Chu Ge was quite eager to try. He was genuinely interested in his superpower and had wanted to understand it for a long time.
He glanced at Qiu Wuji, who nodded.
Thinking that with Qiu Wuji in charge, there wouldn't be any problems, Chu Ge felt relieved and sat down to put on the helmet: "How do I do it?"
Zhong Yi activated the button beside him: "You'll feel mental pressure. Then use the mental feeling you normally have when you activate your superpower to resist it. When you feel overwhelmed, just say stop."
As he spoke, Chu Ge indeed felt a kind of mental pressure. This feeling… was somewhat familiar, like when Qiu Wuji was angry, his glaring eyes could make one's soul churn.
Use the feeling you normally have when you activate your superpower to resist it… He hadn't activated his superpower before. Did the sense of looking down on someone he occasionally felt while writing count?
Chu Ge tried his best to recall that feeling, but he couldn't quite grasp it.
That feeling was usually unintentional; he had never actively achieved it before. This isn't like writing a book in front of a document; there's no plot in my mind, so I can't really grasp the feeling.
But the mental pressure is mounting, like standing alone on a plain, facing a massive army charging towards me. The overwhelming killing intent makes me tremble; running away would make my legs weak and I'd wet myself, screaming would leave me speechless.
This isn't an illusion, just a vivid analogy of psychological pressure. When pressure reaches a certain threshold, a person goes insane.
Qiu Wuji became serious, looking at Chu Ge's tightly clenched fists.
If you can't handle it, retreat! Why stubbornly persist?
She glanced at the instrument panel next to Zhong Yi. The lights on it flickered, going from one star to two, with ten still unlit.
Zhong Yi was saying, "Two stars, relatively low, not bad, a little better than the beginner level... Huh?"
The stars started flashing erratically, sometimes one, sometimes two, sometimes three, sometimes four, impossible to pinpoint.
Under immense pressure, Chu Ge closed his eyes.
The idea of a massive army was just my imagination. It was like waiting for data before a book's release—the pressure was too much, I was imagining too many things, and couldn't sleep or write.
Concentrate, calm down, think about the plot, maybe that will work…
Today's next chapter will be about… Lu Yuanzhang secretly summoning the Infernal Fire, Qiu Wuji slaying the dragon's soul with a single sword strike.
"Roar!" The imagined army transformed into a ferocious fire dragon, its scorching heat sweeping over, as if it would melt Chu Ge into ashes in the next second.
Chu Ge opened his eyes.
Before him, layers of clouds seemed to reappear, like looking down from a great height, the green mountains and flowing water below barely visible.
Below the green mountains, in the underground stronghold of the Yunji Sect, facing the dragon's mouth was Qiu Wuji.
A sword in hand, piercing the stars.
Before he could see more clearly, a "buzzing" sound rang out—the equipment short-circuited.
Chu Ge frantically removed his helmet, only to see Zhong Yi's ghostly expression.
All I saw were stars flashing wildly, and then the equipment burned out.
What is this?
His mental power exceeded the equipment's limits? Are you acting out Dragon Ball?
No, that's not right. The stars never flashed more than four or five at a time. The later ones never lit up. That means even with his unpredictable mental power, it was at most four or five stars.
How did the equipment short-circuit? Does he have electrical control abilities?
Qiu Wuji stood to the side, arms crossed, glancing sideways at Zhong Yi: "Our Black Room's only agreement is that we must not disclose any member's information to outsiders, no matter who, right?"
Zhong Yi stared, mouth slightly agape, at the smoking equipment, and after a long pause, nodded blankly: "Yeah." Chu Ge, embarrassed to linger, grabbed Qiu Wuji and ran off: "Um, let's get together another day, okay? If you need compensation... umm, you can call me next time you have a mission list."
Then he dashed off.
"I can't afford to pay for this. What's the point of putting on such a show?" Zhong Yi forgot to even say "goodbye." He looked at Chu Ge's retreating figure, then at the short-circuited equipment, completely bewildered.
He truly hadn't imagined that someone could short-circuit the testing machine, and then he couldn't even figure out the cause.
He wondered if leaking the information to Chu Ge's mother counted as leaking it to an outsider... For now, he'd better not say anything. What if the mother and son were a couple? He'd be caught in the middle.
Zhong Yi wasn't an official. He hadn't lied to Chu Ge about one thing—contacting officials was only to keep this goofy little group from causing trouble.
Not to cause more trouble.
"Never mind," Zhong Yi stroked his chin, thinking for a long time, then suddenly chuckled, "This is really interesting."
…Chu Ge rode his electric scooter away from the dark room in a flash, Qiu Wuji on the back. He was drenched in cold sweat on the way.
The pressure he had felt earlier was real; it was truly unbearable. He didn't know how he had survived it.
"I said…" he asked somewhat dryly, "You were watching from outside, could you tell what happened?" Qiu Wuji, sitting in the back seat playing with his mask, casually replied, "I could tell. Your mental strength is around level four or five, but because your spirit is focused on another world, the feedback looks very unstable, that's all, nothing complicated."
"Then how did you manage to break the testing equipment? I saw you, did you do it?"
"It wasn't me, and it wasn't really you. How could your spirit have materialized to that extent?" Qiu Wuji said leisurely, "That was just so-called radio wave sensing, which one world considered an extraterrestrial intrusion." "It's just the self-defense of the invasion, a reversal..."
Chu Ge: "..."
Qiu Wuji thought for a moment, then smiled: "Or, to put it another way, something that sounds impressive? That radio wave was resisting the power of an entire world; it's a miracle it didn't explode."
Chu Ge said: "That world... it can materialize in my mind even when I'm not typing?"
Qiu Wuji shook his head: "I don't know, that's a question we need to keep exploring. But what's certain is that you are the one who constructs the world, not your computer. What does it have to do with whether you're typing or not? Do you think my father god is a computer or a document? It's you, Chu Ge."
Chu Ge pondered silently, riding his bike in silence.
Sounds really awesome.
The two thought to themselves, then said nothing more, silently driving to their own neighborhood.
Chu Ge parked his bike and laughed: "Car owners! The more I look at this little electric scooter, the cooler it gets."
Qiu Wuji also thought the little scooter looked increasingly pleasing to the eye.
It's his own scooter, after all.
No, who says it's his own!
Qiu Wuji angrily pressed the elevator button and went upstairs. As soon as he entered, he slammed Chu Ge against the wall, gritting his teeth, "You added me to your crappy group chat, was it because you had some lewd meaning behind that fat guy's words?!" Chu Ge was dumbfounded. Just a moment ago he was thinking about such high-minded topics, how did the tone suddenly change so drastically?
He wanted nothing more than to punch Panda's fat face, his voice filled with anguish: "How could you listen to that fat bastard's instigation? If Qiu Wuji really was behind it, then you were the one using the tools... uh, no, what the hell am I saying?!" Qiu Wuji grabbed him by the collar and tossed him into the room like a cannonball: "Go to hell and meditate! Starting tomorrow, practice in the dark room for two hours every day!" Chu Ge slammed onto the floor with a thud, groaning: "Wait, I need to take a shower first..."
"We'll talk in an hour!"
"?" Qiu Wuji grabbed her clothes and dashed into the bathroom: "Because I've requisitioned the bathroom! Anyway, you're just eavesdropping if you secretly shower at night, it's no different." The moment the door closed, Chu Ge could still hear her muttering, "Shameless lecher."
That night, listening to the rushing water next door, Chu Ge's meditation became increasingly distracted.
He wasn't fantasizing about Qiu Wuji showering! He was pondering philosophical and mathematical questions: Why does it take women an hour to shower, just for a couple more mounds of flesh? Why does it take several times longer?
The profound question deeply troubled Chu Ge, leaving him utterly perplexed.
Writing and saving drafts?
Completely forgotten.
In the distant dark room, Panda kept refreshing the pages of his book, almost in tears: "There really isn't a Chapter 5!"