With the female lead holding down the group, Chu Ge's mind was at ease, and he went back to his writing.
Qiu Wuji might not understand anything about writing books, but what she'd said made a lot of sense. At least for the goal the two of them were working toward now, perfecting the worldbuilding mattered more than the characters' stories — though of course the story couldn't be dropped, either; readers came for the story, not for a setting bible.
It was simply a reminder to himself to be more meticulous in that area.
To present every landscape of this world as though it were real.
And the world would naturally grow that much more real.
North and south, far and wide, each place with its own look and its own customs, instead of every corner you visited being cut from the same mold. The four quarters and the four seasons — spring, summer, autumn, winter — each with scenery of its own, instead of looking the same no matter when you went.
And a story built on that foundation would surely read better, with more pull.
The challenge was getting harder and harder... yet it gave Chu Ge the joy of his original intent instead — the fire a young author once had, that ambition to slay gods and prove the Dao.
Setting every other purpose aside, he also simply, purely wanted to do this well.
And his conditions seemed to have improved, too... cultivation brought him not only better spirits and a quicker mind, but more importantly a stronger memory: much of what he had once forgotten could be recalled again. The poems and famous lines, the descriptive passages of scenery, the historical allusions he'd memorized back then and long since lost — all of them were vivid before his eyes, fresh as new.
When were a person's writing and imagination at their best? In high school, when they had truly read their fill of books and verse. Chu Ge had always thought so — his writing back then had been far, far better than it was now.
So now it was as though he'd returned to those years: his prose had improved, his imagination ranged wider, and he could work poems and allusions into a line effortlessly. Things that had once been beyond him now turned out not to be as hard as he'd imagined.
On top of that... now that he'd started trying to split his attention in two, cultivating while he typed, Chu Ge kept feeling that his current state was strange. Looking at the words on the document, he kept getting a vision-like impression, as if the text were starting to blur into faint, indistinct images.
Much the same as what he'd felt the day he descended to answer Qiu Wuji's Covenant of the Heavenly Dao... looking down over the whole mortal world.
Every blade of grass and every tree; all the joys and sorrows of the human world.
Only blurred, with no details to be made out.
The world inside the book.
Chu Tiange was exploring a dungeon. Idly, he said to the friend beside him, "Have you noticed the scenery around us is getting more vivid? Even the way each cluster of flowers comes into bloom is starting to stir you — like you can feel the life inside it."
His companion laughed. "That's normal. You're a Foundation Establishment cultivator now, after all. An immortal's eye for the finest detail is naturally different from before. Didn't you feel it right after you broke through?"
Chu Tiange stared absently at the little flower by the corner of the wall, and at the grain of the stone.
Is it because my cultivation went up? Maybe... right after I broke through I did feel the world had gotten more real, but I got used to it fast and stopped noticing. Now it's happening again — I can't have reached Golden Core already, can I...
He kept feeling the world had grown more vivid, as if a gauze veil that had draped over it were slowly being drawn back; and he himself felt lighter, as if a pair of eyes that had once been fixed on him were gradually dimming and fading — the fate that had shrouded him, good or bad alike, was shifting away, and the road lay under his own feet.
It has to be an illusion. How could a mere Foundation Establishment cultivator experience what only a Spirit Transformation big shot gets to savor?
He just needed to do his own job, and that was enough. Chu Tiange couldn't help but laugh at himself, then roused the longsword in his hand. "Come on, let's see the next level."
In the distant Blazing Flame Prison, Yan Qianlie sat cross-legged amid roaring flames and slowly opened his eyes.
"I feel it too... the true existence of the Heavenly Dao. So Qiu Wuji discovered it even earlier, and has walked farther than this Sect Master..."
"But it doesn't matter... now you and I are the same." Yan Qianlie looked at his palm; the fiery red flame gradually turned to white, the searing heat so fierce that even the rock walls deep underground began to soundlessly annihilate.
None of this was in the plot.
Chu Ge couldn't possibly write about what they understood of the Heavenly Dao, but as every texture of the world grew more vivid, the outstanding people of that generation would in the end step gradually toward reality.
Could they break free of heaven's will?
At least for now, they were still like puppets on strings.
Chu Ge was wholly absorbed, writing the established plot: "Chu Tiange stepped deep into the cavern, emerald poison miasma filling the space. In the air, wronged spirits seemed to howl, and crimson eyes glinted everywhere."
"Chu Tiange tightened his grip on his longsword, and understanding flashed in his eyes: 'You're nothing but a beaten general our Sect Master drove out, your divine soul lingering on its last breath — why keep up the ghost act? Isn't that so, Venomous Hand Demon Lord?'"
The fated stepping stone showed up in the trial grounds right on schedule. Heaven's will went on, unhurried, always there.
It was only a very ordinary bit of plot, formulaic even, and Chu Ge wrote it with great ease. Yet if he had looked in a mirror just then, he would have found that his expression was not his usual pondering and concentration when writing.
It was coldness.
Every character's fate blossomed and gutted out at his fingertips; their joys and sorrows, their lives and deaths, were decided by him.
It was as if he could see it... beneath layer upon layer of mist, the distant multitudes, like ants.
"Phew..." Having finished the chapter, Chu Ge rubbed his somewhat swollen head and felt that his state just now had been odd — not like splitting his attention in two, but more like zoning out, except the writing had flowed perfectly.
Yeah, that plot was too simple. Nothing but Chu Tiange stomping the Venomous Hand Demon Lord's divine soul while it's recuperating, then driving him off to make trouble for some scheme of Yan Qianlie's... and break. End of chapter.
Plot that simple and I can finish it while spacing out — I really am a genius. Hands on hips!
He checked his cultivation; thankfully, spacing out hadn't caused any mishaps. Yep. Even more of a genius. Hands on hips!
Chu Ge let out a breath and leaned back in his chair, savoring the feeling of that daze. How to put it... it couldn't be put into words.
He looked at the ceiling, and a thought surfaced faintly: If I just wrote that Qiu Wuji fell madly in love with the Creator God, it might actually even hold together. A sect master too proud to look at any man in the world, chasing only the Heavenly Dao in her heart, obsessively conjuring up a god who is the Dao made flesh...
If that holds together, then she can strip tonight.
The thought had barely risen before he viciously stamped it out.
I can't do that.
What I want is a real Qiu Wuji, not some string-pulled doll with a body.
Wonder how she's doing with the group chat and the ops job...
He opened "Fratricide," and his eyes nearly popped out.
Someone was posting an image: "You all just drive, Dad'll figure out the way.jpg"
Right beneath it came a string of porn pics and magnet links.
"Kongyu has been muted for one hour by Admin Qiu Wuji."
"Down with the damn admin!"
"You guys chat, the admin and I are going to bed first.jpg"
"Ban Zhi has been muted for one hour by Admin Qiu Wuji."
Chu Ge couldn't imagine how many people Qiu Wuji had muted in the time he'd spent writing... Normally his DMs would have been blown up with people complaining about this new admin "abusing her power." But when he looked, not a single person had messaged him.
Chu Ge quietly slid into one old admin's DMs: "Hey, you guys are fine with her muting people like this?"
"Nope, everyone's too busy laughing to mind... wait, hold on. She?"
"...Yeah. She really is a female admin," Chu Ge said, speechless. "What do you mean, too busy laughing? Are you all masochists?"
"Holy shit, Big Chu, you actually do have a female fan? Is that even reasonable?"
"Extremely reasonable, actually.jpg" Chu Ge sent a sticker, then added: "Don't tell me the law of 'the moment a group gets a female admin, it's a dead group' is about to kick in? Ugh, I didn't think this through..."
"No, no, this female admin is a lot of fun. At first somebody posted a plate, and she asked what it was. We were all like, wow, there are still netizens who don't know what a plate is these days — so it was a woman after all, hahaha. Though honestly, not many women don't know what a plate is these days either. Could she be a schoolgirl?"
Chu Ge: "You taught her to go search for the plate?"
"Yeah. She came running back half an hour later, muted everyone who'd been posting plates, and said, 'Sure enough, birds of a feather — a pack of lechers!'"
Chu Ge: "..."
"An admin who talks that cute had everybody cracking up. Mushroom chimed in, yeah yeah, birds of a feather, want to see a few of the cars Big Chu used to like best? She said yes, took the magnet links, and only surfaced just now to curse us out, hahaha, I'm dying."
Chu Ge's vision went black.
You guys are having a great time, huh!
If there's no update this afternoon, then it's because the car you were driving got into a crash...
"Oh right, at the very start she asked why the group was called Fratricide — isn't that an ill omen? Everybody cracked up and told her this is a gay group, that Big Chu is the brother everyone here has anal with, and his chrysanthemum has already turned into a sunflower..."