Qiu Wuji, however, showed no reaction at all to that sort of talk. If Chu Ge didn't write books, then naturally she wouldn't exist — so what was there to react to?
But it was only once they went inside that Qiu Wuji slowly began to understand why Chu Ge had said that.
It was a very classical dance hall, and on the surface perfectly normal — classical by Chu Ge's standards, anyway, roughly the kind of ballroom that had been popular back in the nineties and was rarely heard of now.
Men and women danced in each other's arms throughout the hall; soft, elegant music drifted through the air; the lights swayed, their glimmer sweeping over the dancers. Qiu Wuji could clearly see some couples kissing while they danced.
And some people's hands were roaming all over their partners' backs.
Nobody around them batted an eye, as if it were completely normal.
Small drinking tables ringed the dance floor, where men and women sat in twos and threes, drinking and chatting — that much was fairly normal. At the tables in the far corners, though, couples were still wrapped around each other, devouring each other's mouths, hands sneaking up under hems...
The music was gentle and the decor elegant; it all looked quite classy — and yet one glance was enough to see that it was all decadence.
"This kind of setup." Chu Ge stroked his chin. "It's still normal enough — a place for people to play out their own little kinks."
Qiu Wuji was dumbstruck. "You call this normal?"
"Of course it's normal. Usually they don't even have trouble when inspections come around. If there were really something going on, we couldn't have waltzed in without so much as a single check. This is a place for ordinary people to play."
Qiu Wuji: "..."
What exactly do you people think ordinary people are like?
"How many in your party, sir?" Only then did a waiter come over to greet them.
"Two," Chu Ge said. "First time here. Care to recommend anything fun?"
The waiter's eyes flicked over Qiu Wuji from head to toe, and a strange smile appeared on his face.
You've already brought your own lady companion, sir, so the fun stuff isn't for you anyway. Or are you so exceptionally gifted that you can play with someone else right in front of her?
"Aside from the special show later tonight, there aren't really any other activities. With a companion as beautiful as yours, sir, isn't she the best entertainment you could ask for?"
"Hiss..." He sure can talk. Way smoother than us keyboard jockeys.
Chu Ge didn't ask any more questions. He asked for a table in the corner and squeezed in to sit down beside Qiu Wuji.
Yes, squeezed in... The farther into the corner a table was, the more it was the couple's-seat type: dim lighting, no one to disturb you. A man and a woman together couldn't ask for anything better.
Qiu Wuji was squeezed in against the wall, with Chu Ge on the outside. After her attempt at independent action had just been brutally slapped down by reality, she was on her best behavior this time; her face was twitching from holding everything in, but she didn't say a word and let Chu Ge do the talking.
Chu Ge was pressed right up against warm, fragrant softness, their arms touching, and he could feel the tender smoothness of her skin. He forced down the stirring in his heart and studied the menu with great solemnity.
Then his face turned green.
Every wandering thought was smashed to pieces by the string of numbers on the menu.
A bottle of the cheap stuff was over a thousand yuan; the good stuff, over ten thousand; and the even better stuff he didn't dare look at.
A plate of peanuts was ninety-nine yuan — are you fucking robbing me?
Under the waiter's smile, which was growing stiffer by the second, Chu Ge feigned composure. "One bottle of beer. One plate of peanuts."
The waiter's smile turned into something not quite a smile. "Very well."
At least he has some professionalism...
I'd rather you sneered at me a couple of times and gave my Qiuqiu an excuse to rough someone up, storm out, and call it quits.
The waiter quickly brought the beer and peanuts, then paid their table no further attention. Only then did Qiu Wuji speak her first sentence. "Scoot over a bit. Why are you sticking so close?"
Chu Ge said helplessly, "The bench is only so long."
Qiu Wuji pursed her lips and didn't bother rising to it. "What, can't stand the way people look at us?" she said mildly.
Chu Ge admitted, "Yeah. It's awkward."
"If you're going to cultivate, you need to keep your state of mind calm and balanced. Otherwise you'll have a hard time making progress."
"...When you couldn't flag a cab and people were staring at you like an idiot, didn't you still want to hit me? Hisss—ow, ow, ow!"
Not just hit me — she's evolved to pinching flesh. Do you cultivators play this too?
Qiu Wuji said through gritted teeth, "I'm being serious with you!"
Chu Ge poured the beer with an ingratiating smile. "Yes, yes, Master."
Qiu Wuji really couldn't be bothered with him. She picked up the glass and took a casual sip — then sprayed it all out. "What is this, horse piss?"
Chu Ge: "Even if this is the cheapest beer here... that one mouthful just sprayed away ten yuan."
"Strange." Qiu Wuji looked around. "Even if all this place offers is a hall for dancing and decadence, it still shouldn't be this expensive, should it? Is my common-sense judgment wrong after all?"
The poor thing's fallen into self-doubt. Chu Ge didn't know whether to laugh or cry. "Your common sense is fine this time — it's this place that's off. Let's observe first... oh, right, can you use your divine sense to look at other places?"
"I can."
Qiu Wuji had, in fact, already spread out her divine sense to explore... She was not truly the Qi Refining cultivator she appeared to be. Strictly speaking, she was a split-soul body with the divine consciousness and spellcraft knowledge of the tribulation stage, capable of things far beyond what an ordinary Qi Refining cultivator could comprehend.
But her observation ran into trouble almost immediately.
Having too strong a divine sense wasn't necessarily a good thing... For example, when her divine sense passed through the wall she was leaning against, she could "see" the man and woman next door locked in a kiss, the clothes on her shoulders nearly slipped down to her elbows, baring a pale expanse, and then the man buried his head there...
And the truly lethal part was that she could not only see it, but hear it too.
That kind of wanton sound really made one's face flush and heart race.
In that atmosphere, the two of them, sitting pressed so close, couldn't help but feel an illusion of rising temperature. Their touching arms grew hotter and hotter, as if they both had a fever.
Chu Ge, too, couldn't suppress his wandering thoughts. He had the lust but not the nerve; he didn't dare do anything else, only carefully rub against the arm already touching his, as if that might bring him a little comfort.
Rubbing and rubbing in that atmosphere, Qiu Wuji felt it too... Something inside her seemed to stir, to yearn — a feeling she had never experienced in all her life.
It's all that shameless "Creator God's" fault. With a setting of ten thousand years of pure cultivation, I shouldn't possibly have feelings like this — but no, the setting he wrote has to include them. It absolutely has to!
Qiu Wuji gritted her teeth and held it in for a long while. "Chu Ge, are you ever going to stop? Do you really want me to hit you?"
Chu Ge jerked away as if shocked and felt a little ashamed of himself.
That was a bit sleazy. We're not at that kind of relationship...
Qiu Wuji let out a breath. For some reason she felt a little hollow instead, and even the debauchery around them didn't seem quite so glaring anymore.
Her divine sense finally stretched farther and finer.
She sensed something over there... Before she could make it out clearly, the music over the dance floor stopped, the dancers began to leave the floor, and an MC leaped onto the stage and shouted, "And now, the special performance you've all been waiting for! Music!"
The music switched from its earlier soft elegance to something passionate and uninhibited, and even the lights began to flash faster.
A woman rose slowly from underground, gripping a metal pole. Just as the platform rose level with the floor, she undid her jacket and flung it away with a flick of her hand.
The hall erupted in cheers.
Qiu Wuji and Chu Ge stared open-mouthed at the bunny-girl getup revealed on the woman's body, their minds going blank for a moment.
W-wait a minute... Is this pole dancing, or... something even more hardcore?
Qiu Wuji blankly forced out a single sentence: "Looks like I shouldn't have come after all."