Chapter 3 Adaptation Is Not Fabrication

Chu Ge felt he must be hearing things.

The heroine ran out of the book?

And she put a sword to the author's neck, threatening him not to write her falling in love with the male lead...

Could jacking off too much have messed up my head, so now I'm seeing things?

But he looked at the door: shut tight, and there'd been no sound of it opening or closing a moment ago. She had simply appeared behind him out of nowhere...

Just how did she get in here?

If she were a thief who'd slipped in, that would make even less sense. What kind of thief breaks in to tell me to revise my book? A big-shot hacker deciding my writing is garbage, hacking my computer, and doing the writing for me would be more logical than this!

And besides, this woman was far too beautiful...

Chu Ge had assumed Gu Ruoyan was the most beautiful woman he'd ever seen in real life. He hadn't expected that within a few hours, that belief would be shattered by the one standing in front of him now. Looks aside, her aura was hard to put into words: glaring in fury, and yet uncannily ethereal and dreamlike, giving the illusion that at any moment she might feather into the sky and become one with the rosy clouds.

Is that an aura — a presence — any modern person could have?

From her looks to her aura to even her clothes, she matches the description in the book down to the last detail. Where would you even find a woman to cosplay her for you?

So she really did run out of the book?

But I'm no immortal. How would I turn a world inside a book into something real?

At least he was a writer who habitually roamed through every kind of imagining, and his tolerance for bizarre events was relatively high. Chu Ge finally managed not to be so rattled that he couldn't form words, and said with some difficulty, "Let's talk this over nicely, all right? Could you put the sword down first..."

Qiu Wuji stared at his neck, her expression shifting light and dark as she mulled something over. Then the sword vanished into thin air. "Killing you doesn't require a sword."

Chu Ge: "..."

Not requiring a sword is putting it mildly. If you really are Qiu Wuji, you're a big shot who's already ascended — your aura alone could kill me...

And yet the feeling this one gives off... the pressure isn't nearly that overwhelming...

Or is that just because she doesn't feel like killing anyone?

"Get up!" Qiu Wuji hauled Chu Ge off the chair the way you'd pick up a chick, and took his seat like a cuckoo taking over a magpie's nest.

And then...

She stalled.

Chu Ge just stood to one side with his hands tucked away, eyeing those flawless jade fingers hovering over the keyboard, motionless for a long while, plainly unable to work out how to type the words she wanted.

"You... want to write it yourself?" Chu Ge finally couldn't hold back the question.

If she really was Qiu Wuji, then having the heroine personally write her own doings was a rather entertaining experiment... Chu Ge was very curious to see how the plot would unfold.

Literally: the pen's yours, you do the writing.

Qiu Wuji was silent for a moment, then lightly pressed her fingers to the keyboard.

"Zzt—zzt—" A strange crackle of current came from the USB port.

Qiu Wuji frowned and pulled her hand back.

Chu Ge: "...Please don't tell me you're channeling spiritual energy into it to analyze the makeup of this magic artifact..."

Qiu Wuji: "..."

At this point Chu Ge truly believed she was Qiu Wuji. Could any normal person pull off something like that?

After an awkward stretch of silence, Qiu Wuji finally spoke. "How is this magic artifact of yours used? Why can this Sect Master sense no flow of spiritual energy... The electricity here seems to have nothing to do with your writing. How do you put writing into this crystal screen?"

Chu Ge's cheek twitched.

There's no way I can explain this to you. I'm just a liberal-arts dog...

He thought it over, then said cautiously, "Whatever you want to write, you tell me, and I'll write it."

He wanted to test what was really going on here as well... If he wove her future according to the "heroine's" own wishes, what would change?

Qiu Wuji turned and glanced at him, somewhat surprised. "A moment ago you were lost and panicking. You've calmed down quickly."

Chu Ge smiled. "Anyone would panic with a sword at their throat. I'm not one of you cultivators who've walked out of mountains of corpses and seas of blood — if you really are Qiu Wuji, that is."

Qiu Wuji said, "And why aren't you panicking now?"

"Because panicking doesn't help... Right now I want to figure out what's going on more than you do." Chu Ge reached out and tapped the keyboard, confirming it still worked. "Go on, then. How do you want me to write it?"

Qiu Wuji sized him up again, then said without a moment's hesitation, "Write that this Sect Master attains sudden enlightenment and ascends, breaking the limit between heaven and man."

"I don't think that'll work, because it goes against the world's fundamental setting. If I wrote that some ordinary mortal suddenly ascended, that wouldn't hold up either, necessarily."

Qiu Wuji grasped his meaning and narrowed her eyes slightly. "In your setting, I cannot ascend?"

Sensing the murderous intent buried in her anger, Chu Ge hurried to explain, "It's not that you can't ascend — it's that you can't abruptly ascend at this moment. There's a great deal of plot ahead involving you in this world, involving intersections with a great many other characters. If the heroine suddenly vanishes, the whole framework of the story collapses. You could say the foundation of the novel's world is built out of its characters — first there were Chu Tiange and Qiu Wuji, and only then did this world exist."

Qiu Wuji was silent for a moment, but in the end she gave up the seat, insisting, "Write what I said."

Chu Ge shook his head, sat down, and typed: "...Qiu Wuji's heart suddenly opened wide, and she felt the gates of heaven swing open; the intent of ascension on rosy clouds spread slowly through her... Above, tribulation clouds surged into being — the Great Heaven Tribulation!"

Qiu Wuji quietly felt it out for a while, then shook her head slightly. "It's no use."

Chu Ge let out a breath and laughed. "I knew it wouldn't work. It has to be logically self-consistent within the world's framework."

Qiu Wuji looked up and thought for a moment, then sighed to herself as if musing aloud. "This Sect Master never imagined that our 'Creator Father God' would be nothing but a scholar who can't even truss a chicken, and that the truth of our world would be a single book... All our joys and sorrows held in someone else's hand, our future nothing more than a track already laid down... Even my feelings shift from moment to moment with the strokes of a pen."

Her tone carried a note of melancholy, and something like the clarity of seeing everything come unraveled — hard to put into words. Chu Ge stared at her expression in a daze. If she really is a person from inside a book, then learning a truth like this really would be unbearable. A worldview collapsing like that — going mad wouldn't be out of the question.

Of course, the Qiu Wuji he had written would never collapse. With willpower that firm, she would only look for a way to turn the tables and seize her own fate...

That's right — isn't that exactly what she's doing?

The very fact that a disciple's smiling face had popped into her mind had filled her with alarm and revulsion, which must have stirred up some unknown potential and broken her through the boundary...

Most likely.

Once I've truly confirmed it, the wariness left by the sword at my throat slowly fades, replaced by a certain closeness and a little sympathy... How to put this feeling? She's a character I created — like a daughter?

To him, this was only a story — a vessel for his literary ideals, to put it nicely; a pure money-making tool, to put it bluntly.

But to her, it was her entire life being arranged by someone else.

Qiu Wuji frowned at him and asked suddenly, "Are you pitying me?"

Chu Ge pursed his lips and did not answer. Instead he said, "You say it's all in someone else's hands, but it's not quite that bad... Take my not being able to casually write you ascending — that's because it needs self-consistent logic. For a character, every action has to fit what that character would do and say. At most it's a matter of choosing one option among several possibilities — and those are the options you yourself would choose from, never an action that violates who you are."

He paused, then laughed despite himself. "Someone once said that once a character is written, they're beyond the author's control. Your appearing here is the most powerful proof of that saying."

Qiu Wuji watched him quietly, her beautiful eyes like a deep pool — still and profound, her thoughts utterly unreadable.

Only after a long time did she say coldly, "Are you trying to say that this Sect Master might come to like that man, and that it's my own choice?"

Chu Ge's face turned green.

Of course it couldn't be her choice. Qiu Wuji stood peerless in her generation — her pride, her vision, were on a plane all their own. Never mind whether her heart was still as water — even if she were to stir with mortal feeling, as he had deliberately laid the groundwork for, the object of it could never be a disciple who had only just entered the sect. The gap was simply too vast.

But this is a harem novel — if the conditions don't exist, you manufacture them. Winning a woman who could never be won is the whole payoff of the genre! Who'd read it otherwise?

But she truly was a woman who could never be won, which meant this truly was not a choice Qiu Wuji herself would make. It was the author pulling a deus ex machina.

So much so that she'd been repelled enough to run out of the book, hadn't she?

Qiu Wuji said coldly, "That absolutely could not be a choice this Sect Master would make... Which means you can influence this so-called self-consistency to some degree. As the storytellers say, even a slip can be smoothed over."

Chu Ge truly regretted having written her so clever. He could only wipe his cold sweat and say, "True... it can be... smoothed over. On a small scale."

Just as Qiu Wuji was about to say something more, her expression abruptly changed.

Chu Ge watched helplessly as her figure began to blur, as though her solid human body were turning into a transparent ghost.

Then fainter and fainter, like a phantom, until at last she vanished entirely.

Her parting words came out of the empty air: "Whatever method you use, you are not to write this Sect Master having any romantic entanglement with that Chu Tiange. This Sect Master can come out again at any time. If you keep writing nonsense... then you'll never write again."

The voice dwindled into the distance; she was already gone.

Chu Ge looked at the empty room and truly felt as though he were dreaming.