Data-Driven Daoist

Arts did not have trials. Whether it wasn’t needed or the dao didn’t deign to bestow it was a matter of debate. Yu Han’s many books had no answer, only conjectures.

One of those conjectures was that an art, to grade up in mastery, needed an epiphany.

What that epiphany was, no one knew. But it was agreed that for most lower-level arts, it would come with enough study, practice, and real usage.

Epiphany meant change.

Many arts were limited by their grade. elite-grade usually meant the limit was the 2nd tier in mastery. But with epiphanies, one could redesign the art to better match the practitioner. To grade it up. To break it apart. To rediscover it anew, or even cut away the needless parts of the art to refine it! For some, it meant combining different arts into one. For others, it meant splitting an art into many. Though how one did that with bloodline arts, Yu Han had no idea.

Maybe it’s like auxiliary arts? Echoing Dreamscape only appeared because I have Existential Anchor and Deep Sleep. Hmm, Qi Affinity went up quite a bit. Is it because of Inner Awareness?

The trait’s true qi sat at 103. Elder Chang did mention it would go up rapidly as he got the practice in. It would stabilise around the same true qi as Qi Affinity. After that… there were many things.

It sucks not having a dedicated mentor.

The ‘many things’ were mostly many headaches for now, so Yu Han shook his imaginary head and got to work.

He echoed the brush. It appeared in his hand as if rendered by glitching polygons. It felt strangely unreal, even though he tightly grasped it. Trying to spin it as if he were pen spinning worked only when he tried it with his right hand. For the left hand, the illusory brush fell right through after two or three revolutions.

Even after so long and so many levels in Echoing Dreamscape, echoed objects refused to bend to Yu Han’s will. The megalomaniac part of him wanted to complain.

Yu Han opened one of the cabinets filled with memory pearls. Empty ones.

He dispelled the echoed brush.

“Here goes nothing,” Yu Han held the memory pearl between the thumb, index, and middle finger and concentrated.

Ouff…

He could sense the essence leaving his reserves, followed by qi and lifeforce.

[Lifeforce - 21]

Wait a minute.

Memorycasting did not cost qi or lifeforce!

But he just did.

Was this dangerous?

Yu Han focused on the feeling of Echoing Dreamscape doing its magic in the pearl. Slowly, the hue of the pearl changed to a lime green. A mirage of a stone appeared in it.

Yu Han couldn’t project the object. He wanted to go search for his crab in the crabscape soon.

It was a glowstone. He had done it on a whim.

Yu Han had to chide himself. It should have been obvious to check if memorycast objects with arrays still worked in the dreamscape! Why hadn’t he?

Because I was dumb, that’s why.

Did it cost qi and lifeforce because it had arrays? Or was it some other property? Usually, objects with more esoteric properties were used as array-mediums and canvases. Normal stones would work for a glowstone, but the sect used a type that seemed to hold spiritual energy better. The stone could passively absorb the ambient energy and then release it as light when activated. The absorption rate was quite low, even lower than a level 1 rookie’s.

Yu Han took out more pearls.

He memorycast a brush.

[Lifeforce - 48]

“Holy... No wait, this could be useful?” He had some ideas but decided to file them away for later.

Yu Han memorycast two spirit stones. He tried to do a whole pouch, but that wasted a bunch of essence without anything happening. It did not cost qi or lifeforce, as if the process never truly activated.

The Inner Awareness trait was already paying dividends. Without it, Yu Han wouldn’t know for sure that memorycasting cost essence and qi, even though the lifeforce notifications could clue him in.

Did this mean he couldn’t memorycast too complex objects? Or objects with disparate spiritual energy signatures? Or… what? He was able to memorycast his past-life Seiko watch even though it had burst into flames. So he hadn’t tried to memorycast any other complex past-life objects.

Looking around, the only complex objects from his current life that he had memorycast were the shelves and cabinets. Then there were the books.

I guess the halberd and coveralls are pretty—

“Wait a minute, do the coveralls have arrays?” Yu Han did not know. But he did have to bind them with blood, and they were elite-grade!

He had already memorycast them once during the fight with the Ghost Dreams Parasitic Fireworm.

He rummaged through the cabinets until he found the corresponding pearls.

He needed Fei Rui to project them.

I remember losing lifeforce during that fight, but I had never received the notification. Come to think of it, I was never really directly hit by that worm. I was just flung around, but didn’t take damage.

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So was that lifeforce cost from the memorycasting? It should have still given him a notification. Maybe he was just distracted?

Yu Han memorycast three mortal-grade spirit stones into three separate pearls.

[Lifeforce -119]

“Fark.” Each spirit stone took different amounts of essence, qi, and lifeforce. Was it random or did he just suck at it?

Memorycasting didn’t show up as an actual art. Neither did Synaptic Bloom. These were kind of like derivative arts of Echoing Dreamscape and Thousand Petals Awareness.

What made an art, an art?

Why didn’t Memorycasting and Synaptic Bloom count as epiphanies?

Huang Niuniu’s dancing technique showed up as a martial art when she had used the DIY ribbon-whips.

But arrays did not show up as an art, even though I succeeded at drawing them.

This wasn’t the first time Yu Han had noticed the dao being inconsistent.

Right now, he was too weak to delve into its mysteries. Maybe one day, he might become strong enough.

Yu Han took the memorycast pearls, along with the ones with the coverall parts, and headed into the crabscape tunnel.

He found Fei Rui in the Tunnel of Fei Rui’s Stash.

“What’re you doing?” Yu Han asked.

「I’m writing my will, but I can’t write.」

Fei Rui was holding a stick in his pincer and dragging it on the tunnel floor.

“Do you know what a will is?”

「When I die, I want Yu Han to eat me like we promised. But without official documentation, what if Soft Niuniu challenges your claim? Will is the thing that stops her.」

“…well, you’re not wrong. Can you project these, please?”

「What’s the magic word?」

“I already said please.”

「Oh.」

Fei Rui projected the objects.

A talisman brush, three spirit stones, a glowstone, and all the coverall parts.

「Are we fighting? Why do you want to wear the stink-shell?」

“I won’t wear it. I want to check if it has any arrays.”

It had arrays. Between the seams and places where the coverall parts attached to each other. There were arrays on the helmet, and on the gloves too.

The array on the helmet was definitely wind elemental. He recognized the central character. Maybe it kept the smell away?

It was all too complex, and most of these arrays were script-based.

But strangely, Yu Han saw a lot of shape-arrays too.

Who makes these coveralls? Yu Han would need to find out.

After Yu Han put on the coverall, correctly attaching the joints, the arrays in each part joined together. He didn’t know if that made it a formation. What he did know was that script-arrays, unlike shape-arrays, favoured complete objects without any artificial joints.

Spears and swords made from one whole part rather than many different modules joined together like the coverall or mortal weapons. If not, it was recommended to use alchemical processes to merge disparate parts into one first, before applying the array,

With such structures, it was easier to draw script-arrays on them, and even apply some transformation so that the array need not be drawn with mechanical precision.

One of the major advantages shape-arrays had over the other types was that it could, in fact, be drawn with a modular design in mind.

But just because it was easier to make modular designs with shape-arrays, did not mean it favoured them. In fact, it worked just as well with non-modular objects. Did that make them flexible or specialised?

If modular designs aren’t an active disadvantage though… can I do something with my halberd?

Yu Han attached the memorycast spirit stone to the memorycast brush. He drew one of the shape-array for light on the rimstone dam that acted as Fei Rui’s stash. It was filled with ocean debris and other knick-knacks the crab brought back from the tunnel that led to the dreamsea.

Yu Han succeeded in his third try. Drawing a shape on uneven rock was not easy.

The array glowed, and Fei Rui poked it. It went out.

「Aww.」

“Aww.”

Yu Han awwed because even in the dreamscape, drawing the array cost essence. Memorycasting cost qi and lifeforce in addition to essence.

So no unlimited power. Or rather, unlimited spiritual energy to practice forever.

That wouldn’t have been efficient in any case. Since the muscle memory did not carry over.

Yu Han kept practicing. The fact that the array activated meant that the memorycast array on the brush could extract spiritual energy from the memorycast spirit stone. And that meant…. so many things!

Besides, unlike with the waking realm, there seemed to be one other major advantage here.

Drawing complex shapes took a certain kind of willpower. The texts explained it as how much essence at a time could Yu Han move throughout his pathways, and if his mind and pathways were strong enough to withstand the mental strain.

In the waking realm, it took a while to recover after the headache. Here though, it barely took any time. He still had to quit when the headache got too bad.

But he could try again.

And again.

The pain did not remain.

“Deep Writhing Clam is supposed to be a more common bloodline in these parts, right? Why the hell is it still considered trash?”

He knew the answer. It was the synergy he had with Echoing Dreamscape that made all this possible. And what made Echoing Dreamscape possible was his Existential Anchor trait.

Yu Han had a hunch that he only had that trait because of his transmigration.

After drawing around a hundred successful arrays, lighting up Fei Rui’s whole cave in the soft glow of shapes, Yu Han felt he was at the end of his essence.

「Before you go back, take these coconut shells. You can turn them into paper and draw on them.」

“How?”

「I can bring the shells outside and you make paper out of them. Then after you draw, I can bring the paper inside the dreamscape again? Or, uhh, maybe only the paper will come in and not the ink so it’s pointless. I wanted decorations!」

“That’s not a bad idea,” Yu Han pondered. If he used his Inkwell ink, could it bring the drawn papers inside with the ink? Or he could just draw on the paper inside his dreamscape. “How do you know we can bring the paper inside?”

「Paper is just mashed-up and dried tree corpses, right? Wrong? Oh, do they add anything to it other than water? Oh, maybe it won’t work. I can’t bring outside coconuts to the inside unless it’s a special coconut. But those are tasty so I usually eat them.」

It was an idea worth exploring!

“I can’t bring the shells outside though. It’s better if you keep them and give them to me in reality.”

「Silly Yu Han. This is also reality. Just a sleeping one.」

Fei Rui shooed him away and went back to writing his will, even though he didn’t know how to write. Yu Han still had one coconut shell, the crab wouldn’t scuttle for it otherwise.

Yu Han returned to his clamscape.

He would cultivate. And the next day, wake up in the real world with a tank full of essence.

He didn’t know if it was because his initial heavenly allocation was mind, but he regenerated his essence at a really fast rate. Maybe the dreamscape had something to do with it?

Lifeforce would never recover fully in one night, but qi sometimes did. He only figured the case with essence and qi after he got the Inner Awareness trait though.

He knew Fang Zhao and Huang Niuniu recovered lifeforce far faster than him. For them, using their bloodline arts and even training their body would cost lifeforce. They both had a far bigger reserve than him too!

Cheaters!

Before cultivating, there was one more thing Yu Han wanted to do.

He willed the tendril to come down. It slithered perfectly to his will. He held up the coconut shell and laid part of the tendril on it. He carefully guided part of its length to form a perfect circle and with the rest, shaped and looped the tendril to make the self-imitating component in the middle.

In the original shape-array, the shapes were connected only in specific points of the drawing. But because the tendril was one continuous length of rope, and he couldn’t cut it to discrete pieces, there were areas on the coconut shell where the tendril touched itself that the shape-array didn’t.

But that wasn’t a problem.

Yu Han could will ink to come out only through specific parts of the tendril, and not the whole length.

With a blink, the shape-array for light was stamped on the coconut shell. It was nearly perfect, the proportions just about right, only the width of the tendril causing some mistakes in a few places.

But it was more precise than Yu Han drawing with his hand.

He felt a tiny amount of essence slip away…

…but the array did not light up.