Qiu Wuji's sudden robbery left Chu Ge's plan to call the police dead in the water.
Nobody carried cash these days, but this thief was a little out of the ordinary — probably because people in his line of work couldn't afford to leave a paper trail when they did business. He actually had cash on him. A crisp, brand-new ten thousand, thick enough to bulge in his trouser pocket, looking exactly like a commission he'd just been paid... He also had a gold chain and a Rolex.
Qiu Wuji was also aware that money had another form these days, so she wanted to threaten him into transferring funds to her WeChat, which Chu Ge, sweating all over, firmly vetoed: "No matter how you wipe his memory or wreck his phone, once he finds the money gone he can still trace the transfer through all kinds of channels — or if he ends up in police hands, the police will check his transaction records too. That's asking for trouble."
"Oh." Qiu Wuji gave up reluctantly, and decided not to take the gold chain or the watch either, since those would need fencing — just the cash. Then she decisively erased the thief's memory.
Qiu Wuji weighed the thick wad of bills in her hand: "Is this your silver note?"
Chu Ge kept his face blank: "Mm..."
"And the denomination corresponds to those numbers in your WeChat?"
"Mm..."
"Well, this works." Qiu Wuji brightened. "Faster than writing books. I can pay you back now — see, I told you I could make money."
Chu Ge: "...Yeah."
Qiu Wuji hauled the unconscious thief toward the door: "On second thought, leaving his memory at the moment he came through the door isn't good either. Better to leave it much further back — he suddenly passed out, doesn't know who attacked him, doesn't even remember anything about our compound.
You don't need to report it to the authorities either; just let him wake up on his own, and it has nothing to do with us at all. If you insist the authorities should arrest him, you can still report finding a man unconscious outside. Either way, none of it has anything to do with us..."
Chu Ge followed her out with his arms folded, noted that her hands were still wrapped in that white glow, and carefully left no trace of contact with the thief. For a long moment he was speechless.
Why are you so practiced at this sort of thing... Mm. It's Father's fault for not writing you properly.
But there's no helping it. Cultivation novels these days are savagely brutal; you don't survive otherwise... ah...
The streets were deserted at high noon. Qiu Wuji cast an invisibility art and, swaggering along openly, dumped the thief in a roadside green belt two streets away.
Chu Ge trailed behind at a distance to watch, figuring he probably wouldn't need to call the police himself. The area was far from the city center, but it wasn't the back of beyond either; there were commercial blocks nearby, plenty of people around. A body lying in that green belt would stand out; within minutes a passerby would spot him, and someone would naturally call it in.
Still — if a thief like that hadn't blundered into Qiu Wuji's den but into some ordinary person's room, that person would have been in real trouble... You can't just leave a bastard like this to his own devices. He has to be handed over to the police.
He stood far off and watched for a while, and sure enough, someone soon noticed, ran to fetch the security guard from the nearby compound gate, and the guard took one look and quickly called the police. Chu Ge let out a soft breath.
Qiu Wuji stood beside him, saw the relief in his face, and suddenly asked, "What is it? Feeling uneasy?"
"Mm..."
"Because I robbed him?"
"That's part of it. Anyway, don't ever do this kind of thing in our world again — sooner or later it'll blow up in your face, unless you really do run off to some war zone and set yourself up as a big boss. And honestly, I wouldn't want that either."
"Then you didn't firmly stop me — wasn't that because you want money too?"
Chu Ge looked up and thought it over, then shook his head. "No. I need money, but not money that comes this way. Mm... to you, ill-gotten wealth may be fair game — people snatch treasure from each other all the time in the cultivation world — but in the education I grew up with, it still doesn't sit right."
Qiu Wuji's expression turned a little surprised. But I do this because you wrote it that way, don't I...
Then Chu Ge laughed. "That said, you only had that idea because of the world I set up, which means maybe it's my own inner thought, hahaha — so I don't even know how to stop you. Like I said, I'm worried you'll get hooked on money coming in this fast and slip up if you do it too often, not about this one time. Honestly, teaching a thief a lesson felt pretty good, haha..."
Qiu Wuji gave a slight nod. "Mm, understood, I'll be careful... You said that was only part of it. So what was the main reason? Because it touched the world of the extraordinary?"
"Right." Chu Ge gazed at the distant sky and said quietly, "Maybe everyone has an extraordinary world somewhere deep down — a wuxia or immortal dream, imagining they could leave this ordinary life behind, roam the world with a sword, be capable of anything... But when something like that actually shows up, I don't know how many people would turn out to be Lord Ye, who professed to love dragons until one appeared. I suppose I'm a bit like that. That sense of a perfectly good life about to be thrown into disorder — of course it makes you uneasy."
He paused, then gave a self-mocking laugh: "I'm just an ordinary guy who's lived an ordinary twenty-odd years."
Qiu Wuji tilted her head and studied him for a while, then said suddenly, "But there's longing in you too. Hence the contradiction."
"Yeah. It'd be a lie to say I'm not the least bit eager to try. But that's exactly the contradiction."
"Hah... A man who can create a world, who can create a living being that runs to his home and cooks for him, calls himself nothing but an ordinary man." Qiu Wuji smiled. "If Qiu Wuji's Father God is merely an ordinary man, then aren't all the teeming masses of this world no better than pigs and dogs?"
Chu Ge: "...I don't even know how you got out. It's not like I have any special ability."
"And so what? Are the talent abilities other people awaken their own doing? They all just fall from the sky. Some use them for crooked little schemes, some use them to show what they're made of, some are content with an ordinary life and perfectly happy that way. What kind of life you want to live depends entirely on your own choice, doesn't it?" Qiu Wuji said mildly. "Your unease comes from nothing but weakness. If you were strong enough, who could meddle with your life?"
Chu Ge looked into her eyes. You're strong enough. You nearly cut down even your Father God and forced a change to your own fate — didn't you?
Qiu Wuji seemed to guess what he was thinking. They looked at each other for a moment, then smiled at the same time.
Sirens sounded in the distance. The police had arrived.
Both of them stopped talking and watched the officers cuff the thief, question the unlucky compound security guard who'd been dragged into it, and pull the compound's surveillance footage — all of it methodical.
What surprised Chu Ge was that he recognized a familiar face.
Lin Wuyang.
Chu Ge didn't know much about how the police system worked, and found it strange — this guy hadn't gone to a police academy; they'd been classmates in Chinese language and literature, and if he'd sat the civil service exam it should have been for a desk job. How would a call-out like this fall to him?
And he even seemed to be some sort of minor supervisor, hands clasped behind his back, pacing about as though surveying the scene, with two young officers trailing behind him.
Lin Wuyang made half a circuit of the area and spotted Chu Ge standing in the crowd of onlookers in the distance. He blinked in surprise. "You live around here?"
"No, a few streets over. I was passing by and stopped to watch." Qiu Wuji had already slipped away noiselessly before Lin Wuyang came over. There were plenty of onlookers; Chu Ge blended into the crowd without a trace of guilt and greeted him openly: "You've been transferred to criminal investigation?"
"Mm... something like that." Lin Wuyang didn't elaborate. The sloppy, joking manner from their online chats was long gone; he was grave and serious now. "Have you seen anything strange these days, or any unfamiliar faces coming and going?"
"I don't even know the people in my own building, never mind two streets over — how would I know who counts as an unfamiliar face?" Chu Ge said irritably. "You'd get the same answer from anyone else. That's just how it is these days."
Lin Wuyang nodded. True enough — it wasn't like the old days, when neighbors shared a street and knew every face. These days, who knew anyone? Who counted as a stranger? Besides, the man had been dumped out on the main road; he might not have anything to do with the nearby compound at all. Surveillance was the reliable route.
As they were talking, an officer hurried over, looking grim. "Section Chief Lin, we've gone through the footage."
Lin Wuyang glanced at Chu Ge. "Let's catch up when there's time — I've got work to do."
Chu Ge waved a hand. "Sure, sure. Section Chief Lin, already... next time dinner's on you."
Lin Wuyang smiled and left with the officer.
It wasn't that he was putting on airs — police work simply couldn't be overheard by outsiders, whether the case was extraordinary or perfectly ordinary. That was discipline. Hope Chu Ge doesn't think I'm putting on airs. Spend long enough dealing with the wider world and you came to feel that ties with old classmates were still worth treasuring; at least they were much purer.
Beside him, the officer was reporting quietly: "The man just suddenly appeared in the green belt. Not a shadow of anyone before or after — he was simply there."
"Understood." Lin Wuyang let out a soft breath. "Wrap it up... We've been quietly hunting the wall-walker all this time without a single lead, and who'd have thought he'd fall into our hands here by accident. If we follow this thread, I'd say President Gu's materials are about ready to be handed in."
"Then the person who dumped him here..."
"We'll interrogate him back at the station first. Best case, it's one dog biting another... Even if there really is another unknown esper out there, this whole operation reads like someone doing the police a favor. In the spirit of the rules, if a person wants to live their own life in peace, we're not permitted to interfere at will; we have to protect citizens' privacy and lawful rights. Probing any further does no good."
Chu Ge also turned and squeezed out of the crowd to find Qiu Wuji. He'd barely gotten clear of it when he saw a girl in black standing under a utility pole in the distance, quietly watching the commotion.
When she saw him looking her way, the girl turned and left, vanishing in an instant.