Data-Driven Daoist

Yu Han echoed a cool-looking stick and threw it to the other end of his Dreamscape.

Click!

The crab jumped up. It scuttled towards the stick faster than a dog, picked it up, held the prize above its head, then placed it at Yu Han’s feet.

“You’re a doggie!” Yu Han gasped. “A doggo trapped in a crab’s body?”

The crab circled Yu Han, clicking its claws. Yu Han wanted to pet it, but its back had some pointy-looking spikes.

He picked up the stick and poked the crab with it. It wiggled its body as if being tickled, then rolled over. Yu Han placed a palm on its hard-shelled belly and gave it a good scritch. The crab’s many legs went haywire, twitching as if electrocuted.

“Are you a good doggy-crabby? A craggy? A dobby! Wait, no…” Yu Han noticed his voice becoming more high-pitched as he talked. “Why did you appear inside my Deep Sleep?”

The crab pushed Yu Han’s hand away with a claw, then heaved itself upright. It moved dizzily for a while, as if drunk. Then it stood at attention, both claws raised up, the pincers snipping quickly. Yu gave it a good pat, spikes be damned.

It brought out a parchment from somewhere.

Does it have some kind of storage?It spread the parchment on the Dreamscape floor and pointed at the words, then at Yu Han.

“I told you before.”

The crab looked confused. Its beady eyes gleamed, its feet tapped, its claws snipped, and its body wiggled in anticipation.

“I don’t know.”

It dropped, all tension leaving its body, and clicked away sideways.

As it walked, pearls rolled around it. It moved to a portion of the wall and tapped it with its claws. The wall collapsed; this time, the hole was smaller. Yu Han held his breath.

The crab went into the hole, and in a blink, the wall was fixed again.

Yu Han gathered the pearls and put them on the previous pile—they hadn’t disappeared yet. But as he did, he noticed a change. He picked up one of the old pearls. It had turned a shade of blue.

Inside the pearls, something moved. Like a silhouette of a boy? Or a crab? He couldn’t make it out.

A few more pearls had turned bluish too. Yu Han threw them, stepped on them, clashed them together.

Nothing happened.

Do I eat them? Could he choke to death in Deep Sleep?

Yu Han echoed a monster core. It was like a broken rock—angular edges, irregular shape, like a toenail-sized square that had been hammered until it had too many surfaces. It was smaller than the pearl; maybe about six or seven pressed together would be the same size.

They don’t look the same. The pearls were a mystery, as was the crab.

It was called the Non-Thinker Crab. But by its reactions, it could think. The ability to “ask” was a pretty advanced cognitive process.

But it forgets?

There weren’t enough data points, but the hypothesis was formed.

Why does it keep showing up in my dream? The Wisping Serpent Isthmus was a twenty minutes’ donkey cart ride away from here. Could the crab’s ability extend that far? ℞

Nothing to it. For now, there was no apparent harm. But the crab could somehow modify Yu Han’s Dreamscape Walls. With enough interaction, maybe Yu Han could find out more about his own Auxiliary Art.

Yu Han put the crab out of his mind.

He sat down and materialized Ji’s Cultivation Contemplation. The paper felt solid. As he traced his finger over it, the coarse surface felt far more real than last time. The feedback wasn’t like real paper quite yet. This couldn’t be the only improvement after adding those five points of Primordial Qi, though.

He put it down beside him. Let’s see how long you last.

You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

He echoed today’s fight, and the Filth Eating Ghouls jumped out.

As the first Ghoul let out a sound attack, he saw the other Ghouls in the periphery attack flinch. They moved with a dizzy gait, as if disoriented.

Their sound attack. It affects them too!

Yu Han hadn’t noticed before because he had been too focused on one Filth Eating Ghoul’s movements. Or perhaps he was too nervous?

Yu Han came up with a plan. The sound attack took somewhere from six to eleven Lifeforce points. If he could tank through it without losing focus, he could take advantage of their disorientation and wreak havoc.

He willed the mirage to move to the next sound attack.

Again, they’re dizzy.

Then the next one.

Enough data points. Yu Han nodded, satisfied. He went through the fight again. A few more points stood out.

They lived in literal excreta. Thinking logically, their olfactory senses would likely be subdued.

Can’t count on it, but let’s note it as a possibility. How Yu Han would make use of that possibility, he did not know.

He concentrated on their features next. Gaping maw, pointy teeth, jagged claws.

Definitely getting an infection if that punctures me. He could not afford to be injured. Losing Lifeforce was fine, but no actual physical harm was acceptable.

What is Lifeforce, anyway? That was a question he’d wondered about before He made a literal mental note on an echoed notebook to look more into it.

The interaction of Lifeforce loss was weird, too. In tonight’s fight, he was sure that none of the Ghouls’ attacks pierced through his armour. So why did he lose Lifeforce still?

Maybe the sound attack inflicted magical or Qi damage. Did normal attacks also have that?

Yu Han shook his head. He shouldn’t be pondering stuff with no clear answer yet.

Their eyes. No two creatures had eyes in the same position. Let’s try to confirm if they have bad vision.

Wen Liujie mentioned that the Ghouls preferred darkness. Preferred. Meaning it was a choice? So counting light as a large weakness was out.

But maybe they’re sensitive to it. Yu Han remembered Huang Niuniu’s power. He echoed the scene of her rampaging with the whip, trying to figure out if her light show had any effect.

Yu Han wasn’t an expert on Filth Eating Ghoul body language, though, so he couldn’t be sure. He made a note of a few movements, deciding to gather more data with more encounters.

He swiped away the mirage. Then he echoed his own movements.

It would be so much nicer if a life-sized Yu Han echo appeared. Instead, what appeared was the part of Yu Han’s body he could see in his own vision, and a vague grey cloud denoting the rest of his body. The disembodied limbs moved with the halberd as the Filth Eating Ghouls attacked.

I’m too set on trying to complete a variation.

When Yu Han started fighting, he would try to go through the offensive variation from start to finish, even though there was no need.

It wasn’t intentional. That was how he had practised for a month. It was muscle memory, the easiest thing to do.

He had to learn how to best choose the individual forms of the Ox Tail 72 Sweeping Forms.

He brought up the Art window.

[Ox Tail 72 Sweeping Forms]

Type: Martial

Grade: Elite Level 2

Mastery: Initial Step Level 1

True Qi: 42 (+41)/200

“Holy cow!” He jumped up. He’d gained 41 Arts True Qi!

Why? How? After a month of practice, he’d barely earned one. This was the first time he’d earned so much.

No. The first time he’d used Echoing Dreamscape—to echo the green meteor that blasted him to this world—he’d earned more Arts True Qi too.

Was it the actual use of the Art? The perilous situation? Fighting against monsters? In Xianxia stories, the protagonists would power up every time they went through a life-and-death fight, sometimes in the middle of those fights.

Yu Han wasn’t in a life-and-death fight. The danger wasn’t high. But maybe actual combat had virtue?

He went through the fight as many times as he could.

Let’s stick with the basic offensive stances.

Stone Cutting Chop. Heavy Ox Swing. Ox Horn Pierce.

When I pierced them, they got stuck on the halberd hook. He had to be careful of that.

As he pondered and brainstormed, his eyes became heavy.

Fuck. I forgot to check if the book disappeared.

He woke up to the sound of rain. Taking a herbal branch and some salt, he washed and rinsed his mouth thoroughly, then went to the attached outhouse and finished his business.

From his window, he could see a path leading to the proper Nest of Storm-Like Heroes. Another led down to Huang Niuniu’s house. Is she awake?

Yu Han stretched. The first few times he’d worked out without stretching, he couldn’t move afterwards. It was sheer luck that he didn’t rip a muscle.

The rain stopped. Sometimes it would last for hours, other times only a few minutes.

After warming up the legs, arms, torso, and neck, he took his halberd. The ground was wet, and in some places muddy. He hopped over a puddle, then took a stance in the middle of the grassy yard.

His feet were already wet. The wetness had bothered him at first., but he was used to it now.

Last time, I could do twenty-one Stone Cutting Chops before hitting my failure point.

Progressive Overload!

He started with a set of eight. It was easy. Then sixteen. Harder yet. His arms felt weak, a line of sweat already forming on his forehead. He started the third set.

Five… Eleven… Nineteen.

“Twenty. Twenty-one! Tweeenty-twooo!” He let the halberd drop. His muscles ached like they were on fire. He breathed in and out.

It felt good.

“Hahaha!” Personal record broken. He would write it in his notebook after the exercise.

Next, Heavy Ox Swing.

Yu Han devised a specific protocol for this. He would first drag the halberd, then swing it in one direction. Using the leftover momentum, he would swing it in another direction. He would continue this until he was tired or lost his balance.

It was training his brakes—the pulling motion. Most people trained the pushing motion just fine, but neglected the pull. It was paramount to keeping his balance. He didn’t want to accidentally tumble while in a fight.

“Let’s do this!”

Afterwards, he held the Mountain Root Stance for fifteen minutes. Stability and legs!

He did a hundred Swift Hoof Lunges. Cardio!

He finished with multiple sets of slow, methodical Ox Horn Pierces and Grass-Cutting Hooks. Cool down!

This was Yu Han’s routine now. With enough grit and sweat, weight and cardio, he was going to get his abs back!