News travels fast at a university.
Especially when it involves zombies and math.
The campus forums exploded.
[USER: NoodleLover69]
YO, DID ANYONE ELSE SEE LI WEI FROM THE HISTORY DEPT GO FULL SUPER SAIYAN ON THOSE ZOMBIES???
[USER: StatsMajor_Karen]
It wasn't Super Saiyan. It was a practical application of stochastic modeling to de-animate necrotic tissue. I took notes.
[USER: ChadThundercock]
All I know is that Phoenix girl was hot. But yeah, math nerd was kinda badass. 10/10 would watch again.
By morning, the story had mutated.
The legend was born.
Li Wei, the clumsy idiot who once set a fire trying to make toast, was now Li Wei, the Zombie-Slaying God of Mathematics.
He didn't know it yet.
He was hiding in his dorm room, trying to pretend the last 24 hours hadn't happened.
It wasn't working.
**
A knock echoed on his door.
It wasn't a normal knock.
It was a frantic, desperate, almost worshipful knock.
Li Wei froze.
"Mr. Li?" a voice trembled from the other side. "It's Professor Guan, head of the Mathematics Department! We've come to offer you a full scholarship! And tenure! Please, teach us your ways!"
Li Wei peeked through the peephole.
A crowd.
The entire math faculty was standing in the hallway.
They were holding textbooks like offerings.
Their eyes were wide with a fervent, manic gleam.
The look of people who had just found their messiah.
**
He spent the next three days as a prisoner in his own room.
He couldn't leave.
Every time he opened the door, a professor would ask him to sign their calculator.
Students, his new disciples, left him offerings.
Piles of completed calculus homework.
Perfectly sharpened pencils.
A TI-84 graphing calculator, still in its packaging.
It was a nightmare.
This is so weird, Yin Mode whimpered in his head. I don't even like math. I got a D in algebra.
The other part of his mind, the cold, quiet part, felt a flicker of something else.
Recognition, Yang Mode thought, a strange sense of satisfaction washing over him. My methods are being acknowledged by my academic peers. This is... logical.
Then a student tried to kiss his feet.
Okay, this has become inefficient, Yang Mode concluded.
**
Feng Yue was not having a good time.
She had tried to talk to Li Wei three times.
The first time, she was blocked by a group of grad students who wanted to ask him about his "asymptotic approach to zombie eradication."
The second time, he was being followed by a documentary crew from the university's film department.
The third time, he was being carried on the shoulders of the math club, who were chanting his name like a religious mantra.
She stood on a nearby rooftop, watching the procession, her hands clenched into fists.
Flames licked at the edges of her sleeves.
Who were these nerds?
These... disciples?
She was his mentor.
She was the one who was supposed to guide him.
She was the one who held his hand and felt his power and saw his potential.
And now she had to compete with the entire goddamn STEM department.
A feeling she had never experienced before, hot and sharp and ugly, coiled in her gut.
It was jealousy.
And it was making her want to burn things.
**
On the fourth day, Li Wei ran out of instant noodles.
It was a crisis.
He had to brave the outside world.
He put on a hoodie, a face mask, and sunglasses.
It didn't work.
They recognized him instantly.
"It's him! The Chosen Calculator!"
The crowd descended.
"Master Li, can you explain the Riemann hypothesis?"
"Master Li, what are your thoughts on non-Euclidean geometry in relation to spectral theory?"
He was drowning in a sea of academic adoration.
He was going to die here.
Crushed by nerds.
And then, the pressure in his head, the constant war between his two selves, reached its breaking point.
He had become everything he hated.
Popular.
The center of attention.
A success.
He felt like a complete and utter fraud.
His impostor syndrome, a small, nagging voice for years, became a roaring monster.
And his soul finally, officially, split apart at the seams.
**
The students closest to him saw it happen.
It was like watching a TV screen with bad reception.
He flickered.
For a split second, the left side of his face was a mask of pure, cold, arrogant logic. Yang Mode, in all his glory.
The right side was a mess of panicked, tear-streaked terror. Yin Mode, at his absolute limit.
The two halves of his face stared in opposite directions, one looking at the sky, the other at the ground.
Then they snapped back together.
But he was different.
He was both.
And neither.
He stood there, vibrating, a living paradox of confidence and fear.
The crowd fell silent, their academic curiosity replaced by a primal, instinctual awe.
The sheer, raw, chaotic power rolling off him was suffocating.
They had wanted a messiah.
They had gotten a god.
And he was broken.
**
The Linear Algebra lecture in Hall 2B was, by all accounts, incredibly boring.
Professor Zhang was droning on about vector spaces.
But the students weren't normal students.
They were the new converts.
The Cult of Calculus.
They weren't just taking notes.
They were praying.
Every correctly solved equation on their notepads was a prayer. Every theorem they recited was a hymn.
Their combined intellectual energy, their focused, unified worship of mathematical truth, began to create a resonance.
A spiritual frequency.
The air in the lecture hall grew thick.
The chalk on the blackboard began to glow with a faint, golden light.
Professor Zhang didn't notice. He was too busy explaining eigenvalues.
The cultists felt it.
The power.
The presence of their master.
They began to chant, not in words, but in numbers.
"3.14159..."
"1.61803..."
"2.71828..."
The mathematical constants of the universe, spoken with the fervor of prayer.
The resonance intensified.
The fabric of space in the center of the lecture hall began to thin.
It stretched.
It shimmered.
And with a sound like tearing silk, it ripped open.
**
A portal.
A swirling vortex of purple-black energy, smelling of ozone and old paperwork, materialized right in front of the blackboard.
Professor Zhang finally stopped talking.
"Well," he said, adjusting his glasses. "That's not in the lesson plan."
The students stared, their prayers dying on their lips.
Something was coming through.
A massive, horned head emerged first.
Then a broad, muscular torso covered in coarse, black fur.
It was a demon.
A massive Ox-Head demon from Diyu, the Underworld.
It stepped out of the portal and onto the lecture stage, its hooves clicking on the linoleum.
It was terrifying.
It was monstrous.
And it was holding a clipboard.
The Ox-Head demon scanned the lecture hall, its glowing red eyes filled with the infinite boredom of a career bureaucrat.
It cleared its throat, its voice a low, gravelly rumble.
"Li Wei?" it asked, looking down at its clipboard.
"You're being summoned for questioning regarding several cross-dimensional energy violations and a complaint filed by the local zombie union."
"Department of Karmic Audits. Please sign here."
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