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

Question time in the House of Commons, London.

The Prime Minister sat in the front row, his expression frozen in some awkward, indecisive place. Before the opposition leader could even ask his question, the clamor from the House of Commons had already drowned out the Speaker's gavel.

"Order, order."

The speaker knocked five times.

The Chancellor of the Exchequer leaned back, his porcelain-like face devoid of color. Four hours after the dossier was released, his chief of staff had tucked his resignation letter under the second coffee coaster, waiting for him to find it. It took him half an hour to see it.

Opposition MP Jansen stood up, and the Speaker nodded.

"Mr. Prime Minister, does the government intend to conduct an independent investigation into the systemic fraud involved in these documents, or will it continue to use the term 'mismanagement of records' to appease taxpayers?"

"Agreed." The speaker struck the gavel.

As the Prime Minister stood up, a sound escaped his throat, like clearing his throat or swallowing. His speech had been torn apart, leaving only the draft before him, the handwriting trembling. His knuckles were white as he gripped the draft, the edges of the paper wrinkled from the sweat of his palms, and the tips of his leather shoes unconsciously ground against the carpet beneath the table, as if trying to crush all the unspeakable secrets into the ground.

This issue has been submitted to...

He ultimately didn't say it. Conservative MPs in the back rows began chanting "Stand and vote!" even though it wasn't voting time at all. The House of Commons erupted in chaos.

The speaker's gavel struck once every three seconds, as if timing something irreversible.

Isabella Long watched this scene on the monitor in the press room, her fingers flying across her laptop. She had already posted three articles during peak hours, and now she was writing the fourth. The headline was only seven words: "Power is losing its legitimacy." She tapped the live push notification image of the Sword in the Stone in the corner of the screen, a half-hearted smile playing on her lips. The moment she pressed send, the number of shares in the backend had jumped to five figures.

Meanwhile, in the room next to the granite base, Arthur Griffin watched the live television broadcast, not taking a single sip of the black tea in his cup. His fingertips traced the crackled patterns on the rim of the white porcelain cup, the rising steam obscuring half of his glasses. He didn't raise his hand to wipe it, his gaze fixed on the chaotic scene in the House of Commons, his expression so indifferent as to reveal no emotion.

The sword in the stone trembled slightly in the distance.

He didn't speak, but the force field began to shift. The 40-kilometer outer boundary shrank inward by 0.8 kilometers, slowly but steadily, like breathing. On the BBC's real-time generated map, the security zone in central London expanded minute by minute, with two hospitals on the outskirts, which had had their power systems replaced, now fully covered.

Transport for London's website updates track maintenance forecasts in real time, and the emergency overhaul plan for the Piccadilly Line has been reduced from 72 hours to 48 hours. No one issued any instructions; the system simply changed itself.

The television feed cut back to the House of Commons, where opposition MPs stood up to ask questions again. This time, the questions were no longer meant to be repetitive and provocative, but rather something more pointed.

"Mr. Prime Minister, is the government prepared to initiate a formal investigation, or do we have to wait for Shi Zhongjian to dig out all the documents in Whitehall one by one?"

Laughter erupted from all around the parliament.

Isabella displayed a new headline on the monitor: "Democracy is being saved by the threat of a sword."

An emergency meeting has just begun at 10 Downing Street in London's West End.

The Cabinet Secretary walked in carrying two documents: one was the latest expanded data on the force field of the sword in the stone, and the other was a public opinion survey report from the Metropolitan Police. The data showed that after the force field's coverage expanded to hospitals, Londoners' trust in the government rose from 28% to 45%.

"What do people now see the sword in the stone as?" the Chancellor of the Exchequer asked.

The Secretary-General did not answer directly, but instead turned the report towards him. The three keywords of the poll were highlighted in bold on the page.

"Protector. Witness. Judge."

The Chancellor of the Exchequer's finger paused on the page. A ridiculously absurd thought suddenly popped into his head—was the credibility of the British government now less than that of a thousand-year-old antique stuck in a stone?

"So what does it want?"

No one can answer this question.

Evelyn Chen's office at the New York Stock Exchange.

She sat before three rows of offline hard drives, each labeled a different color. The computer screen displayed the latest developments in the John case. Morgan Stanley's legal team had filed a new petition, requesting the court to prohibit the inclusion of any "material relating to the international financial system outside the defendant financial institution."

In other words, they wanted to cut off Evelyn's access to the ammunition.

Evelyn read the complaint twice, then opened a new document and began drafting her counterclaim.

Her line was concise: "A court's prohibition against examining the very foundation upon which the defendant's institution is built is tantamount to prohibiting the examination of the crime itself. Such procedural restrictions violate the fundamental right of the accused to be brought to justice."

She saved the document, noting it as "A Love Letter to Arthur".

Pacific Ocean, 9,200 meters.

Funina stopped moving.

It wasn't fatigue. The mark between her eyebrows was still glowing, the water purification ball was still maintaining its position, but her body was frozen in place.

Mirror One noticed that she turned her head and gestured with her finger toward the dark east.

Something in the chaotic zone changed direction.

It wasn't a violent collision, nor an explosion of energy. It was merely a very slow, liquid displacement, like an exchange of power. The rhythm of the devouring of crimson gold energy and abyssal remnants formed a twisting vortex at the twenty-meter rift, its central axis changing from vertical to oblique.

The giant fish's silhouette became more apparent as the light shifted.

Mirror1 captured the outline of its eyes.

It wasn't an open eye. More like a tiny organ, like an eyelash in water, trying to sense the rising presence.

Funinga suddenly started to rise.

The speed wasn't a sprint, but a rapid, unconventional burst of speed, as if something awaited on the surface and time was running out. Mirror One's fingertips twitched, sensing a faint, crimson-gold pulse suddenly entering the communication frequency band, its rhythm perfectly synchronized with the giant fish's heartbeat. Without asking a single question, it simply followed Funina's trajectory, thickening the miniature plant barrier around itself. In two seconds, it ascended from 9,200 meters to 9,000 meters.

The buoy's return journey time was reduced by a quarter.

Forty-seven minutes became thirty-five minutes.

On the deck, as Zhou Ruo's hand rested on the cold metal, the blue light at the entrance of the passage suddenly shifted to deep indigo.

It's not a gradual transition. It's an instantaneous, complete color change without any transition.

All the warning lights in the sonar room turned on at the same second.

Chen Jianguo's voice came through the communicator, devoid of any emotional fluctuation, only a programmed calmness.

"Passive monitoring array recording. The entire ship is entering Level 3 combat readiness status."

Zhou Ruo did not leave the deck.

She lifted her knees off the steel plate, her tracks unchanged, but her hand was already on the satellite communication device beside her.