Haja!

Wei Zhenzu clutched his knee and hopped madly on one leg.

"What kind of inhuman mechanic is this?! Do lucky bastards deserve to get beaten up? Project Moon, you have no heart!"

Wei Zhenzu wept bitterly as he hopped.

But Timmie wasn't about to give him a chance to catch his breath.

"You didn't just scare them away, you hit them on the head too! Unforgivable! Big Ruin Guard, crush him!"

Timmie had completely gone berserk.

The enormous mechanical Ruin Guard pigeon behind him, as big as a truck, suddenly let out a deafening roar.

The thick mechanical legs beneath the Ruin Guard's chassis snapped outward. Like a giant windmill, it began a deadly spin and came barreling toward Wei Zhenzu.

"Help! This isn't the Teyvat I know at all! What kind of Timmie can summon a Ruin Grader with wings?!"

Wei Zhenzu was scared out of his wits as he watched the behemoth roll toward him like a steamroller. His fingers tapped frantically at the system panel, searching for a lifeline.

"I have no choice. I'll have to risk my life on skill 3! Base power 18, all three coins are minus 7. As long as they all land tails, it's a guaranteed god-tier skill. If they all land heads... I'll give this flock of pigeons a live demonstration of an on-the-spot burial."

Wei Zhenzu gripped the handle of the battered butter umbrella tightly with trembling hands.

His raincoat flapped in the night wind, and beneath his messy hair shone the tragic resolve of a man ready to die.

"No heads, no heads, whatever you do, no heads!"

Wei Zhenzu pushed off hard with both legs and leaped high into the air, swinging the butter umbrella through an exaggerated arc.

"Haja!!!!"

The cry of "Haja" was so awkward and comical that even Varka and Kaeya, watching from a distance, froze for a moment at the bizarre tone.

"That display... is he trying to be funny?" Grand Master Varka's mouth twitched.

In midair, as Wei Zhenzu's furious shout cracked, three golden coins tumbled wildly on the system panel.

[Skill 3: activate!]

[Base power: 18]

[Number of coins: 3]

[Coin power: -7]

Tails! Please, give me tails! Wei Zhenzu pleaded frantically in his mind.

"Ding! Ding! Ding!"

Three crisp, pleasant chimes rang out, as though Lady Luck had breathed a puff of immortal air into his ear.

Three glittering golden coins showing heads lined up neatly across Wei Zhenzu's retinas.

"..."

Wei Zhenzu's expression became completely serene.

"Moonmen."

He murmured to himself.

Accompanied by that ridiculous cry of "Haja!", Wei Zhenzu crashed toward the rapidly spinning giant Ruin Guard pigeon like a salted fish that had lost power.

"Splat."

The tip of the battered butter umbrella gently poked the Ruin Guard's hard armor.

The sound was as faint as a mosquito hitting bulletproof glass, and it didn't leave so much as a scratch.

The Ruin Guard's enormous body didn't pause for even a second.

Its rapidly spinning mechanical arm, carrying a devastating, violent force, struck Wei Zhenzu squarely like a baseball as he hung in midair, stiffly holding up his umbrella.

"Bang!!!"

"I hate this positive-energy world, aaaaaah-"

Screaming, Wei Zhenzu traced a perfect arc through the night sky. Trailed by a few scraps of the butter umbrella, he slammed into Cider Lake outside the City of Mondstadt, throwing up a tremendous splash dozens of meters high.

"..."

Dead silence fell over the bridgehead.

"That's it?" Kaeya's mouth twitched, and he awkwardly rubbed his nose.

"Ahem... well, we old men really can't understand the way young people fight anymore."

Varka also awkwardly looked away.

"Glug, glug..."

After quite a while, a sopping-wet head finally emerged at the edge of Cider Lake.

Wei Zhenzu spat out a mouthful of lake water, a strand of waterweed still perched on his head. His already messy hair was now an even more pitiful sight.

Following the critical hit and his plunge into the lake, his sanity points (SP) were dropping rapidly at a visible rate.

"I'm so pissed off... so pissed off!!"

Wei Zhenzu climbed out of the lake and angrily pointed at Timmie and the flock of mechanical pigeons on the bridge, cursing at the top of his lungs:

"You made so many pigeons. Instead of spinning around in circles here, why don't you pack them up and send them to KFC to support Crazy Thursday?!!!"

Wei Zhenzu's mind began to show signs of slight derangement. Waving the broken butter umbrella, he roared hysterically,

"Today's Crazy Thursday! So much poultry! WeChat me 50! I'll treat you to some finger-lickin' original recipe chicken, bastards! What good is keeping all this mechanical scrap? Even if you fried them, there wouldn't be enough to fill the gaps between your teeth!"

The words "KFC," "fried chicken," and "poultry" seemed to have struck a deep nerve with Timmie.

Timmie's eyes, once filled with resentment, suddenly became fearful and even more crazed.

"Fried chicken... eat... you eat them every day! Unforgivable! Absolutely unforgivable!"

[Special Abnormality trait detected: residual fluctuations of 'Hell's Chicken (Papa Bongy)' intervening]

Amid the system's frantic alerts, the entire environment at Mondstadt's bridgehead began to undergo an absurd transformation.

A layer of sticky, greasy, dark red liquid suddenly appeared on the surface of the once-cold stone bridge, giving off the strong, even somewhat pungent smell of "insanely spicy fried chicken sauce."

In the sky, the once-chilly moonlight was dyed a bizarre deep-fried gold.

The brainwashing BGM "Hell's Chicken" (the Hell's Chicken event theme), a nightmare in the minds of Limbus Bus players, began to echo through Wei Zhenzu's head like a maddening refrain.

"Bongy~ Bongy~ Papa Bongy~"

"Holy crap? The channels got crossed. How did Hell's Chicken get stitched in here too?" Wei Zhenzu was so startled he nearly fell back into Cider Lake.

An astonishing change was taking place around Timmie.

His tears turned into spicy hot sauce, and after the mechanical pigeons, originally pieced together from gears and steel, were splashed with it, their shells began to turn golden and crispy.

That's right, they had turned into flying, mechanical crispy fried pigeons that gave off a tempting aroma!

"Have a taste of the bitter fruit you've sown! Ten thousand feathers descend: poultry's endless funeral!"