The "defiance of the rules" that Chu Ge sensed ought to rank as a fairly serious business.
Qiu Wuji's shouting "smack your head till it's mush" in front of a great crowd was a break from her persona — "breaking the book" — and registered to the author as something "off." Yet the content of the book hadn't changed; what had changed was the real world. That registered as interference from the Heavenly Dao.
Just as in the battle with the Venomous Hand Demon Lord, it was busy correcting a plot that had slipped its reins.
While Chu Ge gazed, Qiu Wuji sensed something too.
It was a law of the Heavenly Dao descending around her, as if to crush her "disrespect," her very "self," all of it, back down.
The others had no such direct sensation, but they could feel a pressure like dark clouds blotting out the sun — the omen of a heavenly tribulation drawing near.
Someone, wild with delight, cried out sharply: "Qiu Wuji, what dark deed have you done, to bring down heavenly punishment?"
The crowd stirred in an uproar.
It really did look like heavenly punishment — at least its precursor.
Qiu Wuji's long hair lifted lightly, and she raised her head to the sky.
She seemed to feel a pair of eyes up in the clouds, watching coldly. Qiu Wuji pulled a stern face and glared right back.
Then the coldness turned to astonishment, then to a doting smile — and with a whoosh, it vanished.
The rain cleared; the sky turned blue.
The crowd: ???
Was even heaven getting out of her way?
City Lord Xie of Cloudsky City rose to his full height and laughed aloud: "I speak what's in my heart. Who says Qiu Wuji has to talk any particular way? What a joke. Sect Master Qiu's words strike right to my heart!"
Qiu Wuji cupped her fist over her sword in a slight salute and said nothing more.
Her gaze stayed fixed on the horizon, on the layer of cloud where that smile had vanished.
It looks like cotton candy...
Chu Ge drew his spirit back. Before him was still the computer screen — no misty haze and green peaks, and no Qiu Wuji.
The feeling of it really was bizarre.
Yeah, so I play favorites — so what? Anyone else who steps out of their "Heavenly Dao setting" persona runs into trouble. She gets away with it.
It was her insistence — and Chu Ge's wish as well.
Let's keep at it, both of us, till the day we break free of the Heavenly Dao.
Say, does this count as seeing her? We didn't exchange a word, though, so it can't really be called "meeting." "Gazing from afar," is it?
One thing that gave Chu Ge more of a headache: this arc was centered on Qiu Wuji, and within several chapters the timeline might not advance a single hour. He couldn't casually drop a "seven days later" the way he used to.
Which meant that until this arc was finished, seeing her was probably out of the question.
It had only been one night and one morning, and already the longing in Chu Ge's heart was spreading unchecked.
Aw, one look from afar and I miss her more — her showing up beside me, all fragrant.
Mass-release chapters to speed this arc along?
But I'm afraid releasing too fast would hurt the quality... A whole morning of writing and his brain had gone stiff. If he wrote Qiu Wuji badly, that would be a real loss.
Time to move around a bit, take a break.
Right — counting the time, there was something I forgot...
Chu Ge scratched his head for a good long while before it finally came to him: he'd forgotten to return the bicycle... No return, no deposit. Ninety-nine for one night was already expensive enough — did he really want to end up paying two hundred ninety-nine for a beat-up bike?
He really could think about buying a new one himself, though. When Qiu Wuji came over, he'd ask her opinion — bicycle, or one of those little electric scooters? Either way, it would widen the range the two of them could get around in.
He rode the bicycle to yesterday's spot and returned it, checked his phone, saw it wasn't lunchtime yet, and then without thinking followed yesterday's route back to the old town to look at the place where the fight had happened.
The nightclub's doors weren't closed, and police were still going in and out, apparently searching for and sealing up all sorts of things.
Nearby, passersby were shooting the breeze: "You hear about it? This place is mixed up with drugs."
"I heard. They hauled off a whole crowd of people last night."
"I also heard some people are real unhappy with the City Bureau's operation this time, saying they acted on their own authority or something..."
"Ahem, better not say that out loud... Unhappy about what? That's hard to say, very hard to say."
Chu Ge's steps paused slightly, and he sighed.
Lin Wuyang's line — "their Qixi, our Qixi" — was still echoing in his heart.
Zhang Qiren's "Lin Wuyang's just a section chief, he can't do a thing" surfaced at the same moment.
Come to think of it, if Zhang Qiren hadn't broken the underworld's taboos this time and suddenly handed Lin Wuyang a knife, Lin Wuyang would have had a hard time bringing off even this operation.
And even if it had come off, what waited for him wasn't necessarily a reward for merit.
His phone rang; Chu Ge answered without looking: "Who's this?"
Lin Wuyang's voice came through, a little weary: "Were you the one blocking that alley mouth last night?"
"Uh..."
"They gave descriptions, a sketch was drawn from them, and it looked like you to me. Given your connection to Zhang Qiren, I figured it was you. Well? You doing work for Zhang Qiren?"
"I won't lie to you, it was me. But I only did it for the sake of doing what needed doing, not for Zhang Qiren. Hey, this is obviously a good thing — how come you don't count it as me doing work for you?"
Lin Wuyang was silent for a moment, then laughed. "Fair enough. That's why I'm calling to ask you about it instead of hauling you in for a statement. Say — do you want a good-Samaritan commendation?"
"Don't... Can you keep this whole thing under wraps for me?"
Lin Wuyang chuckled. "I did a little misdirection. Right now, not even a dog would recognize who that sketch is of."
"Thanks."
"That other woman — they couldn't even describe her. All they said was pretty and cold-as-ice, which is as good as saying nothing. I'm telling you... seems you're hiding quite a lot. Let's talk about it sometime?"
"Wuyang, why do I feel like you're giving off holy light right now?"
Lin Wuyang smiled wryly. "Oh, come off it."
Chu Ge said: "You get chewed out?"
Lin Wuyang sighed. "I was a bit rash, I'll admit... It's not just the club itself. The gamblers that day — plenty of them were people of standing. The cleanup afterward is a real mess, the bureau's under no small pressure, and I even regret it a little. Covering for you comes out of that too: whatever reason you had for being there, in the end you did a good deed, and you shouldn't have to carry the trouble for it."
At the bare-knuckle fights that day there were even more well-dressed capitalists in the stands. If he'd barged into that place, the trouble would've been even worse.
So the work was hard — and so some people had nothing to fear.
Say, the Lin Wuyang of today is really not bad...
Then Lin Wuyang said: "Criticism is criticism, but the bureau's behind me. It's not what you people imagine. I'm still running the case, and our director has taken a lot of the pressure on my behalf."
Chu Ge grunted an "Mm."
Lin Wuyang sighed again. "The problem now is we've got far, far too few people with special abilities. Look at me — a lousy ability like mine, and I can still be a section chief..."
There seemed to be a hint in his words: he wanted Chu Ge to lend a hand. Chu Ge stayed quiet for a moment and didn't pick up on it, only smiled and said: "I think you don't just deserve to be a section chief — you ought to be the director."
"Hey..."
"When you get some free time, let's have a couple of drinks."
Lin Wuyang seemed to want to say more: "...All right."
After hanging up, Chu Ge turned the matter over in his mind... Of those who join the police through the regular exams, the odds of an esper happening to turn up are far too small. Meeting one Lin Wuyang was already no easy thing; the rest of the espers must be scattered across every trade and profession. That's why, all these years, the authorities keep seeking out anyone relevant — Gu Ruoyan taking Yueying away is a textbook example... and the off-the-books contact Zhong Buli that Mom introduced should be one too.
But this kind of search didn't look easy... Once people had special abilities, they generally seldom displayed them in front of outsiders; and even when they did, those out to profit for themselves or to live as they pleased surely made up the majority, while those choosing to do work under restrictions were probably few. Never mind anyone else — wasn't Chu Ge himself exactly the same?
So that's why the compromise of "off-the-books" came into being — and is it a kind of trial and observation as well?
Turning all this over, his feet without thinking carried him along the familiar route to the neighborhood of the little restaurant where he'd had his late-night snack the night before. Only then did he register that he was hungry. He wandered around the block, and was startled to find that within two streets in any direction there was only this one restaurant.
And even with only that one restaurant, the business wasn't much good. He and Qiu Wuji had eaten beef noodles here last night, and the flavor had been genuinely mediocre; poor business was no surprise.
Whatever. Mediocre is mediocre — fill my stomach first.
Chu Ge ambled in the door, and before he could get a word out he saw the lady boss gripping a young man by the collar: "You, with the surname Zhong — you really think you're Zhongli, do you? Now you're trying to dine and dash on me?"
The man was caught somewhere between laughing and crying. "I was three cents short, how does that make it a dine-and-dash? I just hit one wrong key on the nine-key pad! And I don't play mobile games, I've got no idea what you're talking about!"
"If you don't know what I'm talking about, how do you know it's a mobile game?"
"Because everyone who sees my name asks the same thing, so naturally I know..." The man sighed. "Kids these days see Li Taibai and figure he's from Honor of Kings; they see King Arthur and say she's some blonde girl with a cowlick. Those two idiots yesterday — I was quoting Xin Qiji, "a thousand li of clear autumn over the Chu sky," and they ask if I'm a fellow reader, saying it's a famous line from their Big Chu. Fucking hell. If this keeps up, what are we supposed to do..."
Chu Ge: "..."
The lady boss heard him out and sank into deep worry herself: "True... but whether you're fretting over the motherland's future or the collapse of the universe, you're still scanning that three cents over to me today!"
Chu Ge finally burst out laughing.
Only then did the lady boss notice Chu Ge standing by the door. Her eyes lit up at once: "How many of you, sir?"
"One, to begin with. Two, now." Chu Ge pointed at the one surnamed Zhong. "I'll cover his three cents, and this meal's on me too."