The arena was a university.
A perfect, sterile, and soulless university.
The walls were white. The floors were white. The air smelled of bleach and academic superiority.
This was the Perfect God's home turf.
"The trial is simple," the Jade Emperor announced from a floating, celestial judge's box. "You will compete in a series of academic challenges."
"The winner," he said with a smug smile, "will be determined by a panel of your divine peers."
He gestured to the jury box, where gods from every pantheon were munching on cosmic popcorn, ready for the show.
"First challenge," the Jade Emperor declared. "Solve the Unified Field Theory. You have five minutes."
**
Dean Wang, the Perfect God, did not even blink.
He walked to a floating whiteboard, picked up a marker, and began to write.
It was not writing.
It was art.
A flawless, elegant symphony of equations that flowed from his hand as if he were transcribing the thoughts of the universe itself.
He finished in three minutes.
The theory was perfect. It was beautiful. It was correct.
The cosmic jury wept.
**
Then, it was Li Wei's turn.
His four selves stood in a confused, arguing huddle.
"Okay, so we just... do that?" Yin Mode asked, pointing a trembling finger at the perfect equation.
"His methodology is sound," Yang Mode stated, his golden eyes narrowed in professional admiration. "But his conclusion lacks a certain... elegance."
"We can do better," the Hero declared, a spark of competitive fire in his eyes.
Or we could just draw a funny dog, the Ghost whispered in their shared mind.
They couldn't agree.
Yang Mode wanted to write a more efficient version of the theory.
Yin Mode wanted to write an apology for being so bad at math.
The Hero wanted to write a theory that was also a heroic poem.
They had thirty seconds left.
In a panic, they all grabbed a marker and started writing on the board at the same time.
The result was not an equation.
It was a mess.
Yang's perfect, logical script was scrawled over by Yin's panicked, childish handwriting. The Hero's epic verse was interrupted by a small, shadowy doodle of a dog wearing a hat.
It was a disaster.
It was a failure.
It was, according to the god of art in the jury box, "a groundbreaking work of post-modern academic expressionism."
They passed. Barely.
**
The challenges continued.
Build a stable, self-sustaining pocket dimension.
Dean Wang built a perfect, orderly utopia where everyone was happy and productive.
Li Wei's four selves argued and accidentally created a dimension where the laws of physics were determined by a popular vote held every Tuesday. It was a chaotic, unpredictable, and surprisingly fun place to live.
Compose a symphony that captures the sound of a dying star.
Dean Wang composed a masterpiece of heartbreaking, mathematical precision.
Li Wei's group created a punk rock anthem about cosmic angst that was loud, angry, and incredibly catchy.
The jury was split.
The older, more traditional gods loved the perfection of Dean Wang.
The younger, more chaotic deities were Team Li Wei all the way.
Feng Yue watched from the sidelines, a cold knot of dread tightening in her stomach.
She saw the Jade Emperor, his face a mask of smug satisfaction.
He wasn't judging the contest.
He was enjoying the show.
And the challenges... they weren't random. They were all designed to highlight the superiority of order over chaos.
The game was rigged.
**
"For the final challenge," the Jade Emperor announced, his voice dripping with false sincerity, "a test of the heart."
The sterile university arena dissolved.
Replaced by a single, floating balcony under a sky of soft, romantic starlight.
Feng Yue was suddenly standing in the middle of it.
"The objective," the Emperor said, his voice a low, dramatic purr. "Win her affection."
Dean Wang went first.
He didn't speak.
He simply raised a hand.
The starlight above them coalesced. It flowed down from the heavens, weaving itself into a single, perfect, impossible flower.
Each petal was a different galaxy. The stem was a captured nebula. It pulsed with a soft, gentle light, humming a melody that was mathematically calculated to be the most romantic sound in the universe.
It was the perfect gift.
A flawless, algorithmically generated romantic gesture.
It was beautiful.
It was logical.
It was completely and utterly soulless.
**
Feng Yue looked at the perfect flower.
And she felt... nothing.
Then, she looked at Li Wei.
He was just standing there, his four selves staring at the galactic flower with a look of pure, unadulterated panic.
He had nothing.
No plan. No perfect gift.
He couldn't compete with that.
And in that moment of shared, pathetic failure, something inside him broke.
The doubt. The fear. The impostor syndrome.
The cold, terrifying question that had been poisoning his soul.
Is any of this real?
He looked at Feng Yue, not as a prize to be won, but as the only real thing in his entire, manufactured existence.
And a wave of raw, genuine, and utterly illogical emotion washed over him.
Jealousy.
Hot, ugly, and beautifully, painfully human.
Fear.
The cold, sharp, and terrifying fear of losing her.
His personalities, all of them, felt it at once.
She's going to choose him, Yin Mode wailed, his heart shattering into a million pieces. He's better. He's perfect. He's not... me.
The probability of her choosing the optimal candidate is 98.7%, Yang Mode calculated, and for the first time, his logic felt like a death sentence.
We lose, the Hero whispered, his voice filled with a quiet, tragic finality.
His love for her, artificial or not, programmed or not, was real.
The pain was real.
And that, in itself, was a kind of victory.
**
He had lost.
He knew it.
He had no grand gesture. No cosmic flower.
All he had was his own, stupid, broken heart.
He walked toward her.
He didn't have a plan.
He just... moved.
He was supposed to be competing. To be proving himself.
But he was done.
Done with the tests. Done with the gods. Done with trying to be something he wasn't.
He stopped in front of her.
He looked into her eyes.
And he just... gave up.
He let the chaos win.
Yin Mode, the clumsy, terrified idiot, took control.
He was frustrated. He was heartbroken. He was tired of losing.
He looked at the final, impossible equation for the Unified Field Theory, still floating on the whiteboard from the first challenge.
He stomped over to it, his face a mask of pure, childish frustration.
"This is stupid!" he yelled at the perfect, beautiful math. "All of it! It's all just stupid!"
He grabbed a marker.
And with all the pent-up rage of a kid who just wanted to be normal, he scribbled all over the perfect equation.
He didn't write words.
He drew.
A stupid, childish, and completely out-of-place doodle.
A stick figure of himself.
Holding hands with a stick figure of Feng Yue.
With a big, dumb, happy sun smiling down on them.
It was the most illogical, most inefficient, and most profoundly stupid solution imaginable.
**
The cosmic jury stared.
The Jade Emperor's smug smile faltered.
Dean Wang's perfect face registered its first-ever micro-expression.
Confusion.
Then, the god of wisdom in the jury box, a being of pure, infinite intellect, gasped.
"My heavens," he whispered, his voice filled with a dawning, revolutionary awe.
"He's not solving the equation."
"He's proposing a new axiom."
"That the fundamental, unifying force of the universe... isn't a number."
"It's a connection."
The other judges looked at the stupid stick figure drawing.
And they saw it.
Not a doodle.
But a new, beautiful, and ridiculously simple truth.
"That's..." the god of art breathed.
"...innovative thinking."
đź“Ł [SYSTEM NOTICE: AUTHOR SUPPORT INTERFACE]
Did this chapter bless your braincell or ruin your will to live (in a good way)?
Drop a comment or throw a power stone — it's like XP for my soul.