The Jade Emperor got a social media account.
It was Li Wei's idea.
It was, therefore, a terrible idea.
He chose the handle @CelestialEmperor_Official.
He chose a profile picture of himself looking stern and majestic.
And for his first-ever post to the mortal and divine realms, after ten thousand years of silent, orderly rule, he tweeted:
@CelestialEmperor_Official: "Just learned what YOLO means. About to restructure reality! 😤 #Blessed #FirstTweet #DivineDecree"
He hit send.
And the celestial internet broke.
**
The tweet didn't just get likes.
It got retweeted.
By every god.
Simultaneously.
The sudden, massive surge of divine energy, all focused on a single, profoundly stupid post, was too much for the mortal servers.
Twitter crashed.
Then Instagram.
Then TikTok.
The entire digital infrastructure of the human world went down in a blaze of glory and a flurry of 404 errors.
It was the first-ever apocalypse-by-social-media.
**
When the internet came back online, sputtering and coughing like a resurrected ghost, it was different.
The mortal platforms had been forced to upgrade their servers to handle omnipotent users.
And the gods had arrived.
They flooded social media like a divine plague.
Zeus was on Tinder, and his profile was exactly as problematic as you'd expect.
Thor started a TikTok channel dedicated to hammer tricks. It was surprisingly popular.
Anubis was now a food blogger, exclusively reviewing the last meals of the damned.
It was chaos.
It was beautiful.
And the Jade Emperor was at the center of it all.
He had discovered the most powerful and addictive force in the universe.
Validation.
**
He became obsessed.
He checked his follower count every thirty seconds.
He got into flame wars with minor deities in the comment sections.
And he started making cosmic policy decisions based on Twitter polls.
@CelestialEmperor_Official: "Feeling cute, might delete Mondays later. Thoughts?"
A) Yasss Queen (8.9 million votes)
B) Please don't, I have a dentist appointment (12 votes)
Monday was officially on probation.
He was no longer a ruler.
He was an influencer.
And he needed a social media manager.
**
"I am not a social media manager," Yang Mode stated, his voice a flat, cold line of pure refusal.
He was standing in the newly redecorated Celestial Palace, which now had a "content creation room" with a ring light.
"My function is the analysis and application of cosmic law," he continued. "Not crafting 'relatable content' for a lonely old man's vanity project."
"Please," the Jade Emperor begged, his eyes wide and desperate. "My engagement is dropping. I think the algorithm hates me."
Yin Mode, meanwhile, was having the time of his life.
"You're not using enough emojis!" he said cheerfully, pointing at the Emperor's latest, very serious decree about tax law. "It needs more sparkle! More pizzazz!"
He took the Emperor's celestial tablet.
"See? You just add a little smiley face here... a rocket ship here... and the poop emoji here, just to keep it spicy."
The Jade Emperor watched, his face a mask of pure, divine concentration.
A moment later, a new, legally binding celestial law was posted across all realms.
@CelestialEmperor_Official: "Henceforth, all mortal tithes shall be increased by 10% to fund a new celestial highway project. 🚀💰😊💩"
The poop emoji caused a diplomatic incident with the Underworld that lasted three weeks.
**
While Li Wei was busy (and failing) at managing the Emperor's midlife crisis, Feng Yue was thriving.
She had started her own channel.
It wasn't flashy. It wasn't chaotic.
It was a simple cooking show, broadcast from her dorm room.
"Phoenix Fire Kitchen."
She would just... cook. Using her own internal flame to perfectly sear a steak or caramelize a crème brûlée.
Her calm confidence, her effortless grace, her ability to create something beautiful and delicious out of simple ingredients...
It went viral.
Her channel became more popular than Li Wei's chaos streams.
More popular than the Jade Emperor's divine decrees.
She became the biggest influencer in the cosmos.
Not by trying to be famous.
But just by being herself.
**
The final straw came on a Friday.
The Jade Emperor, high on the validation of a successful "Ask Me Anything" session, posted his most chaotic poll yet.
@CelestialEmperor_Official: "Weekend vibes! What should be the new fundamental force of the universe?"
A) Gravity (boring) (2% of votes)
B) The Power of Friendship (47% of votes)
C) Cringe (51% of votes)
The universe, by democratic decree, was now officially powered by cringe.
The effects were immediate.
The moon blushed with secondhand embarrassment and tried to hide behind a nebula.
The laws of physics became awkward and uncertain.
Every serious, dramatic moment in the universe was now accompanied by a faint, internal laugh track.
Li Wei stood in the middle of the chaos, watching as the very fabric of reality became a bad sitcom.
And he felt a profound, soul-crushing loss of control.
He had unleashed this.
His idea. His mess.
He had given the universe's most powerful being the universe's most addictive toy.
And now, everything was a joke.
He found Feng Yue on the roof of the history building, quietly filming a segment on how to perfectly poach an egg.
"You have to stop him," Li Wei said, his voice a low, desperate whisper. "This is my fault. I have to fix it."
Feng Yue turned off her camera.
She looked at him, her expression not one of anger, or pity, but of a calm, quiet understanding.
"No, you don't," she said softly.
"What?"
"You can't fix him," she said. "You can't control him. He's the Jade Emperor. He's a grown-ass god, Li Wei. He's making his own, terrible, cringe-inducing choices."
She took a step closer, her phoenix-fire eyes searching his.
"We can't control what other people do," she said, her voice a gentle anchor in his storm of guilt. "We can't manage their chaos. We can only manage our own."
The words, so simple, so sane, hit him with the force of a divine revelation.
He had been trying to fix the universe.
But the universe didn't need fixing.
It just needed to be.
And he just needed to be.
**
The moment of profound, emotional clarity was, of course, interrupted by a system-wide notification.
A new hashtag was trending.
Across all realms. All platforms. All timelines.
It had started as a joke. A single, sarcastic post from a disgruntled demon in Hell's IT department.
But it had caught on.
It had become a movement.
A revolution.
#ReplaceJadeEmperor
The hashtag hit ten million votes.
Then twenty.
Then a hundred million.
A new alert, this one from the ancient, dusty archives of celestial law, flashed across every screen in existence.
[ANCIENT CONSTITUTIONAL CLAUSE 1A, SUBSECTION 9, HAS BEEN TRIGGERED.]
[A VOTE OF NO CONFIDENCE HAS BEEN PASSED.]
[A DEMOCRATIC ELECTION FOR A NEW SUPREME DEITY WILL NOW BE HELD.]
The livestream chat, the divine forums, the entire supernatural internet, held its collective breath.
A final message appeared, displaying the results of a real-time, universe-wide poll.
[CURRENT TOP CANDIDATE FOR NEW JADE EMPEROR:]
[@ChaosBoy_Official]
📣 [SYSTEM NOTICE: AUTHOR SUPPORT INTERFACE]
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