The Imperial Jade Ballroom was a testament to human vanity—a floating platform of reinforced crystal held aloft by anti-gravity emitters. I stood in the center of the room, wearing a tuxedo that felt like a straightjacket, while Lin Yue hung on my arm like a shimmering, violet-eyed predator.
"You look stiff, Ren," she whispered, her voice a silk ribbon in my ear. "Are your 'vibrations' acting up again?"
"I'm just resonating with the sheer cost of the hors d'oeuvres, Miss Lin," I replied, grabbing a tiny cracker topped with what looked like gold-leafed algae. "My middle-class soul is currently undergoing a structural collapse."
[DAO MESSAGE: HOST, LOOK TO YOUR LEFT. THE 'GLITCH' HAS ARRIVED. AND... OH MY. HE'S ACTUALLY WEARING A CUMMERBUND.]
The Return of the (Very Confused) King
At the edge of the fountain, Zhou Min stood clutching a glass of champagne as if it were a holy relic. The Council had clearly "polished" him—they must have picked him up from the alley and shoved him into a designer suit to see how he reacted to the high-frequency energy of the gala.
But the "Normalization" was hitting him hard. He was caught between his memories of being a Dao-Director and the reality of being a data-scrub who didn't know which fork to use.
"I... I am the master of the Ten Thousand Heavens," Zhou muttered to a very confused waiter. "Bring me the nectar of immortality. Or... or a ginger ale. Whichever has more bubbles."
I walked over, dragging a curious Lin Yue with me. I leaned in close to Zhou, my voice dripping with mock-sympathy. "Rough night, Director? I know the feeling. One minute you're commanding the laws of physics, the next you're wondering if this tuxedo is a rental or a permanent debt. It's the tragedy of the modern era—even gods have to worry about dry-cleaning."
Zhou looked at me, his golden eyes flickering like a dying lightbulb. "Chen Feng... you... you turned the universe into a cubicle! My soul... it cannot compute the... the tax brackets!"
With a pathetic little poof of static, the golden light in Zhou's eyes vanished completely. His mind, unable to reconcile the grandeur of his past with the crushing weight of a 21st-century social event, simply chose to reboot. He slumped over into a topiary bush, snoring loudly.
[DAO MESSAGE: SYSTEM REPORT: THE RIVAL HAS ENTERED 'CRITICAL HIBERNATION'. HE LITERALLY PASSED OUT FROM SOCIAL ANXIETY. I... I ALMOST FEEL SORRY FOR HIM.]
"What was that about?" Lin Yue asked, her eyes narrowing as the Elder Council's Envoys approached us, their robes shimmering with a threatening brilliance.
"Just a fellow 'Vibrationist' who hit his limit," I said, turning to face the Envoys.
"Li Ren," the lead Envoy intoned, their voice vibrating the crystal floor. "We have observed your 'Foundation Weaving.' We offer you a seat on the Council. You will serve as the Anchor-General, and in return, your family will be elevated to the Apex Tier. Your power will be... codified."
The room went silent. Lin Tao leaned forward, his eyes hungry. Lin Yue held her breath. They expected me to bow, to be grateful, to be integrated.
I took a long, dramatic sip of my algae-cracker and looked the Envoy dead in the eye.
"I'm going to have to decline," I said, my voice carrying across the entire ballroom. "But I have a counter-proposal. Since you're so worried about 'stability,' I've decided to launch a Universal Maintenance Subscription."
The Envoys froze. "A... what?"
"A subscription service!" I cheered, throwing my arms out. "For a monthly fee of 50 Yuan per citizen—waived for students, obviously—I will guarantee that the ground doesn't swallow the city. I'm calling it 'Dao-Dash.' If a bridge starts to wobble, you just ping the app, and I'll send a localized 'Vibration' to fix it. I've already registered the domain name."
The Envoys' masks seemed to twitch. "You... you would turn the fundamental laws of existence into a... a gig-economy app?"
"Exactly!" I shouted. "And as for your Council, I've decided you're all now my Beta-Testers. I've just updated the building's stabilization lattice. If any of you try to 'codify' me, the gravity in this room will switch to 'Moon-Mode' for exactly three seconds. It's a feature, not a bug!"
To prove my point, I tapped my foot. The entire ballroom drifted two inches off its supports, making every billionaire in the room yelp and float briefly like balloons, before dropping them back down with a gentle thud.
[DAO MESSAGE: ...HOST... YOU... YOU JUST THREATENED THE HIGHEST POWER ON EARTH WITH AN APP UPDATE. MY DATA-BANKS ARE MELTING FROM THE SHEER AUDACITY.]
Lin Yue burst into a fit of laughter, her eyes shining with genuine intrigue. "A subscription service? Ren, you're either the most dangerous man alive or a complete lunatic."
"Why not both?" I winked, grabbing another cracker.
The Council stood paralyzed, unable to arrest a man who had just threatened to turn the entire planet into a "Freemium" service. I had achieved the impossible: I had made the divine so ridiculous that they didn't know how to fight it.