The Jade Emperor looked at the glitching, spasming mess that was Li Wei.
He was not angry.
He was not disappointed.
He was a programmer who had just found a critical bug in his code.
"The experiment is not over," he corrected, his voice the calm, level tone of a software engineer explaining a patch. "It has simply entered the final phase of competitive beta testing."
He gestured to the chaotic scene around them. The cosmic spa. The terrified gods. The very confused turtle.
"All of this," he said with a dismissive wave, "has just been data collection."
**
He looked from Li Wei to Nuwa, who was standing protectively in front of her failed creation.
"You and I had a wager, Sister Nuwa," the Jade Emperor said, his voice taking on the air of a corporate rival discussing quarterly earnings. "A coding contest, if you will."
"The challenge: to create the most 'human' artificial god. The most stable build. The most efficient design."
"Your entry," he said, pointing a perfectly manicured finger at Li Wei, "was 'Project Chaos.' An open-source, emotionally volatile, and frankly, very buggy piece of work."
"My entry," he said with a thin, triumphant smile, "was 'Project Order'."
"The prize for this contest," he announced to the stunned audience, "is administrative control of Reality.exe. The source code of the entire universe."
**
Li Wei's mind, already a warzone of conflicting personalities, tried to process this new, reality-shattering piece of information.
He wasn't just an experiment.
He was an entry in a cosmic coding competition.
His entire existence, his pain, his love, his struggle... it was all for a grade.
And he had a rival.
Another artificial god.
Someone created by the Jade Emperor himself.
"Who?" Li Wei's multiple voices whispered as one. "Who is it?"
The Jade Emperor smiled. "Oh, he's been watching you this whole time. Collecting data on your performance. He's been your benchmark for normalcy."
A figure stepped forward from the crowd of spa-going deities.
He was unassuming.
He was calm.
He was wearing a sensible tweed jacket over his celestial bathrobe.
It was Dean Zhang.
Xuanwu. The Black Tortoise.
The kindly, ancient turtle god who had been his Dean.
"Hello, Li Wei," the Dean said, his voice a calm, steady rumble. "I must admit, your performance has been... highly irregular."
**
"My creation," the Jade Emperor announced with the pride of a CEO unveiling a new product, "is the perfect fusion of divine power and mortal stability. He is competent. He is responsible. He has never once tried to solve a problem by turning it into a dance battle."
"He is, in every measurable metric, superior to your chaotic, emotionally unstable mess."
Li Wei looked at the Dean. His rival.
The perfect god.
The one who had always been in control. The one who had always been... normal.
And a new, cold, and utterly devastating thought entered his mind.
A thought that was worse than any cosmic threat.
He looked at Feng Yue.
At her beautiful, fierce, and currently very confused face.
And he thought: Does she love me? Or does she love the chaos? The project? The drama?
If she had met him first... the stable one... the good one... would she have chosen him?
The doubt was a poison.
It infected every memory. Every feeling.
Was his love for her real?
Or was it just a bug? A feature of his chaotic programming?
Was the Dean's potential love for her, a love born of order and stability, more "real" than his own?
His personalities, all of them, fell silent, united for the first time in a shared, profound, and utterly soul-crushing wave of impostor syndrome.
**
"The final round of the contest is simple," the Jade Emperor declared, his voice cutting through Li Wei's internal crisis.
"A test of humanity."
"The most human trait of all," he said, a cruel, cold light in his eyes, "is sacrifice."
"You must both prove your capacity for genuine, selfless sacrifice. The one who performs the most meaningful act of self-denial will be declared the winner."
He turned his gaze to Feng Yue.
"And you, my dear," he said, his voice dripping with false sympathy. "The anchor. The emotional catalyst. The divinely programmed love interest."
"You must choose."
"Which project will you support? Which version of reality do you wish to live in?"
"The stable, predictable world of Order?"
He gestured to the calm, competent Dean.
"Or the chaotic, unpredictable, and frankly, much more entertaining world of your current... associate?"
He gestured to the glitching, heartbroken mess that was Li Wei.
"Your choice," the Jade Emperor said, his smile widening, "will determine the future operating system of the entire universe."
"No pressure."
**
Feng Yue stared at the two of them.
The Dean. Calm. Stable. Perfect. A god who would probably never forget their anniversary or accidentally set the kitchen on fire. A god who would provide a life of peace and order.
And Li Wei.
A beautiful disaster. A walking paradox. A boy who was a hundred different kinds of broken, and a hundred different kinds of wonderful. A boy whose love was a chaotic, terrifying, and exhilarating storm.
Her programming, her very bloodline, screamed at her to choose order. To choose stability.
But her heart...
Her stupid, illogical, and utterly chaotic heart...
It didn't want the perfect god.
It wanted her magnificent idiot.
**
Before she could speak, the Dean took a step forward.
"The choice is irrelevant," he said, his calm, steady voice resonating with a new, terrifying power.
His form began to shimmer.
The kindly, wrinkled face of the old professor melted away.
The tweed jacket dissolved into robes of pure, white light.
He grew taller, his form becoming one of pure, mathematical perfection.
He was flawlessly handsome.
His eyes were not filled with fire or chaos, but with the calm, serene light of a billion perfectly aligned stars.
He had no personality flaws.
No emotional glitches.
He was the god of order. The perfect creation.
He looked at Li Wei, not with malice, but with the detached pity of a superior being.
"This contest is over," the Perfect God stated. "Your chaos is a bug. A flaw. A temporary anomaly in an otherwise orderly system."
He raised a hand, and the very fabric of the void around them began to hum, to align, to snap into a perfect, geometric grid.
The cosmic spa, the terrified gods, Xuanwu's shell... it all dissolved.
Replaced by a sterile, white, and infinitely vast arena.
A trial.
"I do not need to prove my humanity through sacrifice," the Perfect God declared, his voice echoing in the new, silent reality.
"I will prove my superiority through victory."
He looked at the four, flickering, broken pieces of Li Wei.
"Prove to me," he challenged, his voice the calm, quiet certainty of a foregone conclusion, "that your chaos... is better than my order."
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