The army of the lost stared at him.
Thousands of them.
A silent, hollow-eyed audience of failure.
Their chains rattled, a sound like dry leaves skittering across pavement.
Meng Po, the Goddess of Forgetting and now, apparently, a game show host, smiled her serene, terrifying smile.
"Welcome, Li Wei," she announced, her voice echoing through the massive arena. "To the final exam."
"These are your predecessors. The ones who chose the easy way out. The ones who drank the tea."
Her gaze swept across the legions of the damned.
"They failed. And their failure has earned them an eternity as gatekeepers. Obstacles for the next candidate."
She pointed a delicate finger at Li Wei.
"To prove you are worthy, to prove your choice to remember has meaning, you must defeat them."
"Not with fists," she said, a cruel twinkle in her ancient eyes.
"With your mind."
**
The arena floor shifted.
A single stone podium rose in the center, directly opposite Li Wei.
The chains on one of the forgotten souls dissolved.
A man in the robes of a Han Dynasty scholar stepped forward, his eyes empty but his posture radiating an aura of pure, unadulterated intellect.
"Your first opponent," Meng Po announced. "Candidate number 34. A master of strategic debate."
The scholar's empty eyes focused on Li Wei.
"The topic," a ghostly voice boomed through the arena, "Is a benevolent dictatorship preferable to a chaotic democracy? You have five minutes to prepare your opening statement."
Oh, hell no, Yin Mode's voice screamed in his head. I can't even win an argument with my roommate about whose turn it is to take out the trash!
But the panic was shoved aside by a wave of cold, crystalline logic.
The golden light bloomed in Li Wei's eyes.
Yang Mode was online.
"Five minutes is excessive," he stated, his voice flat and confident. "I am ready now."
**
It wasn't a debate.
It was a slaughter.
Yang Mode dismantled the scholar's arguments with the ruthless precision of a surgeon.
He used logic loops. He used philosophical paradoxes. He quoted Sun Tzu, Machiavelli, and, for some reason, the university's student handbook.
The scholar, who had been a genius in his time, was simply outclassed by two thousand years of strategic evolution.
He short-circuited mid-rebuttal and was escorted off the stage by two spectral guards.
One down.
Thousands to go.
**
The trials continued.
It was a relentless, soul-crushing gauntlet of academic combat.
He faced a Tang Dynasty poet in a Haiku battle to the death.
Yin Mode, surprisingly, won that one by composing a haiku so stupid and nonsensical that it broke the poet's brain.
Spicy noodle soup,My pants are on backward now,Tuesday is a thing.
The poet wept.
He faced a Song Dynasty mathematician in a duel of abacus versus mental calculus.
Yang Mode won in twelve seconds, his mind a supercomputer of pure, unadulterated numbers.
He faced an opera singer, a calligrapher, a master of Go.
He won.
And won.
And won.
He was a machine, switching between the chaotic creativity of the Fool and the ruthless logic of the Genius.
Yin and Yang.
Perfectly balanced. Perfectly effective.
From the stands, his friends watched in awe.
Feng Yue, her heart a chaotic mix of pride and terror, saw the god he was becoming.
Even the gods who had appeared in the stands, placing bets on the outcome, were impressed.
"The kid's got style," Hermes, the Dean of Admissions, commented to a stoic-looking Guan Yu.
But Li Wei felt... empty.
Each victory was hollow.
He was proving he was better than them.
But he was also proving he was just like them.
Alone.
Fighting a battle only he could understand.
He realized, with a dawning, cold horror, why they had all failed.
They had all tried to win by themselves.
**
The final opponent stepped forward.
She was different.
She wasn't wearing ancient robes.
She wore a faded band t-shirt, ripped jeans, and scuffed-up combat boots.
She looked like she had just walked out of a 1990s rock concert.
Her eyes were just as empty as the others, but the despair in them felt... fresh.
"Candidate number 7,351," Meng Po announced, her voice for once lacking its usual cheer. "She failed the test fifty years ago."
Fifty years.
She was from his time.
She could have been his grandmother.
She looked at Li Wei, and for a split second, a flicker of something that wasn't emptiness crossed her face.
Recognition.
"The final challenge," the ghostly voice boomed. "A duel of existential philosophy. The topic: Justify your own existence."
The girl just stood there, silent.
Li Wei looked at her.
He saw the faded logo on her shirt.
He saw the chipped black nail polish on her fingers.
He saw the ghost of a dream she once had.
And he broke.
The logic of Yang Mode shattered.
The panic of Yin Mode dissolved.
He was just Li Wei.
And he was looking at a girl who had been trapped in this hell for half a century because she couldn't answer an impossible question.
He saw not an opponent.
Not an obstacle.
He saw a victim.
Just like him.
Tears streamed down his face, hot and real.
"This is wrong," he whispered, his voice cracking with a sob. "All of this. It's wrong."
He turned to face Meng Po, his eyes blazing with a righteous fury that was entirely his own.
"They're not failures!" he roared, his voice echoing through the silent arena. "They're victims! You put them through an impossible test, you broke them, and then you chained them up to be punching bags for the next guy in line!"
"What kind of sick, twisted system is this?"
Meng Po's serene smile finally faltered.
"It is the way it has always been," she said softly.
"Well, not anymore," Li Wei snarled.
**
He turned back to the girl in the combat boots.
He walked toward her, not as an opponent, but as a friend.
"You don't have to justify your existence to anyone," he said, his voice gentle.
He looked out at the thousands of chained souls.
"None of you do."
He took a deep breath.
And he did something no other Chaos Cultivator had ever thought to do.
He reached out.
Not with power.
Not with logic.
But with compassion.
"Okay, everyone!" he announced, his voice ringing with a strange, new authority. "Listen up!"
"The Han Dynasty scholar! Your arguments were brilliant, but your understanding of democratic principles is a little shaky. Let's work on that."
"The Tang Dynasty poet! Your meter was flawless, but your themes were a little derivative. We can workshop it!"
"The girl in the band shirt! Your nihilism is a valid philosophical stance, but it's not a conclusion. It's a starting point."
He turned to the entire arena of the damned.
"You all failed because you tried to do this alone," he said. "But you're not alone anymore."
"I'm starting a study group."
**
Silence.
Utter, baffled silence.
Feng Yue stared, her jaw on the floor.
The gods in the stands looked at each other in utter confusion.
Even Meng Po looked completely, totally, and utterly lost.
A study group?
For the eternally damned?
Li Wei grinned, a wild, chaotic, and beautiful grin.
"We're all gonna pass this test," he declared. "Together."
He looked at Meng Po, his eyes shining with a light that was brighter than any logic, more powerful than any chaos.
It was the light of pure, unadulterated hope.
Meng Po just stared at him, her face a perfect mask of disbelief.
She facepalmed.
Hard.
"That's..." she stammered, "that's not how the trials work."
Li Wei just shrugged, his grin widening.
"I'm the Chaos Cultivator," he said.
"I make my own rules."
đź“Ł [SYSTEM NOTICE: AUTHOR SUPPORT INTERFACE]
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