The Immortal Cultivator Signed Up for a Dating App novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Ticket 4471

Tang Yu refuses her boss's order to delete the only profile her tester account matches, and learns Jiang Lü made the account two years ago.

Tang Yu did not sleep, and on Monday morning she told the truth in the smallest possible words.

"The user is real," she said.

"She matched with me, and she's the only one. I couldn't reproduce it with any other account."

Zhou Hanqing, founder of Hongxian Technology, sat behind a glass desk on the twelfth floor.

He did not look up from his phone.

He was forty-four, with rimless glasses, a grey suit and a smile that was always slightly ahead of the conversation.

"Then it's not a bug," he said. "It's a nuisance."

"It's a bug. I just haven't found where."

"Launch is in three weeks. I have investors flying in from Shanghai on the fifteenth." He finally looked up.

"A tester account that finds exactly one person looks like a broken app, Tang Yu."

"Close the ticket as can't reproduce. And delete her profile."

Tang Yu stood very still in the doorway.

"Delete her."

"The profile. It's causing the problem."

"I don't know that it's causing it. And she's a person, Mr. Zhou. She signed up in good faith."

"Then she can sign up again, after launch."

"If I delete her, I lose my only reproduction. I can't fix what I can't see."

His smile didn't move, but something behind it did.

"You're very careful for a contractor."

"I'm a tester. Careful is the job."

The silence went on a beat too long.

"Three days," Zhou said. "Then I'll delete it myself."

Tang Yu went back to her desk in the open-plan room with her jaw tight and her ears hot.

Lin Jie, the junior engineer at the next desk, a thin young man in round glasses and a faded hoodie, rolled his chair closer.

"Is it true?" he whispered. "That there's only one match?"

"For me. Yes."

"That's impossible. The matcher gives everyone twenty at least."

"Then something's different about my account."

"Or about her."

Tang Yu was opening her mouth to answer when the whole room went quiet.

At the lobby glass door stood Jiang Lü.

She wore the same green robe as on Friday.

On her feet were the cloth shoes of a monk, and in her arms she held a bamboo steamer the size of a hatbox.

The receptionist stared at her in a daze.

"I am here to help Tang Yu," Jiang Lü announced. "I have brought breakfast."

"You can't just walk in here," Tang Yu said, crossing the floor at a near run.

"The young man at the front said I could. I asked him politely."

"Did he ask for your ID?"

"He asked for something with a picture. I showed him my face."

Tang Yu closed her eyes briefly.

When she opened them, twenty engineers were already gathered around the steamer, and Jiang Lü was lifting the lid on forty pork buns.

The smell rolled out.

"Please eat," said Jiang Lü, and bowed.

"I do not know how many people are needed to fix a machine, so I made enough for all of them."

"You made these?"

"At four this morning."

Mei Xiaoran's face appeared at Tang Yu's shoulder.

Mei worked at the same agency and could not have missed this if she had been in another city.

"She's gorgeous," Mei whispered. "Are you dating the bug?"

"Shut up."

"Are you?"

"It's work."

"I will pay for the buns," Mei said, "with my life."

Even Zhou came out of his office.

He stopped a few feet from Jiang Lü and took her in, the robe, the hair, the buns.

"A volunteer tester," Tang Yu said fast. "She's helping with the match test."

"How generous." Zhou's smile came back, a notch brighter. "And your name?"

"Jiang Lü."

"Your company?"

"I do not have one."

"Your ID number, for the log?"

Jiang Lü went quiet.

It was not a refusal.

She simply stopped, the way a person does when the next honest word is not one they are able to say.

Tang Yu stepped in again.

"I'll give you the paperwork this afternoon."

"See that you do," said Zhou, and walked away with a steamed bun in his hand.

Later, Tang Yu dragged her into a little meeting room.

Jiang Lü sat with a paper cup of tea and knocked it into the keyboard.

Cold tea poured across the keys.

"Oh," said Jiang Lü. "It is fine." She considered the laptop. "It is not fine."

Tang Yu was already lifting the machine to drain it.

"That's a meme," she said. "Where did you get that?"

"People say it."

"Sure they do."

She wiped the keyboard dry and logged into the admin panel to check for damage, and Lin Jie leaned in at the door.

"Weird," he said. "I was pulling the account logs. Her profile isn't new."

"It was made last week, wasn't it?"

"It's the oldest account in the whole database. It was created before our public beta. Two years ago."

Tang Yu turned slowly.

Jiang Lü looked at the table, and at the cup, and then at Tang Yu.

"Granny Bai dared me to," she said. "I made the account that day. I only just found the courage to be matched."

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