It was finals week.
The one week of the year more terrifying than a jiangshi outbreak.
The entire campus was a ghost town of sleep-deprived, caffeine-fueled zombies.
Real zombies, in Jiang's case.
For Li Wei, it was a special kind of hell.
He wasn't just balancing five different subjects.
He was balancing them with saving the world, managing a fractured soul, and trying not to get incinerated by the god of fire who was now his classmate.
His first exam: Constitutional Law.
He walked into the massive, silent examination hall.
And froze.
The proctor was not a tired-looking grad student.
Standing at the front of the room, radiating an aura of absolute, soul-crushing authority, was the Jade Emperor.
He was wearing a perfectly tailored suit and a terrifyingly neutral expression.
"Welcome, students," he said, his voice the calm, quiet boom of ultimate power. "I will be proctoring your examination today."
He held up a single, glowing piece of paper.
"The Heavenly Court takes academic integrity very seriously."
A student in the front row nervously clicked his pen.
The Jade Emperor's gaze snapped to him.
"There will be no clicking," he stated.
The pen exploded into a puff of divine dust.
The student fainted.
Li Wei wanted to faint, too.
**
The exams were a blur of impossible challenges.
For his Physics final, Lei Gong, the God of Thunder, made them calculate the escape velocity of a lightning bolt while he threw actual lightning bolts at them.
Yang Mode aced it, his paper a flawless symphony of equations, written with a hand that never trembled.
For his Public Speaking final, Yin Mode had to give a presentation on "The Ethical Implications of Divine Intervention in Mortal Affairs."
To a panel of actual divine interveners.
He stammered. He dropped his notecards. He accidentally called the Goddess of Mercy "dude."
And somehow, he charmed them all with his sheer, unadulterated, terrified honesty.
He passed. With a B-.
The stress was a constant, grinding pressure.
It was making his soul glitch.
During his oral presentation, he switched from Yin to Yang mid-sentence.
"...and so, in conclusion," he stammered nervously, "I think the gods should probably, like, chill out a bit?"
Then his posture straightened, his eyes flashed gold, and his voice dropped to a cold, analytical monotone.
"Furthermore, a cost-benefit analysis indicates that 73% of all divine interventions result in a net negative karmic outcome. A moratorium is the only logical solution."
The divine panel gave him a standing ovation.
He still only got a B-.
**
Feng Yue was his only anchor in the storm.
She was dealing with her own finals, her Ice Queen persona making her a terrifyingly efficient study machine.
But every night, she would show up at his dorm room with flashcards and a thermos of tea.
"You are confusing the Shang Dynasty with the Zhou Dynasty again," she said, her voice the normal, fiery one he was starting to crave. "The Shang were obsessed with oracle bones. The Zhou were obsessed with the Mandate of Heaven. It's not that complicated."
"It is when one of your personalities was actually there," Li Wei mumbled, his head buried in a textbook.
Zhuge Liang's memories were not helping his GPA.
She sighed, a sound of pure, exasperated affection.
She sat next to him on the floor, their shoulders brushing.
"Just focus," she said softly. "You can do this."
He looked at her, at the quiet strength in her eyes.
And for a moment, he felt like he could.
**
The panic attack hit him during his Statistics final.
The exam hall was silent, except for the scratching of a hundred pens.
Li Wei stared at the final question.
It was a monster.
A multi-part probability problem that involved calculating the statistical likelihood of a soul achieving enlightenment based on the number of good deeds performed versus the number of times they'd hit snooze on their alarm.
It was impossible.
His brain just... shut down.
Yang Mode? Yin Mode's voice called out into the void of his own mind. A little help here? This is your department.
Silence.
Uh, hello? Mr. Math God? You in there?
Nothing.
The stress. The lack of sleep. The constant pressure.
His other half, his logical fortress, had crashed.
He was alone.
He was just a clumsy, terrified history major.
And he was staring at a math problem that might as well have been written in an alien language.
The numbers on the page started to swim.
The room felt like it was shrinking.
His heart hammered against his ribs, a frantic, trapped bird.
He couldn't breathe.
He was going to fail.
Not just the test.
He was going to fail at everything.
He wasn't a hero. He wasn't a genius. He was a fraud.
A terrified, useless fraud.
A single, hot tear of pure, unfiltered panic rolled down his cheek.
**
Across the room, Feng Yue felt it.
A spike of pure, chaotic despair from Li Wei's energy signature.
She looked up from her own perfect exam paper.
She saw him.
He was pale, trembling, his knuckles white as he gripped his pen.
She saw the single tear tracing a path down his face.
And in that moment, she didn't see the Chaos Cultivator.
She didn't see the idiot who made her scream internally.
She saw a boy.
A boy who was carrying the weight of multiple worlds, multiple personalities, multiple destinies.
A boy who was expected to save everyone, and still pass his stats final.
A boy who was breaking under the impossible, crushing weight of it all.
Her heart ached.
She wanted to run to him. To hold him. To burn the entire, stupid exam hall to the ground.
But she couldn't.
All she could do was watch.
And for the first time, she truly understood the depth of his struggle.
**
He somehow made it to his last final.
Ancient Chinese Literature.
His best subject.
He was still shaken, his soul feeling raw and exposed.
He sat down, his hands trembling slightly.
He could do this.
Just one more test.
The exam paper was placed in front of him.
He took a deep breath and looked at the first question.
1. Analyze the use of metaphor in the poetry of Li Bai.
Okay. He could do this.
He started to write.
Then he blinked.
The characters on the page... were they moving?
He rubbed his eyes.
He looked again.
The ink was literally rearranging itself.
The elegant, printed characters flowed like water, forming new words, new sentences.
A message.
A message written just for him.
The White Snake has taken your friends.
His blood ran cold.
Long Bo. Xiao Qian. Jiang.
Come to Penglai. Alone.
The words shimmered, the ink glowing with a faint, cold light.
Or watch them die.
He stared in horror, his heart a block of ice in his chest.
And then, a final, cruel line of text appeared at the bottom of the page, formatted like a footnote.
P.S. - This counts as your final grade.
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