The vote was locked.
A perfect, 50/50 split between "happily ever after" and "fake your own death."
The fate of Li Wei's love life hung in the balance, a cosmic coin flip.
Then, the final vote came in.
Option C.
The one no one had seen.
[Kidnap him to the moon for a proper date. (1 vote)]
The tie was broken.
The system pinged, a sound of digital finality.
[WINNING VOTE: OPTION C]
The livestream chat went nuclear.
[USER: WaterNymph_69]
WAIT WHO VOTED FOR THAT?!
[USER: DemonicOverlord_Dave]
That's the ultimate chaos move. I respect it.
The name of the voter, the single, chaotic entity who had just hijacked the entire plot, flashed on the screen.
[VOTER: Anonymous_God_777]
A new private message pinged in Xiao Bai's streaming interface.
It was from the anonymous god.
[Anonymous_God_777: Sry for the drama! I'm just, like, his biggest fan. The show is literally the only thing that gets me through my eternal, lonely existence. Anyway, activating the teleport now! XOXO]
Xiao Bai's fox ears flattened against her head.
Oh no.
She knew who this was.
There was only one major deity who was that lonely, that dramatic, and that terminally online.
Chang'e. The Goddess of the Moon.
**
Li Wei was in his calculus exam.
It was hell.
A quiet, boring, and intensely difficult hell.
He was staring at an equation that looked like a cat had walked across his keyboard.
He had no idea what he was doing.
He was pretty sure he was going to fail.
Then, a single, brilliant beam of pure, silver moonlight shot through the ceiling of the lecture hall.
It wasn't the gentle, romantic moonlight of poetry.
It was a focused, weaponized, and deeply personal beam of "you're coming with me" moonlight.
It hit Li Wei's desk.
And the world dissolved into a shower of silver sparks.
**
The transition was... surprisingly smooth.
One moment, he was in a stuffy lecture hall, smelling of chalk dust and desperation.
The next, he was standing on soft, grey dust, under a sky of impossible, star-dusted blackness.
The Earth hung above him like a giant, blue-and-white marble.
He was on the moon.
He was not alone.
His entire calculus class was there with him.
His professor, a small, nervous man named Dr. Evans, was floating three feet off the ground, his expression a perfect mask of academic terror.
The other students were looking around, their faces a mixture of awe and "what the hell is happening."
This was not a normal field trip.
**
Then, the problem hit.
The very big, very immediate, "everyone is about to die" problem.
There was no air.
A girl in the front row started to gasp, her hands at her throat.
Panic began to spread.
Okay, this is bad, Yin Mode's voice shrieked in his head. This is very, very bad. We're going to suffocate on the moon because a goddess has a crush on us! This is the most ridiculous death ever!
The sheer, overwhelming pressure of the situation, the immediate threat of mass death, flipped a switch.
The panic was shoved aside by a wave of cold, hard logic.
Yang Mode was online.
His golden eyes scanned the scene, not with fear, but with data.
"Atmospheric pressure: zero," he stated, his voice a calm, chilling monotone. "Oxygen levels: non-existent. Time until mass asphyxiation: 47 seconds."
He raised a hand.
Glowing, golden equations began to weave themselves into the air around the group.
Formulas for pressure. For atmospheric composition. For the precise ratio of nitrogen to oxygen required to sustain human life.
"Creating a temporary, localized atmospheric bubble," he announced to no one in particular. "This is a suboptimal solution, but it will have to suffice."
A shimmering, invisible dome of breathable air solidified around the entire, terrified calculus class.
The students, who had been gasping for air, suddenly found themselves able to breathe again.
They stared at Li Wei, at the glowing math swirling around him, their minds completely blown.
Their weird, clumsy classmate was a math god.
Literally.
**
With the immediate crisis of mass death averted, Yang Mode's control began to fade.
Yin Mode resurfaced, blinking in the strange, low-gravity environment.
He looked at his floating professor.
He looked at his stunned classmates.
He looked at the Earth, hanging in the sky.
"Bro," he whispered. "Did I do that?"
A soft, musical voice answered him.
"You are even more impressive in person."
He turned.
She stood a few feet away, a vision of impossible, lunar beauty.
Chang'e. The Moon Goddess.
She wore robes of woven moonlight, and her skin seemed to glow with a soft, internal light.
She was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen.
And she was smiling at him.
"I'm so sorry for the dramatic entrance," she said, her voice a melody of shy apology. "But I just... I had to meet you. I've been watching your stream since the beginning. You're my favorite."
Li Wei's brain, which had just rebooted, promptly crashed again.
The Moon Goddess was his stan?
"So," she said, her cheeks turning a faint, silvery pink. "This is a bit forward, but... this is our date."
**
Before Li Wei could formulate a response, which probably would have been just a series of confused grunts, a new light appeared in the sky.
It was not the gentle, silver light of the moon.
It was a furious, burning, crimson light.
A comet of pure, righteous fury, streaking across the blackness of space.
It was Feng Yue.
She had seen the teleportation beam. She had felt his energy signature vanish from the Earth.
And she had followed.
She landed on the moon's surface, her phoenix-fire wings flaring, creating a crater of molten dust around her feet.
She looked at Li Wei.
She looked at the beautiful, glowing moon goddess who was currently trying to ask him out.
And her eyes, her beautiful, fiery eyes, narrowed into slits of pure, possessive rage.
The three-way, inter-deity, lunar love triangle was officially on.
**
Feng Yue strode forward, her every step a promise of violence.
"Chang'e," she snarled, her voice a low growl.
"Feng Yue," Chang'e replied, her own smile faltering.
The two goddesses stared at each other, the air crackling with divine tension.
Li Wei, caught in the middle, did the only thing he could.
He tried to become invisible.
It didn't work.
"He is with me," Feng Yue declared.
"The celestial democratic process says otherwise," Chang'e retorted, a hint of steel in her melodic voice. "I won the vote."
Feng Yue was about to unleash a torrent of phoenix fire that would have turned a significant portion of the moon into a sea of glass.
But then, she saw Chang'e's face.
Really saw it.
Behind the divine beauty, behind the pride, there was something else.
A deep, profound, and utterly soul-crushing loneliness.
The loneliness of a goddess trapped in an eternal, silent exile.
And then, Chang'e's perfect, divine composure finally broke.
Her lower lip trembled.
Her eyes filled with tears of pure, silver moonlight.
"I'm sorry," she whispered, her voice cracking with the weight of centuries of solitude. "I just... I'm so lonely."
"You two," she sobbed, looking from Feng Yue to Li Wei. "Your chaos. Your arguments. Your stupid, beautiful, messy love story... it's the only thing that makes me feel like I'm not completely alone up here."
The confession, raw and heartbreaking, hung in the silent, airless space.
Feng Yue's anger, her jealousy, her righteous fury... it all just... evaporated.
She saw not a rival.
She saw another girl, trapped by her own divinity, just trying to find a connection.
Her heart, a heart she thought was made of pure fire, ached with a sudden, overwhelming wave of sympathy.
**
The profound, emotional moment was, of course, when Li Wei's stomach growled.
Loudly.
The sound was shockingly loud in the near-silence of the moon.
Chang'e's sobs hitched.
Feng Yue stared at him.
Li Wei's face went bright red.
"Sorry," he mumbled. "I, uh, missed breakfast. Because of the... kidnapping."
He looked at Chang'e, his expression one of pure, innocent, and deeply inappropriate curiosity.
"Do you, like... have any snacks up here?"
Chang'e blinked, her tears stopping mid-stream.
A slow, watery, but genuine smile spread across her face.
She gestured to the ground beneath their feet.
"Snacks?" she said, her voice still thick with emotion, but now with a hint of amusement. "Honey, you're standing on the biggest, oldest, and most sophisticated cheese in the entire universe."
She scooped up a handful of moon dust, which solidified in her hand into a glowing, translucent cracker.
"Want to try some?"
đź“Ł [SYSTEM NOTICE: AUTHOR SUPPORT INTERFACE]
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