The map on the star chart was a glowing, golden wound in the fabric of the library.
It pointed down.
Way, way down.
"So," Xiao Qian said, her fox tails twitching nervously. "Secret evil lair beneath the school. Classic."
"It... is... probably... structurally... unsound," Jiang rasped, ever the pragmatist.
Long Bo was already cross-referencing the glowing map with a university blueprint he had summoned from a water scroll.
"It's not on here," he announced, a flicker of excitement in his orderly eyes. "This chamber predates the university. It predates the city. It might predate the concept of... property taxes."
Li Wei just stared at the map.
He felt a pull.
A strange, unnerving sense of homecoming.
I know this place, a voice whispered in his soul. It wasn't Yin or Yang. It was older.
"We have to go," he said, his voice quiet but firm.
**
They followed the map through the deserted library, down a series of maintenance tunnels that smelled of dust and forgotten history.
The air grew colder.
The silence grew heavier.
They stopped in front of a solid brick wall. A dead end.
"Well, that was fun," Xiao Qian said, ready to turn back.
But Long Bo pointed a single, elegant finger at the wall.
"The resonance is strongest here," he said.
Li Wei reached out and touched the bricks.
They were cold. Solid.
But he felt... something. A hum. A vibration that matched the chaotic thrum of his own fractured soul.
He pushed.
And his hand went right through the wall.
It passed through the solid brick like it was smoke, a ripple of golden energy spreading from the point of contact.
The wall dissolved, fading away into shimmering motes of light, revealing a dark, yawning archway beyond.
"Show off," Xiao Qian muttered, though her eyes were wide with awe.
**
They stepped through the archway and into the classroom.
It was ancient.
The stone walls were covered in carvings, but not of words or pictures.
They were covered in equations.
Complex, beautiful, and terrifying theorems that seemed to twist the very geometry of the room.
Desks, carved from a single piece of obsidian, were arranged in neat rows.
And in the center of the room, a single piece of chalk floated in mid-air.
As they watched, it began to move.
It danced through the air, leaving a trail of glowing, golden dust.
It was writing on a massive slate blackboard that covered the entire far wall.
It wrote with a speed and precision that was inhuman.
A flawless, elegant script that flowed like water.
Li Wei stared at the handwriting.
His blood ran cold.
He knew that script.
He had seen it before.
In his own notebooks, during the times when his other self took over.
The handwriting on the ancient, magical blackboard... was his own.
**
Impossible, Yin Mode whimpered. I've never been here before. I'd remember a magic ghost classroom.
A cold, analytical presence surfaced, pushing through the panic.
Yang Mode stared at the board, his golden eyes glowing with a fierce, analytical light.
The calligraphic style is identical to my own subconscious outputs, he calculated. The mathematical principles being demonstrated... they are familiar. They are the foundational theorems of my own chaos cultivation.
He looked around the room, not with fear, but with a dawning, terrifying understanding.
"This isn't just a classroom," he said out loud, his voice a flat, chilling echo in the ancient chamber.
"This is where I learned."
The moment he spoke, the room responded.
The air crackled with power.
The equations carved on the walls began to glow, one by one.
Holographic images flickered into existence above the desks.
They were lessons.
Holograms of star charts, of celestial mechanics, of the fundamental source code of reality itself.
And in the center of the room, a new hologram appeared.
It was a figure. A man, seated at the teacher's desk.
He looked tired.
He looked brilliant.
And he looked exactly like an older, more world-weary version of Li Wei.
"Welcome, successor," the hologram said, its voice a sigh of infinite resignation. "If you are seeing this, it means you have found my final lesson."
"And it means that I have failed."
**
The hologram of the First Chaos Cultivator looked at them, his eyes filled with a sadness that transcended time.
"This power," he said, gesturing to the glowing equations, "is a curse. A beautiful, brilliant curse. It allows you to see the flaws in creation. To see how to fix them."
"But reality does not like to be fixed. It is a chaotic, imperfect system. And it will fight back."
The hologram flickered, showing images of destruction.
Galaxies collapsing.
Stars dying.
"I tried to bring order," the First Cultivator whispered. "I tried to perfect the universe's flawed design. And in my arrogance, I nearly broke it."
"The heavens, the gods, they did not kill me. They sealed me. Here. In this classroom. Forced to teach my own failures for all eternity, waiting for the next fool to inherit my power."
He looked at Li Wei, his gaze piercing, as if he could see every fractured piece of his soul.
"They will do the same to you," he warned. "They will watch you. They will test you. And when your power grows too great, they will contain you."
"You are not the first to walk this path. And you are not destined to be the last."
**
The words hit Li Wei like a physical blow.
He wasn't unique.
He wasn't special.
He wasn't a chosen one.
He was just... the next one.
The next in a long, repeating line of brilliant failures.
A cosmic bug that the universe kept trying, and failing, to patch.
His entire identity, his struggle, his pain... it wasn't even his own.
It was a rerun.
A story that had been told before, and would be told again.
And it always ended the same way.
Failure.
Imprisonment.
Despair.
He stumbled back, his carefully constructed sense of self shattering into a million pieces.
Who was he?
Was he even a person?
Or was he just a collection of inherited memories, pre-programmed abilities, and a destiny that wasn't his to choose?
**
At the very back of the chamber, behind the teacher's desk, was a door.
It was a massive, imposing thing, forged from a metal that seemed to absorb the light.
It was covered in chains, sealed with a hundred glowing talismans.
And carved into its surface were a few simple, terrifying words.
ONLY OPEN WHEN READY TO DIE
This was it, then.
The final lesson.
The final failure.
The end of the line.
"Well," Xiao Qian whispered, her usual sass gone, replaced by a genuine awe. "That's... dramatic."
Li Wei just stared at the door, his heart a cold, dead weight in his chest.
He felt nothing.
No fear. No hope.
Just the crushing, empty certainty of his own pre-written doom.
Then, he felt a familiar, urgent sensation.
A feeling he had been ignoring for the last hour.
He really, really had to pee.
"Uh, guys?" he said, his voice a weak croak. "Is there a... you know... a bathroom in this ancient, soul-crushing prison of eternal failure?"
Long Bo, Xiao Qian, and Jiang just stared at him.
"What?" Li Wei said defensively. "Prophecy and existential dread don't make my bladder bigger!"
He looked around frantically.
There was only one other door.
The big, scary, death door.
"Well," he mumbled to himself, "when you gotta go, you gotta go."
He walked toward the Door of Certain Doom.
"Li Wei, no!" Xiao Qian yelped.
"It... says... 'die'!" Jiang rasped, with uncharacteristic speed.
But Li Wei wasn't listening.
He was a man on a mission.
He reached out, grabbed the massive, chain-wrapped handle, and pulled.
The chains shattered.
The talismans dissolved into dust.
The massive, ominous door swung open with a groan that echoed with the despair of a thousand failed souls.
And revealed...
A 7-Eleven.
**
Bright, fluorescent lights.
The gentle hum of a Slurpee machine.
Aisles stocked with chips, candy, and questionable-looking hot dogs.
And behind the counter, a bored-looking woman with kind, ancient eyes was wiping down the counter.
She looked up as the door opened, a small, welcoming bell chiming softly.
"Welcome to the Crossroads Convenience," she said, her voice a gentle, soothing melody. "Can I help you?"
She gestured to a sign behind her.
TODAY'S SPECIAL: MEMORY-ERASING ICED TEA & SNACKS FOR THE ETERNALLY DAMNED
It was Meng Po.
The goddess of forgetting.
And she was running a convenience store at the end of reality.
đź“Ł [SYSTEM NOTICE: AUTHOR SUPPORT INTERFACE]
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