Data-Driven Daoist

「Do you want me to do the thing?」 Fei Rui asked. 「Will the green flame hurt me?」

"Do you want to?" Yu Han asked. He’s probably talking about playing whatever was projected in the pearl.

Fei Rui nodded. 「I can't be afraid of green flames. I'm a big crab, and Soft Niuniu has the ointment to make the pain half go away. It's only half as painful now. Ouch.」

Yu Han took the pearl. It felt like glass on his fingers. Shiny, smooth.

Huang Niuniu closed in, an expectant look in her eyes. "Is it for me?"

"This isn't jewellery," Yu Han said.

"Senior Brother Feral Spot was the first to give me an ornament. Aren't you ashamed?"

"This isn't an ornament either."

"Then what is it?" Huang Niuniu snatched it. "There's something inside. Is that Fei Rui? Wow. He's so big!"

Yu Han had echoed the memory of when Huang Niuniu's stalkers from the Mad Bloodhounds had trespassed into his yard. They had talked, thinking that Yu Han wouldn't be able to hear them.

But I could. Just like with Fang Zhao's ring. Am I immune to psychic manipulation? If so, that was a huge weight off his shoulders, but he couldn't be sure yet. Maybe he was just resistant, not immune. Or maybe Existential Anchor really was behind this resistance, and he could train it in the future to become immune?

"Give it to Fei Rui," Yu Han said. "Let's see if it works."

Huang Niuniu handed the shining green pearl to the crab.

「Your pearls are green and mine are blue. The flame was green. Can I have a blue flame?」 Fei Rui pondered aloud. He squeezed the pearl, and the lime green glow dimmed.

"E-Eek!" Huang Niuniu fell and stumbled towards Yu Han as if she'd seen a ghost. "W-What's that?!"

On the opposite wall was a giant Fei Rui, supporting himself with his long legs, claws positioned over the window like a guillotine.

「That's me!」 Fei Rui jumped up. 「It's me! Wow. I'm a big crab. So big!」 He tugged Yu Han. 「Did you see? That's me!」

"I-Is that Fei Rui?" Huang Niuniu shifted her gaze between the palm-sized crab and the eerie behemoth.

The projected Fei Rui went into full camouflage.

"Eek!" Huang Niuniu grabbed Yu Han tighter.

In reality, it was daytime. But over what was real, the nighttime environment seemed to have been overlaid. It was disorienting. Like watching two scenes in a monitor that kept glitching.

The view shifted and the projection of Yu Han lay down.

"There are two Han'ers!" Huang Niuniu seemed to have just noticed it.

Whose memory is being projected here? If it was just him, the view would have shifted to utter darkness because he had closed his eyes. But camouflaged Fei Rui was still there. As was the dagger he held, and Huang Niuniu on the bed.

“There’s two of me!” She noticed it too.

How big of an area can I project? How many gigabytes of memory was this? Was there even a unit to speak of, or was this something more metaphysical?

About thirty seconds had passed. The memory would last seventy or so more.

Noise came from the door.

"No gaps."

"Check the window. Peek in if you can first."

"Aye, old man."

Huang Niuniu's eyes widened. "T-This is... last night? Someone tried to break in? Pearls… This is Fei Rui's memory?"

"Smart girl," Yu Han said. She had picked up on the clues, and probably what Yu Han had shared about his dreamscape. There was the pearl too, and Fei Rui's matter with memories. "It's my memory."

"They didn't fuck. I think so. The smell ain't there. Dao Companions wouldn't sleep separately, right?" The voices came from the projection.

Huang Niuniu blushed deeply. "I'll kill them!"

"Calm down—"

"I'll blind them and burn their noses!"

"The girl's a virgin, her Primordial Yin’s still there," the old man said. "We'll fetch a good price."

Huang Niuniu fell silent, trembling. She closed her eyes. Her breathing got faster as if she was hyperventilating.

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Oh, fuck. Yu Han was an idiot. I should've considered her trauma! He looked at Fei Rui. "Stop the projection—"

"Don't!" Huang Niuniu shouted. "Don't."

Footsteps went around the hut. No more voices sounded as the projection ended. The dark scene overlaid with the daytime reality faded, as did the Yu Han on the floor, the Huang Niuniu on the bed, and the Fei Rui on the wall.

They had set up arrays. Those were mentioned in the Rookie Cheat Sheet and Ji's Cultivation Contemplations.Also in the Four Meditations. In xianxia novels, arrays were like magic circles or rituals from RPG games, complete with mysterious effects. Is it a bug? Are they listening in?

If so, it was too late now. Or maybe it couldn't hear the projection?

Yu Han was surprised by how calm he was. Was this Johan? No, Johan would first throw a tantrum before suddenly becoming deathly calm.

The pearl no longer had its radiance. The lime green colour had faded quite a bit, and the mirage inside was blurry.

「Can't project this anymore,」 Fei Rui said. 「I think if I keep this inside the dreamscape it's going to get better. There's the swirly mind thing... Ah, right, Essence! Essence. It needs Essence!」

Essence. That word again. But last time Fei Rui said he didn't know about it. Let's see if Fang Zhao does. Yu Han was starting to feel grateful for the red-eyed boy. It was like having an encyclopaedia.

Of course, Fang Zhao didn't know everything. But he knew enough about the basics thanks to his upbringing, and probably from his years of effort to solve his problem.

"They... could've broken in. They—Why didn't you wake me?" Huang Niuniu demanded.

"I didn't want to alert them."

"But… Fine," she huffed.

"We'll speak outside," Yu Han said. He didn't know if his house was bugged now.

"I'm hungry. Let's go to my hut. I'll cook some—"

"No." Her hut could be bugged too.

Yu Han put every valuable thing he had in a bag. The books, scrolls, spirit stones, monster cores, tokens, and some other miscellaneous stuff. Then they went to Huang Niuniu's and gathered her valuables too.

Before they could leave, Li Yao and Fang Zhao arrived. "What're you guys up to?" Li Yao asked.

The sky was gloomy—perhaps it was about to rain. Yu Han took all of them to a secluded spot. After confirming with Fei Rui that no one was around, he explained what had happened the night before.

"This is troubling," Fang Zhao said with a sharp glare. "Brother Yu is right. There are arrays and formations that can record and transmit sound. It's a peculiar favourite of various organisations that work in the shadows."

"Sounds about right. If our gang had one, I can think of a hundred ways to make some good cash out of it," Li Yao added, then thumped Fang Zhao in the back. "How'd a young master like you know, though?"

"I've... had run-ins with the less desirables of the Divine Capital," Fang Zhao said. "First to find a cure, and then..." He looked away, ashamed.

Right, brothels and casinos.

"Did it help?" Li Yao asked.

Dude! Read the room. Yu Han rolled his eyes.

"It wasn't totally useless. I was able to pass my tribulation preemptively." Fang Zhao shook his head. "I don't know if it was worth it, though. That pain... only near demonic-level unorthodoxy could come up with such methods of training. I don't even know—"

"You passed your tribulation?" Yu Han interrupted.

"I thought that if I could pass preemptively, I would cure my crippled cultivation. Originally, my tribulation was something that I wouldn't be able to pass preemptively if I wanted to practise my clan's unique Arts. We'd tried; it didn't work." Fang Zhao stared down at the tiger-engraved gold ring. "After I gained the Red Fiend Ancestry, the Tribulation changed. I was exiled from the clan, but it opened up the way to pass the Tribulation. I sought help from an underground organisation from the Divine Capital, and successfully passed the Tribulation. But as you know, it didn't cure my ailment."

"So the only thing stopping you from levelling up is the quantity of True Qi. You don't have any other barriers?"

"If you don't count gaining 110 True Qi before it gets depleted as a barrier." Fang Zhao let out a bitter laugh. "Even with all the backing of my family with elixirs and pills, formations and artefacts, the most I could gain was 37 True Qi in a day. If I had taken the resources over time, it would have been enough for thousands of True Qi."

"Only thousands?" Yu Han asked. "Your family should have elixirs and pills that can grant far more than that, right?" Judging by the experience scaling, or rather, True Qi scaling, a thousand True Qi would very quickly become chump change. Echoing Dreamscape at Level 6 needed 700 True Qi to level up. If Realm level acted the same way, then even thousands of True Qi would be a drop in the bucket for someone whose level was in the 30s or 40s.

"There was a limit to how good an elixir I could take. My clan and I, we were willing to risk my life. But any more, and that would be committing suicide."

"You wanted to raise your Trait level so that it could protect you against the decay?" Yu Han asked. "But what if you had enough blood to refine to 110 True Qi at once? Or rather, 111?"

Fang Zhao looked stumped. "Huh? I-I didn't think of that."

"Can't your clan gather enough blood?"

"Wait, slow down a bit, Brother Yu." Fang Zhao raised his hand. "They definitely could! They just probably need one Monster in Core Formation or Nascent Soul realm." He then shook his head, even though his face showed clear excitement. "It won't work. Same problem as before. I can't refine blood of such high grade. I'd die!"

No, you won't. Not if you really are like the protagonists from in the stories. Yu Han thought for a bit and said, "What if your clan gathers many low-level monsters and bloodlets them into a pool? All you'd have to do is go in and start refining."

"C-Could it work? No way. No way?" Fang Zhao had crashed. "No. No, it won't! I can't possibly refine for so long. No... I can! I have the Healing Potion of the Blue Waved Water and a share of the—" Fang Zhao stopped, looked around if someone was there, and sighed in relief.

The Underspore Lanterns. Yu Han nodded. Does he need to heal after refining the blood?

" I'm exiled from the clan because I awakened a foreign trait." Fang Zhao's voice broke. "They won’t help me gather the blood. I should have had them gather the blood before I took the elixir.” His laugh was barely a buzz of hopelessness. A rasping sound, like stones grinding together. "Even if I start now, even if I had your help, it might take years."

He then cheered himself up with two loud slaps to his face. "I can do it. Let it take years or decades. I'll do it!"

Li Yao cackled. "Dude, you're like those wrinkled shrews in the brothels, going crazy after hitting 30. What's it called again?"

"Bipolar?" Yu Han said. He glanced at Huang Niuniu but hurriedly looked away.

"Not that. But I think that word works too!" Li Yao laughed more. He covered his mouth, his eyes narrowing. A cold anger settled in his voice as he said the next words. "Let's talk about Fang Zhao's issue later. Those Mad Bloodhounds are courting death. The question is, how do we deliver?"

Yu Han nodded, although he made a mental note to go through the Four Meditations again. It might just have the answer to Fang Zhao's Level 1 dilemma.

「Yu Han! There's people over there,」 Fei Rui said. He pointed down the main path. 「I think they're stronger than the human monsters from last night.」