The Oracle Alliance, which had for months operated as a network of whispers and secrets, was unleashed.
Oracle's declaration of total war was not a suggestion; it was a floodgate being opened. The bounty, "Operation Serpent's Head," was not a single mission but a brutal, comprehensive kill-list. For twenty-four hours after the assassination attempt on Su Liying, the entirety of the Tianxia Concord became a hunting ground.
In the rain-slicked industrial docks of Guangzhou, a team of Prometheus enforcers were meeting in a supposedly secure warehouse. They never saw it coming. The walls of the warehouse exploded inwards as AxeManiac and his Berserker squad, armed with Hephaestus's Kinetic Breacher charges and fueled by righteous fury, stormed the building. The battle was short, brutal, and decisive. The traitors who had once hunted in the shadows were now the ones being mercilessly hunted.
Miles away, in the luxurious financial district of Beijing, a mid-level Prometheus commander was enjoying a quiet dinner when his security detail was silently and systematically neutralized by Old Croc's "Stray Dogs." They didn't kill him. They simply subdued him, injected him with a sedative, and vanished into the night, taking with them a high-value prisoner and all the secrets in his head.
It was the same story in a dozen other cities. Safe houses were raided. Financial fronts were exposed. Supply caches were seized. It was a coordinated, multi-pronged decapitation strike, executed with a speed and precision that was terrifying. Every squad had been provided with a perfect, detailed intelligence package from Oracle—guard schedules, security system backdoors, even the psychological weaknesses of their targets. It wasn't a fair fight. It was a purge.
In the digital war room of [Channel: Zero], the core members of Project Zero watched the results pour in. The holographic map of the Tianxia Concord, once dotted with dozens of red enemy markers, was slowly being cleansed.
General Jiang Wei was the grand strategist, a Go master playing with real-world pieces. "The Berserkers' assault in Guangzhou has drawn the attention of the local Prometheus command," he stated, his voice calm but his eyes blazing with intensity. "That creates an opening in the south. Nomad-Lead, redirect the 'Silent Shadow' squad to hit their secondary data hub there. Now."
Lin Mei, the field commander, executed his orders instantly, her fingers a blur as she relayed commands to her troops across the continent. "Silent Shadow, you have your new target. Go."
Su Liying and her Analysis Core were the nerve center of the entire operation. They were processing captured data from the raids in real-time, finding new targets faster than the assault teams could hit them. Crystalline_Mind: "New intel. The Prometheus commander captured by the Stray Dogs has a hidden account funneling money to a political figure in the Sector 5 government. We have a new traitor."
The synergy was perfect. The feedback loop of intelligence, strategy, and action was a beautiful, deadly machine. They were dismantling a global conspiracy in a single night.
Hephaestus, monitoring from his workshop, let out a grim laugh. Hephaestus: "This isn't a war... this is an extermination. Oracle has given us a list, and we have become his executioners."
The statement hung in the channel, a stark reminder of the brutal new path their leader had set them upon. There was no moral ambiguity. There was no room for mercy. There was only the cold, hard logic of survival.
Inside a hardened, subterranean bunker deep beneath his private villa, Wei Tang, the Sector Chief of the Tianxia Concord's Prometheus branch, watched his empire burn.
His screen was a sea of red alerts. [ASSET LOST: Guangzhou Data Hub - Destroyed] [ASSET LOST: Commander Liu - Captured] [COMMUNICATIONS BLACKOUT: Sector 9 Safe House - No Response]
Every few minutes, another marker on his strategic map would go dark. His entire network, built over decades of secrecy and infiltration, was being systematically dismantled in a single night. His assets were being eliminated. His safe houses were being burned. His communications were in chaos.
He was completely blind, a king trapped in his castle while an invisible army tore it down around him, brick by brick.
He knew this wasn't the government. The government was too slow, too bureaucratic. He knew it wasn't a rival guild. Their attacks would have been cruder, more obvious. This... this was different. This was the work of a ghost. A single, intelligent, and utterly ruthless entity that knew his every move, his every secret.
Oracle.
A profound, primal fear, a fear he hadn't felt since he was a rookie hunter facing his first Abyss monster, gripped him. This wasn't a battle for influence anymore. This was a battle for survival.
He slammed his fist on his console. "All assets!" he roared into his private comms channel. "Go dark! Burn everything! Disperse! Abort all operations! Wait for further instructions! NOW!"
He was trying to cut his losses, to hide his remaining pieces from the all-seeing eye that was hunting them. But he knew, with a chilling certainty, that it was already too late.
In his quiet apartment, the television was playing a popular comedy show. Qin Yue was laughing loudly at a stupid joke. His mother was humming to herself as she folded laundry. His father was reading the news on a tablet. It was a perfect portrait of mundane, domestic peace.
Qin Mo sat on the sofa, seemingly watching the show with his sister. But his mind was a universe away.
He was observing the results of his declaration of war. He watched as the Prometheus network scattered like frightened insects. The result was satisfactory. The purge was effective. The immediate threat to Su Liying was being systematically eliminated at its very root.
He had unleashed a whirlwind of violence and chaos to protect the quiet peace of this single, small room.
His phone, the secure device for the Alliance, buzzed with a new private message. He opened it, his expression unchanging. It was from Crystalline_Mind. From Su Liying.
It wasn't a report. It wasn't a piece of intelligence. It was a single, quiet question.
> Crystalline_Mind: The first phase was a complete success. The enemy is in full retreat. But the brutality of it... the efficiency... Oracle... Is this really the only way?
Qin Mo looked at her question. His partner. His Chief Analyst. His anchor to humanity. She was not questioning his strategy. She was questioning his soul.
The god of war had just been asked to justify his wrath. And for the first time, he did not have an immediate, calculated answer.