Chương 27: Creative Project

Xu Fang looked at the notebook. He looked at Lin Che. He looked back at the notebook, turning another page.

"Right," he said finally. Lin Che sat down slowly and put the cans on the table. Xu Fang turned to the map. He held it at a slight angle, as though the change in perspective might help.

"Is this a dungeon?"

"It's — no. Not exactly."

"It looks like a dungeon.

"It's more of a—" Lin Che rubbed his nose.

"It's something I'm working on." Xu Fang looked at him.

"Like a project," said Lin Che.

"What kind of project?" Lin Che rubbed his nose again.

"Writing, maybe," said Lin Che.

"Or something like that. I haven't fully decided the format yet." Xu Fang looked at the notebook again and turned back to the herb list, with the pharmacological notations beside each entry. He turned to the page about circulations and then landed back onto the dungeon map.

"The herbs are very specific," he said.

"I do research properly."

"And this—" he tapped the map.

"The annotation system. The scale notation in the corner. You did this from scratch?"

"I had plenty of time." Xu Fang closed the notebook and turned it once over in his hands before handing it back to Lin Che.

"You should have led with this," he said.

"With what?"

"That you have an actual creative project on the go. You've been doing the same logistics job for years and I've been waiting for you to do something interesting with yourself." He picked up the beer and raised it in cheers to Lin Che.

"I know people, you know."

"Xu Fang—""Game development contacts and publishing contacts — well, one publishing contact and she does business books mainly, but she knows people who do other things. And Ren Weihua from university, you remember him? He went into UX and now he does a lot of indie game stuff on the side." He had turned to face Lin Che more fully, much more enthusiastically.

"The map alone is compelling. If you're building a world, the cartography is usually the last thing that people think about and the first thing that makes it feel real."

"I'm still in the early stages," admitted Lin Che.

"That's when you want to talk to people. Before it's finished, not after." He pointed at the notebook.

"Flesh it out a bit more — the creatures and the rules of the world and what the herbs do. Do all of it, and I can make some introductions. No pressure, just conversations." Lin Che looked at the notebook.

"Alright."

"Good." Xu Fang settled back into the sofa with a grin on his face for rendering a useful crevice.

"I also have a more immediate thing, actually. Do you know anything about martial arts competitions?" Lin Che held his beer can very still.

"There's one in a couple of days," said Xu Fang.

"A friend of mine knows someone who fights in it, and he's been trying to get me to go for the last two years and I keep on saying yes and then bailing because I can never get anyone to go with me. Li Peng thinks it's barbaric and you've always had something on." He looked at Lin Che.

"You don't have anything on, do you?"

"I could probably make it," said Lin Che, carefully.

"I can also introduce you to the fighter I know — Guo Mingzhe. He's been doing traditional styles for like fifteen years. If you want to talk to someone who actually knows about this stuff for your project, he'd be a good interview." Xu Fang pulled out his phone.

"I'll get us tickets."

"Let me check with my wife first."

"She's out."

"I'll text her."

"You're a very considerate husband."

"She sometimes has things planned for her." He picked up his phone.

"I'll text her later." Xu Fang accepted this and turned the television back on, finding something that was not Shen Yue's dating programme.

They watched the television for another hour, with Xu Fang slowly migrating from a vertical position to one which was much more horizontal. He fell asleep before the episode ended, arm over the back of the sofa and mouth slightly agape. The empty beer can was just about held in place in his palm, narrowly avoiding falling onto the floor. Lin Che took the can carefully and put it on the table. He looked at the notebook, which he'd set on top of the closed pizza boxes and picked up his phone.

Xu fang found the notebook under the sofa cushion. He thinks it's a creative project — writing or game design. He waited. The response came after a few minutes, which meant she was still awake at two in the morning. And? He wants to introduce me to his industry contacts. He thinks the map is compelling. Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences. He's not wrong. Shen Yue. The worst case is that Xu Fang thinks you have a very detailed and somewhat unusual hobby.

Nothing concerning about that. He's not going to look at a herb list and a corridor map and conclude that his friend has secretly joined a cultivation sect. Lin Che looked at Xu Fagn's sleeping form. He also wants to go to a martial arts competition in a couple of days. He has a fighter contact he wants to introduce me to. A slightly longer pause. Which competition? He didn't say the name but it's on Wednesday. An even longer pause. That's the invitational. We sponsor and oversee it.

It's mostly a traditional styles showcase with regular practitioners and no cultivation involvement. It's legitimate. You know it? I know all of them. It's one of the clan's external affairs projects — we fund it and coordinate the venue. Elder Mao reviews the shortlist of participants. It keeps us connected to the legitimate martial arts community so we can find prospective disciples. They're all ordinary fighters so it's a good event. Can you get us tickets? I'll get you front row. You don't have to.

I'm getting you front row. Stop texting me, I'm in a meeting. Lin Che lowered the phone and looked at Xu Fang. A couple of minutes later, his phone buzzed. Shen Yue had sent two tickets: front row, centre section. The seats were listed under the Shen family corporate sponsorship allocation. It had been less than ten minutes. Lin Che put his phone face-down on the table and went to bed.

Xu Fang woke up disoriented and then immediately oriented when he could smell coffee. He found Lin Che in the kitchen with breakfast assembled on the table in a quantity that seemed aspirational for two people, but which, given yesterday's pizza consumption fiasco, Xu Fang was revising his assumptions about.

"Your wife is still not home?" asked Xu Fang, sitting down.

"She said she'd be late."

"That's very late."

"That's what a family business does to you," said Lin Che. Xu Fang poured himself a cup of coffee.

"About the competition—""Got the tickets," said Lin Che. Xu Fang paused mid-pour.

"Already?"

"My wife's family is one of the main sponsors. She got front row." Xu Fang put the coffee pot down and looked at Lin Che with a shocked expression.

"Your wife's family?" he asked.

"One of the sponsors, yes." Xu Fang picked up his cup and looked at the breakfast spread, which included a plate of fried dough and some scrambled eggs.

"Lin Che," he said.

"Mm."

"Your wife comes from money."

"Her family is comfortable, yes."

"Comfortable." He gestured vaguely at the apartment around them, which was a good apartment in a location that had become expensive over the past few years, but which was clearly still an apartment.

"She comes from 'front row seats available at her whimsy' money and she lives here?"

"She prefers it."

"She prefers it," repeated Xu Fang under his breath.

"What does she do for work?" Lin Che opened his mouth and closed it again trying to think of Shen Yue's role within the clan. He picked up his chopsticks.

"She has a role in the family's external affairs," he said.

"Managing some of their community relationships, partnerships. That kind of thing, you know?"

"Partnerships?"

"Sponsorships and cultural projects. The competition you want to go to, actually — that's one of hers." Xu Fang looked at him.

"You have been married for two months."

"Almost three."

"And you're describing your wife's job like you're reading it off a company website," he said.

"Do you actually not know, or are you just bad at explaining it?" Lin Che thought about this honestly.

"Possibly both," he said.

"What does she like?" asked Xu Fang, suddenly.

"Hmm?"

"What does she like? I want to get her a gift to say thanks."

"Tea and reading. She annotates everything she reads. She falls asleep on the sofa with the electric blanket on and enjoys watching her trash tv shows after a day of corporate hell." Xu Fang sat himself down and nodded along. He picked up his chopsticks and began to start eating.

"Tell me about the world," he said, eventually.

"The project and the dungeon with the wolves."

"It's more of a zoo, technically."

"Even better," said Xu Fang.

"Start from the beginning."

They talked until mid-morning, by which point Lin Che had described as much of the holy land's structure as he could possibly attribute to creative invention rather than firsthand memory, and Xu Fang had genuinely become engaged in a way that made the distinction feel increasingly unnecessary. Xu Fang left at eleven with the tickets on his phone and two leftover slices of pizza that he accepted from Lin Che after much refusal. Lin Che washed the dishes.

Shen Yue came home in the early afternoon with bags under her eyes, suggesting she had not had even an ounce of sleep since he last saw her. She put her bag down, changed, and came to the kitchen to reheat some congee before going to sleep. She was silent the entire time, clearly far too exhausted to have a conversation, so Lin Che did not ask her anything. Instead, he continued working on the cleaner copy of the holy land map that Elder Mao had asked for.

Across the city, in a training hall the Shen Clan maintained for external practitioners, Yang Zichen was working through a form alone. He had been here since early morning. The form he was running was not one from the clan's archive, but rather something he'd developed himself over several years. It was a synthesis of the external arts training he'd received from the Shen Clan curriculum but without any of the Qi-based techniques — it was pure martial prowess instead.

It didn't have a name, because he didn't give it one, as naming something implied it was finished. His leg had fully healed. To Zichen, this training room was something very comforting to him, as it reminded him of his roots. Just a few years ago, he had been a desperate teenager trying to find a place for himself in the world, venting out his anger in fights and picking up martial arts in the process. That led to his eventual scouting and hiring by the Shen Clan, personally being recruited by Shen Bowen himself.

He would be fighting in the invitational. After lots of requests, which had been shut down because "a cultivator should not bully those weaker than them", he managed to finally be allowed to fight in this tournament. This was his main goal those many years ago, but he had been scouted before he could even compete. After a lot of paperwork and temporary Qi blocks, Zichen had finally been allowed to compete.

Zichen looked at the training floor, which bore the accumulated marks of a lot of mornings exactly like this one, and thought back to his fight with Lin Che. His own martial prowess was not enough to defeat overwhelming raw strength. Zichen went back to the beginning of the form and started again.