Data-Driven Daoist

“Nope,” Yu Han said.

The crab froze. It jumped, all its protrusions retracting back into its boxy body, which fell with a thump.

I’m not going into some strange crab space! Yu Han thought. Was he a fool? What if he got stuck there? What if his psyche got trapped in a crab’s body, his real body lying comatose? A million different things could go wrong.

More importantly…

Yu Han sat back down to meditate again, closing his eyes. That experience was shocking. Meditating with the Cultivation Art had an effect Yu Han had never seen before, even when he’d cultivated his Psychic Art, Auxiliary Art, or Martial Art.

Click.

Yu Han peeked. The crab retracted its claw.

“Do you want something?”

No reply. It was just a box. He closed his eyes again. Better to meditate.

Click click. Yu Han opened his eyes, fuming. After some questioning, he got nothing, so he sat back down to meditate again.

Click click click.

“You little—you’re doing this on purpose!” Yu Han shouted.

It just plonked there, no movements.

“Be quiet. I have to meditate.” Yu Han closed his eyes. In his heart, he was expecting a click. But nothing happened for a while. Did it learn its lesson?

Good. He took a breath. One. Five—

Click click click click.

“That’s it, you little orange—” Yu Han jumped up and stomped to the crab-box, cursing. He picked it up, about to shove it inside its hole. With it here, he’d never be able to meditate.

When he’d shoved the crab halfway through the hole, Yu Han realized something.

His hand had crossed the threshold too.

“Fuck.” He let go of the crab. But it was too late.

A small suction dragged at him. It was weak, really, like a gentle breeze. But strangely, it was enough to bring him through.

Behind him, the wall closed.

“I messed up,” Yu Han muttered, sitting down. The ground on this side was wet, like the inside of a coastal cave. “I got tricked by a crab.”

The heinous villain in question scurried about around a stalagmite. Its eight legs splashed water from puddles, distorting the reflection of the light source above.

Yu Han looked up.

Rays of light, like that of the stars and moon on a cloudless sky, pierced through the stalactite-covered ceiling from little holes. As he stared up, water dripped on his face. It was cold, the feeling of it far more real than anything he had ever conjured.

The ground under his feet was coarse, cold stone—slippery, damp, covered in strange moss and algae.

“What is this place?” Yu Han stood up, using a stalagmite to steady himself. He took one step after another, careful not to slip.

Click. The crab pointed deep into the cave with its pincers.

Who knew what would happen if he hurt himself in another being’s territory? The cool air of the cave failed to calm his beating heart.

Too careless. I gotta get out. He had taken the crab for a fool. Now look at him, lured in by cute acting.

The wall behind, which should have led to his dreamscape, was now coastal cave stone. Water dripped from hairline-thin cracks into a puddle below. He punched it, then kicked it.

It wouldn’t budge.

Should I stay here? He could wait until he naturally woke up. But again, what if he got stuck? Should I keep trying to break the wall? His gut told him it was a fool’s errand.

The crab walked from one stalagmite to another, knocking against them as if checking its territory. Its other pincer still held the blue pearl.

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It clicked, then blew bubbles out of its mouth. It kept pointing deeper into the cave.

“Fine then, have it your way. If something goes wrong, Niu’er won’t forgive you. She’ll tell the Sect.” Yu Han tried to sound menacing.

The crab clicked. One eye-stalk was focused on Yu Han, while the other moved around like a windmill, as if looking for something. It crawled between two stalagmites, then picked up a pearl.

It held the shiny orb in front of its eyes. The orange pupil-like flame inside those obsidian stalks narrowed. It walked forward.

He knew ghost crabs could move in all directions, but didn’t they still favour sideways walking?

The crab tapped against the rocky walls a few times, as if in reply.

After a while, they reached the end of the cave. There was a cavernous area with a pond in the middle, where transparent water shimmered light blue. Photon specks rose from the pond, then disappeared into nothingness.

The crab dropped both the blue pearl and the normal one into the pond. Then it did a dance—hopping up and down, clicking its pincers in front of its body one by one.

The bottom of the pond was visible from where Yu Han stood. It was filled with pearls. Hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands of pearls stacked one atop the other. Like grains of sand on a lake bed.

Only one of them was blue.

The crab got to its feet, then did a crab bow. With a plop, a few more pearls materialized around it. It hurriedly gathered them, then threw them in the pond again.

It then took out half a coconut shell from somewhere. It scooped out some water, taking great care not to touch the pond directly. It then came before Yu Han, holding the coconut shell up.

“You want me to drink the water?” Yu Han asked.

The crab threw it at him, completely soaking his in-dream clothes. Yu Han remained silent.

Before he could curse, the crab walked around him, back the way they came.

“Wait here! You’re gonna be my dinner!” Yu Han chased after the little bastard. He’d been played a fool one too many times!

Wait, don’t be hasty! Listen to what the data says—

“Fuck the data!” he yelled. The sound echoed in the cave tunnel. The wet clothes stuck to his body uncomfortably.

This was a dreamscape. He could easily echo dry ones. He tried.

It didn’t work.

Yu Han ground to a halt. Calm down. I’m not in my own territory now. This is the crab’s dreamscape. Crabscape? He was being led around by a noose, but it was still safest not to antagonize the master of the realm. The first priority was to get out safely.

The crab had long disappeared from view. Yu Han trudged back down the eerie path until he was at the start again.

The crab was there. So was the human-sized hole back to Yu Han’s dreamscape. The crab clicked, eye-stalks dancing up and down one by one.

Yu Han dashed through the hole, jumping and falling with a roll onto his own dreamscape floor.

“I’m back!” he yelled. He turned to the crab, still in the hole. “Hey buddy, come here. I got a surprise for you.” He echoed an iron maiden, then a pot of boiling water, a seafood cracker, and finally a crab pick. “I won’t hurt you. Swear to Jesus.”

The crab clicked. It spun around three and a half times, its eight legs moving like clockwork. The little movement ended with its back at Yu Han’s face.

Yu Han echoed a stick. “You like playing fetch, don’t you? Come here, you snivelling little—”

The hole vanished.

“Fucker.”

Yu Han threw the stick.

That crab’s bad news. Yu Han decided to echo traps and weapons the next time he was in the dreamscape. If the crab appeared again, he would catch it, boil it, then eat it without sharing with Huang Niuniu.

But won’t it just forget what happened today? Yu Han clicked his tongue. Doesn’t matter. It played with the pearls for quite a while. I’ll just lure it in with—

“You gotta be kidding me,” he gasped out. His fingers tapped against his thigh anxiously.

All the pearls had turned blue. There were hundreds of them. Before, it would take a few days for the pearls to complete their transformation. Now, not a single normal one was left. Not even the ones the crab had poofed into existence today.

The pearls were scattered all over that part of the dreamscape. They were something Yu Han couldn’t echo away even if he tried.

Wait, does that mean that if the crab keeps materializing pearls in my dreamscape, then one day it will be full of pearls? He panicked. How the hell was he going to practice his Arts, or even move?

Calm down. Gather them first. Baby steps. Yu Han echoed a bamboo basket, then put the pearls in it. After about half an hour, he was almost done. There were already 159 pearls in the basket, with three more lying about.

He picked one up and placed it in the basket.

Memory: 22 -> 23

[Mind Origin: 16.13 -> 16.60]

The basket full of blue pearls disappeared. Yu Han’s mind crashed and refused to work for a while.

“So let me get this straight. You’re a crab that loses its memories daily. You leave strange pearls in my dreamscape, then when they turn blue and reach a sufficient number, they grant me a stat in memory?”

Yu Han breathed in and out. That reminds me, I need to check what that cultivation session did.

But if he checked now, he’d be distracted. He couldn’t be distracted. The crab was taking up all his attention! He threw the cultivation anomaly out of his mind and conjured a pen and paper.

“Crab pearls gradually turn blue and seem to have a… mirage in them? Mirage.” Yu Han tapped the notepad. “The keyword here is ‘memory.’” He organized the data. “It’s not a mirage, it’s a memory? I got a point in it. The crab loses it. Is it giving me its points? Why? How? Can it visit other beings’ dreams? It does! The Four Meditations seemed to mention something similar.”

As he spoke, the speed at which he jotted down the words became faster. It would be fine if the mirage of the notebook vanished—just writing it down helped him remember.

“First of all, I won’t be drowning—literally—in pearls if the crab decides to stick around. I’ll just get more points in Memory—fingers crossed. I only got the point when enough pearls turned blue. My Memory stat went from 22 to 23, but the number of blue pearls in the basket was 160.” Yu Han eyed the two that remained. One had a mirage of the crab digging a sandbox Yu Han had echoed. The other showed it tasting a mirage of Deep Sea’s Vitality’s Spite. “What is the significance of that number? Why did the two blue pearls remain?”

There was another important question.

“Why did so many pearls turn blue this time so fast? What happened?” Yu Han’s smile grew larger. “Why did the crab take me into its crabscape? Why did it throw the pearls in the pond? What is… what is a dreamscape?” He looked around in wonder, the smile on his face turning into a grin.

It was all data. And he was going to find out all those “whys,” even if he had to brute force it. He hadn’t had this much fun in months!

He woke up to the sound of rain, and the first thing he did was open his Dao records.