Data-Driven Daoist

“There is nothing strange about it,” Shu Boyan said. “Perhaps I can impart you with this knowledge. It is nothing secret, and you don’t have a master to teach you. First, though, it’s best if we take our outfits off. In proper places of course. Young Li, that wasn’t---don’t rub the face-paint. There’s a special solution to dissolve it.”

“Tubs, you wanna wait or head off?” Li Yao asked even though he most certainly knew the answer.

“I don’t have anything urgent. I’m on Night Soil duty with Niu’er, but that’s a few hours away.”

Are you kidding me? A chant that moves essence? What? Why the hell would I leave before hearing an explanation?

If this was true, and it somehow worked, then... then...

Then what?

Yu Han waited, hopping from one foot to another. He must have looked like a hyperactive child, even though he tried his best to calm his mind.

He activated Synaptic Bloom.

Be at peace. There is no sound, no senses, no anxiety or inner turmoil. The mind follows the body, and if the body felt no tension, then how dare the mind?

It worked. Sort of. Thousand Petals Awareness intensified and muted senses. It did not calm stress directly. It wasn’t meditation.

But if he cultivated Calm Before the Storm Breathing Technique during Synaptic Bloom, the combination worked wonders.

Shu Boyan led Li Yao back from one of the courtyard houses. They were back in their sect robes.

Shu Boyan wore a similar azure-white robe to all other disciples. But on one side of his sleeves was the character Shu embroidered in white silk. From his waist-belt a token hung with the characters for ‘Demon Slayer’ in yellow strokes.

Shu clan.

Foundation-building.

And the Suppressing Demon hall.

Yu Han had already figured that Shu Boyan was from the Shu clan. It didn’t matter. Just because the five core clans hoarded a lot of resources did not mean that every member of those clans, even the peripheral ones, were sailing a smooth sea. In fact, one could argue that the internal competition in the clans was even worse than in the outer sect.

There were too many with the same surname. But too few Elders at the core formation or nascent soul realms. Too few spots to learn the core arts of the sect and clan.

Wen Liujie was from the Wen clan. Dong Tianlan was from the Dong, and Tan Ruoxuan was from the Tan. Excluding Dong Tianlan, the other two seemed to have normalish identities, despite being clan scions. They neither lorded over others nor received outsized favours. Yu Han knew that even as peripheral members, they would definitely benefit. But nowhere near as a core member.

Shu Boyan being in the foundation-building realm changed everything. He looked young, and although appearances did not perfectly denote age for cultivators, in the lower cultivation realms one’s longevity did not increase so much unlike what laypeople tales in the mortal cities claimed.

That meant Shu Boyan might have reached foundation building before the age limit. He might be a core disciple, like Duan Xiaolong and Zhang Jiyou. He might be even stronger than Feral Spot and Elder Chang! And unlike outer sect elders, core disciples had a smoother path to promotion.

Being part of the Suppressing Demon hall meant this Shu Boyan was a combat-focused cultivator whose main sect mission was to go out and battle demonic beasts and cultivators. His job and creed was to fight to the death and rid the world of impurities.

Suppressing Demon hall was one of the combat-focused halls alongside the Martial Command hall and the Vanguard hall.

They said that after the Shu clan lost control of the Law Enforcement hall, most, if not all, the Shu clan-affiliated enforcers, from the body-tempering realm to the nascent-soul realm, transferred to this hall.

The new sect master could not just kill them. He was going for orthodoxy, and massacring the camp that had supported the defeated contender for the sect master position would not only create death feuds with more than half of the sect, he’d be directly branded as a demonic cultivator and purified. That is, if the sect survived the ordeal.

Yu Han did not understand much of sect politics yet. He wanted to first establish a courtyard and then slowly dive into the muddy waters. He had a hunch it was inevitable with his MBTI.

Despite that, even he knew that the current hall masters of the Suppressing Demon, Vanguard, and Martial Command halls all had the surname Shu. They were the most battle-focused group of the sect, and probably had the strongest fist!

In fact, the previous sect master, who is the current sect master’s master, was also a Shu. The disgraced hall master of the Law Enforcement hall who was forcefully demoted to the Suppressing Demon hall was also a Shu. Both nascent souls. Sima Quanqing, Sima Yan’s cousin in the inner sect, was an indirect disciple of Shu Wangli, an inner sect core formation realm elder.

The Shu clan were the strongest of the five core clans. Suppressing Demon hall dined on demons that could kill off entire towns and cities on a regular basis.

And this Shu Boyan was a core disciple of that clan, and that hall.

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Yu Han hated that part of his mind immediately went to how he should milk this connection. He stopped himself. He wanted genuine connections built on trust. He would not be a brown-nose.

“Are all your troupe members part of the Suppressing Demon hall?” Yu Han asked. He didn’t want to act weird, and Shu Boyan had already shown he was fine with casual speech. But he needed to confirm something. “Li Yao is part of the Night Alchemists’ Yard. You can’t take him from us.”

That brought a smile to Shu Boyan’s lips. “A yard is not a hall, Junior Yu. Perhaps it would do you good to study up on it? Young Li, you make your friend jealous.”

“Don’t trust him,” Li Yao told Shu Boyan. “He’s scheming something.”

“I most certainly am not!” Yu Han was.

Shu Boyan burst into laughter. When he stopped, he flicked an arm towards a corridor leading deeper into the temple from the courtyard. He walked, and they followed. “Most, but not all, of my troupe mates are brothers and sisters of the Suppressing Demon hall. Some are from the Ritual hall too.”

Ritual hall? So there might be Liangs.

“You see, Junior Yu, this temple is a joint project between the Ritual hall and Suppressing Demon hall,” Shu Boyan explained. “When it comes to slaying evil, faith can be a fine weapon. When it comes to writing stories, a sword may become the pen in the correct hands.”

“That makes no sense,” Li Yao said.

“It does to those who know how to listen,” Shu Boyan replied.

Stop antagonizing a Shu clan core disciple, you dumb street-rat! Yu Han screamed internally.

“Though the elder enshrined here was once a Shu, his ghost has long passed. He had a divine title, but the divine court of Great Xia did not deign to offer more,” Shu Boyan continued. “His soul has long since scattered. Now, the spiritual energy of the faithful is harvested for proper use by Liang priests and array-masters. All the talismans, all the formations, all the work is in service to rid this world of evil. We do the work that gods should be doing. So we shall take the spiritual energy of faith, not them.”

They arrived at a chamber of the temple where a sect member in ceremonial robes moved an incense burner in front of a large cauldron. The cauldron seemed to be empty except for the smoke that lifted from the incense and swirled into the hollow. All around the central sect member and the cauldron, other disciples sat in seiza poses and chanted sutras with their eyes closed. The incense smoke seemed to carry with it a faint scent of honey and pigweed, a strange combination.

The central sect member rang a bell while still holding the incense. The others stopped chanting, opened their eyes, and took out brushes. Yu Han had just noticed that in front of each person, on the floor, was a sheet of array paper and ink tools. They dipped their brushes, and with slow, methodical strokes, began to draw script-arrays.

The incense smoke gathered around the disciples, their papers, and their brushes, seeming to sink into everything with each movement.

“They use their faith to bind the divine incense, their prayers are offered to the dao and the truest of divine forces. Their methods bind the faith of all the devotees that visit the temple, and the paper absorbs it along the guidance of their essence. Other than the deacon, the rest are in the qi-gathering realm. They can barely move essence at will. They cannot even see it in their dao records. Hence they use the deacon’s essence and the talisman drawing artefacts to channel their own. The arrays are potent anti-demon weapons. You would bleed from the head if you knew how much they cost to produce, and how many we go through on each mission.”

They moved on, this time heading back towards the outer temple square. As they walked, they saw more disciples. Some from the inner sect, some from the outer. There were elders, stewards, and deacons, and travellers and traders. Disparate identities they might have had, here in the centrum, most were more like denizens offering their prayers either fueled by superstition or want or agendas or emotions.

“The gods are few. Fewer are the dutiful divines. The Suppressing Demon hall disciples cannot be everywhere,” Shu Boyan said. “The world is vast. Far vaster than you can imagine. We can protect the peninsula. Less perfectly so, we can patrol some of the major cities of the archipelago down south and the minor island nations and kingdoms around the peninsula. We send equally few disciples to the one good prefecture we are entitled to in the Lower Bounds Province of Great Xia, though soon more will be sent to the other one. Of course, the islands, kingdoms, and Great Xia have their own cultivator families, sects, palaces, and institutes. They do their own patrols. Wars even. Yet demons still show up. Why?”

Neither Li Yao nor Yu Han could answer.

“Because there are too many mortals,” Shu Boyan said. “Billions of them. So what’s the solution? Should we kill them off?”

Yu Han paled.

But Li Yao just looked confused. “So we really were a demonic sect in disguise?”

“What do you mean, ‘really’?” Shu Boyan said. “That was meant to agitate you into giving stupid answers. Not some admittance of conspiracy.”

“Ah, no. There’s this rumour in the marketplace that the sect needs demons to refine this and that pill.”

“How utterly preposterous. What are the Law Enforcement hall doing? Where did you hear that rumour?”

Li Yao shrugged and named names. Of people and places.

“We stray from the topic. But it’s important to squash such rumours in the bud. We are aiming for orthodoxy, or so the sect master claims at least. What his orthodoxy is, even he barely knows. Still, we are not a demonic sect, and we do not condone genocides. Our creed stands to protect humanity from evil, whether that is man, heaven, or beast,” Shu Boyan said. “To go back to the topic of mortals, their population numbers in the billions. There are nowhere near enough cultivators, let alone demon slayers to protect them. Their very desires, murky as they are because of the grand suffering that is life, creates demons and demonic cultivators like mushrooms after autumn rain. Do you know how many buffoons risk their very soul to cultivate with monster cores directly? Too m any to count. Demons are not the only threat either. There are all manner of monsters and ghosts, spirits and apparitions that do anything from playing harmless pranks to going on murderous rampages. So why haven’t mortals been wiped out yet? Why can villages still survive in isolated mountains?”

“Because mortals can defeat monsters, demons, ghosts, and apparitions by themselves.” Yu Han didn’t want to say the answer was obvious. That might offend the senior brother in his theatrics.

“Correct, Junior Yu, though I must admit it pains me you did not get the answer wrong first,” Shu Boyan said. “The stronger fiends still need a cultivator to help kill. A weaker monster just needs a few good stabs. A strong mortal martial artist with a lifetime’s worth of experience can, many a time, best body-tempering and even qi-gathering cultivators and beasts. Despite having unawakened spirit roots, their mortal blades can slash through the ethereal bodies of ghosts. Amazing is their vigour, don’t you think? Whether they know it or not, they too walk the dao. But what if they aren’t a strong martial artist? How can they defend themselves against all manner of unseen, unslashable, untouchable evil?”

“... mortals also have qi, lifeforce, and essence, don’t they?” Yu Han went straight to the heart of the matter.

Shu Boyan snapped his fingers. “Indeed they do. As do all living beings ever to have lived. They may not be cultivators, so they cannot move their spiritual energies directly. But just like bloodline and mortal martial arts can indirectly move lifeforce and qi, there exist methods that even mortals can use to move essence. They come in many names. Chants, sutras, hymns, divine invocations, shamanic curses and ritualised blessings. And with them, even mortals can impose their feeble intentions upon the world.”