The Black House had only one rule: no member's business was ever to be leaked to an outsider, no matter who it was.
Everything was done on a volunteer basis—come if you feel like it, don't if you don't.
When nothing was going on, the Black House was just a place for everyone to practice and hang out; it wasn't as if the whole membership was ever present at once. Three people were missing right now—one regular member, and two more mask-wearers.
Which meant the Black House had only nine members in all, three of them masked. Add Chu Ge and Qiu Wuji and that made eleven, with the mask crowd expanded to five.
A tiny organization—throw a banquet and they'd barely scrape together one table.
Everyone gave their names and a quick self-introduction.
The young man with the writing was called Wan Zijun. His original profession hadn't been farming but copywriting at an ad agency; somehow, somewhere along the way, the copy had migrated onto his face.
Ever since he'd discovered his power, Wan Zijun had dreamed of being a superhero. But his goofy power not only failed to make him one—it nearly got him socially annihilated at the company. With no other choice he quit, ran off to the countryside to inherit the few mu of land his grandfather had left behind, and took up farming, supplying supermarkets and Head Chef Jin on a steady basis. It was hard work, but the income was actually pretty decent.
Of course, he'd accepted that inheritance for the same reason Chu Ge had: out in the suburbs it was relatively convenient to train a power. Under normal circumstances Wan Zijun rarely came to the Black House—he lived too far—but today he'd come specially to meet the newcomers.
The fatty's name was very fatty indeed: Panda.
Here was another "vagrant with no fixed employment"—he made his living gold-farming in games.
While everyone chatted, the row of computers in the corner was auto-mining away, every one of them running bots.
Hold on. Is this a place for training powers, or a game gold-farming studio?
"People still mine in WoW these days?" Chu Ge asked in amazement. "Is the classic server really that popular?"
"Tons of big spenders on the classic server—all those students from back in the day have money now, and they throw it around..." Fatty Panda's gaze toward Chu Ge grew friendlier still. The same novel, and the same game too—for a net addict, love and hate were that simple.
"Third Brother, add me on QQ, I'll pull you into Fratricide."
Chu Ge pretended he didn't understand. "What's that?"
"It's the place where everybody gets together to fuck Chu Ge, that cliffhanger hound."
Under her mask, Qiu Wuji was grinning.
Chu Ge said weakly, "I think we should still show Big Chu a little respect. The man writes well, and he doesn't go on hiatus..."
"One thing's one thing!" Panda laughed. "That group's a lot of fun. There's even a mod who cosplays Qiu Wuji, and she does a scarily good impression. Shame she hasn't popped up much these last couple of days."
Chu Ge said, deliberately, "Who knows, maybe she really is Qiu Wuji?"
"Still dreaming, Third Brother?" Panda rubbed his fat chin, thought it over, then snickered. "I mean, us screwing Ge is one thing. But if she really is Qiu Wuji, and she's screwing Ge too—then isn't she riding her own Father God and doing all the work herself?"
The grin froze on Qiu Wuji's face inside her mask.
Chu Ge was awed by the man's genius, and instinctively shielded his poor lower back.
Over there, Wan Zijun was asking Qiu Wuji, "How come Sixth Brother doesn't say anything?"
Say something, my ass! Suppressing the urge to swat the fatty to death, Qiu Wuji took a deep breath. "Can't you tell I'm a woman? You really think you can say any dirty thing you like in that crappy group of yours?"
"Emmmm..." Panda's fat face stiffened too. Can't blame me for that. That mask is way too misleading. A good figure doesn't help—first impression is a Huluwa, and one of those chibi head-tilted ones at that.
I mean, a Huluwa face and a gourd of a body—that makes her an iron Huluwa!
Qiu Wuji said through gritted teeth, "I heard you had equipment here for training powers. We admired the idea immensely, and that's why we joined. So is this 'training' of yours just bullshit?"
"This is training powers," Panda said, pointing at his own computer as if it were obvious. "When you're gaming and you see some idiot on the other side, don't you want to reach through the cable and slap him? I'm accumulating emotion."
Chu Ge: "Yeah, yeah, sure."
Holding up a mirror, Wan Zijun kept tracing away on his face. "This is training too. Without training, which of you could write a proper character on your own face? 'One,' 'two,' 'three' don't count."
Qiu Wuji: "..."
Fine, I couldn't—but I don't plan on writing on my face either!
Chu Ge simply couldn't hold his curiosity back. "How did you first discover your power? What made you think of writing on your own face?"
"Once I was watching a ball game and wrote 'China will win' on my face—and they actually won that match."
Chu Ge: "I don't think that was your power, exactly. Or rather, your power probably can't reach that level..."
"Ah, the joke was a bit cold, but you don't have to be so dead serious about it..." Wan Zijun smiled faintly. "Same way we won't ask you two how you discovered your powers. Everyone's got their little secrets."
Chu Ge nodded thoughtfully, then something occurred to him and he grinned at Panda. "So I'll skip adding you on QQ. I'm a masked man, after all."
"No fun at all." Panda thumped his way back to his computer. "You two play on your own. I'm off to tease Qiu Wuji in the group."
Good luck finding her in there.
Wan Zijun said, "Fatty, let's make a bet—will Big Chu put out five chapters tonight or not?"
Panda: "Probably yes!"
Chu Ge: "I bet he doesn't."
Panda wouldn't have it. "Big Chu's been popping aphrodisiacs today, there's bound to be. What are we betting?"
Chu Ge said earnestly, "Just let me slap that fat face of yours once."
Panda jumped up. "You're on! And I won't hit you—I just get to pull off your Huluwa mask!"
Chu Ge put on an exceedingly honest-looking smile. "Deal."
For all her fury, Qiu Wuji couldn't help laughing. Chu Ge's bet was absolutely the most shameless bet under heaven—referee and player at once, just like the wager he'd made with Yan Qianlie in that other world.
Veteran cheater.
Chu Ge was looking at Qiu Wuji too. Amusement shone in both their eyes; neither of them thought this "organization" felt like an organization at all.
What difference was there between this and a group-chat meetup for people with nothing better to do? Even the Writers' Association—that famously idle bunch with nothing better to do, which Chu Ge was part of—had a bit more organization to it than this.
Still, this was just right; it suited their needs exactly.
Espers really were a lonely lot. It was nice to be able to chat with a bunch of similar people, and they could wear masks without giving their identities away, so their lives weren't affected. Chu Ge figured he'd make a QQ alt account later and add them all—that wouldn't be bad either.
"So?" Zhong Yi appeared at his side, all smiles. "Not much pressure here, is there?"
Chu Ge said helplessly, "The people are great... but I mainly came to train my power. How should I put this? These facilities feel like nothing more than a gym."
"This floor really is basically a gym... If an esper has to fight somebody, at the very least his body's reactions have to keep up. Otherwise you take one sucker punch out of nowhere and you're dead—then what's the point of any of it? The equipment here is all top of the line; it's just that these lazy bums hardly use it."
Thinking about it, the treadmill back at his place really no longer suited his current cultivation. For a body-cultivation art like Golden Bell Shield, sitting there meditating every day was admittedly a bit odd. Here there was a full set of gym equipment, punching bags included—worth coming for, actually.
It was just a bit of a letdown from what he'd pictured—like a building with "Buckingham Palace" over the entrance where a row of KTV hostesses greets you the moment you walk in.
Qiu Wuji, however, had spotted the key point. "This is only this floor? So there's something else upstairs?"
Zhong Yi patted Chu Ge on the shoulder. "Learn from Sixth Brother. Careful and attentive, and her speech is all classical, too."
Chu Ge: "..."
"Come up and have a look, it's actually kind of interesting." Zhong Yi led the two of them upstairs. "The rooftop has plum blossom stakes and the like set up for footwork practice—except no one has ever used them, wasting my damn money. The second floor has some special equipment rooms, mainly for training the spirit, plus some for element perception and so on. Not that a single one of us in the Black House uses elements—we just keep them ready."
Now this was getting interesting... Chu Ge thought to himself that there was no way an ordinary person could get hold of equipment like this; Zhong Yi's setup had to be backed by the authorities, and other organizations probably had channels of their own. In the years espers had been developing, training and developing one's ability was likely more important than the ability itself.
And they even had things like plum blossom stakes for footwork training... That hit exactly what Chu Ge needed. Suddenly this goofy place didn't seem so goofy anymore.
"Here." Zhong Yi pushed open a small room. Inside were some electronic instruments, a chair, and a helmet suspended over the chair by all sorts of apparatus.
"Getting a CT scan?" Chu Ge snarked.
"Something like that," Zhong Yi said. "The helmet can pick up brainwaves and roughly gauge your mental strength. Choosing different pressure levels also has some effect on training the spirit."
Chu Ge was a little interested. "Can this thing tell exactly what kind of power someone has?"
"No. Powers are all weird and varied—there's no way to collect proper samples. This can only roughly gauge mental strength, and it's not very accurate." Zhong Yi turned and looked at Chu Ge, something meaningful in his eyes. "Want to give it a try?"