Feng Yue watched from the rooftop, her heart a frantic drum against her ribs.
This was impossible.
The idiot, the walking disaster she'd been tracking, was gone.
In his place stood something else.
Something cold.
Something terrifying.
Something beautiful.
**
The last conscious thug, the one who'd been smart enough to hang back, pulled a gun.
A cheap, unreliable pistol, but still a problem.
The new Li Wei didn't even look at him.
His golden eyes were focused on the unconscious gang leader at his feet.
He bent down.
He plucked a plastic bottle cap from the grimy asphalt.
Feng Yue's brow furrowed.
What was he doing?
**
He held the cap between his thumb and forefinger.
"Projectile mass: 1.2 grams," he murmured, his voice a flat, chilling monotone. "Target distance: 7.3 meters. Required initial velocity: 87.4 meters per second."
He glanced around the alley, his gaze not lingering on objects, but on the spaces between them.
On the angles.
The surfaces.
The possibilities.
"Ricochet vector one: brick wall, 42-degree angle. Vector two: dumpster lid, 18-degree angle. Vector three: rusted fire escape..."
He listed off seven points of contact in less than a second.
Feng Yue felt a shiver crawl up her spine.
It wasn't fear.
It was awe.
Those eyes.
Those golden, glowing Equation Eyes.
They were a legend. A myth whispered in the highest echelons of the cultivation world.
The power to see the universe for what it was.
Not magic.
Not qi.
Just… math.
The fundamental source code of reality itself.
And this bumbling, noodle-obsessed college student had them.
**
The thug with the gun finally got his nerve back.
He aimed.
He fired.
BANG.
The sound was deafening in the narrow alley.
But before the trigger was even fully pulled, Li Wei had already flicked the bottle cap.
It shot from his fingers, a blur of red plastic.
It hit the brick wall. Tink.
It zipped to the dumpster lid. Clang.
It danced off the fire escape, the side of a drainpipe, a loose window pane, a discarded beer bottle, and a single, forgotten brick.
Each impact was a perfect, calculated note in a symphony of violence.
The bottle cap, now glowing with faint kinetic energy, completed its final ricochet.
It struck the gunman's trigger finger.
The man shrieked, dropping the pistol.
The bullet went wide, embedding itself harmlessly in a wall.
The bottle cap, its momentum finally spent, dropped to the ground with a final, anticlimactic clatter.
Li Wei adjusted his glasses.
"Elementary physics," he stated to the empty alley.
**
Police sirens began to wail in the distance.
Getting closer.
Yang Mode's head snapped up.
His Equation Eyes scanned the alley again.
"Auditory stimulus detected. Estimated arrival of local law enforcement: 94 seconds."
He turned to Feng Yue, who was still perched on the roof, utterly gobsmacked.
He saw her not as a person, but as a variable.
"Unidentified female entity. Cultivation level: significant but inefficiently managed. Threat level: indeterminate."
He calculated.
"Optimal escape routes: 73. Optimal escape routes that account for your presence: 12. Optimal escape routes that account for your presence and my current lack of data on your abilities: 3."
He pointed to a fire escape on the adjacent building.
"Route Alpha is the most logical path. It provides the most cover and…"
He stopped.
Mid-sentence.
The golden light in his eyes flickered.
It wavered.
It died.
**
The unnerving stillness vanished.
The perfect posture slumped.
He swayed on his feet, his shoulders hunching forward.
He blinked, his eyes now just normal, confused, brown eyes.
The cold, calculating god was gone.
And the idiot was back.
**
Li Wei looked at the unconscious men on the ground.
He looked at the smoking hole in the brick wall.
He looked at his own hands, then back at the bodies.
His face went pale.
Paler than a ghost with an iron deficiency.
"Oh my god," he whispered, his voice trembling. "Oh my god, I did it. I finally snapped. I'm having a psychotic break."
He started patting himself down frantically.
"Where's the blood? Did I kill them? Am I a murderer now? I knew this would happen. All those violent video games. My mom warned me."
Feng Yue stared.
This was… whiplash.
She tried to process the sudden shift. The absolute, 180-degree personality flip.
This was the anomaly.
Not just the power.
The duality.
She needed to secure him. Now.
She leaped from the roof, landing as silently as a falling leaf.
"You are not having a psychotic break," she said, her voice firm and commanding. She needed to take control of the situation.
Li Wei yelped and jumped back, tripping over his own feet again for good measure.
He stared at her.
At her ancient robes.
At her fiery, intense eyes.
At the literal sword strapped to her back.
"Whoa," he breathed. "You're a cosplayer? That's a sick costume. Is there a convention nearby?"
Feng Yue's eye twitched.
"This is not a costume," she said through gritted teeth. "You are a cultivator. You just channeled immense qi to manipulate the laws of physics."
Li Wei's expression of pure, unadulterated confusion did not change.
"Qi? Like… the life energy stuff? From anime?"
He shook his head, his hands flying to his temples.
"No. Nope. This is definitely a stress-induced hallucination. I'm probably still in the fountain. Or in a coma. That makes more sense."
He looked at her, his eyes wide with a strange, misplaced pity.
"It's okay," he said, his voice soft and soothing. "You're probably having a breakdown too. This city is stressful. Do you need to talk about it?"
Feng Yue felt a vein throb in her forehead.
She, Feng Yue, Crown Princess of the Penglai Immortal Realm, Scourge of the Western Demons, wielder of the Sacred Phoenix Flames…
Was being offered therapy.
By an idiot who thought calculus was a type of noodle.
The sirens were getting louder.
They had maybe thirty seconds.
"We have to go," she snapped, grabbing his arm.
He yelped again.
"Stranger danger!" he shrieked, trying to pull away. "I'm not supposed to go with strange, beautiful women who appear out of nowhere and talk about anime powers!"
He broke free from her grasp.
And he ran.
He ran as fast as his clumsy legs could carry him, back toward the main street.
He screamed over his shoulder, his voice echoing through the night.
"I DON'T WANT TO GO TO JAIL FOR MATH CRIMES!"
Feng Yue stood there for a solid three seconds, her brain short-circuiting.
Then she took off after him.
"Get back here, you magnificent fool!" she yelled. "I need to explain the intricacies of your soul's paradoxical duality!"
A few late-night partiers on the street stopped and stared as a panicked-looking college kid was chased by a woman in historical robes shouting things that sounded suspiciously like Pokemon attacks.
"I'll use Phoenix Fire Burst!"
"Stop resisting the Karmic Cycle!"
Li Wei just screamed louder.
This was, without a doubt, the weirdest night of his entire life.
And it was only just getting started.
📣 [SYSTEM NOTICE: AUTHOR SUPPORT INTERFACE]
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