Data-Driven Daoist

Yu Han held a sack of waterstones and a shovel. It was a clean one from the shed, not the one they used to shovel shit, though it might have been used for that purpose in the past.

“Hiss.” Feral Spot glided across the yard like a snake, surveying the masterwork Fei Rui had dug all day.

The pit was massive. As deep as a pond. Fei Rui rested at the very bottom.

Feral Spot turned to Yu Han and hissed.

Fei Rui replied instead of his human.

“It’s vandalism for a good cause,” Yu Han agreed with his crab. “Senior Feral Spot, can you leave your tracks surrounding the hole? Having blessings from a spirit beast as great as you will surely grant my cute little Fei Rui good luck.”

Feral Spot released a proud hiss and complied.

Good. Evidence planted. Now, if anyone asks, we can blame this stupid worm.

Yu Han excavated ten smaller pits surrounding the hole and placed two waterstones in each. They produced water, which poured into the larger basin through ten narrow inlets.

Fei Rui had expanded to his largest form, the size of a minitruck. The crater still dwarfed him.

Hours passed.

Feral Spot thumped the waterstones occasionally, coaxing a heavier gush of water.

These weren’t the normal waterstones but higher-grade ones the worm had stolen from somewhere. Even so, midnight approached before the water fully submerged Fei Rui.

Pinching the earth-grade spirit stone with his cutting claw, Fei Rui brought it forward and blew a stream of bubbles over it. The stone dissolved into the water.

Fei Rui retracted his claws, legs, eyestalks, and spikes with a series of clacks and clicks, collapsing into a smooth, armoured box that settled into the mud with a dense thud.

Yu Han bowed to the worm. Emotionally, it rankled, but logically, he was grateful.

“Senior Feral Spot, I’ll take my leave,” Yu Han said. “Niu’er is practising with in the cauldron room. She said she’ll meet you in the spirit composting pit, but I think she’ll be happier if you visited her now. The hut burning really upset her. She cried today.”

Feral Spot nodded with his spotted end. The slight blue hues on his body spiked outward like jagged shards of glass for a split second.

Dad would be proud of me siccing a worm spirit on an arsonist.

Yu Han retreated to the resting quarters and lay down.

Thousand Petals Synaptic Bloom.

The waking world peeled away. With the rhythms of his cultivation technique, he drifted deep into sleep.

He opened his eyes in the dreamscape. Fei Rui waited by the entrance to the crabscape, waving a pincer.

He scuttled in place.

Fei Rui had asked Yu Han to send him off. Mistress Miao had regaled them with tales of heroes being sent off by a cheering crowd before great adventures. Fei Rui wanted to be a hero, but it was hard to bring a crowd into the dreamscape, so Yu Han would do.

“Where did you learn the ritual?” Yu Han asked.

Fei Rui said.

Fei Rui stopped, tapped his carapace, then scuttled forward.

“How often is sometimes?”

They reached the opening to one of the tunnels. It was a fork.

Fei Rui pointed back the way they had come, toward the clamscape.

They entered the tunnel; its interior remained mostly unchanged. Fei Rui had deposited new items, a shell here, a rock there. Many had disappeared, like the collection of dead starfish and broken corals.

Fei Rui asked. Without waiting for an answer, he exited the chamber and headed towards the next tunnel.

It was the Tunnel of Many Strange Dreams.

Fei Rui said,

Fei Rui halted at the tunnel’s terminus, an opening that bled into a vast, liquid darkness. Feline hisses and bird cries echoed. Words followed, jumbled together. They made no sense.

The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

In the tunnel, where wisps of fog rose from cracks in the rocky floor, the voices of hundreds of strangers mingled, creating an ambient atmosphere Yu Han wanted to record and put on YouTube as music to study to.

Another lost opportunity.

The next tunnel tilted downwards in a gentle slope and continued for a while. The height and width of the passage shifted in places, but it never grew so cramped that Yu Han had to crawl. Fei Rui’s pointed legs clattered rhythmically against the stone. Dim light filtered through cracks in the walls, refracting like sunbeams plunging underwater.

A scent hung in the air. Seaweed. Pine trees. Coconuts?

The passage opened into a subterranean pond.

A lone green coconut floated on it.

Fei Rui plunged into the water, his rapid scuttling churning a foamy wake as he intercepted the coconut. He snatched it and paddled back.

“So this is where you’ve been getting your collectables from?” Yu Han asked. He hadn’t been to this tunnel before.

Fei Rui pointed at the pond with a claw.

“Oh.”

Fei Rui imitated.

“Who are they?”

Fei Rui crossed his heavy claws. Fei Rui opened his claw-arms wide to demonstrate the “length” of how much strength was required.

Happy Adventures, huh. It was a world of magic and monsters. Shouldn’t he feel more inclined to explore all the mysteries?

Mysteries did excite him. The death and evil, not so much.

Yu Han would rather be in the safety of the sect. Well, relative safety, considering there were demons in the city and an arsonist who burnt down his hut.

Fang Zhao was drawn to adventure. He was still in the hidden realm, probably getting ganked again by core disciple cadres. Li Yao also seemed like the type to enjoy a quest to save the world. Huang Niuniu... was probably more a day-trip person.

Adventure.

To venture upon. To undertake and try. Try what? Tasks of an exciting, unusual, and often hazardous nature.

It was the exact opposite of what came to mind when thinking of home.

Yu Han was a homebody.

But perhaps adventure and home could coexist?

It... could work? A theme for their courtyard. To appeal to a large yet niche audience.

A grin crept across his face.

Holy shit. It’s perfect! He could keep Fang Zhao in the loop, keep himself in the sect, earn a bunch of money, and indoctrinate a hell lot of minions---Friends. Nurture connection with friends.

Reality wasn’t a book, though. He would have to think of the business model. He had decades of experience in leadership, but whether he was a good leader was up for debate.

He could get things done. But often at others’ expenses. Dad never liked that. Yu Han would do things differently.

He would benefit. He wouldn’t be a saint. But he wouldn’t be a prick, either. He’d make it sustainable. Work life balance and all that.

Fingers crossed.

They reached another tunnel with a pond and thousands of pearls. Most of the pearls were white, but a considerable number of them had turned blue.

Fei Rui scuttled to the edge and blew a froth of bubbles. As they popped, they solidified into pale pearls. The moment they dropped, Fei Rui struck them with the flat of his crushing claw. When he lifted his claw, the struck pearls shone blue, swirling with faint mirages inside.

After repeating the process, Fei Rui dumped the pearls into the pond.

Fei Rui shifted his eyestalks from the pond, to Yu Han, and finally to the green coconut.

He shredded the green outer husk of the coconut to expose the woody inner shell. Puncturing a small hole, he tipped it back and drank the water.

The crab held it out. Water sloshed and the hole was covered in crab drool.

Yu Han accepted the fruit, Fei Rui’s eyestalks tracking the movement.

“I don’t want to drink strange food from the dreamscape---”

Fei Rui’s voice turned serious.

Yu Han lifted the coconut, hovering it a safe distance above his face to avoid the slime, and tilted it back. The water poured directly into his mouth. Not sweet at all, slightly grassy and slightly salty. It was like drinking diluted Gatorade.

But it was refreshing, in a way factory-made drinks could never be.

After Yu Han was done, Fei Rui took back the coconut and broke it in half.

There wasn’t any flesh. It really was green.

They left the Tunnel of Memories and passed four more tunnel entrances blocked by speleothems and rocky outgrowths.

Finally, they stopped in front of a squarish passageway. It was partially choked with speleothems.

“The Tunnel of doom...”

“The Tunnel of Doom.”

Fei Rui’s eyestalks glimmered dim orange in the obsidian black. Like a fire. It burnt.

Fei Rui asked.

“Take as much time as you need,” Yu Han said. “Be careful. If I wake up, I’ll use Thousand Petals Synaptic Bloom to come back again.”

“Don’t hurry it. And... if you think you’re not ready, we can prepare more!”

Tribulations were dangerous.

Like the Tunnel of Happy Adventures, the Tunnel of Doom exited into a part of the dreamsea where, according to Fei Rui’s Grandpa, nightmares lived.

Fei Rui didn’t say exactly what his tribulation was. But from the bits and pieces he let slip, he would have to fight one of the nightmares.

One that was in the qi gathering realm at least.

“Of course!”

Yu Han picked up the small crab and gave it a hug that would make Huang Niuniu jealous.

He put Fei Rui down. The crab scuttled into the tunnel. Half a minute later, he returned and gave Yu Han another, tighter hug.

He scuttled off, this time for real.

Yu Han wasn’t worried. Not at all. He shoved a trembling hand into his pocket.

Tribulations are personal. No one can help him. Not me, not Feral Spot, not Mistress Miao...

Fei Rui was mentally young. Maybe around seven, eight years old? A bit younger or older, give or take. Like every kid that age, he moved at his own pace. He wanted validation, attention, support, fun. A family.

How lonely had he been, those decades of forgetting? Even if he didn’t remember, some parts of him surely felt it?

He was so excited leading Yu Han around his home. Fei Rui’s crabscape. One thing after the next. The stash, the pond, the pearls, and the coconut. He wanted to be praised for doing a good job and being a good boy.

Yu Han was like that when he was young, wasn’t he? Was Johan?

It was too long ago. He couldn’t remember.

Yu Han made his way back to the clamscape. Fei Rui would return soon. He would trust the crab’s words.

He needed something to take his mind off it. To keep him distracted.

He had gained mind sub-origin points to boot. His Mind had gone up from 17.95 to 19.15.

It was time to tackle the other bottleneck he faced.

He retrieved a memorycast notebook from a shelf and sat. An inkwell tendril unspooled from the black ink-sac orb.

“With steel, the passage opens. With thanks, the spirit flows...”

He chanted the mortal invocation for the divine. In his mind’s eye, thousands of flowers bloomed and withered at the same pace. His senses fell away one by one, but parts of them remained.

It was meditation, not disregard. It was mindfulness, not mindlessness.

He needed enough awareness to feel the essence move. To watch it diffuse from his dreamscape body. To stamp the Snakemark array on the paper.

It had been long enough. It was time to do something about his trial and level up.