Chu Ge was eager to give it a try. He was indeed very interested in his own extraordinary abilities, and the desire to understand them clearly had taken root for a long time.
He glanced at Qiu Wuji and saw her nod.
Qiu Wuji thought to herself that nothing should go wrong with her in charge. Chu Ge felt relieved and sat down, putting on the helmet. “What should I do?”
Zhong Yi pressed the button beside him to activate it. “You will feel mental pressure. Use the same mental sensation you have when using your abilities normally to resist it. When you feel overwhelmed, shout ‘stop.'”
As soon as he finished speaking, Chu Ge indeed felt a kind of mental oppression. This feeling… was somewhat familiar. It was like when Qiu Wuji got angry, her gaze could stir up a storm in one’s soul.
Resist with the feeling of using abilities normally… He had never used his abilities normally before. Could the occasional sense of overlooking things while typing count?
Chu Ge tried his best to recall that feeling but couldn’t grasp it.
That feeling normally came unintentionally; he had never achieved it actively. Now, it wasn’t like he was writing a story in front of a document, and his mind was completely blank, making it even harder to experience.
But the mental pressure kept growing, as if he were standing alone on a plain, with countless enemies and their killing intent rushing towards him. The overwhelming killing intent made him tremble, his legs weak and his voice lost, even if he wanted to run or scream.
This wasn’t an illusion, just a vivid analogy for psychological pressure. When pressure reaches a certain critical point, people go insane.
Qiu Wuji became serious as she watched Chu Ge tightly clenching his fists.
Why not just give up and retreat? Why insist on pushing through?
She turned her head and glanced at the instrument beside Zhong Yi. The dots on it were jumping, from one lit star to two lit stars, with ten stars still unlit.
Zhong Yi said, “Two stars, relatively low, but not bad, slightly better than a beginner level… Huh?”
The stars started flickering chaotically, sometimes appearing as one, sometimes as two, three, or four, impossible to determine.
Chu Ge was under tremendous pressure and closed his eyes.
All those thousands of troops and horses were just his imagination, nothing more than stage fright, feeling too much pressure and imagining too many things, unable to sleep or write.
He focused his mind and tried to think about the plot, maybe that would work…
The next chapter he had to write today was… Lu Yuanzhang secretly evoking the purgatory fire, Qiu Wuji cutting down the dragon’s soul with a single sword.
“Roar!” The imagined thousands of troops and horses transformed into a ferocious fire dragon, engulfing him in scorching heat, as if he would be reduced to ashes in the next second.
Chu Ge opened his eyes.
Before him, it seemed as if layers of clouds and mist appeared again, as if he were looking down from a high altitude, with verdant mountains and flowing waters barely visible below.
Beneath the green mountains, in the secret underground of the Cloud Horizon Sect, facing the dragon’s mouth, was Qiu Wuji. A sword in her hand, appearing like a cluster of stars. Before he could examine it more carefully, a “sizzle” sound came, and the equipment short-circuited.
Chu Ge took off his helmet in astonishment and saw Zhong Yi’s expression as if he had seen a ghost.
All he could see was the stars flickering chaotically, and then the equipment burned out.
What was this?
Did his mental power exceed the device’s limit? Are we trying to reenact Dragon Ball here? No, that’s not it. The stars weren’t flashing more than four or five at most. The ones at the back have never lit up, which means that no matter how elusive his mental power is, it’s at most a four or five-star level.
So how did the equipment short-circuit? Does he have the ability to control electricity?
Qiu Wuji stood with her arms crossed, glancing at Zhong Yi from the corner of her eye. “The only rule in this organization is not to disclose any information about the members to outsiders, no matter who they are, right?”
Zhong Yi had his mouth half open, looking at the smoking instrument. After a while, he nodded dumbfoundedly, “Uh-huh.”
Chu Ge, who broke their equipment, didn’t have the courage to stay any longer. He pulled Qiu Wuji and left in a hurry. “Um, let’s meet another day. If you need anything or if I need to compensate for something… um, you can let me know when there’s a mission.”
After saying that, he ran away in a hurry.
I can’t afford to compensate for this. What’s the use of pretending to be so powerful…
Zhong Yi even forgot to say “goodbye.” He looked at Chu Ge’s fleeing figure and then at the short-circuited equipment, as if he were sleepwalking. He had never expected that someone could short-circuit their testing machine, and he still couldn’t figure out the reason behind it.
He didn’t know if it counted as disclosing information to Chu Ge’s mother… For now, it’s best not to mention it. Zhong Yi wasn’t an official person. At least one thing he said to Chu Ge was true: his contact with the official side was only to keep this group of eccentric individuals out of trouble.
Not to attract more trouble.
“Never mind.” Zhong Yi rubbed his chin and pondered for a long time, then suddenly chuckled. “It’s really interesting.”
…
Chu Ge rode an electric scooter and swiftly left the secret room with Qiu Wuji. He was sweating profusely on the way. The previous pressure was like something substantial, really difficult to endure. He didn’t even know how he managed to get through it.
“I say…” he asked somewhat dryly, “Could you tell what was happening from the outside?”
Qiu Wuji sat in the backseat, playing with a mask, casually saying, “Yes, I could. Your mental power is roughly at the level of four to five stages, but because your focus is on another world, the feedback appears to be unstable. That’s all, nothing complicated.”
“But how did I manage to blow up the testing equipment? Was it you, did you do it?”
“It wasn’t me, and it wasn’t really you either. How could your mental power materialize to such an extent?” Qiu Wuji mused, “It’s just a so-called electromagnetic wave sensing. It was considered as an extraterrestrial invasion by another world and rebounded…”
Chu Ge: “…”
Qiu Wuji thought for a moment and smiled, “Or let’s put it in a more impressive way? That electromagnetic wave was opposing the power of an entire world. It’s fortunate that it didn’t explode.”
Chu Ge asked, “That world… It can manifest in my mind even when I’m not writing?”
Qiu Wuji shook her head, “I don’t know. That’s a question we always need to explore. But what we can be certain of is that you are the one constructing the world, not your computer. What does it have to do with whether you’re writing or not? Do you think my creator god is a computer or a document? It’s you, Chu Ge.”
Chu Ge fell into silent contemplation and rode the bike quietly. It sounded really impressive.
Both of them pondered silently without saying much, and they quietly arrived at their residential area.
Chu Ge parked the bike and chuckled, “Being part of the car-owning clan! The more I look at this electric scooter, the cooler it seems.”
Qiu Wuji also found the little vehicle more appealing the more she looked at it. Their own ride.
Wait, who said it’s their own?
She pressed the button with an annoyed expression and stepped into the elevator. As soon as they entered the apartment, she slammed Chu Ge against the wall and through gritted teeth said, “You added me to your crappy group, is it because of that fat guy’s sleazy suggestion?”
Chu Ge was dumbfounded. He was just thinking about such lofty topics a moment ago, but now the situation took a sudden turn. Why did the atmosphere change so drastically?
He wished he could punch Panda’s fat face and express his anger, “How could you listen to that fat guy’s instigation? Even if it’s really you on the other end… uh, I mean, what am I even saying!”
Qiu Wuji grabbed his collar and flung him like a cannonball, throwing his whole body into the room. “Go and practice in the Black Room for two hours every day, starting from tomorrow!”
Chu Ge groaned as he crashed onto the floor, “Wait, I need to take a shower first…”
“In an hour!”
“?”
Qiu Wuji swiftly entered the bathroom, clutching her clothes. “Because I’m requisitioning the bathroom! Besides, secretly listening while I shower at midnight is no different, so it doesn’t matter.”
As the door closed, Chu Ge could still hear her muttering, “Pervert.”
That night, Chu Ge listened to the sound of rushing water from the adjacent room, and even during his meditation, his mind wandered.
Definitely not imagining how Qiu Wuji was taking a shower! Instead, he pondered philosophical and mathematical questions: Why does it take women an hour to shower for just a little extra flesh? Why does it require multiple times longer?
Profound questions deeply troubled Chu Ge, and he couldn’t find the answers no matter how much he thought.
Writing?
It had long been forgotten in the distant sky.
In the distance, Panda kept refreshing the pages of the book and was nearly in tears, “There’s really no fifth chapter!”
