The celestial courtroom was silent.
So silent you could hear a pin drop across three dimensions.
Sun Wukong, the Great Sage Equal to Heaven, stood in the center of the room, holding a cheap, plastic USB drive like it was the key to the universe.
Which, at the moment, it kind of was.
"Evidence?" the Jade Emperor boomed, his voice a low, dangerous rumble of pure, orderly rage. "What evidence could a delinquent monkey possibly have that is relevant to these proceedings?"
Sun Wukong just grinned, a wide, chaotic, and deeply disrespectful grin.
"Oh, I think you'll find it's very relevant, Your Majesty," he said, his tone dripping with sarcasm.
He sauntered over to the prosecution's desk, unplugged their fancy, holographic evidence projector, and plugged in his own USB drive.
"I call this exhibit," he announced to the stunned court, "The Real Tea."
**
The massive screen flickered to life.
It wasn't a legal document.
It wasn't a celestial statute.
It was security footage.
Grainy, black-and-white footage from a hidden camera, timestamped for 3 AM in the Celestial Palace.
The footage showed the Jade Emperor's private study.
And in the center of the study, on a golden pedestal, was a shrine.
It was not a shrine to his ancestors.
It was not a shrine to the cosmic order.
It was a shrine to Li Wei.
**
A collective, universe-shattering gasp went through the courtroom.
The shrine was a masterpiece of obsessive fandom.
There were blurry, zoomed-in photos of Li Wei tripping over things.
There was a custom-made body pillow with Yin Mode's terrified face on one side and Yang Mode's cool, analytical face on the other.
There was a collection of merchandise. T-shirts that said "I Survived the Cult of Calculus." Mugs that read "World's Okayest Chaos Cultivator."
The Jade Emperor, the supreme ruler of all existence, was a stan.
A very devoted, very creepy stan.
The footage continued.
It showed the Emperor, in his imperial pajamas, lighting incense at the shrine.
He bowed.
"Oh, great Chaos Cultivator," the Emperor's voice whispered on the recording, filled with a reverence that was deeply, deeply wrong. "Please notice me."
The court was in chaos.
Gods were fainting. Demons were openly weeping with laughter.
Feng Yue just stared, her brain refusing to process what she was seeing.
**
"There's more," Sun Wukong said, his grin widening.
He clicked a new file.
[JADE_EMPEROR_BROWSER_HISTORY.txt]
The screen filled with text.
A list of the Emperor's most recent celestial internet searches.
The entire court read in horrified, fascinated silence.
"How to slide into a mortal's DMs casually"
"Is it weird to follow your test subject's girlfriend on Ascension?"
"Li Wei x Feng Yue fanfiction (wholesome only)"
"What does 'yeet' mean?"
"Buy 'Chaos Boy' body pillow cheap"
"How to look cool and mysterious and not like a lonely old man"
The secondhand embarrassment was a physical force.
It washed over the entire courtroom, a tidal wave of pure, unadulterated cringe.
The divine legal system, an institution of profound dignity and order, had just been exposed as the obsessive fan club of a single, lonely god.
**
Analysis, a cold voice stated in Li Wei's mind. Yang Mode was processing the new data, his logic engine running at full capacity. The defendant's legal action was not a genuine attempt to enforce copyright law.
The probability that this entire trial was an overly elaborate, and frankly, pathetic, attempt to get our attention is 99.7%.
He was right.
The cease-and-desist. The threat of deletion.
It was all just a cosmic version of a kid pulling a girl's pigtails because he has a crush on her.
So... he likes us? Yin Mode's voice asked, a note of pure, innocent confusion in his tone. He thinks we're cool?
He looked at the Jade Emperor, who was trying to become one with his throne out of sheer mortification.
He looked at the chaos in the court.
He looked at Sun Wukong, who was now selling bootleg "I'm with the Chaos Boy" t-shirts to the jury.
And Yin Mode, in his infinite, beautiful, and unfiltered simplicity, asked the most logical question of all.
"So... can we all be friends now?"
The question, so pure, so innocent, so completely out of place in the middle of a legal and existential crisis, broke the celestial justice system.
The bailiffs stopped trying to restore order.
The lawyers stopped objecting.
The entire, complex machinery of divine law just... ground to a halt, completely unable to process this level of simple, human kindness.
**
The Jade Emperor looked up.
His face, once a mask of cold, imperial authority, had crumbled.
The rage was gone. The arrogance was gone.
All that was left was a very old, very powerful, and very, very lonely man.
His perfect, divine composure finally, completely, shattered.
"I'm sorry," he whispered, his voice no longer a boom of command, but the quiet, cracking voice of an old man.
A single, golden tear, containing the weight of ten thousand lonely years, rolled down his cheek.
"It's just... so quiet," he confessed to the stunned courtroom. "Up here. In the palace. The endless paperwork. The perfect, silent order of it all."
He looked at Li Wei, his eyes filled with a strange, paternal envy.
"And then there was you," he said, his voice thick with a profound, cosmic sadness. "Your chaos. Your noise. Your stupid, beautiful, messy life."
"You were... interesting."
"You reminded me," he whispered, his voice breaking, "what it felt like to be spontaneous. To feel something other than the weight of my own, perfect, eternal boredom."
The confession, the raw, vulnerable heart of the universe's most powerful being, laid bare for all to see.
He wasn't a tyrant.
He was just a fan.
A lonely old man who had forgotten how to have fun.
**
The courtroom was silent again.
But this time, it was a different kind of silence.
A soft, gentle, and deeply empathetic silence.
Li Wei looked at the crying god on the throne.
And he didn't see an emperor.
He saw a lonely old man who didn't know how to make friends.
Yin Mode, the part of him that was pure, unfiltered empathy, took control.
He walked up to the throne.
He looked up at the supreme ruler of all existence.
And he offered him a small, kind, and slightly goofy smile.
"You know," he said, his voice gentle. "If you want, I could teach you how to use social media properly. It's a great way to meet people."
The Jade Emperor looked down at him, his golden eyes wide with a mixture of confusion and hope.
"Social media?" he asked, his voice a hoarse whisper.
He leaned in, his expression one of profound, cosmic, and utterly out-of-touch curiosity.
"Can you," he asked, his voice barely audible, "show me what 'stan' means?"
"The young gods keep saying it, and I just... I just nod."
đź“Ł [SYSTEM NOTICE: AUTHOR SUPPORT INTERFACE]
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