Chapter 33 What's So Bad About That?

Over on his side, Yan Qianlie felt the binding of the Heavenly Dao oath settle on him. His thoughts grew heavy, but he did not agonize over it.

The binding runs both ways. This is a wager—do you really think you're guaranteed to win, Qiu Wuji?

Couldn't it be this Sect Master who wins the wager, takes the Taixu Fire, and smashes through the gates of your Cloud Horizon Sect besides?

Yes... the sects off the battlefield will tip the scales of the duel as well. This can't be treated like any ordinary one-on-one; I'll have to plan it out carefully...

Yan Qianlie turned it over in his mind, and said with a laugh, "Since the Heavenly Dao has sealed the pact, this Sect Master accepts it. As for when our battle will be—Sect Master Qiu, why don't you set the terms?"

Qiu Wuji's lovely eyes shifted, and she said with a smiling lilt, "What does Your Excellency think?"

Yan Qianlie laughed heartily, turned, and left: "Then the fifteenth of the seventh month—the Night of a Hundred Ghosts!"

Qiu Wuji watched Yan Qianlie's back as he turned into firelight and fled. She looked thoroughly unconcerned, but inside she was cursing up a storm: "Our world has no such thing as a 'fifteenth of the seventh month, Night of a Hundred Ghosts'! What are you adding random settings for?"

"Huh? I got on a roll and tossed in a badass line off the top of my head. That's inspiration. And anyway, the next arc really is the Night of a Hundred Ghosts. Oh, right—I can even use that as the volume title. So much gravitas, hahaha, I'm so smart."

Qiu Wuji ground her teeth. She very much wanted to haul him out and give him a beating.

But she discovered she couldn't haul him out at all.

It really was true that heaven's will is vast and unknowable, formless, without substance. He could track her down, but she had no idea whatsoever where he was.

Chu Ge noticed too: "Let me guess—you want to hit me and you have no target? Hahaha, isn't it impressive? Go on, say it—call me Father God!"

Qiu Wuji: "..."

She choked it down, teeth clenched, and flew back to the sect on her sword. The moment she was inside she said, "See that the matters this Sect Master arranged are carried out at once. This Sect Master must go into seclusion and temper herself for the battle with Yan Qianlie."

The very next moment, Chu Ge, sitting at his computer, was hauled up by the scruff of the neck and viciously beaten. "So you thought I couldn't hit you? Impressive, am I? Father God, am I?"

"Holy shit?" Chu Ge was struck dumb. "Ow—no, stop, stop hitting me! You can pop out this easily now? You don't even have to wait out a cooldown? That's not scientific... Then if you can't stay and get sent back, and you turn right around and come back again, isn't that the same as permanent? Are you abusing a bug here..."

Qiu Wuji sneered. "What? You don't want me to be able to come out whenever I please?"

"How could I possibly not want that?" Chu Ge was overjoyed. "Being able to come out anytime is what's badass! If I get into danger, I just yell 'help!'—doesn't that make me invincible?"

"In your dreams. What makes you think I'm obliged to hear you yelling for help?"

Qiu Wuji said crossly.

"Let me ask you—has playing the Heavenly Dao gone to your head so much you've turned stupid? More than ten days have already passed for me back in my own world. The sect has already carried out no end of quiet preparations. In all that time, any soul exhaustion has recovered, hasn't it? Otherwise would I have dared rashly meet Yan Qianlie and seal a wager pact? Without fearing he'd simply strike? Do you take me for as big an idiot as you?"

"Uh, so more than ten days have passed on your side?" Chu Ge thought about it—fair enough. Only a day had passed on his, but with his uninterrupted ten-thousand-word daily updates, the story's clock moved along briskly enough. It had been the same last time: the Venomous Hand Demon Lord business had been "seven days later," and she'd been back the next day on his side.

In other words, if he wanted Qiu Wuji to be able to come out sooner, all he had to do was casually throw in a "three days later" or a "seven days later"? And then what if the plot jumped ahead to a "thousand years later"? Would Qiu Wuji really spend a thousand years alone over there?

The thought suddenly sent a chill through him.

"And another thing—just because I can come out, why must I come out?" Qiu Wuji eyed him sidelong. "What kind of misunderstanding do you have about this Sect Master? Do you think I've got nothing better to do?"

"Come on, enough with the 'this Sect Master,'" Chu Ge said with a laugh. "Didn't 'I' already roll off your tongue nice and smooth before? What are you going out of your way to do this for?"

Qiu Wuji gave a hmph and didn't answer.

"You've got to get to know the new world, right? So you'll always have to come out," Chu Ge said with a laugh. "And even setting that aside, you need to read what I write next so we can compare notes. That's the only way we'll work out how to free you from the book's influence."

Qiu Wuji sighed inwardly.

It was exactly this attitude that made it impossible for her to feel any dislike toward Chu Ge.

Take any other man who could manipulate her life as he pleased, define her thoughts and her love—and he would never be like Chu Ge, would never genuinely work to help her break free.

Maybe what he wanted really was different from what other men wanted. What he was thinking was, If the people I write could really stand on their own, how badass would that be?

He deserved the title of Father God.

Qiu Wuji stopped butting heads with him and asked instead, "So you can make a divine descent whenever you like now? Can you do anything else?"

"From what I can tell so far, no. It only works because what I wrote was the scene of you communicating with the Heavenly Dao—which is basically me writing that I'm communicating with you, so we can communicate... But I think there's a lot of room to grow this. I'll look into it later. If I write the Heavenly Dao taking human form as Hongjun and stepping out, I wonder if that could work. If it does, wouldn't I be invincible the moment I step in..."

"I think that's pretty unlikely. However you look at it, it's absurd. A person with no cultivation at all crossing straight in and becoming invincible—there's got to be a problem with that, doesn't there? Or put it this way: if your novel's original setting has no Heavenly Dao taking human form, and you just slap it on out of nowhere, doesn't that also violate the 'self-consistency' you insist on?"

"Tsk, you actually understand all this now..."

Qiu Wuji ground her teeth. "Can't I be jealous? I cultivated for ten thousand years, and you walk in and you're invincible—how is that fair!"

"All right, all right, I know you're an old lady." Chu Ge said, swiftly striking a defensive pose.

Qiu Wuji shot him a glance. "Masochist. I won't give you the satisfaction."

Chu Ge: "?"

"A low-level disciple who doesn't even rate the first layer of the Qi Refining stage shouldn't sit around dreaming about being invincible every day," Qiu Wuji said scornfully. "If you really want to get into our world and show off in a big way, then you'll definitely need a certain foundation in cultivation yourself—no doubt about it. I suspect the reason you could communicate this time is also that you've already begun cultivating."

Chu Ge thought it over. It made perfect sense, so he shut up.

Made sense, sure—but to reach the level he actually wanted, I'd be cultivating until the year of the monkey...

"On the other hand, your idea of comparing what I do against your plot—that's a serious matter," Qiu Wuji said. She leaned over to look at the chapter he'd posted, and as she read, her expression grew worse and worse.

Chu Ge asked, puzzled, "What's wrong?"

"This... what's with this intent to contend for supremacy?"

"Oh, that's a change extrapolated from the plot. Think about it—a contest between the strongest of the strong is bound to draw the eyes of the whole world and pull in an enormous web of ties. Both sides have friends and enemies, and each will drag in the other's. As a sect master, even if you never paid that sort of thing any mind before, with a great war looming you'd certainly make some preparations."

Qiu Wuji said nothing.

Chu Ge watched her expression and said carefully, "It's not that you have to contend for supremacy. It's that in a conflict between sects, choosing among every kind of means is exactly what a sect master who bestrides the age ought to do. And afterward, if you really can crush or even wipe out the Fire Prison Sect, you'd already be looking down on the world—even if we don't call it contending for supremacy, you'd still be an uncrowned emperor."

Qiu Wuji raised her head and thought for a long while, then suddenly laughed at herself. "So I thought I'd changed my style of doing things—and it turns out this was the reasonable deduction all along?"

"Hmm..."

"Then what I did—was it because you wrote it, or because that's what I myself think?"

Chu Ge thought it over, then answered, "The you of now is different from before. Before, you couldn't sense whether your own thinking showed signs of being forced on you. Now you can. If you didn't feel any such signs this time, then it may not be because I wrote it."

Qiu Wuji perked up a little. "Then what is it?"

Chu Ge smiled. "Why can't it be that your heart and mine are in tune?"

Qiu Wuji glared at him furiously. Chu Ge met her gaze without flinching.

After the two of them had stared at each other for quite a while, Qiu Wuji looked away. "In tune, maybe not. That you know me too well—now that part is true."

She sighed. "Whatever the cause, it still gives me this feeling that fate was settled long ago in the dark, like a net I can't struggle out of... That feeling... is truly detestable."

Chu Ge said suddenly, "Having someone who knows you—what's so bad about that?"

Qiu Wuji looked over at him again.

"What you just said reminded me of something—in tune, indeed, maybe not." Chu Ge smiled. "So then, Qiu Wuji, how much do you know about me?"