The livestream was no longer a mirror.
It was a nuke.
A nuke that detonated in the soul of every single being in the cosmos.
The first cosmic secret it dropped was a casual, off-hand comment, displayed in elegant, golden text for all to see.
[COSMIC TRUTH #1: Reincarnation is not a journey of spiritual growth. It is a cosmic recycling program designed to save on the energy costs of creating new souls.]
A collective, universe-shattering "oof."
**
The chat, which had been a wholesome space of healing and self-discovery, became a screaming vortex of existential dread.
[USER: WaterNymph_69]
WAIT. SO ALL MY PAST LIVES WERE JUST... RECYCLING? I'M A SPIRITUAL SODA CAN?!
[USER: DemonicOverlord_Dave]
My entire business model is based on karmic debt. My stocks are plummeting.
[USER: MinorGod_Steve]
I KNEW IT. I KNEW THIS WAS ALL POINTLESS.
The stream, in its infinite, terrible wisdom, was not done.
[COSMIC TRUTH #2: The concept of 'free will' was a beta feature that was never properly debugged. Most of your 'choices' are just the result of a buggy algorithm trying to prevent reality from crashing.]
That one broke people.
Across all three realms, a billion beings simultaneously looked at their own hands and had the same, terrifying thought.
Am I even real?
**
The backlash was immediate.
And it was divine.
A bolt of pure, orderly lightning slammed into the university's server room, vaporizing a potted plant.
Zeus had arrived. And he was pissed.
"SHUT IT DOWN!" he roared, his voice the sound of a thousand thunderstorms. "This is classified information! You are destabilizing the mortal faith matrix!"
Another portal ripped open. The Jade Emperor stepped through, his face a mask of cold, bureaucratic fury.
"This is an unauthorized disclosure of celestial trade secrets!" he declared. "I will have you audited into oblivion!"
Gods from every pantheon began to arrive.
Odin. Ra. A very annoyed-looking Quetzalcoatl.
They were all here to pull the plug.
To censor the truth.
To put the existential toothpaste back in the tube.
**
"We have a problem," Xiao Bai, the fox spirit producer, said, her voice an octave higher than usual. "The entire divine establishment is about to cancel our show. Violently."
Yang Mode was already at work, his fingers a blur across a keyboard of pure light.
"I am constructing a firewall," he stated, his golden eyes narrowed in concentration. "A conceptual barrier to block their divine authority from accessing our broadcast signal."
"Can you do that?" Yin Mode asked, peeking out from under a desk.
"Theoretically," Yang Mode replied. "But I am essentially trying to build a dam in the middle of a hurricane with nothing but logic and spite."
While Yang Mode was fighting a god-level cyberwar, Yin Mode was doing damage control.
He looked at the chat, at the millions of souls having a collective breakdown.
And his heart, his stupid, clumsy, and infinitely empathetic heart, ached.
He grabbed Xiao Bai's microphone.
"Hey, guys," he said, his voice a small, gentle anchor in the storm of existential dread. "It's okay."
The chat paused its screaming.
"I know this is... a lot," he stammered. "And it's scary. And it makes you feel like nothing matters."
"But... it does matter!" he insisted. "Who cares if it's a recycling program? You're still you! You still get to feel things! You still get to eat spicy chips!"
A single, hopeful message appeared in the chat.
[USER: SadGhost_27]
I do like spicy chips.
"Yeah!" Yin Mode said, his confidence growing. "And who cares if free will is buggy? That just means it's not our fault when we do stupid stuff! It's a feature!"
He was becoming the universe's first, and only, existential crisis counselor.
And it was, somehow, kind of working.
**
The firewall was holding. Barely.
The angry gods were throwing everything they had at it.
Lightning bolts of divine censorship.
Cease-and-desist orders that were also literal plagues of locusts.
But Yang Mode's logic was a cold, hard wall against their fury.
The stream, protected by its firewall of pure, unadulterated nerd rage, continued its terrible, beautiful work.
It had saved its biggest secret for last.
The lens of truth, which had been focused on the abstract concepts of the cosmos, now turned its gaze to a single, concrete point.
A location.
The coordinates of the original God of Chaos's hidden power.
The ultimate weapon. The ultimate prize.
The map, the final, universe-breaking spoiler, burned on the screen for all to see.
**
Every god, every demon, every ambitious being in the cosmos, stopped their attack.
They stared at the screen.
At the map.
The Jade Emperor's eyes widened with cold, calculating ambition.
Zhurong, who had been enjoying a nice, relaxing aromatherapy session, suddenly looked up, a hungry fire in his eyes.
The Great Stream War was over.
The Great Treasure Hunt had just begun.
A silent, universal agreement was made.
The stream could no longer be allowed to exist.
Not because it was revealing the truth.
But because it had just made that truth a liability.
They all turned their combined, awesome power on Yang Mode's firewall.
It shattered.
**
And in the server room, Li Wei felt the full, crushing weight of what he had done.
The angry glares of the gods.
The terrified, broken messages in the chat.
The dawning, hungry ambition in the eyes of his enemies.
He had wanted to show them the truth.
He had wanted to be authentic.
But the truth was a weapon. And he had just handed it to everyone.
He had destroyed their comforting illusions. He had broken their faith. He had started a cosmic arms race.
And for what?
For views? For validation? For the right to be messy?
A wave of guilt, so powerful it almost knocked him off his feet, washed over him.
He looked at Feng Yue, his eyes filled with a profound, heartbreaking doubt.
"Was it worth it?" he whispered, his voice cracking. "Is the truth... is it always worth the pain it causes?"
She opened her mouth to answer.
To tell him yes. To tell him that a beautiful lie is still a lie.
But before she could, Yin Mode, who had been listening to the existential woes of a million souls, finally had his own breakthrough.
He looked at the camera, a small, goofy, and ridiculously profound smile on his face.
"You know," he said to the entire, watching universe. "Everyone's freaking out about free will being a buggy beta feature."
"But I think it's kinda cool."
He held up a half-eaten bag of pineapple-flavored potato chips he had found under the desk.
"If free will is buggy," he declared, his voice ringing with the simple, beautiful clarity of a true idiot-savant. "That explains why I put pineapple on pizza."
"I'm not weird," he said, taking a triumphant bite of his terrible snack.
"I'm just experiencing a glitch!"
đź“Ł [SYSTEM NOTICE: AUTHOR SUPPORT INTERFACE]
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