"There's an AC remote in your room. Right — same idea as the TV remote. If you feel hot you can turn it on. No need to sneak off and wash up."
First thing the next morning, Chu Ge explained it to Qiu Wuji, who was sitting on the couch.
"Mm. Mm-hm." Qiu Wuji sat there with her gaze drifting, looking at the pajamas Chu Ge had stripped off and hung over the arm of the couch.
He'd said he was going running, so he'd taken his clothes off on purpose.
Lecher.
All flabby and slack. Absolutely hideous.
"Sss—" Chu Ge made to step up onto the treadmill, and before he'd even started, his whole body ached so badly he couldn't get his legs moving.
"Can I skip training today?" Chu Ge ventured.
Qiu Wuji eyed him sidelong. "Is that why your running treasure tool has turned into a storage treasure tool?"
Chu Ge: "..."
"Long neglect, then sudden movement yesterday — that's what this is," Qiu Wuji said. "If you'd massaged and loosened up after training yesterday it wouldn't be so bad, but you went straight off to bathe."
Chu Ge was in too much pain to keep going, and could only say, "So is there any saving me now?"
Qiu Wuji looked at his bare torso, her eyes flickering.
Of course there is — I just get his blood and qi moving for him and that's that. Under immortal arts, no ache will linger.
But while they were on the subject, there was one thing that really invited complaint. Qiu Wuji ground her teeth and said, word by word, "Why is it that my immortal arts can take effect at a distance for everything except healing? Explain that to me."
Chu Ge rolled his eyes around and backed away a step at a time.
Did that really need explaining?
Haven't you seen it on TV? The male lead can heal a man through his clothes, but heal a woman and they have to come off.
It's the same for us writers. Everything else can work at a distance to show off how special immortals are — everything except healing. The more skin contact the better, and clothes off is better still... otherwise it's guaranteed qi deviation. Certain of it.
One look at his face and Qiu Wuji knew exactly what was going on. She put on a stern face. "Go patch it. I know that can be changed."
"Even if I patch it, it only shows up in the actual text later. This kind of thing never gets written into the outline or the setting notes — there's nothing to change."
"So what you're saying is, right now, for me to heal you I have to touch you."
"That seems to be how it is..."
"Then go heal yourself." Qiu Wuji rose with a cold laugh. "Ache yourself to death for all I care."
"Hey, hey, wait." Chu Ge said, utterly shameless, "My training is so I can get to the bottom of your travel secret sooner — every day counts... If this ache drags on for days and you go back, that's way too much time wasted going back and forth..."
Qiu Wuji looked at him in exasperation.
"It's just healing, bright wind and clear moon..."
"You're not so far gone that you can't move. How do you think anyone else manages to train? Trying to con this Sect Master? Get lost!"
Qiu Wuji lashed out with a kick; Chu Ge had already run off ahead of it and climbed onto the treadmill.
Of course you can run when you're sore — how else does anyone run?... So conning the old lady really isn't so easy after all.
Chu Ge sighed and started running. Qiu Wuji watched his bare torso, pursed her lips again, quietly reached over and tugged up the pajamas he'd left by the couch, then secretly cast an art that turned the cartoon figure on the chest into a crying face.
Mm. That looks different now. Much easier on the eyes.
Fresh and pleased with herself, Qiu Wuji quietly put the pajamas back and went to the kitchen to make breakfast.
Breakfast was simple: rice porridge and fried eggs. I should probably look at some cookbooks from this world — otherwise I'll miss out on a lot of scenery, won't I?
Cultivators were placid by nature and could endure; she had never been terribly eager to go out and learn more. It was Chu Ge who cared about it more, feeling she was learning too slowly, forever confined to one room. Qiu Wuji didn't see it that way. I haven't even taken in all the scenery inside this one room — how can I talk about a lifetime?
Her allotment of years was long. There was time.
Maybe in a few decades, watching a white-haired Chu Ge would have its own charm.
Qiu Wuji had long taken birth, aging, sickness and death lightly; thinking this way was only natural. But the more she thought, the more she frowned...
Him growing old and dying... doesn't sit right.
Mm. It must be because the Father God of Creation can't die. Then I'd better get him cultivating soon.
"Today I'm taking you out to buy a phone, and to hunt up a secondhand laptop."
After the meal, Chu Ge — aching all over and running on empty — typed out another chapter and uploaded it, then, grimacing, headed out with Qiu Wuji again.
He still hadn't noticed that his pajamas had been altered.
Watching him struggle through walking, Qiu Wuji felt a small tangle of feelings. "You could rest at home and write. Nothing else is urgent."
"I think it's pretty urgent. You're learning about this world too slowly. How much of the book have you read?"
"I came across someone a lot like you."
"Who?"
"Tang Xuanzong, Li Longji."
Chu Ge: "?"
How does that even connect? How am I anything like him?
She must mean my wise and dashing younger self. Mm. Good eye.
Qiu Wuji turned her face aside. "The phone — that's the treasure tool you use to talk across ten thousand li, isn't it? The one you use to have people deliver the LPG and so on."
"Right. These days it's not only about talking across ten thousand li. Too many things are rolled into one; modern people can't do without it. Once you have it in hand, study it slowly."
"Is it expensive?"
"You get a plain one free with a top-up. As long as it does the job."
"Then what does 'secondhand ben' mean?"
"'Secondhand computer.' A laptop is more convenient; if you like a desktop like mine, that works too. Secondhand because it's cheap — I can't afford a good one right now... anyway, we'll see when we get there." Chu Ge said, "My computer is a work tool, I can't hand it over to you. Otherwise I'd have let you go online long ago — you take in information far faster that way than binge-watching shows. And if you want to write and make money too, that's the prerequisite."
Qiu Wuji said hesitantly, "That all sounds like a lot of money. Spending like that — how many days will your newly arrived royalties last?"
"Aren't we putting it down as your debt?"
"Are you deliberately making me owe you more, so that when the time comes I won't be able to repay it?"
"Oh? You even know that trope?"
"Bah." Qiu Wuji snorted. "Do you know the simplest way to repay a favor?"
"Hm?"
Qiu Wuji put on a face of cold, murderous intent. "You die, and there's nothing left to repay."
Chu Ge grinned. "Then you wouldn't be my Qiu Wuji."
Why do I have to be your Qiu Wuji?
Qiu Wuji's mouth opened and shut; before she could get the words out, Chu Ge had pulled her into a China Telecom store.
Chu Ge had a China Mobile SIM himself, so using his own ID to open a second China Telecom line was perfectly ordinary; it went through without a hitch. A top-up came with a low-end handset, which he casually pressed into Qiu Wuji's hand.
"Remember it — your number," Chu Ge whispered at her ear.
His breath at her ear left her ear tingling. Qiu Wuji badly wanted to shove him away, but feared too big a movement would draw stares.
She clutched the little pink phone tightly, memorizing the string of digits that belonged to her, knowing she was drawing closer and closer to being someone of this present world...
And yet the contacts list held only his name. Even behind her own string of digits was the stamp of his identity.
And along with it, his "I have a responsibility to help you" — a real and true resolve, being carried out step by step, even though he wasn't well off.
—That's my Qiu Wuji.
Deep down she had a faint feeling that if he brought up healing and getting his blood moving again, maybe she should just do it... The way he grimaces and can't even walk properly — he really is suffering...
Suddenly I kind of want to go back... This feeling... isn't a good one.
Yet this time her divine soul's stay had clearly lengthened once more. All the way until she followed Chu Ge home after hunting down a secondhand laptop, Qiu Wuji felt not the slightest sign of being unable to hold on and needing to return.
Go back of my own accord?
There's nothing I particularly need to run back for, is there?
I might as well just cook him more good food...
"This thing is called WeChat. I can send you money like this." Chu Ge was setting up various apps for her, and casually transferred a few hundred yuan. "When you go to buy groceries, you scan with this. You've watched me scan plenty of times — you should get it."
"Mm."
"Oh, right — you need a WeChat ID." Chu Ge craned his neck to look at the WeChat on her phone. "Does our Sect Master Qiu have any thoughts about giving herself a mighty nickname?"
Qiu Wuji did want a nickname — not for the sake of might, but to be deliberately unlike "his Qiu Wuji."
But she turned it over in her head for a long, long while and nothing came. Her fingers mimicking the way he typed, she slowly searched and searched, and in the end the ID somehow became, without her noticing:
"Water follows the sky away, autumn without end."