Data-Driven Daoist

If this tendril gets damaged somehow, will I lose lifeforce? There was no way to test that.

Or…

Was there?

He moved the tendril around erratically, through the bed, the unlit brazier, the ground. No matter what it hit, lifeforce didn’t drop nor did he do any damage.

It didn’t seem to cost any qi or essence either; none of the spiritual energies. Maybe he had to hit a monstrous beast?

Can it go through anything, though?

An idea came to his mind. Could he inject ink into another being’s brain directly?

That would… be interesting.

He tried it out, first with a bowl of water.

It was a success. He could release ink when the tendril went into the water from the water’s surface. When the tendril entered the water through the bottom of the clay bowl, however, it seemed to take more essence, almost ten times more! It felt as if he was squeezing ink through a narrow opening.

When the ink did get released, the part of the tendril on the water-side of the bowl lost its form. It became blurry as if dissolving into tinier strands, and automatically retracted back until the tendril was fully outside.

Looking closely, ink did not, in fact, get released. It had merely been a phantom feeling.

Yu Han tried it out a few more times. He could resist when the tendrils retracted, but there was a mental strain. It kind of felt like how one’s body would resist if someone tried to bite their own finger off.

Some kind of limiter in the brain? Or the soul?

Yu Han swayed the tendril in mid-air. The tendril’s body was slightly thicker at the base and thinner at the tip. It didn’t have the same physics as a whip, unlike what he had first assumed.

He could suspend it perfectly straight as if it were a rod without any extra strain. The longest he could extend the tendril was a bit more than one and a half metres. Though it was called a tendril, it didn’t look at all like a plant appendage, nor a cephalopod tentacle. It was smooth like a cord. No suction cup-like suckers, nor did it spiral around itself in a coil automatically. Although when materialising it, it did look as if it were uncoiling. Though the rhythm was never uniform. It spiralled out in unpredictable patterns, striking out vertically one moment and horizontally the next, usually settling into a tangled mix of both planes.

He banished the tendril and stood up straight, concentrating on the area beside the crest of his head. The tendril materialised there and fell down all the way to his toes.

It was almost exactly as long as Yu Han. He could materialise it from anywhere within seven or eight centimetres of his body. If he concentrated, that distance increased.

What the hell is it, really? Yu Han had an idea where its ink came from, but no idea what it was.

He couldn’t inject ink into solid matter. Like with the bowl, it just wouldn’t come out. It was like trying to pump a hose even though it was clamped down under a car wheel.

He tried injecting ink into metal first, a silver tael. Then stone, a random pebble from his yard. Finally, with wood, there seemed to be some progress. But the essence cost skyrocketed.

Is it on the molecular scale? Does it cost more when the ink needs to come out in tiny enough quantities to fill in the minute gaps between wood fibres? Does it mean if I want to spray ink, it would cost extra?

Yu Han split the piece of firewood. It was stained, ever so faintly, with ink down the middle.

He then sprayed ink in mid-air. It worked, kind of? A bit sprayed, the rest flowed out like—

Yu Han’s face fell. It’s like I’m peeing… Maybe the spraying would get better with practice and more levels to the art.

He tried to inject ink into some plants outside his hut. No luck. Let alone a living tree, he couldn’t inject ink inside even a leaf or a stalk of grass. And the moment he tried, the tendril would retract.

So, no insta-kill cheat. Bummer. I wanted a death punch.

「Yu Han! I bring you what you asked for. Please don’t make it feel pain, and if you do, tell me why you thought it was worth the malice.」

“Buddy, science needs sacrifice.”

Yu Han took the frog. It was a cute thing; small, the size of his thumbnail, with brownish skin and small bumps on it. He held the slimy creature. It tried to jump away but Yu Han didn’t let it.

He made the tendril go into the creature. It did. Ink? No luck. The moment he tried to inject, he felt a sting and the tendril jumped out.

This time, the barrier felt more tangible. As if there were a firewall blocking Yu Han from messing with the poor frog, and it literally burnt him the moment he did.

Was it the frog’s own spiritual energy? Or something more esoteric like a soul?

The frog ribbited. It bit his finger, but it didn’t have enough force to even nick one lifeforce.

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It looked kind of annoyed.

And scared.

Yu Han splashed its butt with the ink. Then its back. Finally, the tendril was less than a millimetre away from the frog’s eye.

Splash.

Ribbit!

“Sorry,” Yu Han felt bad. He squeezed the frog’s mouth open and navigated the tendril inside. He could inject ink. The cost was a bit higher than normal, but not ten times as much like before.

So even if he found an unobstructed way inside another living creature’s body, it would still cost more to inject ink? Did they have some sort of… domain of authority? Yu Han couldn’t find a better term for it. Domain of existence?

More tests.

If the tendril passed through the frog’s ‘cheek,’ he couldn’t release even a drop.

I should try with inert meat. He could butcher the frog.

The frog was terrified. It kept croaking. Fei Rui’s observing eyes felt heavy on his back. The amphibian was helpless.

Yu Han felt bad; he really did. The more he stared at it, the more his guts twisted.

Okay, no butchering cute creatures today.

But science.

He trapped the frog in a clay vat.

The frog had eaten some of the ink. Yu Han would check if it was alive later.

I… am I an animal abuser? Wait! On Earth, the difference between abusing an animal and not was a licence. This is science. Science! Johan would have laughed his ass off if he saw me squirming like this. Ugh, I guess people did need to learn how to handle the animal ‘humanely’ to get the licence. There would have been rules and regulations and… ethical constraints.

After thinking for a while, he caught some bugs and put them in the vat, too. It wouldn’t repay the bullying, but he hoped it would at least keep the thing fed.

「Science is scary. Is it built on top of the suffering of others?」

“That and so much more.”

「To cause another harm for any personal gain, is it science, too?」

“Good question. When Fei Rui eats a shrimp, small writhers, bugs, and clams, do you think they feel pain? Are they harmed?”

「Do algae and trees feel pain? Do rocks?」

“Do they now?”

「I can think on it! Thanks, Yu Han. You are the best Yu Han but I haven’t met any other.」

Fei Rui pondered the question while his legs scuttled towards the stash in the yard.

Ever since the crab had built a longer stockpile of memories, it had turned more contemplative. The change was slow, so Yu Han had taken longer to notice it. Was this the original Fei Rui, lost because of a loss of memories? Or was it a completely different evolution of personality based on stashing new memories?

Back inside, Yu Han lit a candle. It was made of monster fat, a cheap commodity. Most people used glowstones, but live fire came in handy with different tasks.

He navigated the tendril to touch the flame. The fire scorched!

“Ouch!” The tendril retracted faster than before, as if literally singed.

No, it was singed. Part of it flaked off.

[Lifeforce - 11].

That wasn’t too bad. More lifeforce left from inside his body and mended the damaged tendril. It was good to know that it regenerated.

It can be hurt. And it has nerves?!

The pain felt more spiritual than that. Not exactly like hurting his flesh, but similar enough. If it had nerves, Yu Han would have liked it to be able to feel stuff, like with touch, and send some kind of feedback. Perhaps even boost the feedback with Thousand Petals Awareness.

It couldn’t.

Come to think of it, don’t octopuses taste with their tentacles, too? That would be freaky. If he could attack directly with the tendril in the future, that would be the same as licking his enemies.

Yu Han checked inside himself with the Inner Awareness trait.

Out of his three innate spiritual energies, essence felt like it had the most quantity, almost twice as much as lifeforce, maybe even more! Qi, he had the least of; half as much as his lifeforce.

Although Yu Han could feel the three spiritual energies distinctly, it wasn’t like they were fully disparate. Here and there throughout his body, mainly centred around the three confluences at his head, heart, and navel, they mixed. These spots were called the dantians. They had individual names, but Yu Han forgot. Funny, how even with high memory points, it wasn’t as if he suddenly had eidetic recollection.

The three spiritual energies would mix sometimes fully, sometimes not. There were too many changes.

It was hard to keep track of.

Essence had a cool feeling. Lifeforce was hot. Qi felt warm, somewhere in between the two? It wasn’t really temperature. Yu Han was approximating the sensations because he had no other ways to describe them. It was like tasting a new sound, touching a new colour.

After all the experimenting, essence was down about a quarter. Moving the tendril didn’t cost anything, but materialising it and squirting ink did.

He had enough left for his nightly dreamscape practice.

After cleaning up, he lay down on the bed. One breath at a time, he concentrated on Thousand Petals Awareness.

It was now like a mental button. He didn’t need the accompanying mantra most of the time. He would will it, and his senses would increase or decrease their intensity. One moment, the flower meadow would bloom, the next it would wilt. With more levels to the art, he could now visualise each sense with different flowers. Though each still had a touch of green here and there.

All fell to black.

Then, his mind slipped away from the waking realm.

He appeared in the white clamscape, the dreamscape.

After the second bloodline awakening, it had grown larger, perhaps three or four times. It was hard to calculate the exact volume of the non-uniformly shaped space.

The memorycast furniture remained in its respective places. The space between them had enlarged. Of the clamscape floor, the soft, squishy parts had moved to a more uniform distribution towards the two areas; one stayed on the floor, while the other seemed to have moved to the ceiling. The hard parts covered most of the floor, so it was easier to move about.

The mirror-like portal didn’t grow. It was still about a metre wide, and directly under the umbo.

An anomaly had appeared near the hinge. There, lines of black crisscrossed as if they were roots of a vine growing into a building. Following the black lines up to the ceiling, Yu Han saw an obsidian black orb. It looked like a pearl, but it hung from the ceiling from more black lines that grew out of its body. One line fell down, transparent.

It was the Inkwell Tendril.

And the orb was the ink-sac.

He could feel the ink inside. If he concentrated, he could sense a slow, rhythmic, pulsating beat. He saw it both as a visual ripple and a touch of thrumming vibration through the entire clamscape.

The first time he saw it, he had freaked out. But now, he simply accepted it as part of his power.

The changes to his dreamscape weren’t fully reflected in any of his stats, so to speak. Not in his origin points, arts, or traits. The ink-sac and the tendril were of course part of the changes brought about by Inkwell Tendril. But what of the expanded size? Could that be explained by the true qi gained in Deep Writhing Clam Bloodline? Yu Han didn’t think so. Mistress Miao did say that the second bloodline awakening was something different from merely progressing a stage.

He sat down on a memorycast zabuton. Eyes closed, looking inside with his inner vision. He was already nothing but a mental construct in a dream, so looking inside was nothing if not meta. Inside of inside.

But here, where nothing was material, Inner Awareness showed him the most.

The entire clamscape was made of hundreds of different kinds of spiritual energies. Though essence seemed to number the most. There was an outer layer of lifeforce, and qi wriggled around the insides. The other types Yu han had no clue about. But all of them interacted with the innate spiritual energies. Some more directly, they melted right it. Others more passively, mixing but never joining.

A tunnel-like feature led from part of the clamshell to somewhere far away. It started from where the opening to Fei Rui’s crabscape was.

He turned his gaze towards the mirror portal.