The Oracle's Death Sentence

The giant hammer crashed down.

The muffled crack of bone hurt his eardrums.

A dark red mark bearing instruction text in reverse was seared into the bones of the right wing Dvalin had slammed down.

The scalding liquid metal instantly vaporized the dragon blood around it. The stench of burning mingled with the thick smell of blood, piercing his nostrils.

"Two."

Wei Zhenzu spoke the number without expression, advancing the instruction count.

"Roar!"

Dvalin let out a howl of pain.

His enormous wing swept violently upward, and a gale carrying poisoned blood became a dense, dark red storm barrier, forcibly driving Wei Zhenzu and his hammer back.

His leather shoes gouged two deep furrows in the rough stone slabs, sending sparks flying.

Wei Zhenzu steadied himself and dropped to one knee. A sharply tailored dark suit covered his body, and at the left side of his chest, a faint golden light pulsed slowly and steadily through the fabric.

A faint golden light surrounded his body.

His heart.

The flesh beneath his suit trembled slightly. Forcing himself to keep up with the Oracle Terminal's extreme movement speed had torn his leg muscles.

Warm blood ran slowly down the inside of his suit trousers. His pain receptors screamed warnings, but his mind remained absolutely rational.

The terminal emitted a series of faint beeps.

The ghostly blue code flickering before Wei Zhenzu rapidly reorganized, and a string of new instructions refreshed across his retinas.

"Collaboration protocol confirmed. Beginning group reconstruction." He slowly rose and turned to look at Varka and Kaeya behind him.

The golden halo beneath his feet suddenly expanded outward, enveloping the entire ruined platform in an instant.

Several faintly glowing, illusory petals drifted silently onto the shoulders of the two Knights of Favonius.

"What is this trick now?" Varka tightened his grip on his two swords, frowning slightly as he watched the instruction petals settle on his shoulder.

He could feel an icy law that did not belong to Teyvat attempting to intervene in his combat instincts.

It felt as though an invisible thread were quietly fastening itself to his limbs and bones.

"Grand Master, this power... is very strange." Kaeya leaned on his sword and coughed violently.

His only remaining eye, the right one, stared fixedly at the suited figure's back.

The man stood straight, a faint golden light flickering on his chest, yet the aura he gave off was more unfathomable than the Abyss.

"Obey the oracle." Wei Zhenzu did not turn around.

He raised his right arm, and the liquid metal in his palm began vibrating at high frequency, refracting a cold silver light.

"Three steps left. Sword angle, thirty degrees." The cold instructions echoed above the platform. This was not a discussion, but an unquestionable death sentence.

Varka froze for an instant. His instinct was to object. Why would the Knight of Boreas himself need anyone to instruct him in swordsmanship?

But at that very moment, Dvalin opened his enormous jaws again. Three wind blades tore through the air, cutting off every escape route Varka had.

There was no time to think. Guided by that strange law, Varka's body reacted before his brain did.

He took three exceptionally precise steps to the left.

The deadly poisoned wind blades grazed the tip of his nose, and several strands of long hair drifted down.

Varka's pupils contracted. This position, this angle, was the perfect blind spot, where Dvalin's previous attack had spent its force and his next had yet to begin.

"Swing." The mechanical prompt sounded again.

A wild grin spread across Varka's face as violent Anemo power surged into his greatsword.

The muscles in his arms tightened, and at a standard thirty-degree slant, he unleashed a heavy slash powerful enough to split mountains and shatter stone.

The cyan sword light cut hard into the storm barrier around Dvalin's neck. Dark red Anemo power surged violently as a huge gap was ripped open.

The golden light on Wei Zhenzu's chest flashed, and he moved.

The Oracle Terminal in his palm reconfigured itself in a single frame. The mercury-like liquid metal instantly lengthened into an exceedingly slender, honed rapier.

[Feather of Silence].

"Pierce the heart of silence, and run through memory."

Wei Zhenzu became a blurred black shadow.

The hem of his suit snapped in the gale as he darted into the storm through the gap Varka had torn open.

The rapier burst into dozens of silver afterimages amid the dead silence, its tip stabbing with perfect precision at the energy nodes of Dvalin's shield.

The dark red storm barrier gave a crisp crack, and dense fractures spread across it like a spiderweb.

"Third." Wei Zhenzu withdrew his sword and retreated, coldly announcing the third instruction count. The instruction petals around him grew denser.

"Kaeya. Two o'clock. Freeze the joint with frost for two seconds."

The instructions continued without pause, the emotionless voice reaching his ears.

Kaeya clenched his teeth and swallowed the taste of blood in his throat.

He no longer tried to understand this absurd way of fighting. Faced with that overwhelming pressure, obedience became his only instinct.

He shattered the ice beneath his feet and shot toward two o'clock like an arrow loosed from a bow.

There, Dvalin's left claw was preparing to sweep into Wei Zhenzu.

"Freeze!" Kaeya swung his sword with one hand, and his Vision erupted with a blinding chill.

Biting frost climbed along the blade, precisely covering the bone joints of Dvalin's left claw.

The extreme cold instantly locked the dragon in place.

Two seconds.

No more, no less. In the Oracle Terminal's calculations, that brief pause was enough to carry out one perfect execution.

Wei Zhenzu was in midair when the rapier in his hand instantly melted, the liquid metal making a dry scraping sound.

As it reconfigured, it briefly seemed to boil and resist. The weapon about to take shape bore an unspeakable sorrow.

Silver light flowed, and a slender hand-and-a-half sword finally solidified in his palm.

While he was gathering strength for that aerial slash, Varka moved below.

The Knight of Boreas's combat instincts now aligned perfectly with the Oracle Terminal's cold calculations. He bent his knees slightly, and the muscles and bones beneath his heavy armor gave a muffled crack.

"Wind, tear it apart!" Varka roared.

He brought his two broad swords together and, facing Dvalin's frozen left claw, unleashed a fierce upward sweep of his blades.

At the same time, Varka directed Anemo power toward the ground beneath Wei Zhenzu's feet.

The violent wind pressure locked precisely onto Wei Zhenzu in midair. It became an irresistible force, driving his speed to the extreme of breaking the sound barrier.

"Raise your blade and laugh, weeping at the waterfall like the scent of fallen leaves."

Wei Zhenzu gripped the hand-and-a-half sword tightly in one hand and flipped lightly in midair, carried by the violent thrust of the wind.

One millisecond before Dvalin's joint thawed, he brought the blade crashing down from above in an elegant posture.