Chu Ge's rented place was a good long way from that fancy café downtown. For your average web writer who never stepped outside, living in the suburbs and living in the city center made no real difference — the biggest difference was that the rent was a lot cheaper.
He grabbed a bowl of fried noodles, and by the time he got back to the apartment it was nearly dark; the little living room was dim.
It was a two-bedroom, one-living-room rental, and neither room had a light on. Yet from one of them came the clatter of a keyboard, the melody of fingertips dancing through the dim room and drifting into the equally dim living room. There was clearly someone there, clearly sound — and somehow it only made the place feel emptier and deader.
That was Chu Ge's writer friend, who shared the rent.
The friend had a very classical-sounding name: Zhang Qiren. When Chu Ge had posted a roommate ad on the writers' forum, he'd had it in mind to find a fellow writer so they could push each other along. Zhang Qiren happened to be looking for a place as well, and they'd hit it off at once. They'd been living together for close to half a year now.
In the end he'd discovered there was no pushing each other along at all. It was all bullshit.
"Eaten yet?" Chu Ge asked casually.
A reply came from inside the room: "I threw something together a bit ago, and then my inspiration started gushing like a burst bladder... wait, you're back at this hour? Did the blind date blow up in your face?"
"Ruptured. Just like your inspiration." Chu Ge pushed open his own door, about to go in.
The clack of keys next door finally stopped, and a skinny guy in glasses appeared in his doorway. He sized up Chu Ge's blind-date getup and clicked his tongue in admiration. "Our Brother Chu here actually has a bit of Daniel Wu about him, you know. So what did she rate you?"
"Zero," Chu Ge said sourly.
Full marks if she'd sleep with you, zero if she wouldn't. Standard procedure.
Zhang Qiren promptly put on an "I get it" look, then sighed with regret. "And you didn't even keep a photo for your brother to admire..."
Chu Ge said nothing. If I had taken a photo, you'd just say I pulled some picture off the internet to con you... how could a woman from a blind date ever be that pretty?
Zhang Qiren asked, "What was it this time? Hukou? Money? An apartment?"
Chu Ge glanced at him, then suddenly grinned. "Because we're unemployed vagrants."
Zhang Qiren's grin froze a little, and his voice suddenly went up. "Those frogs at the bottom of a well don't know jack shit. Thirty years of bad luck, thirty years of good — don't you mock a poor youngster... uh, do you even count as a youngster anymore?"
Chu Ge didn't bother answering that last bit, and only said, "So keep at it, then. Get yourself over to the good side as fast as you can."
Zhang Qiren nodded. "Oh, right, Brother Chu — my new book goes on sale tomorrow. Remember to give me a chapter recommendation."
"Haven't forgotten. It's noted down."
"Thanks in advance... I'm, uh, I'm a little nervous." Zhang Qiren rubbed his hands unconsciously, and lowered his voice. "The recent numbers... they look pretty cold."
Truth was, he'd already shown Chu Ge his numbers several times, and Chu Ge thought they did look a bit cold too. But all he could do was repeat the encouragement he'd already given several times over: "Don't chicken out. This business is a damn mystery. Some books look red-hot and barely get any subscribers; some look niche and turn out to have a pile of diehards... anyway, this is the knife that decides whether you live or die. Being nervous won't help..."
Zhang Qiren forced a smile. "Yeah. Screw it. Live or die, it's out of my hands now. If it takes off, it's club hostesses. If it doesn't... then I'm the club hostess!"
Chu Ge: "...Has it ever occurred to you that you might not be popular because you're too sleazy?"
"Like you're any less sleazy. Whose last book had that pair of sisters, the double—"
"Which is why I'm not popular either."
"So are you still going to write the sisters?"
"Yep."
"...A man after my own heart."
Zhang Qiren had too much on his mind to chat further. The two of them went back to their own rooms; Chu Ge brewed a cup of tea, sat down at his desk, opened his document, and didn't move again except for trips to the bathroom.
Such was daily life for Chu Ge and Zhang Qiren.
If not for Chu Ge's blind date giving them something real to talk about, the two of them usually didn't even chat this much. They lived together, and yet they were more in the habit of talking online.
A very common scene: the two of them sitting side by side eating at the fast-food place downstairs, both holding their phones, shooting the breeze with each other in the authors' group... as if they knew each other's avatars better than each other's faces.
Chu Ge seriously suspected that if this kept up, he'd lose the ability to speak... The way he'd spouted that torrent of nonsense in front of Gu Ruoyan today — part of that was simply having lost his feel for normal conversation...
Great, why am I thinking about her again?
Chu Ge's fingers hovered over the keys while he thought absently. Maybe he could add a character like that to the book — the intellectual, white-collar office woman type... but he was writing xianxia, so that image would roughly correspond to somebody in the upper ranks of a sect, and then get conquered and bedded by the protagonist... yeah.
That was a bit of a hassle, because one established heroine was already somewhat similar — the sect master of the sect the protagonist belonged to, one of the strongest cultivators under heaven, already touching the very edge of ascension, and the most beautiful woman in the world.
And the next stretch of the story was all about conquering her.
That's right — Chu Ge wrote harem novels, and had a middling, neither-here-nor-there sort of name for himself in the scene.
As a harem writer, Chu Ge knew perfectly well that the key lay in giving each female character a distinct flavor. This sect master was aloof, proud, elegant, and domineering — actually quite different from Gu Ruoyan. But if he added a white-collar-style sect character, the two would come off somewhat alike, and it would be hard to tell them apart.
Better quit chasing tangents. Write this sect master properly — she's the first heroine.
The book had only been on sale a short while, was just two or three hundred chapters long, and the plot hadn't fully unfolded yet. At this stage the protagonist, "Chu Tiange," was still a small-time figure: thanks to an accident earlier, he'd caught the sect master's eye and been promoted straight from a no-rank chore servant to an inner sect disciple, and the sect master even gave him personal pointers now and then. This was where the protagonist's rise began.
At this stage the protagonist still regarded the sect master as his teacher and was deeply reverent toward her; and to the sect master, he was no more than promising material worth a little lifting up.
As for how the protagonist's filial piety would later go bad, and how the sect master would get the urge to be an old cow nibbling at young grass — that required long-term plot design. But he could start laying the groundwork now.
For example, start describing the sect master's inner state from the side: sometimes she would feel lonely, sometimes she would reflect on what exactly was missing from her long cultivation career, whether there was some reason she had never been able to ascend... and so on and so forth.
Why would an old monster who'd spent ten thousand years pure of heart and thin of desire suddenly feel the stirrings of spring? That was all setup logic.
Chu Ge really did put his heart into it.
"Qiu Wuji pushed open the window and gazed at the moon. Moonlight like water spilled lightly over the mortal world, illuminating the perfect profile of her face, hazy and dreamlike. She stood lost in thought for a long while, and vaguely wondered: after ascension, would she ascend into the moon itself? And if so, would it be nothing more than going from one lonely place to another, lonelier one..."
Qiu Wuji — the name came from a ci by Jiaxuan: "The skies of Chu stretch a thousand li of clear autumn; the water follows the sky away, and autumn goes on without end." It echoed the protagonist Chu Tiange's name exactly — another stroke of craftsmanship. If Chu Tiange was a projection of Chu Ge himself, then Qiu Wuji was likely the sum of all Chu Ge's hopes and fantasies about his ideal type; he had poured a great deal of feeling into her.
The reason he'd told Gu Ruoyan, "Sometimes it's a bit less, but this month it's already over ten thousand," was precisely that his earlier books had flopped pretty hard, while this one was doing better and better — a character you poured feeling into naturally won the readers' approval.
"For some reason, that smiling face of Chu Tiange's suddenly flashed through Qiu Wuji's mind. That sunny smile was so unlike anything else on this immortal path where every man schemes for himself; it could widen a person's heart just to look at it..."
Chu Ge's ten fingers flew. The more he wrote, the deeper the feel for it became, as though with every word that surfaced he could see with his own eyes a peerless fairy maiden pushing open her window to gaze at the moon, lost and alone.
So much so that he could almost feel the cold wind from that opened window seeping in from behind him, a chill crawling down his spine.
Hang on, that's not right...
My window's in front of me. So why is my back going cold?
Puzzled, Chu Ge turned his head.
A flash of cold light — a dark blue longsword was laid across his neck, its bone-piercing chill seeming cold enough to freeze his very soul.
Chu Ge stared dumbstruck at the space behind him. A woman in ancient dress held the sword level against his throat, her phoenix eyes blazing with murderous fury as she glared at his document.
The air seemed to stand still for several seconds, or perhaps only an instant. Before Chu Ge's brain could manage any reaction at all, he heard the woman say, word by word: "If you dare write that I fell in love with that disciple, then even if the whole world collapses, I'll take your worthless life!"
Chu Ge was struck completely dumb. "Wait — who even are you?"
The woman drew her gaze back from the document and rested it on the dark blue tip of the blade. "Qiu Wuji."
Chu Ge: "???"