Chapter 5 The Road Is Hard

Qiu Wuji was so furious she nearly blew her meditation chamber apart, but there was no way she could break the boundary again anytime soon.

"Someone come!" Her voice, thick with rage, echoed faintly through the sect's mountain valleys. "Go to the sect's hidden vaults and fetch the Black Tortoise Phosphorus Crystal and the Void-Scattering Shuttle. Request the Heaven-and-Earth Maze-Returning Grand Formation!"

The sect elders went white as paper. "S-Sect Master, are you g-going to face tribulation? B-but it's not time yet!"

Qiu Wuji ground her teeth. "What do you mean, not time yet? This Sect Master is going to face tribulation, and that's final!"

Aren't they both just ascension?

Is there really any difference between the immortal realm and that bizarre world of the grid-box typing treasure?

While Qiu Wuji busily laid her plans to break the boundary, Chu Ge, quite naturally, lay awake all night.

Now that Qiu Wuji has "seen through the truth," I wonder whether what I write still has any power over her mind?

Whether it does or not, she's bound to notice, isn't she?

Ever since he'd published that one line, he'd felt like he was prying open some kind of Pandora's box — nervous and thrilled at once, half convinced Qiu Wuji would come out in a towering rage and kill him. He tossed and turned and could not shut his eyes.

Any stray night breeze that blew past made him think Qiu Wuji had appeared; he would break out in a cold sweat and look over, and there would be nothing there.

Okay, okay — she probably can't come out whenever she feels like it. If she could, I'd be dead for sure!

He held out until past two in the morning, then, unable to lie there any longer, simply got up and kept typing.

He'd posted that last chapter in too much of a hurry — hadn't even checked for typos, and had forgotten to give Zhang Qiren his chapter recommendation. Zhang Qiren's book went on paid release at noon today; as a friend, it was only right to give him a push. Best of all to publish another chapter in the morning and recommend Zhang Qiren's book at the end of it.

But when he turned on the computer, he just sat there blankly. His head was mush, and he had no idea at all how to continue.

The whole outline's collapsed. Write what, my ass.

Chu Ge hesitated, then opened the review section. He hadn't dared look before; he'd felt sure that with the heroine's heart turning like that, he'd be cursed into the ground. When he opened it, he was dumbstruck.

The reviews were mostly positive... only, this kind of praise left a bad taste in Chu Ge's mouth.

"That's more like it! A woman like Qiu Wuji pining after some low-level disciple — I thought the character setup was going to fall apart. Thank god, she's been pulled back."

"Exactly. Our harem can't open that fast either — slow conquest is where the flavor is."

Chu Ge couldn't help himself and answered on his alt account: "How is that fast? Even without that turn at the end, her just thinking about the protagonist was only foreshadowing, wasn't it? It's not as if she's in love with him already — they haven't even gotten started yet."

"That's all true, but... the author came up writing harems. Write it like that and it feels like it's as good as done. He's going to collect her sooner or later anyway."

"Right, it just feels too fast."

Chu Ge's anger flared. "You lot are really something — treating something that hasn't happened as if it already has, then calling it too fast. What if he doesn't collect her?"

"As if that's possible. You haven't read the author's last book, have you... Want to bet on whether he collects her?"

Chu Ge: "..."

In the past, Chu Ge wouldn't have dared take that bet.

Of course he was going to collect her, originally...

But now...

He looked up and thought it over for a long while, then suddenly laughed.

He suddenly felt that writing Qiu Wuji free of any entanglement with the protagonist might actually be a good thing... maybe I've been looking at it wrong somewhere.

Isn't suspense the whole point of telling a story — making it impossible to guess what happens next? As things stand, everyone assumes in advance what's going to happen; they've even taken out a loan on her being collected. Where's the suspense in that?

The main plotline might be fine, but the romance line had no suspense left — only the spectacle of the process. That wasn't necessarily bad, it just didn't hold up; it was like a stool missing a leg.

Anyway, Qiu Wuji won't let me write it the old way, so I might as well rebuild the outline from scratch. It breaks free of everyone's guesses — and it's not as if I can't come up with another story.

The worst that can happen is a flop. It's not as if I've never flopped before.

All the gloom of half a night's agonizing melted away. Chu Ge laughed out loud and replied with two words: "You're on."

That said, he logged off without waiting for a reply.

What the stakes were didn't matter.

What mattered was that he had stepped out of the prison he'd drawn for himself.

— just as Qiu Wuji had stepped out of that patch of sky.

Chu Ge simply posted a standalone notice: "Reorganizing the Outline, Taking a Day Off, and Recommending a Book While I'm At It."

With his promise to Zhang Qiren fulfilled, the last nagging weight lifted, and Chu Ge relaxed completely. Loosening out his stiff muscles, he walked out of his room.

The door next door was shut tight, but light leaked faintly through the crack.

Zhang Qiren, sure enough, was still up too.

Chu Ge understood completely... the book went on paid release during the day. The pressure right now had to be enormous; being too nervous to sleep was only natural.

Besides, writers like them were used to staying up anyway. In the dead of night they were often more absorbed, more inspired — writing until the small hours was perfectly normal.

He knocked. "Want to go out and grab something to eat?"

Zhang Qiren said, muffled, "Just had instant noodles... Want some? Hey, come in and talk, what are you standing out there for?"

Chu Ge pushed the door open and saw at a glance that Zhang Qiren was shooting the breeze with someone on QQ.

"You're sure relaxed. I figured you'd be writing — turns out you're talking crap." Chu Ge walked over and glanced at the screen; the chat window had a girl's avatar. "Holy shit, you've actually got the presence of mind to flirt?"

Zhang Qiren said carelessly, "Heaven knows whether it's a man or a woman. Take it seriously and you lose. I'm just easing my mood — what, should I sit and stare blankly at a document instead?"

"Fair enough." So Chu Ge watched Zhang Qiren ease his mood.

The girl on the other side was saying: "My mom passed away."

Bully With Backup: "Want me to come over and keep you company?"

"I have a boyfriend."

"I have a mother." Zhang Qiren sent it, blocked her, all in one smooth motion.

Chu Ge: "..."

Zhang Qiren turned his head. "Don't look at me like that. I know all you want is white-cut chicken... oh, no, wait — you want a late-night snack. How about white-cut chicken?"

"White-cut chicken, my ass, at this hour. Let's just go have a bowl of bianrou and be done with it." Chu Ge headed out, smiling. "Didn't you just eat instant noodles?"

Zhang Qiren chuckled. "Something's on your mind. Forget instant noodles — even if I'd just eaten eighteen steamer baskets of baozi, I'd still go eat a bite more with you."

Chu Ge was a little surprised. "I wouldn't have guessed — you can read minds?"

"Read minds, my foot... I saw your standalone post. You were fine at dusk, then all of a sudden it's reorganize the outline — did your ideas for what comes next hit a wall? You knocking on my door at this hour — what else would it be for but talking through your ideas?"

That was right: of course Chu Ge had come knocking to talk over his ideas with a fellow writer. That was the whole point of renting a place with another writer in the first place — though this was probably the first time in six months they'd actually done it, apart from giving each other opinions on a new book.

Zhang Qiren seemed to have thought of the same thing, and it struck him as funny too. He slung an arm over Chu Ge's shoulder as they walked. "Having a friend who remembers to recommend my book even while he's taking a day off himself... I think that's a more important reason to share an apartment than talking about writing."

Chu Ge felt the same: having a friend who, nervous as he was on the eve of his own paid release, was still willing to come out at midnight to eat and talk ideas — that was the meaning that mattered most.

The two of them reached a street stall outside the housing compound. Bianrou was off the table; they got some skewers and a bottle of beer each.

"If you ask me — I'm a hack, sure — but I really do think you'd be better off changing your approach with this book." Zhang Qiren clinked glasses with him and grinned. "Including that two-sisters-at-once stuff we talked about before. Sure, I love reading it, but in the end that's all I remember about that book. With this one, all I want to see is when you push that female sect master down — I skip all the protagonist's striving. Is that what you want to be giving people?"

Chu Ge watched the foam in his glass. "And if it flops? Then I'm a lingerie model?"

Zhang Qiren pursed his lips, the feeling all too familiar.

It's easy to make that joke out loud. If it doesn't take off, I'm a lingerie model.

Yet after countless days and nights of torment, sitting in front of a computer ten-odd hours a day, cervical spine trouble, tenosynovitis, sciatica — a whole body of ailments ground out of him — who would want to watch it all come down to a few pathetic numbers nobody even looks at?

Here was Zhang Qiren himself, jittery on the eve of his own paid release — who could be that free and easy? Much less Chu Ge, whose numbers had visibly started climbing. Could he bear to give that up?

He could only answer lamely: "Look at me — I flop so hard even dogs won't read it, and I'm still sticking with no-heroine."

Chu Ge glanced at him.

In truth, Chu Ge knew: Zhang Qiren really couldn't afford to flop this time.