"I heard that constable telling his subordinate that if an esper wants to live a normal life, he has to be protected." Qiu Wuji appeared beside him and walked home with Chu Ge, lowering her voice. "There's real warmth in the way people are treated in your country."
Most of what had been weighing on Chu Ge's mind was cleared away by that one sentence. In high spirits, he laughed. "That's right — we call it putting people first. And it makes sense, doesn't it? Most powers aren't necessarily dangerous, and most people are used to a comfortable life. Wanting to live decently is only natural. No need to make a whole thing of it."
"Mm... their cultivation is strange. It's as if they train one specific power rather than following a systematic path."
Powers and immortal cultivation were obviously not the same thing... but Chu Ge spotted the interesting bit buried in her words. "Their power can be trained?"
"Yes. You can see the marks of tempering — it's very obvious. The same ability can differ enormously in strength. Passing through a wooden door and passing through a wall are two different things; how thick a slab of steel you can pass through is another. Past a certain point the ability undergoes a qualitative change — say, ignoring defenses? Merging your body with the Five Elements? Those are all directions worth expecting."
Chu Ge looked thoughtful. "So this so-called awakening of spiritual energy isn't anything new. It's already beginning to have a system."
Qiu Wuji turned and glanced at him, then smiled suddenly. "Have you ever considered that you might have awakened a power by accident, and simply not know it?"
Chu Ge was taken aback. "You don't mean... manifesting imagination?"
Qiu Wuji shook her head. "Who can say. If it truly is that kind of ability... the power of a god? That's beyond what I know; I wouldn't dare guess. Once you've begun cultivating, once you can feel and control your own strength, perhaps you'll know for certain."
"Mm." Chu Ge sighed. "But that sounds like it's a long, long way off. Never mind starting — I haven't even met the baseline my body needs, and getting into shape is hardly the work of a day or two."
Qiu Wuji bit lightly at her lower lip, lowered her head, and walked on without answering.
Chu Ge's mind was on other things, and for the moment he didn't notice anything off about her. Soon they reached the rented apartment; he glanced at the door across the hall and murmured to himself, "This neighbor..."
Qiu Wuji said coolly, "She's lethal. That's no ordinary ability, and now someone has taken an interest in her. She's likely to bring trouble down on us. I'm wondering whether I ought to force her to leave..."
Chu Ge hesitated, and what Zhang Qiren had told him surfaced in his mind — that she had been a game streamer, and flopped.
She was probably someone who wanted an ordinary life too. She just hadn't managed it.
He sighed quietly and said in a low voice, "It really would be better if she left. But let's be a little tactical about it. If you just go and pressure her, aren't you giving away that you're no ordinary person — and then you'd have to wipe her memory again and all the rest of it?"
Qiu Wuji mulled it over, and it gave her a headache too. "It really is awkward to handle... Shall we just watch for now and take our chance later?"
"Mm. Anyway, it's not as if someone's going to blunder into the place next door every time — in theory it has nothing to do with us." Chu Ge stopped fretting, opened the door, and went in.
Once inside with the door shut, both of them quickly felt the sense of all the world's noise being sealed outside. Chu Ge let out a comfortable breath and smiled. "This is what a home feels like."
Qiu Wuji smiled faintly.
"It's still early. I'll go write for a while, then exercise."
"Wait." Qiu Wuji asked, "First teach me how to look up recipes, or one of those cooking livestreams."
"Oh. First I'll teach you to use Qiandu — from now on, if there's a term you don't understand, you can just search it. Like this..." Chu Ge leaned in beside her, opened the laptop, and typed in "Qiu Wuji."
The first page already turned up several poems connected to the phrase, among them the full ci that contained "Water follows the sky away, autumn without end."
Qiu Wuji's lovely eyes glittered with wonder.
This really is a top-tier magical treasure — there's nothing like it even in the cultivation world.
You had something like this and you didn't tell me sooner? I thought that laptop of yours was just for writing books! If I'd had this earlier, how much pointless guessing I could have saved myself!
Then again, right enough — back then there was no means for it. His computer is a tool he uses all day long, and he sits rooted to it from morning to night; it can't be given up. Only now have things improved.
Chu Ge demonstrated a few more, for instance: "How do you make egg fried rice?"
Instantly another mound of results appeared, video tutorials included.
"It's practically a divine artifact," Qiu Wuji said, overjoyed.
Chu Ge said warily, "Don't believe everything in there. It isn't authoritative — it's just information from all sorts of different people. Reference only."
Qiu Wuji said, "This Sect Master can judge for herself."
Chu Ge eyed her dubiously for a while, then moved on to the next lesson. "For livestreams and videos... mm, let's start with Bilibili. Watch, like this..."
Qiu Wuji sat at the computer, and Chu Ge stayed right beside her to teach, the two of them very close, each able to catch the other's scent.
Yet neither seemed to feel much of anything about it. Closeness at this level had apparently become entirely normal.
Even the point of Qiu Wuji's recipe hunting had turned odd at this stage. She had handed all the money she'd taken straight to Chu Ge; that covered not only months of food and lodging but the full cost of the phone and the laptop, repaid to the last cent. She no longer needed to cook for him to work off rent.
But both of them had forgotten that.
It wasn't until the lesson was over and Chu Ge had gone back to his room to write that it hit him: the way they'd been sitting, he clearly could have gotten away with a little something — catching her small hand to move the mouse, that sort of thing. Her mind had been on learning; she might not even have noticed...
Ugh. Idiot.
In the other room, Qiu Wuji watched Chu Ge go, opened the search bar, and thought for a good long while. Her first search was not a recipe, but this, pecked out slowly one finger at a time: "Can a WeChat transfer be sent without leaving a trace?"
The results made her frown. They only covered how to delete traces from the phone and said nothing about stopping the police from checking by other means. It seemed she'd better trust Chu Ge on this one; most likely it could be traced.
So much for that source of funds.
After some thought she typed another: "What do I do if the female lead ran out of the book?"
The very first result was the identical question, posted by an anonymous user — not a single character different.
The top-voted reply beneath it: "Fifty yuan, shipping included, and your troubles are solved."
The anonymous poster seemed to have hit a nerve, though, and fired back: "You a locksmith? 'Cause you're not worthy of a single key."
Qiu Wuji glanced at the post's timestamp, and the corners of her mouth curved up without her noticing.
The anonymous poster is probably in the next room typing away right now. Just look at how indignant he got.
So we can run into each other even here.
She thought a while longer, and her final search was: "Where is the Miracle Nightclub?"
It was a term she had dug out of the wall-walker's head — even Chu Ge didn't know when she'd done it.
Qiandu Maps displayed the local address, and Qiu Wuji silently memorized it.
Chu Ge wasn't too keen on sticking his own nose into this sort of thing, so she wouldn't go straight there. But at some suitable moment, a little quiet scouting from the shadows was always permissible.
Still, this laptop really was fun — a veritable kaleidoscope, with the myriad heavens and all their worlds inside it.
Qiu Wuji scrolled down through the pages with great interest, and her eyes gradually went glassy.
Because the search term contained "nightclub," some peculiar things had turned up on the page — "sex slaves" this, "training" that, all of it vocabulary straight out of the demonic sects.
So it really is the demon realm.
As if possessed, Qiu Wuji clicked in, and an enormous security alert sprang up on the screen and frightened her into closing the entire browser. This laptop isn't going to catch fire, is it?
Forget it. Cooking videos.
Qiu Wuji opened the video site, searched up a clip, and before long she was staring blankly again.
Why is she wearing nothing but a three-point bikini?
Is this supposed to be teaching me to cook?
Honestly...
Qiu Wuji watched the video, her gaze drifting, her thoughts floating off somewhere she couldn't name.
Maybe for him, used to living in a place like this, these things really are perfectly normal...
Evening.
Chu Ge finished another chapter and a half, then came out to loosen up his muscles, planning to run again.
He'd already run that morning; by rights someone just getting back into exercise shouldn't run this much. But the moment he had free time, the first thing he wanted was more training, whether or not it did any good.
I guess I just feel the urgency.
He stripped off his outer shirt and was just about to get on the treadmill when something struck him as off.
It's past five already, and Qiu Wuji is still in her room?
As if she'd heard him moving about outside, Qiu Wuji came hurrying out with a touch of panic. "Ah — I lost track of the time. I should be cooking."
Chu Ge smiled with perfect understanding — everyone had been through it. "Never thought I'd see our Sect Master Qiu dive headfirst into the internet and not come back out."
"I did not," Qiu Wuji said, sticking to her story. "I merely learned a few extra dishes."
"Sure, sure." Chu Ge grinned. "Looking forward to the new skills."
Qiu Wuji hesitated a moment. "You're going running again?"
"Yeah. Feels like time isn't waiting for me."
"Is the soreness gone?"
"No. Worse."
Qiu Wuji pressed her lips together and was silent for a good while, then said abruptly, "Don't run. Come sit here."
Chu Ge: "?"
Qiu Wuji said calmly, "I'm going to heal you and get your blood moving."
Chu Ge: "!!!"
"What kind of face is that?" Qiu Wuji said stiffly. "You feel the urgency — do you think I don't? The truth is, the schedule you were worrying about can be accelerated a great deal. I can not only heal you and get your blood moving, I can open up your eight extraordinary vessels and nourish your five viscera and six bowels — you could begin cultivating outright. It's only a mortal body; how much trouble can it be to set it right?"
Chu Ge was dumbstruck. "Then you had me running and exercising, and put me through two days of misery..."
Qiu Wuji turned her head away. "I wanted you to start honestly, from the very beginning. Getting something too easily makes a person restless and flighty, and that's bad for your state of mind later on."
Chu Ge glared at her in exasperation for a long moment, then something occurred to him. "Does it shorten how long you can stay in this world?"
Qiu Wuji froze, then forced herself to say, "No."
"Don't lie to me. It definitely does." Chu Ge turned to go. "Forget it, I don't want it. I'll train on my own."
"So much fuss!" Qiu Wuji suddenly flew into a rage, grabbed Chu Ge, flipped him over, sat down on him, and gave him a beating. "Posing, posing! You obviously want it, and you still have to put on that righteous look. I don't want you playing the good man! Saying one thing and meaning another is the most detestable thing there is!"
"Holy shit, help, ow ow ow!"
Pink fists rained down on his back, and at some point they became slender palms stroking lightly.
His cries of pain gradually turned into moans.
Vast, pure immortal power seeped thread by thread into his skin, warming his muscles, smoothing his meridians, regulating his organs.
Chu Ge felt as though he were in the Jade Pool of the immortal realm, so comfortable he was drifting among the clouds, ready to ascend on the spot.
Honestly, there was hardly anything suggestive about it. Sending a suggestive sticker would be raunchier than this... the contact in any licensed massage parlor would be raunchier than this. But suggestiveness lives only in the mind.
The daylight sank; the room's lights stayed off. One man, one woman alone, their silhouettes dim.
A jade hand stroked his bare back; a faint fragrance stirred the air of its own accord.
At this moment, silence said more than words.
The City Bureau.
Lin Wuyang, who had been working overtime until now, stood up and stretched out his limbs, and a knock came at the door. "Section Chief Lin, hello — I'm Gu Ruoyan."
"President Gu, please come in." At ease, Lin Wuyang handed her a printed document. "The materials you asked for are basically complete. The electronic copy has already been sent to your email."
"Thank you very much. Sorry for the trouble, Section Chief Lin."
"Only doing my duty. Your editorial office's roster is compiled as well — it serves as an important basis for our internal files."
Gu Ruoyan looked over the document in her hand and suddenly smiled. "I'd guess Section Chief Lin's version still has an omission?"
Lin Wuyang said frankly, "It's impossible to know everything. Today we caught the wall-walker by accident and pried out of him the identities and abilities of some of his accomplices — that's about as much as I can report. Learning more will be long, slow grinding work, and new figures can appear at any time."
Gu Ruoyan shook her head with a smile. "I don't mean those. Nobody expects to know everything about them in the first place."
Lin Wuyang said, puzzled, "Then what?"
Gu Ruoyan smiled. "You yourself, Section Chief Lin."
Lin Wuyang: "Uh..."
Gu Ruoyan picked up a pen from the desk and added a block of text at the bottom of the document.
Registry of Ability Users:
Name: Lin Wuyang.
Position: Section Chief, Special Affairs Division, Nanjiang City Bureau.
Power: Compelled Truth — when activated, the target cannot help but speak the truth.
Development: Minimal.
Type: Support.
Potential assessment (provisional): B.