Chu Ge was just a struggling hack of a novelist, not an immortal. He had never imagined his work could create a real world. Yet the lingering fragrance in the air confirmed that none of this had been a hallucination.
The thought left him shaken with belated fear.
As he had written her, Qiu Wuji was hardly gentle or kind. Cultivators fought heaven for longevity and competed against their fellow men, decisive and ruthless when it came to killing. Though she did not belong to the Demon Sect, she clearly had no shortage of blood on her hands.
Given her circumstances and personality, her most likely course of action should have been to kill this "Creator God." Then the story could unfold on its own, leaving her free to roam wherever she pleased.
For the first time, Chu Ge felt just how close he had come to death.
Perhaps she feared that the "Creator God's" death might cause her world to collapse... After all, this was a work whose worldbuilding had yet to be fully revealed. Never mind anything else-Chu Ge had not even worked out the outline for what the Immortal Realm would be like after ascension. As one of the greatest figures in her world, Qiu Wuji probably had some instinctive awareness that this "Creator God" could not die.
That was why she had said, "I'll kill you even if it means the world collapses."
That made sense... But it only made the whole thing even freakier.
Come to think of it, the idea that every book was a world was not entirely incomprehensible. Huang Rong and Wanwan could both emerge from books into the modern world, so characters from other books naturally could too. Perhaps it had little to do with how well a work was written. As long as it was a book, it really was a world, no matter how awful it might be.
People were always traveling between different fictional worlds, with characters crossing over from one to another... That was what the so-called myriad heavens and worlds amounted to.
Put that way, his own female lead coming out did not seem so unusual. Perhaps it required neither an extraordinarily bizarre imagination nor for him to be an immortal. It was merely the familiar concept of "breaking through the dimensional wall."
The problem was that those other worlds were at least complete, their characters' fates already settled. What was going on with his? The world was still under construction, the plot had only just begun, and the female lead had already come out to force the author to revise his manuscript?
Fortunately, for some unknown reason, Qiu Wuji could not stay long. Before she had time to consider how to weave a development that fit the world's logic, she had gone back. Ultimately, the mess had fallen back into Chu Ge's hands.
It still seemed manageable...
But it was still a colossal pain in the ass!
His outline for the mortal realm, centered around Qiu Wuji before her ascension, was very thorough. If the primary female lead suddenly had nothing to do with the male lead, wouldn't the entire mortal-realm storyline fall apart?
How the hell was he supposed to revise that?
Even if he reduced Qiu Wuji's role and transferred her original scenes to other female characters, barely managing to keep the story coherent, plenty of things would still feel off. Besides, from the readers' perspective, a stunning sect leader had abruptly lost her role. Wouldn't that count as wasting a potential love interest?
The book was practically guaranteed to flop.
But refusing to change it was not an option either. A flop would only cost him money. Failing to make her changes would cost him his life!
Chu Ge sat in front of his computer looking constipated, staring blankly for a full half hour without managing to write a single word.
Before he knew it, the clock had reached eleven thirty.
"Fuck!" Chu Ge happened to glance at the time and suddenly snapped out of it.
He had already written most of this chapter, but it still was not finished. If he kept dawdling, he really would miss his update!
Chu Ge could not have been more miserable. Missing updates while a book was gaining traction seriously damaged an author's credibility. He had refused to take a day off even when he had been mildly ill, yet now this inexplicable nonsense was about to ruin his update streak.
The book's prospects looked increasingly bleak.
"Who the fuck did I piss off...?" Chu Ge was bursting with curses. Other people's miraculous encounters brought them good fortune. His was... He could not even find words for it.
"So she just can't get together with the protagonist, right? When it comes to writing, who's afraid of whom? Screw it, all or nothing!" Chu Ge gritted his teeth, straightened his keyboard, and hammered out the words:
"Qiu Wuji stood by the window for a while before gathering her thoughts. Why had she thought of that Chu Tiange? Honestly... What man in this world could possibly be worthy of her? Certainly not some mere disciple. Even if solitary yin could not give rise to life, leaving her lonely, if she truly sought a man, surely it ought to be the Father God who had created the world!" Finished. Published!
The world within the book.
Qiu Wuji was not standing by a window. She was cultivating in seclusion in a secret chamber.
Her actions were not synchronized with what the author wrote. Their timelines were different, and besides, characters naturally had things of their own to do outside their assigned scenes. It was not as though they dropped dead whenever they went offstage.
Inside the chamber, a spectral figure descended out of thin air and merged with her body.
It turned out that what had left her world to meet Chu Ge was merely her divine consciousness, not her physical body.
She had yet to meet the conditions for ascension. Breaking through the boundary with a thought had only been possible because extreme anger had unleashed her potential, and she could not sustain it. Forcing herself to remain outside might separate her soul from her body, with disastrous consequences. Once she sensed her limit, she had no choice but to return.
That was why Chu Ge had found her presence less oppressive than he had imagined. Put simply, what he had encountered was merely a wisp of consciousness that had barely managed to breach the plane boundary.
Her divine consciousness returned to her body. Qiu Wuji opened her eyes, their slightly vacant gaze gradually giving way to a resolute light.
Never mind how dumbfounded Chu Ge had been. Qiu Wuji's own thoughts had hardly been calm at the time.
She had seen a man sitting before a strange screen of light, tapping on an equally strange artifact covered in little squares. Words had appeared on the screen in response, describing her own innermost thoughts.
The shock and bewilderment of that moment were beyond anything she could explain to another person.
This man was writing a story, and I was merely... a character in a story he invented?
The entire world was just a book... Then was everything I had experienced real or illusory?
Or was this what people called "the inscrutable will of heaven"?
The Immortal Dao did have cultivation concepts such as the dao of writing and painting, along with the notion of creating a cosmos of one's own. But since theirs was merely a "lower realm," no one possessed cultivation profound enough to succeed. Still, the concept existed, and as one of the greatest figures of her age, Qiu Wuji could readily understand it.
Yet when she herself was a living being within a book, the impact on her understanding and emotions was truly impossible to grasp without experiencing it firsthand.
But that was all right...
What people feared was the unknown. The vast will of heaven was the hardest thing to fathom and the hardest to resist. But now that she had seen through to the truth, there would always be a way.
What could that feeble "Creator God" possibly do?
With a threat or two, wouldn't he jump at my every command?
Then I could do more than take control of my own fate. I could accomplish even greater things.
Sure enough, after her return, that disciple's image had grown increasingly hazy in her mind. That "Creator God" really did not dare defy her wishes. Surely this meant he was finding a way to sever that absurd romantic bond?
The crucial issue now was that her breakthrough had involved an element of chance. Her most urgent task was to discover how to cross the boundary reliably whenever she wished, and how to remain outside for an extended period.
When that time came, she could stay home and have her own world woven as she pleased, or venture out and explore the myriad heavens. With an endless universe and boundless horizons before her, what could she not accomplish?
Fall for a disciple? What a joke! How could that possibly be my future?
Nor could it ever be the choice I, Qiu Wuji, would make.
If I truly sought a man, surely it ought to be the Father God who had created the world!
The thought slipped into place so seamlessly that Qiu Wuji did not notice anything wrong at first. Only after quite a while did she begin to catch on. How could she possibly have thought that?
Something stirred in Qiu Wuji's mind, and her eyes slowly widened.
He wrote that? He actually dared to write that!
(End of chapter)
Before you continue