Data-Driven Daoist

Wang Daming crashed into the mud wall so hard the wall cracked.

“Boss—”

Fei Rui pulled his crushing claw back and windmilled it around in the opposite direction. The Camo-claw hit the man who had been standing closest to Wang Daming.

Blood splattered. Teeth flew. The thug arced out of the broken door and landed on the muddy ground, skidding forward like a sleigh.

The crab’s pincer claw had not been idle. He struck it lower, parallel to the floor, right on another thug’s shins.

Snap. Snap, snap!

The blood rose like a fountain alongside the scream of a man in unimaginable pain.

The sound made Yu Han’s stomach churn.

“Spider!” Droopy Eyes was the first to react. He got his hand around the hilt of his sword. Fei Rui got his crushing claw around the circumference of his head.

“Ghhmmm—” Droopy Eyes screamed, muffled. Fei Rui lifted him up and slammed his head on the floor.

Once.

Twice.

Thrice.

“Who’s twitching now?” Yu Han smirked. Droopy Eyes couldn’t reply.

“M-Monster! R-Run—” The three remaining thugs tried to leave the hut at the same time. Lucky for them, the doorway was large enough for fat Yu Han.

Fei Rui had longer legs, though.

Far longer.

He tripped the trailing thug. With a heavy claw, he hammered the poor bloke’s back. No cracks, but that had to be bad for the spine. Internals, too, judging by the vomiting blood. Fei Rui jumped and landed in front of the remaining two. He grabbed one’s neck and squeezed.

“Stay away! Stay away, demon!” The remaining man whimpered, sword in hand. He swung, the martial art executing almost perfectly despite how obviously scared the fellow was. The wind sang around the blade, and the edge glowed orange as if superheated.

An art? The thug was in the High Body Tempering realm. He would have a trick or two up his sleeves.

The sword hit Fei Rui’s claws. The crab’s carapace was constantly changing colour to blend in with the surroundings. But at this range, and at his scale, he appeared like a behemoth that tried to blend into the world itself.

A blotch.

The sword left a white line on his shell.

Fei Rui’s other claw hammered the man’s sword hand from the side. It snapped, angled, and hung limp. Fei Rui kicked out with two legs, hitting both shoulders. The man flew all the way out of the yard and hit a tree sideways, before falling down. A splatter of blood was left on the tree.

“Is he dead?” Dread crawled up Yu Han’s spine. Fei Rui did NOT know how to hold back. “Is your claw okay?”

Fei Rui scuttled to each of the unconscious thugs.

<Alive! Alive. Alive. Uuuuh ... still awake. Die!> The crab hit Wang Daming. <Okay, now passed out but alive. Alive. Aaaaaan ... wow, Mister Tree is hurt. But the bad human is hurt more and alive.>

“Can you pile them up? Strip them of all valuables?” Yu Han asked.

<What’s the magic word?>

“Please loot them.”

<I can put stuff in my stash, too?>

“Be my guest.”

<I am your Accorded Spirit Beast, not your guest. Guests come and go, but I am forever!>

Fei Rui piled them up in the yard. He shifted his claw size to better cut through clothes and rip them apart. Even unconscious, the thugs groaned as they bled out.

The crab made a pile of clothes. Even the underwear was not spared. Then came a pile of shinies, including rings and gems, gold and swords. Clay vials of pills and pastes followed. Finally, a few trinkets and talisman paper.

“F-Fei Rui!” Huang Niuniu’s voice came from outside the yard. “No! No, bad crab. Bad crab, you don’t take clothes off unmarried young men without consent---”

<Mine! It goes in my stash. Soft Niuniu, you stay away, you hear me.>

Yu Han recovered by the time it had drizzled once and washed the blood in the yard away into reddish puddles.

“I evolved my art and gained a buttload of points in mind,” he said to Huang Niuniu. “Buttload.”

“Stop saying bad words—”

“Buttload!”

“You know,” she said, a finger swiping an errant strand of hair behind her ear, “you don’t have to be so jealous of my amazingly unfair and mysterious new bloodline art.”

He ignored her. He took out rope and tied the thugs together. After thinking for a while and kicking their prone forms until he was satisfied, he brought out minor healing salves and tinctures that he kept on hand.

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“What do we do now?” he asked. “They attacked first. But how do I explain how I beat ’em? I don’t want to make Fei Rui public knowledge. Especially since he’ll tackle his tribulation tonight.”

<I soooo will.> The crab bopped his body up and down. It looked strange, since he was hanging vertically off a tree trunk.

“We have our shift soon,” Huang Niuniu said. She went through the rings and trinkets. “No storage rings. Oh, this one has an array—it’s broken.”

Blades, knives. The only useful things would be the talismans, pills, and pastes.

“This smells strange.” Huang Niuniu moved an opened vial away from her nose.

“Stop sniffing them,” Yu Han said. “Could be poison.”

“Let’s make them into fertiliser,” Huang Niuniu suggested. “Dump them in the spiritual composting pit. They will nourish the sect. Nobody will know, other than Senior Feral Spot.”

“Let’s do it then,” Yu Han agreed. Huang Niuniu hit him.

“It was a JOKE!” she said. “What if more of these ... people come while we’re away? Why are they here in the first place?”

Yu Han narrated the events that happened at the marketplace.

“Li Tieniu?” Huang Niuniu laughed. “I can’t believe someone is actually named that. I bet it’s a nickname.”

Yu Han looked at her, long and hard.

“W-What?” She blushed. “I won’t—is my hair weird?”

There’s no way this girl, named Yellow Cow Cow, is making fun of a guy named Iron Bull.

He put his texts and notes in his storage ring. The rest of his valuables, he put in Huang Niuniu’s storage pouch. He had few decorations. A sketch of a Gundam hanging from a nail, a few papers with concept art—mostly monsters, but a few of Zero Two from Darling in the Franxx—glued to the mud wall with rice paste. Glowstones hanging from tiny straw pots and the replacement mat Fang Zhao had given him.

They went to Niu’er’s place and packed up her valuables, too. Just in case, they’d camp out at the Night Alchemists’ Yard.

“What do we do ...” Yu Han and Huang Niuniu had no idea. They could carry the bodies on Fei Rui’s largest size, but that would be showing their hands in public.

“Let’s just ...” Huang Niuniu thought. “Dump them on the road?”

“The intersection over there,” Yu Han pointed up the hill, “has little foot traffic, but not zero.”

The three dragged the bodies. It was about a twenty-minute walk away. They made sure no one was there. Just in case, Yu Han and Huang Niuniu helped, and Fei Rui only became as big as a large sheep.

“Vice-leaders have a lot of power,” Yu Han explained on the way to the yard. “Sun Tao’s friend, the former leader of Sima Yan’s courtyard, made him and six other nobles vice-leaders in exchange for hard spirit stones.”

“How much?” Huang Niuniu asked.

“Sun Tao didn’t say,” Yu Han said. “Main point of the story is, they got canned. A few schemes and a letter from the drunk Shu Wangli to the administration and vessel affairs halls, and there was this thing called a tribunal. The rest’s history.”

“If anyone would wanna replace you,” Huang Niuniu said, “it’s gotta be Fang Zhao, that noble boy. He’s so unpunctual. He said he would be back days ago, but look at this. He treats Mistress Miao so badly. You can’t trust unpunctual people who treat cats with contempt.” She shuddered. “I speak from experience. There was this servant, a girl I don’t remember the name of. She was never on time to mop the terrace and always stole the food I left out for Lin Ni and Ming Ni. Oh, they were two fat orange tabbies. Turned out the girl stole Linxue’s expensive red-silk shawl, too ... I think she was sold to—”

“You had cats?” Yu Han asked.

“I didn’t,” Huang Niuniu said. “Lord Father didn’t let me. Grandma said if I showed too much affection towards them, Linxue might ... make them go away.”

“We’ll have Fei Rui do to Linxue what he did to Wang Daming.”

“That’s a nice idea, idea man!”

Yu Han destroyed the horde of ghouls from all three of the stone tanks. Thousand Petals Synaptic Bloom made him a beast. His halberd swept in without sound, poking their cores out with one strike and beheading the next with another.

“... That’s unfair,” Huang Niuniu said.

<Go Yu Han!> Fei Rui cheered. <Now I can rest assured that even if I, Fei Rui, a Cognizant Collector Crab, take many, many hours away from my favourite human to beat up my tribulation to become a stronger crab. I have faith that my human will be a-okay. Is faith enough though? What even is faith. Even without faith, I have three other reasons I think Yu Han will manage, and the first reason is—oh, is it actually the second reason? It is—>

They dumped the monster corpses and excreta-nodules into the gorge. When they made their way back to the Night Alchemists’ Yard, Tan Ruoxuan waited with three of her subordinates.

“What happened?” she asked.

“D-Do we play dumb?” Huang Niuniu whispered.

“Stop whispering louder than you normally speak.” Yu Han didn’t know whether to chide her or play along. “Wang Daming attacked me first.” He handed over the jade slip with the recording. They would learn of Fei Rui. Elder Chang already knew, as did Wen Liujie. Yu Han had a good guess that Tan Ruoxuan knew too. It would be a shame for her subordinates to find out. Like the law enforcer senior sister who was part of the Shu, they might have noble backgrounds, too, and other loyalties.

Tan Ruoxuan might have noticed his apprehension towards the other law enforcers.

“Worry not,” she reassured. “I know who to bring when a recruit Young Dragon Duan Xiaolong might occasionally check up on is involved. They are sworn to the law with oaths to the soul and would be foolish to break them. Though it is puzzling. Why did you simply head off to work after your huts were burnt down?”

“My what?” Yu Han’s eyes widened.

His reaction confused the police officers. After playing the slips, they looked at Fei Rui with amazement. “Your crab knows proper martial arts?” She turned the recording off. “You were attacked?! Why did you not head straight to the Law Enforcement Hall? Attacking a rookie would have them banished to a penal town!”

“That is—wait, no. My hut was burned?!” Yu Han asked. His voice rose a timbre. Someone burned my house?

“Not just yours, but Huang Niuniu’s too,” Tan Ruoxuan said. “You both ... still don’t trust us, do you?”

“We heard you were letting commoner-origin criminals go with a slap on their wrists ...” Huang Niuniu said. If she was bothered by her home literally being firebombed, she did not show it.

Tan Ruoxuan sighed deeply, and the other law enforcers each showed uncomfortable expressions. One shrugged, one looked away, and the third just shook her head.

“It is needed if the Sect Master is to absolve commoner criminals who were wrongly punished during the past decades,” she said. “But that does not excuse the current situation. We do not merely release them with slaps on their wrists. We incorporated fines large enough to bankrupt them. We remember their faces, and they know what we shall do once the situation calms down. But those damn—”

“Chief,” a subordinate interrupted her.

“I know. I know!” Tan Ruoxuan gritted her teeth.

“Did the nobles pay off the fine?” Yu Han guessed.

“Smart kid, aren’t you?” the same law enforcer said. “This Wang Daming won’t be let off. You have hard proof, captured in a jade of moments borrowed from the law enforcement hall no less. There will be no wrist slaps. The sect master will understand. If not, then his orthodoxy is a lie.”

They went to their huts. They still smouldered. A nearby resident had seen the smoke and notified the law enforcers.

<Nooooooooooo!> Fei Rui cried. <You inverse-caves... Who did this? So inferior. You should make caves that go into the earth, not wood and grass structures that makes artificial caves above. Oh no...Yu Han, don’t cry,> the crab comforted him. <We will do the morally correct thing and burn their homes-caves to the ground, too—oh, my stash is fine.>

“Fei Rui,” Yu Han said. “That’s may or may not be the morally correct thing.”

<May or...may not?> The crab was shocked. His legs twitched and he tripped.

The hut wasn’t Yu Han’s. He had lived there for a couple of months. Lucky he had taken away most of his valuables.

So why did he feel so cold? Huang Niuniu took his hand.

“You are sad,” she said.

He was. A bit. It was his house. Some prick had burnt it down.

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