The email was ominous.
SUBJECT: Urgent Academic Review
FROM: Dean Zhang
Mr. Li, my office. Now.
Li Wei's blood ran cold.
This was it.
He was being expelled.
For the fire. And the nosebleed flood. And the general campus-wide weirdness that seemed to follow him like a stray dog.
He was going to have to call his mom.
His other mom. The one who was a mid-level manager in Hell.
That was going to be an awkward conversation.
**
He trudged to the Dean's office, his feet dragging with the weight of his impending doom.
The office was... weird.
He'd never been inside before.
It wasn't the sterile, corporate space he expected.
It was more like a museum's storage closet.
Ancient, dusty artifacts were everywhere. A cracked oracle bone served as a paperweight. A bronze ritual vessel was being used as a pencil holder.
And on the Dean's massive mahogany desk, there wasn't a computer.
There was a turtle shell.
A massive, ancient turtle shell, polished to a dark, glossy sheen.
Intricate glowing lines of golden light pulsed softly across its surface, like a circuit board designed by a god.
**
Dean Zhang sat behind the desk, looking exactly as he always did.
Old.
Wrinkled.
And infinitely, cosmically tired.
He gestured to a chair. "Mr. Li. Please. Sit."
Li Wei sat. The chair was surprisingly comfortable.
"I called you here to discuss the... unusual electromagnetic disturbances originating from your dormitory," the Dean began, his voice a low, gentle rumble.
"Disturbances," he said, "that have caused three campus-wide power outages, a spontaneous popcorn manifestation, and a very confusing incident involving the Wi-Fi router achieving temporary sentience."
Li Wei sank lower in his chair.
"I'm so sorry," he mumbled. "My roommate got a new microwave. It's probably that."
Dean Zhang did not smile.
"No, Mr. Li," he said, his ancient eyes seeming to look right through him. "It is not the microwave."
He sighed, a sound that seemed to carry the weight of centuries.
"I am going to tell you a secret," he said. "A secret that has been kept for a very, very long time."
He leaned forward, his expression grave.
"My name is not Zhang."
He paused for dramatic effect.
"It is Xuanwu. The Black Tortoise. Guardian of the North, Sentinel of the Watery Depths, and part-time university administrator."
Li Wei just stared at him.
His brain, which had already been through a triad beatdown, a hotpot assassination, and a hostile takeover by a dead strategist, simply refused to process this new information.
"Like... from the myths?" he asked weakly. "The giant turtle-snake thing?"
"I prefer 'celestial guardian'," Xuanwu rumbled. "But yes. That's the one."
**
The Dean, the ancient cosmic turtle god, stood up and walked to the window.
"This university, Li Wei, is not just a place of learning. It is a guard post."
He gestured to the campus below.
"It was built on a dimensional weak point. A place where the veil between your world and... others... is thin."
"My purpose here is to maintain the balance. To ensure the integrity of the barrier."
He turned back to Li Wei, his expression grim.
"And you, my boy, have been kicking the ever-loving crap out of my barrier."
He tapped a command into his turtle-shell computer.
A holographic screen flickered to life in the air.
It showed security footage.
From Li Wei's dorm room.
It was him.
Sleepwalking.
His eyes were closed, but he was moving with a strange, dreamlike purpose.
He was drawing.
On the walls. On the floor. On the ceiling.
With his finger, he was tracing complex, glowing symbols in the air.
Symbols that lingered for a moment before fading.
"Protection arrays," Xuanwu explained. "Very old. Very powerful. Your subconscious, your 'Yin' self, has been sensing the weakness in the barrier and trying to patch it in your sleep."
"It's the reason you're always so tired. You've been doing unpaid, supernatural maintenance work every night for years."
**
The footage changed.
It was from the library. The courtyard. The cafeteria.
It was footage of him.
The other him.
Yang Mode.
It showed him calculating equations that dissolved zombies. It showed the energy transfer with Feng Yue that caused the campus-wide blackout.
"Your subconscious patches the wall," Xuanwu said, his voice heavy. "And your conscious power, your 'Yang' self, blasts holes in it."
"Your very existence, son, is a paradox that is destabilizing reality."
The words hit Li Wei like a physical blow.
His whole life.
It was all a lie.
His clumsiness. His weird sleepwalking habits. His constant exhaustion.
It wasn't just him being a mess.
It was him being a cosmic, reality-breaking mess.
And everyone knew.
The Dean. Feng Yue. His mother in Hell.
Everyone knew but him.
He wasn't a person.
He was a problem. A secret to be managed. A walking, talking natural disaster.
The carefully constructed walls of his identity, already cracked and fragile, completely shattered.
I'm not real, Yin Mode's voice whispered in his head, a sound of pure, hollow despair. None of this is real.
The data is conclusive, Yang Mode's voice stated, cold and sharp with a new, terrifying certainty. Our existence is a fundamental error in the universal source code.
The two voices, the two halves of his broken soul, spoke at the same time.
One screamed in terror.
The other stated a logical fact.
"I'm a monster."
"I am an anomaly."
The voices overlapped, spilling out of his mouth in a discordant, horrifying harmony.
The air around him warped, the two sides of his being fighting for control of his physical form.
He was literally coming apart at the seams.
**
Suddenly, a deafening alarm blared from the turtle-shell computer.
A red light flashed on its surface, bathing the office in an apocalyptic glow.
A synthesized, panicked voice echoed from the shell.
"BREACH DETECTED. CONTAINMENT FIELD FAILURE IN SECTORS 4, 5, AND 7."
Xuanwu rushed back to his desk, his ancient face a mask of grim resignation.
"No," he whispered.
"JIANGSHI OUTBREAK IN PROGRESS," the computer announced, its voice tinny and terrified.
Li Wei looked out the window.
The campus courtyard, which had been peaceful moments before, was now... hopping.
Dozens, then hundreds, of stiff, gray figures were pouring out of shimmering tears in the air.
The students on the lawn screamed and ran.
The computer's voice rose to a fever pitch, its final announcement a death sentence for the entire campus.
"ESTIMATED CASUALTIES: EVERYONE."
đź“Ł [SYSTEM NOTICE: AUTHOR SUPPORT INTERFACE]
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