Instructor Kie, even being Rank 4 in the Stone realm ensured you'd live to a hundred and fifty.

  It was still hard to ignore the pressure of time...

  The class was held near the edge of the compound and you found it was filled with a mix of white and pale blue robes, spotting Giro to one side. Surprisingly there was a woman who was given a wide berth by the others.

  Her robe had swaths of pale green mixed in, indicating a higher rank than any student but still below the instructor's gray-blue. You wandered over to Giro and he looked happy to see someone he knew.

  "Did you see the lady?" he whispered and wasn't subtle about his pointing.

  "Hard to miss her," you said quieter.

  "She's in the Copper Rank! I heard from the others that she's here to do a job for the sect and is in the class to pass the time, but I think she might just like animals," Giro mused. He pulled out a small piece of meat that he must have taken from the feast area.

  "Hungry?" he offered with a smile.

  You two passed the time snacking and talking until the instructor turned up. It was a person called Instructor Weo Jung and you didn't know if they were a boy or girl, but you didn't really care as they had a massive wolf at their side with piercing green eyes and a horn growing out of its head.

  "In this lesson," they began and even their voice was between deep and light, "I shall explain what taming is and weed out those here I feel will either abuse the art or will get eaten by the first hare they try to tame," they said dryly with a flick of their dark green hair. It wasn't a natural color, but something that dyed the long strands within.

  A little like veins when they become poisoned.

  "Taming is the art of giving a portion of yourself to another creature and allowing a bit your Dantian to exist within them and vice versa, for this reason, you cannot simply be given a Spirit Realm beast and tame it with the aid of others. You will explode into beautiful chunks," Instructor Weo said brightly and you noticed even their nails were a pale green.

  "What's the biggest difference in power there can be between beast and cultivator?" someone asked respectfully.

  "For the Cultivator, a beast no higher than three inner realm ranks is advised unless the creature is very intelligent and can control their Qi so as not to kill you. So, for Cultivators, with enough control, you can tame even stone-rank beasts as you advance but few would choose to do so as they grow," Weo explained softly.

  He went on to explain that there were a lot of benefits and drawbacks to taming. Like cultivators, beasts could also grow but it was usually a natural thing and not many surpassed their natural limits.

  A cultivator had to divert time to aiding the beast if they simply did not release and move onto stronger creatures as they themselves grew.

  "Harfarx here is of low Iron rank but he used to be copper. When I cultivate, his essence allows me to more easily refine earth and my body," he explained with a smile, stroking the wolf softly.

  The lesson went on with the rule that man could cultivate many techniques with effort but beasts had one or two in their very blood. The taming ability allowed each side to tap into the other's gift.

  "Even a wood mouse can be a powerful ally in dark times," Weo finished with a mysterious smile.

  Giro got the last question in, even if he was nervous with the sudden attention.

  "How many partners can one have?" he asked and Weo smiled.

  "That depends on three things. Your ability in taming itself, your sea of consciousness, and your cultivation as a whole. You'll learn more but for today, I'm offering the taming ability scroll for 6 Merits. It's normally 20 in the store so this is a good deal," Weo called.

  You didn't hesitate to buy it and your sleeve felt lighter. Giro also bought it and you discovered that his scroll was just impossible to look at while your copy was readable.

  Giro couldn't read yours either without permission.

  Gained: Stone-Rank 5 Taming scroll: Allows one to raise taming skill to 1. Able to gain 3 points in sea of consciousness up to stat rank 2. Needs to be studied.

  ---

  By the time you returned to your hut after dinner, the sun had set and the forest took on a near-tranquil feel to it. Guards began to light lanterns around the edge and in the branches, giving the whole compound a serene sleepy feel. Older students were still moving about as they had access to more in depth or advanced classes.

  You didn't know the exact date but you decided today was the end of day 1 of Dei Nhatz. Day 1 of many to come...

  ---

  In a hut nearby, a crude map had been pinned to the wall and numbers inked in next to them.

  A circle was drawn around the numbered 1.

  Tomorrow, they will begin. They snuck a scroll out from under their bed, showing it was a scroll of low copper grade.

  Their edge, their ace, and the key to becoming strong. It hurt to look at the scroll so much but the pain, the experience was enough to shape his sea and Dantian.

  One day, he would even get to read the technique itself perhaps.

  Now, how to train the body?