On the way back from the supermarket, the passersby felt as though they were watching a nicely matched young couple head home — handsome man, pretty woman, a pleasure to look at. The man carried bag after bag, big and small; you could tell there were pajamas in there, cooking oil, salt, this and that — loaded down from head to toe. The woman was fresh and unburdened, carrying a single bag of rice.
At first glance it all looked normal enough. Look closer, and something was off...
Who was supposed to be carrying the rice?
And it wasn't even a small bag of rice. It looked like one of those big ten-kilo sacks. Did all the stuff on the man add up to that much weight?
Before anyone could work it out, the couple had already strode briskly into the residential compound and vanished from sight.
"You have no shame at all," Qiu Wuji said, eyes fixed straight ahead.
"Hey, you're the one who said I'm weak." Chu Ge had gone full dead pig who no longer fears boiling water. "Twenty jin is like holding a sewing needle for you. Call it the capable doing the extra work."
Qiu Wuji asked, "Strength, being able to fight, being able to make money — do those need an identity too?"
"Right. You could make money, you might even become a big shot, but you'd need an identity. Unless you cross the border into some war zone — for now that's a bit difficult, and unnecessary anyway." Chu Ge paused. He'd actually been about to say, Forget work, I'll support you — but then he remembered the full-of-swagger speech he'd already thrown out a few days ago, and it wouldn't do to take it back, so he sulked and said nothing.
Of course, Qiu Wuji had no wish to live under someone else's roof either. She was about to break free of the "Creator God's" "binding of heavenly will" — so naturally, an equal exchange was what would make her an independent being.
Therefore cooking counted as labor and could offset the rent. Teaching him cultivation did not count, because the cultivation method was something he'd given her in the first place; she was merely giving it back. Qiu Wuji had stubborn lines of judgment in her heart, and they were hers alone.
Of course, cooking for someone was a considerable loss of face for Qiu Wuji... She could only tell herself that she would be eating it too, and that the other party was the Creator God and so arguably qualified... She just barely managed to make herself accept it.
The two of them hauled the bags into the little kitchen that had never once been used. Chu Ge's face darkened slightly, and he quietly slipped away. Half annoyed and half amused, Qiu Wuji surveyed the kitchen — so filthy even a dog wouldn't crawl into it; the stuff in the spice box that looked like salt had caked into lumps, no telling which former tenant had left it behind.
Come to think of it, Chu Ge's room and Zhang Qiren's were both fairly clean and tidy, and the living room and balcony were passable too — clearly swept now and then. Why the kitchen alone was in this state... maybe because neither of them had ever used it?
Seeing Chu Ge's flushed face as he fled, a sly, foxy little smile surfaced in Qiu Wuji's eyes too. A flick of her slender fingers, a flash of white light, and the whole kitchen was suddenly spotless, bright as new.
I cultivate immortality... a cleansing spell is a minor art at most.
This Creator God is adorably dumb.
Outside, Chu Ge was on the phone calling someone to deliver LPG, and while he talked he kept poking his head in to peek at the kitchen. The spotless kitchen only made him blink for a moment before he understood — but his gaze lingered far more on Qiu Wuji's back in her OL outfit. She was busily decanting the seasonings into the spice boxes, and that back view looked very...
Chu Ge cursed himself for being a flop of a writer, too poor at his craft to describe a scene and a feeling like this.
It was like a small stone dropped into the lake of his heart, rippling out ring after ring.
Qiu Wuji turned her head. "Who are you on the phone with?"
"Getting someone to deliver LPG."
"Then why did you choke halfway through?"
"Because I was looking at you."
Qiu Wuji put on the expression of someone who wanted to hit him, and Chu Ge bolted like a wisp of smoke.
Qiu Wuji gave a "hmph" and went back to sorting things.
When she came out after finishing, Chu Ge was sitting on the sofa hugging his phone, doing who-knew-what. Qiu Wuji leaned over to look — it was the review section of his app.
Qiu Wuji tried, "Since... since you're getting flamed so badly, maybe just..."
"It's not like that!" Chu Ge looked up at her, expression serious. "The thing is, I don't want to write it that way now."
Qiu Wuji pressed her lips together, then put on a stern face. "What are you thinking? I meant maybe you just shouldn't read the comments."
"I still have to read them." Chu Ge smiled. "People are starting to tear into each other."
"Huh?"
"The single-heroine and no-heroine factions caught wind and joined in, saying this is how it should be. 'Have you people never seen a woman before?' 'Collecting every girl he meets — what a total loser.'"
"..." Qiu Wuji shook her head, speechless. "I don't understand your world. Fighting over how someone else's book should be written — are their fates going to get arranged like mine? To care that much."
"Your world argues over different interpretations of the Dao too. It's really about the same — everyone has their own view, and getting everyone to agree is the hard part."
Lumping novels together with interpretations of the Dao was hard for Qiu Wuji to accept, but she got the reasoning well enough. It left her with one feeling: the people of this world really do have too much free time.
Staring absently at the review section, Chu Ge muttered as though to himself, "Strange. I'm a small-time nobody who's only just gone premium — where would this kind of reach beyond my own circle come from? By rights, no-heroine readers shouldn't even know my book exists. So why is it that the moment I write one controversial point — and not even a very serious one — suddenly this many people show up to argue?"
Qiu Wuji reacted at once. "Someone's helping you?"
"That makes no sense, though..." Puzzled, Chu Ge flipped through his site messages — no recommendation notice, which meant the traffic wasn't coming from a featured slot. Then he checked the third-party forums; no related discussion there either. Which was only normal. He'd just written a poison-and-self-rescue scene without any mushiness, a nothing of a thing; getting cursed out in his own review section was one thing, but it shouldn't be stirring up forum debate.
Which made it even stranger. Where had the others caught wind of it?
"Really strange." Chu Ge shook his head, still baffled.
Qiu Wuji asked, "Is this good or bad for you?"
"Good. If the original readers quit and no new ones came, I'd be dead for sure — but aren't new readers arriving? Though I don't know how many will convert." Chu Ge set the phone down and turned to her with a smile. "Either way, fortune or disaster, I can't dodge it. I'll just keep writing."
Qiu Wuji nodded and said no more, but a small guilt remained lodged in her heart.
I really have caused him a great deal of trouble... but there's nothing to be done about it.
Chu Ge, for his part, had long since stopped agonizing over it. "By the way, why are you reading my review section? The history books you asked for arrived a couple of days ago — that's what you should be reading."
Following Chu Ge's gaze, Qiu Wuji saw a neat stack of books in the corner. She went over, took one, and looked at the cover. "Five Thousand Years of China... your civilization is really young."
Not even as old as me.
Chu Ge's expression turned strange. He held it in for a while, then said, "All right, I get it, you're an old lady."
Qiu Wuji's eyes turned dangerous.
Chu Ge said, "That stuff about your world — it's just us writers making things up, bragging about ten thousand years here, a hundred million years there, all to make it look ancient and weathered.
If you really thought it through, a cultivation world tens of thousands of years old looking exactly the same as it did tens of thousands of years ago, with civilization never changing or developing at all — that's the truly unreasonable part... But that's not important. The theme of a cultivation novel is cultivation, not social change.
Anyone who wants to read about social change has other works for it; no need to go looking in the wrong place."
Qiu Wuji fell into thought.
Chu Ge rose to his full height. "I should get to typing... I type, you read — this scene could go in a painting."
He had just been congratulating himself on a grand, atmospheric show when the doorbell rang: "LPG delivery!"
The atmosphere shattered with a crash, and life's petty chores came rushing in.
Seeing Chu Ge's awkward expression, Qiu Wuji couldn't help but laugh.
At the other end of the city, in the no-heroine forum Chu Ge had never paid any attention to, Zhang Qiren closed the thread. "Brother can only help you this far."