Xiao Bai, the fox spirit CEO of the universe's hottest new reality show, was a genius.
A beautiful, fluffy-tailed, and deeply unethical genius.
Her stream was already a massive success.
But she knew how to take it to the next level.
Engagement.
She unveiled her masterpiece with a triumphant flourish on the livestream's interface.
[NEW FEATURE UNLOCKED: THE CHAOS TIER!]
[For a low, low price of 1,000 spirit stones, YOU can become a producer!]
[Chaos Tier subscribers can now vote on Li Wei's daily choices! What should he eat for breakfast? Who should he talk to? Should he wear his pants backward today? YOU DECIDE!]
[Disclaimer: Universal stability is not guaranteed. All sales are final.]
The supernatural internet lost its collective mind.
His free will was now a premium subscription service.
**
The first vote was immediate.
And it was brutal.
[CHAOS POLL: What should Li Wei do in his 10 AM Advanced Alchemy class?]
A) Take meticulous notes (3 votes)
B) Ask a thoughtful question (1 vote)
C) Confess his undying love to the professor (1.2 million votes)
Li Wei, sitting in the lecture hall, felt a strange, irresistible compulsion.
His body moved on its own.
He stood up.
Professor Long, a stern, ancient dragon in a tweed jacket, paused mid-lecture on the elemental properties of sulfur.
"Yes, Mr. Li?" the professor asked, his voice a low rumble.
Li Wei's mouth opened.
Words he did not choose came tumbling out.
"Professor Long," he declared, his voice ringing with a passion he did not feel. "I cannot hide it any longer! Your lectures on covalent bonds have created an unbreakable bond... with my heart!"
The classroom went dead silent.
Professor Long, the ancient Dragon of the Western Coasts, just stared at him, his reptilian eyes blinking slowly.
"Mr. Li," the dragon rumbled after a long, painful pause. "That is... highly inappropriate."
"Please see me after class. For detention."
The livestream chat exploded with laughter.
**
This could not continue.
This is a sub-optimal outcome, a cold voice stated in the back of Li Wei's mind. The audience's collective decision-making is inefficient and prone to malicious trolling.
Yang Mode was online.
And he had a plan.
He couldn't fight the system.
So he would game it.
He spent the next hour creating a thousand celestial bot accounts.
Each one was programmed with a simple, logical directive: to vote for the most boring, most efficient, and most non-chaotic option in every poll.
The bot war began.
[CHAOS POLL: Should Li Wei eat at the cafeteria?]
A) Yes, the nutrient paste is efficient. (1,000 votes from Yang's bots)
B) No, he should challenge the God of Cookery to a duel. (1.5 million votes from the chaos-loving public)
The system was overwhelmed.
The real viewers fought back, creating their own bots.
The livestream's comment section became a digital battlefield, a war between pure, unadulterated chaos and cold, hard logic.
And Li Wei was the prize.
**
The chaos peaked.
The audience, now in a frenzy, issued a new, impossible poll.
A paradox.
[URGENT VOTE: What is Li Wei's next move regarding Feng Yue?]
A) Ask her on a romantic date immediately! (2.1 million votes)
B) Avoid her completely and retreat to the library to wallow in angst! (2.1 million votes)
A perfect tie.
Two diametrically opposed commands, both with equal, overwhelming power.
Li Wei's body, controlled by the democratic will of the cosmos, tried to obey both.
He took a step toward Feng Yue's dorm room.
Then a step back toward the library.
Then a step forward.
Then a step back.
His movements became a bizarre, jerky, and deeply confusing dance.
A forward-lunge-into-a-panicked-retreat shuffle.
Students on the campus quad stopped and stared.
"Is that... a new TikTok dance?" someone whispered.
Li Wei was not dancing.
He was a puppet, his strings pulled by a million different masters, trapped in a feedback loop of pure, democratic insanity.
**
Feng Yue found him like that.
Stuck in his paradoxical dance, his face a mask of pure, tortured confusion.
She had been watching the stream.
She had seen the polls. The bots. The slow, crowdsourced erosion of his free will.
She stormed up to him, her face a thundercloud.
The sheer force of her aura, her raw, unfiltered phoenix fury, was enough to momentarily override the system's commands.
Li Wei stopped dancing. He just stood there, trembling.
"What are you doing?" she demanded, her voice low and dangerous.
"They're... they're voting," he stammered. "I have to... I don't have a choice."
"There is always a choice!" she snapped.
She looked at him, at the boy who was losing himself to please a million invisible strangers.
The boy whose every action was now just... content.
And the question that had been burning in her heart finally boiled over.
"Is this real?" she asked, her voice cracking with a pain she couldn't hide.
He stared at her, confused. "Is what real?"
"Us," she whispered, her voice raw. "This. Our... relationship."
"Or is it just part of the show? Is every word, every touch, just... content for your audience?"
The question hit him like a physical blow.
He looked at her, at the genuine heartbreak in her eyes.
And he realized, with a dawning, sickening horror, that he didn't have an answer.
**
Before he could say anything, a new poll, the biggest one yet, flashed across the livestream's interface.
It was the tiebreaker.
The ultimate choice.
[FINAL CHAOS VOTE: Li Wei's relationship status is unstable. How should he resolve this?]
A) Propose marriage to the Phoenix Princess immediately. (4.9 million votes)
B) Fake his own death and run away to join a monastery. (4.9 million votes)
Another perfect, impossible tie.
The vote count flickered, locked in a dead heat.
The fate of his entire romantic future, and possibly his continued existence, was balanced on a knife's edge.
The system pinged.
[VOTE IS TIED. AWAITING FINAL TIEBREAKER VOTE.]
The chat held its collective breath.
A single, new vote appeared on the screen.
It was not for option A.
It was not for option B.
It was for a hidden, third option that no one had even seen.
[Option C: Kidnap him to the moon for a proper date. (1 vote)]
The vote was cast.
The tie was broken.
And the name of the voter, the single, chaotic entity who had just decided his fate, flashed on the screen for all the cosmos to see.
[VOTER: Anonymous_God_777]
đź“Ł [SYSTEM NOTICE: AUTHOR SUPPORT INTERFACE]
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