"Kidnapped by human traffickers as a child and sold off to some mountain backwater, only just rescued..." Chu Ge looked at Qiu Wuji's file and was speechless. "With skin that soft, and that otherworldly, fairy-like air about her—who on earth is going to believe this identity?"
Zhong Yi said, hands folded in his sleeves: "And if you're taken for the trafficker? Does it suddenly start to make a bit of sense?"
Chu Ge: "?"
Qiu Wuji said, "It does seem rather reasonable."
Chu Ge: "..."
Zhong Yi studied Qiu Wuji for a moment, then sighed. "You really ought to wear a mask. You look a hundred times better than that ID photo—take you to the Black House and those people will lose their souls. And then your ID says Qiu Wuji..."
Qiu Wuji smiled faintly and did not answer.
In this world, praising someone's looks seemed utterly commonplace; she still wasn't used to it. People in that world had been far more reserved. The truth was, in either world, she disliked having attention fixed on her appearance... But for the moment, the other things she took pride in were exactly the things that had to stay hidden. Never mind.
Hmph. Once I write my way to godhood, I'll have something worth praising!
Qiu Wuji, who still hadn't settled on her protagonist's name, was brimming with confidence.
Zhong Yi said, "This is only an archived record. Trafficking cases and the like aren't made public, so who needs to believe it? The publicly certified identity is that you're his distant cousin, attached to his household registration... By the way, how distant is this distant relative?"
Chu Ge, utterly solemn: "Beyond the five degrees of mourning!"
Qiu Wuji did not argue.
She had been created by him—did that count as kin? But there was no blood between them. So it ought to count as a relationship beyond the five degrees of mourning anyway. Nothing wrong with that.
And just like that, the registration went through. The ID card still had to be produced, ready the next day, or it could be mailed. Chu Ge did not linger either; he left an address, took the household register, and led Qiu Wuji out, his feelings complicated.
On the back of the scooter, Qiu Wuji turned the register over and over in her hands, her feelings just as complicated.
Head of Household: Chu Ge.
Household Member: Qiu Wuji.
The registered address wasn't the rental—it was the old house Chu Ge had moved out of, over in the old quarter of the city... Hmm, so he's actually a property owner?
Apart from her relationship to the head of household reading "cousin," just looking at the thing, she couldn't shake the feeling that it was no different from a marriage license.
Head of household, household member—it really did look strange.
Right, now that I have an identity, I really could get a marriage license now, couldn't I?
"Cousin, huh..."
"Huh? ...What?"
Chu Ge, riding the scooter, said with a somewhat rueful tone, "Once the ID comes through, let's go open a bank account... You really are a modern person now."
Qiu Wuji was silent.
Her WeChat bound to his number, using his bank card, clinging to him like dodder twined around a tree—it seemed like only yesterday.
Now she could have an account of her own. She was an independent person in her own right.
"Don't you feel the least bit of loss?" Qiu Wuji asked suddenly.
"I do." Chu Ge smiled. "It's that sort of... my daughter's all grown up feeling."
"Still running your mouth," Qiu Wuji said crossly. "I have my own identity now. I'm not dependent on you anymore—I can leave whenever I like, go anywhere I like! Don't you know that?"
"Yeah. That's exactly what it's like when a daughter grows up."
"You..."
"I am a little wistful," Chu Ge said, his tone turning serious. "But Qiu Wuji, this is what we've been chasing all these two months..."
Qiu Wuji fell silent.
Chu Ge said, "Honestly, I can't tell whether I feel more wistful or more gratified. And the thing is, I don't even have much of a real sense of it—maybe because we didn't earn it bit by bit ourselves, so it's missing a little flavor. Guess you really shouldn't cheat at games."
Qiu Wuji said helplessly, "I've never seen anyone who wants to make things harder for himself. You think this is a cultivation trial? For someone like you, a writer who holes up at home typing all day, on your own you'd flail at this for a few years and still never get it done."
"Uh, whatever—the process doesn't matter. This result is what we needed." Chu Ge rode into the residential compound and slowly came to a stop. "Your identity is independent now... I hope your life will be too."
Qiu Wuji looked at his back and was silent for a long time.
There had once been the occasional thought, unable to understand why she felt so close to him—but this moment, she no longer needed to wonder.
It probably had very little to do with that one line of setting.
Because he truly was helping her with all his heart. People are not wood or stone—how could she feel nothing?
"Today is the fifteenth of the seventh lunar month on our side," Chu Ge said suddenly. "Our two timelines aren't quite the same, are they? It shouldn't be time for your decisive battle with Yan Qianlie yet?"
"Not yet." Qiu Wuji said, "Time in there follows your plot; it has nothing to do with real-world time. But it won't be long..."
"Maybe I just can't understand your state of mind. I keep thinking, with something huge looming, you're still here fussing over everyday family matters—it feels off."
Qiu Wuji smiled faintly. "That eager to send me off?"
"That's not what I meant..."
"I'm studying the intent behind your world-creation. To me, that is the real path to a breakthrough... Cultivation is none of your concern." Qiu Wuji headed for the elevator, ponytail swinging. "I'm definitely going to write it!"
A short while later.
Chu Ge stared at the protagonist's name "Chu Xiaoqiu" in the document, without even the energy to mock it.
Whether as a protagonist's name or as our kid's name, it feels like it's lacking something.
Qiu Wuji gave him a sidelong look. "What? Names should return to plain simplicity. The protagonist is a poor girl, so it should be like that. Names like your Chu Tiange and Qiu Wuji are too artfully crafted—anyone can tell they were cobbled together from poems and allusions."
She actually had a fucking point... Chu Ge didn't know whether to laugh or cry. "Fine, we'll do it your way. Stock up a few chapters of manuscript; once the ID arrives, you can put your book up on Dianniang."
Hmm, come to think of it, Chu Xiaoqiu isn't so bad. It's a fusion of both our names, after all... Chu Ge sneaked a glance at Qiu Wuji's profile. This isn't a name she'd be willing to use, though. By rights she should have shot it down even if I'd suggested it—and yet she came up with it herself...
Does that mean...?
Never mind. Think too much and I'll get hit.
But Chu Ge was still in a good mood. Humming a little tune, he went back to his room to write.
The two rooms were quiet; only the faint clatter of keyboards echoed, much like the days when he'd shared a place with Zhang Qiren. However Chu Ge had pictured it back then, he would never have guessed that getting a girlfriend would turn out to be the two of them sitting and writing together...
Hmm, not girlfriend. Ah, whatever, close enough... Anyway, when the picture really did reach the "writing together" stage, Chu Ge didn't find it strange in the least. A writer's life is probably always the same shape—and he had long since grown used to that shape.
It was nice.
Qiu Wuji wrote for three days—five chapters in all, two thousand words each, ten thousand words total.
That day, the ID card arrived.
With the solemn mindset of one about to face Yan Qianlie in a decisive duel, Qiu Wuji opened Dianniang, registered an author account, filled out every form with the greatest care, clicked to publish the first chapter, and nervously awaited the intake review.
Chu Ge set his own work aside for the moment and sat beside her to keep her company while they waited. "The intake review is quick these days—an hour at most, and if things move fast it's approved in seconds."
Qiu Wuji was a little nervous. "It wouldn't fail review, would it?"
"Usually not. There are only two ways to fail: the first chapter has some obvious sensitive-content problem, or the sentences don't even flow—worse than an AI... And you know, even stuff written by AI passes intake all the time."
On that point, Qiu Wuji was confident.
It was only that she couldn't invent stories, didn't know novel-writing techniques and elements—that didn't mean her prose was weak. If it came to beauty of language, to spinning out poetry and parallel prose, she could mop the floor with a hundred Chu Ges.
In the end, the two of them waited tensely for a dozen-odd minutes, and then a site message arrived: "We're sorry, your work has not met the intake standards. Please keep up the effort..."
Qiu Wuji was dumbstruck. "Huh?"
Chu Ge scratched his head. He thought so too: story or no story, whether anyone would read it or not, at least the writing was impressive—it opened on a sweep of scenery in neat four-and-six parallel prose; bring in some ancient scholar and even he couldn't do better. How could prose like that fail to meet intake standards?
He thought it over, steeled himself, and went to his own editor, sending over Qiu Wuji's first chapter: "Editor, could you take a look? This is my cousin's writing, and it didn't even pass intake. What's the reason? Did it trip some sensitive word?"
The editor was silent for a moment, then replied with a few words: "We don't take classical Chinese."