Chapter 17 - Training

First Pov

The journey to the Valley of Peace didn´t have any complications, except maybe the long distance and the thousand steps before me right now. I always hated working out and could probably just teleport up but that could be noticed by Oogway, as well as it being contra productive, as I was here to learn to fight and for that I needed a strong enough body.

After nearly three hours, I finally arrived at the door to the Jade Palace. It was already late but I could still hear people practicing in the courtyard, so I just knocked. I waited for about a minute before the sound of fighting stopped and a pig opened the door. ''Yes, how can I help you'' he asked, a strange question to ask a 5-year-old who climbed all the way up here, did he think I walked up here for three hours just to ask if could go on their toilet? ''Hi, ahem, I want to learn Kung Fu'' he looked at me and asked ''How old are you? Where are your parents and do they know you're here?'', ''My name is Umar, I´m five years old and my parents know I came here''. At that answer he sighted ''Well Umar, it´s already too late to send you back, its getting dark. I imagine you are already tired after climbing the stairs, you can stay for the night and we will talk about it tomorrow morning after your rested''. Well, I'm not yet accepted but a bed sounded really good right now, so I can wait till tomorrow.

I immediately fell asleep after hitting the bed, the morning was also rather easy, I was asked a lot of questions and was examined, but after that I was finally accepted as a disciple. I wasn´t given to a master immediately, but was put in a beginner course where there were several other my age. It was mostly imitating the moves of the teacher and physical training for the first three months, after that we were finally allowed to use training equipment. That gave me finally an opportunity to showcase my talent and get a masters guidance.

After I completed the beginner training course on the first try, several masters started to pay attention to me. It was also around that time that I started to finally grow my World tree again, this universe had a proper afterlife, the spirit realm, so I could just grow it there, but that would attract some attention, but as long as it didn´t get destroyed or associated with me it would be alright. Another thing I had to do was make sure that the tree didn´t absorb the chi in the surroundings but just the energy I fed it, otherwise it would not only absorb the stuff that I was planning to take for myself but also bring the universe to its end earlier than planned.

Just a week after I planted the tree in the spirit realm, made sure that it radiated anti-chi to prevent it from being destroyed and gave it enough energy to freely grow for over a decade, I was accepted by a master. My master was a beaver named Bifi, I didn´t care about her name but in order to show my nonexistent respect to my master, I had to remember her name.

Training was going well and with my ever-increasing talent it was almost too easy, I was able to master most things she taught me almost immediately and I was now able to hold my ground against her in a hand fight. I had to admit, having a master was more useful than I thought, I already had the memories of countless masters but I don´t have their experience and mastery they gathered over decades. It was like watching an action movie, I knew how they did it but couldn´t replicate it, I really had to find a way to get adaptive muscle memory otherwise most of that knowledge would be wasted.

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I was now 7-years old and have reached the level of a master in pure hand-to-hand combat, my progress has been shocking so it wasn´t a surprise when rumors about my absurd talent spread. My master has finally decided I was ready to learn how to handle weapons, I didn´t want to started advanced or get suspected for being bloodthirsty, so I chose a bo staff to begin with. A bo staff was easy to handle and didn´t have any blades but it´s mastery could be transferred over to a spear so it was the perfect beginner weapon.

It barely took me 7 months to master the bo staff completely and rumors about me started to spread once more but I paid I t no head. Even thought my master was still shocked about my terrifying learning speed, she was also ecstatic to be able to teach a prodigy like me and couldn´t wait for me to choose my next weapon of choice, but I declined because I wanted to start reading the techniques from the Thousand scrolls of kung fu before concentrating on mastering the next weapon. I had already gained extreme precision from my training, like being able to hit the wings of a fly with the bo staff or if I felt like it even chop sticks precision, and I wanted to use that skill to lean about acupuncture. Acupuncture was very underrated, being able to control someone's body through their nerves was definitely something I wanted, it could be used for both fighting as well as medicine, not that I cared much for the medicine part.

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A/N- This world is mostly there for him to get actual combat experience, learn how to wield weapons without cutting his own fingers off, increase his martial talent and give him a huge energy reserve upgrade. If you aren´t interested in the grind, then you can skip it, it will probably only be 5-7 chapters max.