Zhurong's entrance was not subtle.
The pillar of divine flame turned the beige, bureaucratic office into a furnace.
He stood there, a god of destruction in a place of paperwork, his flaming armor radiating pure, arrogant power.
"Well," he said, his voice a triumphant roar that cracked the very foundations of Hell. "This is convenient."
He looked at the scene.
At Nuwa, the creator goddess, looking like a stressed-out project manager.
At Feng Yue, the phoenix princess, her face a pale mask of heartbreak.
And at Li Wei, the broken, beautiful experiment, currently split into two very confused, very traumatized halves.
"All the pieces," Zhurong gloated, spreading his arms wide. "All in one place. You've saved me the trouble of hunting you down."
**
Nuwa stepped forward, her robes of starlight flaring with a protective, maternal fury.
"Zhurong," she warned, her voice ringing with the authority of a being who had shaped galaxies. "You will not touch him."
The Fire God laughed. A sound like a world burning.
"Oh, Sister Nuwa," he sneered. "Always so sentimental about your little pet projects."
"But you don't understand," he said, his eyes glowing with a manic, obsessive light. "I'm not here to destroy him. I'm here to upgrade him."
He pointed a flaming gauntlet at a massive, obsidian server rack humming in the corner of the office.
It was the central mainframe. The heart of Hell's bureaucracy.
"You were always so poetic," Zhurong mocked. "Calling this place 'Diyu.' 'The Underworld'."
"But I see it for what it truly is," he said, his grin widening.
"It's a computer."
"A massive, cosmic computer that runs the operating system for this entire, flawed reality."
"And your boy," he said, his gaze locking onto the two Li Weis, "is the admin password."
**
He lunged.
Not at Li Wei.
At the server.
His hand, wreathed in divine fire, phased right through the obsidian casing.
He was plugging himself in.
"I'm not going to kill him," Zhurong explained, his voice taking on a distorted, digital quality as he interfaced with Hell's mainframe. "That would be a waste of good code."
"I'm going to do something much more efficient."
"I'm going to copy and paste him."
A beam of pure, raw data, black and red with corrupted code, shot out from the server.
It struck Li Wei.
Both of him.
Yin and Yang screamed as one, their forms flickering, destabilizing under the assault.
"The ultimate software piracy," Zhurong's voice echoed, now coming from the room's speakers. "I am downloading his consciousness. His power. His entire god-construct."
"And I'm installing it. Directly into my own."
A holographic progress bar appeared in the air above Li Wei's head.
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**
"No!" Nuwa screamed, unleashing a wave of creative energy, the very power that had birthed stars.
It splashed harmlessly against Zhurong's firewall of pure, divine arrogance.
"Your admin privileges have been revoked, Sister," the Fire God's voice crackled.
Feng Yue moved next.
She was a blur of motion, a storm of phoenix fire.
She didn't attack Zhurong. She attacked the data stream.
Her flames, the fire of rebirth and purification, slammed into the black-and-red code.
The beam flickered.
The download percentage stuttered, dropping back to 2%.
"Cute," Zhurong's voice droned. "You're trying to burn digital information. Adorable."
The data stream intensified, pushing her back.
"Your fire is powerful, little bird," he admitted. "But this is my world now. A world of pure data. And in this world, I am the god of lag."
He throttled her connection. Her flames sputtered, weakened, as if her own spiritual bandwidth was being choked.
**
Nuwa rushed to Li Wei's side.
His two forms were flickering violently, threatening to de-rez completely.
"Listen to me!" she yelled, her voice desperate. "I can stop this! I built a backdoor into his code! An emergency backup!"
"But it requires his consent!"
She looked at the two terrified, glitching figures.
"All of his consent!"
She grabbed Yin Mode by the shoulders. "Li Wei! You have to agree to the system restore! It's the only way!"
Yin Mode was hyperventilating, his eyes wide with a terror that was all too real.
"But... but what will happen?" he stammered.
"It will wipe the current session!" Nuwa explained frantically. "It will reset you to a previous save state! Before the pain! Before the betrayal!"
He would be normal again.
The offer from the convenience store, but for real this time.
But he looked at Feng Yue, who was fighting a losing battle against the data stream, her face a mask of fierce, desperate love.
He would forget her.
He would lose her.
"No," he whispered.
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Nuwa spun to Yang Mode.
"You!" she commanded. "You understand logic! This is the only viable path! Authorize the backup!"
Yang Mode was staring at the progress bar, his golden eyes calculating the rate of transfer.
"Negative," he stated, his voice cold and detached, but with an undercurrent of something new. Something that sounded almost... human.
"A system restore would erase all accumulated data," he said. "Including the data point that proves her love is not a programmed response, but an emergent property of her own free will."
He was talking about Feng Yue.
About her heartbreak. Her pain.
To him, it wasn't a tragedy.
It was data.
The most important data he had ever acquired.
"I will not erase the proof," he declared.
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They were going to fail.
Nuwa sank to her knees, a look of utter defeat on her face.
Her greatest creation, her attempt to build a better god, was about to become the universe's greatest weapon.
And it was all her fault.
**
Yin Mode was fading.
The download was pulling him apart, his consciousness being copied, compressed, and stolen.
He was facing deletion.
He looked at Feng Yue.
She was still fighting, her flames weakening, her body trembling with exhaustion, but she was not giving up.
She was fighting for him.
For the idiot. For the genius. For the whole, broken, beautiful mess.
And in that moment, facing his own erasure, Yin Mode felt a strange, quiet calm.
The panic was gone.
All that was left was a single, simple, and profoundly true thought.
He loved her.
It didn't matter if it was programmed.
It didn't matter if it was a lie.
The feeling, right here, right now, was the only real thing in his entire, manufactured existence.
"It was real to me," he whispered, his voice a faint echo as his form began to dissolve.
**
That single, honest, emotional data point.
It hit Yang Mode like a lightning strike.
It was the final, missing piece of the puzzle.
The variable he couldn't calculate.
The human element.
His golden eyes snapped into sharp focus.
The glitching stopped.
He stood up straight, his expression one of pure, cold, and utterly terrifying certainty.
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"I know how to beat him," he announced, his voice ringing with the authority of a god who has just solved the final equation.
Nuwa and Feng Yue both turned to look at him.
"He wants our code?" Yang Mode said, a slow, dangerous smile spreading across his face. A smile that did not belong on the face of a being of pure logic.
"Fine."
"Let's give it to him."
He looked at his own fading, terrified other half.
"We need to deliberately corrupt our own code."
The transfer beam pulsed, a wave of pure, soul-stealing energy.
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