Fate's Choice: Livestream at the Start Summoning Billions of Ravens

In the underground command center in Xianyang, when the receiving light for the Red Star classified documents came on, Academician Qi had already been sitting in front of the screen for four hours.

The deep-sea buoys are sending up not photos or videos, but a set of symbolic structural parameters.

Topological coordinates, stroke depth, turning angle, line spacing, and a column of concept weight values ​​that cannot be classified for the time being.

Academician Qi brought up nine of the symbols and projected them onto the left side of the main screen.

On the right is a rubbing of the inscription that Zhou Dazhuang took back from the front of the Chijin Gate last time.

The moment the two sets of lines overlapped, everyone in the command room fell silent.

It's not similar.

They share the same origin.

The symbols on the fins of the giant deep-sea fish and the inscriptions on the door beneath Xianyang come from the same system.

Academician Qi stared at the screen for more than ten seconds before reaching out and pressing the communication button.

"Dazhuang".

Zhou Dazhuang's voice quickly returned from the underground passage.

"Yes, Academician."

"Bring the Tiger Tally and its brand, and go to the Crimson Gold Gate once more."

"Now?"

"Now."

Fifteen minutes later, Zhou Dazhuang stood in front of the Chijin gate again.

The tiger tally brand on his right palm had been heating up ever since he entered the dark red passage.

But this time is different.

The popularity doesn't jump around in waves, but rather it's as if something, from a great distance, is slowly aligning with its frequency.

A low voice came from the communicator from Academician Qi.

"Dazhuang, look up at the words on the door."

Zhou Dazhuang raised his head.

The word is still engraved in the center of the golden gate.

and so on.

The last time I came here, the character was quietly embedded in the metal surface, its lines lifeless and unmoving.

This time, a reddish-gold light began to seep from the edges of the characters.

The strokes loosened and slowly flowed to both sides, causing the patterns on the entire door to shift along with them, finally stopping only at the door frame.

The door cracked.

There was no sound, no vibration, only a sliver of crimson-gold light leaking from the crack in the door, cutting into Zhou Dazhuang's face.

The door gap was just wide enough for one person to squeeze through sideways; it wasn't even an inch wider.

Academician Qi's voice came through the communicator.

"Dazhuang, your heart rate is 158, your blood pressure is high, and your right palm temperature is 41.3 degrees Celsius. What's your condition right now?"

The door opened.

"How many were opened?"

"Just a crack, barely big enough for me to pass through."

Academician Qi remained silent for a second.

"Was it opened by the tiger tally?"

Zhou Dazhuang looked down at his right palm.

The brand was throbbing, faster than before, and the heat was penetrating his bones, but he could feel that the door had no direct connection to what was in his palm.

"I didn't open it, Academician."

He shone his flashlight through the crack in the door, and the golden light reflected out, making him squint.

"It cracked on its own, leaving a gap for me to pass through, but it doesn't quite mean anything."

"What do you mean by 'the meaning isn't quite right'?"

Zhou Dazhuang bit the tip of his tongue, and it took him a while to put that feeling into words.

"It means... you're allowed to come in and take a look, but it didn't say you were the person it was waiting for."

In the ground command center, Academician Qi paused on his notebook, drawing a line under the words "limited authority".

"Vascular signs are stable, continue treatment."

Zhou Dazhuang turned sideways and squeezed through the crack in the door with his right shoulder pressed against the edge.

The crimson light brushed against his cheek, and the temperature was much higher than that of the dark red passage outside.

Behind him, the door closed silently, and the characters flowed back to their original positions from both sides, restoring the character "等" to its original form.

Behind the door was a passageway made of red gold alloy.

Completely different from the dark red metallic corridor before, the walls were so smooth that there wasn't a single seam, and the warmth from under your feet rose up through the soles of your shoes.

"Academician, I'm going down now."

"Give me the details."

"receive."

The passageway has a slight incline, and with each step, the soles of your feet become a little warmer.

The frequency of the tiger tally brand on his right palm was changing, increasing from once per second when he entered to twice per second.

"Seventy-five meters below zero. The ground is getting hotter and hotter; you can still feel it even with your shoes on."

"Can you stand up?"

"Yes, it won't burn your feet, it will just feel hot."

"continue."

Zhou Dazhuang didn't say anything more, looking down at the reddish-gold ground beneath his feet, and walked deeper and deeper step by step.

All that could be heard through the communicator was the dull thud of his shoes hitting the metal surface.

Eighty meters below zero.

-85 meters.

Ninety meters below zero.

"academician."

"exist."

"It's empty in front."

The passage ends at a distance of -93 meters.

As Zhou Dazhuang stepped out of the passage, the beam of his flashlight pierced the darkness, striking the dome over thirty meters high. It bounced back from the crimson-gold metal ribs, cutting crisscrossing patterns of light on the ground.

"A large space, even larger than the one above. The dome is thirty meters high and circular."

Academician Qi's breathing became slightly heavier.

"What does the central government have?"

"A platform, round, reddish-gold, with an exceptionally glossy surface."

Zhou Dazhuang shone the flashlight onto the stone table, and the light spots were clearly visible.

"When you shine a flashlight on it, it looks almost like looking in a mirror. It's about five or six meters in diameter."

Academician Qi marked the blank B in his notebook, and when he wrote the number, he pressed down on his wrist to make the writing steady.

"Approach the stone platform and describe everything you see."

Zhou Dazhuang walked forward, his shoes touching the reddish-gold ground. The heat spread from the soles of his feet upwards. It wasn't hot, but it kept reminding him that something was moving beneath his feet.

He stopped at the edge of the stone platform.

Then look up.

"Academician, there's a ball floating three meters above the platform."

Directly above the stone platform, a fist-sized, dark red metal sphere hangs there, slowly rotating.

The surface of the sphere is covered with inscriptions.

"There are words on the ball, which are similar to the patterns on the tiger talisman on my palm, but the strokes are thicker, the writing is simpler, and it's more primitive."

"What do you mean by 'more primitive'? Please explain in detail."

Zhou Dazhuang stared at the inscription on the surface of the sphere for three seconds.

"It's like the characters on the tiger tally were copied later, while this sphere is the earliest version. The original."

Academician Qi's pen paused on the paper for a moment.

"Go directly to the bottom of the stone platform and report how you feel."

Zhou Dazhuang took the last few steps and stood in the very center of the stone platform.

The brand on his right palm was so hot that he could barely hold the flashlight. Sweat dripped down his wrist, making a soft sizzling sound as it fell onto the gold-plated ground, turning into white steam.

The sphere's rotation speed was increasing; it sped up with every step he took closer.

He looked up at the ball, his mind completely blank.

old.

This thing is old.

It's not old from the Qin Dynasty, not old from two thousand years ago, and not the kind of old that can be referenced by anything known.

The old locust tree at the village entrance is three hundred years old; he can count its annual rings.

He could understand the tiger tally in his palm, which had been around for over two thousand years.

But the sensation conveyed to him by the dark red ball above his head pulverized his entire understanding of time.

He opened his mouth, but couldn't find the right words.

"Academician. This thing is older than everything I've ever seen combined."

He paused for a moment.

"Not the kind of old that's like the Qin Dynasty. It's the kind that's so old that even the passage of time is forgotten."

The communication channel was silent for three seconds.

"Dazhuang, stop right there."