The Immortal Cultivator Signed Up for a Dating App novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Whole Menu
On a work-ordered first date in a Chengdu hotpot restaurant, Jiang Lü in long green robes orders everything on the menu, and a red tail wraps Tang Yu's ankle under the table.
The only match on Tang Yu's tester account was sitting in a hotpot restaurant in Chengdu.
She wore a long green robe with sleeves that touched the floor.
Tang Yu stopped in the doorway with her laptop bag on her shoulder and checked the profile photo on her phone.
It was the same woman.
She had waist-long auburn hair, and the straight back of someone who had never once slouched.
She was also the only person in the restaurant not in jeans.
"Jiang Lü?" Tang Yu said.
"Tang Yu." The woman rose and bowed from the waist. "I have been looking forward to this."
"Please don't bow. I'm only here for work."
"Of course," Jiang Lü said, and sat, and kept her hands folded very politely on the table.
Tang Yu sat across from her and took out her notebook.
The bug was simple to describe.
Hongxian, a dating app launching in three weeks, matched every normal account with dozens of people.
Tang Yu's tester account matched exactly one.
The client wanted the cause found.
Her boss at the testing agency had said, "Meet her. Reproduce it in the field. Charge the dinner to the project."
Tang Yu had said that this was the stupidest ticket she had ever been given.
Her boss had said it paid double.
The waiter arrived with the menu, a laminated book as thick as a short novel.
Jiang Lü took it with both hands and read it from the first page, her lips moving slightly.
"Would you like to share a mandarin pot?" Tang Yu asked. "Half spicy, half clear?"
"I would like," Jiang Lü said, "all of it."
"All of what?"
"The menu."
The waiter laughed politely and then stopped.
"Every dish?" he said. "There are eighty-six."
"Please. And a second pot, if one pot will not hold it."
Tang Yu opened her mouth and shut it again.
"I'm paying," Jiang Lü added. "I have silver."
"Nobody pays in silver."
"Then I have this."
From her sleeve Jiang Lü drew a thick roll of one-hundred-yuan notes held with a hair ribbon.
She set it on the table beside the chopsticks.
The waiter looked at the roll for a long moment.
Then he wrote down eighty-six dishes.
Within twenty minutes the table was covered.
Tripe, duck intestines, beef slices curled like roses, lotus root, brain flower, blood curd, quail eggs, tiny sausages, a whole plate of frozen tofu.
The red pot boiled on the left and the clear pot on the right.
The smell of Sichuan pepper filled the air.
Jiang Lü sat in front of all of it with her chopsticks poised, very still.
"Have you used chopsticks before?" Tang Yu asked.
"For nine hundred years."
"Okay."
"Never at a table with this many people's food on it, though. It is a great deal of choice."
Jiang Lü lowered a slice of beef into the red pot, counted under her breath, and lifted it out at seven.
"I have waited a long time to be allowed to eat everything."
Tang Yu stared at her.
She had a short list of explanations ready for odd users.
Nervous, performing, theatre student, lonely.
None of them quite covered nine hundred years.
"You said that like a joke," Tang Yu said.
"Did I?" Jiang Lü ate the beef and closed her eyes. Her whole face changed. "Oh, that is good."
She opened her eyes and saw Tang Yu watching her.
Color rose along her cheekbones.
"I am sorry. I forgot my manners. I think I am a little nervous."
"Why?"
"You are the first person I have ever met this way."
Tang Yu laughed, because it was funny, and then because she could not stop.
Jiang Lü smiled at her over the steam, and the smile went right through Tang Yu's ribs.
Under the table, something warm brushed her ankle.
She thought it was the waiter's cart.
Then it curled around her calf, soft and heavy, and gave a gentle squeeze.
Tang Yu went rigid.
She bent very slowly and lifted the edge of the tablecloth.
A thick red tail, tipped in white, lay across the floor and wrapped twice around her leg.
It was wagging.
She straightened up with her face on fire.
Jiang Lü had gone the color of a boiled shrimp, and her hands were flat on the table.
"That," Jiang Lü said, very small, "does that when I am happy."
"I am sorry. I am not usually allowed to be happy in public."
"You have a tail."
"I am a fox," said Jiang Lü. "I am nine hundred and four years old. And this is my first date."
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