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

"All data collection is complete, the situation has changed, and I need instructions from my superiors."

Zhou Ruo's voice was a straight line on the communication channel, without trembling, but her speaking speed was a third faster than usual.

In his office in Beijing, Chen Jianguo's finger had already pressed the first number on the red telephone keypad.

The second, the third, the fourth.

Each key press was short, yet it felt like it was hitting the eardrums of everyone on the other end of the communication channel.

He did not interrupt Zhou Ruo, nor did he make her repeat herself.

Three seconds later, the encrypted line of the red telephone connected to the underground conference room in Xishan, while the other line remained on the surface channel of the Tanyuan. Both lines were lit simultaneously. Chen Jianguo stood in front of his desk, one hand gripping the black receiver, the other hand pressed against the table, his knuckles white from the pressure.

"Go on."

His voice was lower than usual.

Zhou Ruo gripped the satellite communicator and transmitted Funina's original words into the channel, one by one.

"She asked whether the fleet should go down with her or turn to escape if the things below started to rise."

This saying reached the capital and also spread to the Western Hills.

The communication channel was silent for a full eight seconds.

Inside the bridge of the Tanyuan, the eyes of the three officers on duty were all fixed on the green indicator light on the communications panel.

No one dared to speak.

The pulsation below deck struck the hull again, and the warning lights in the sonar room flashed once more.

Chen Jianguo's voice finally came through, his tone very slow.

"Tell me the color of the passageway entrance."

Zhou Ruo turned her head and glanced at the stern of the ship.

"Deep indigo with reddish-gold spots at the edges, without any whitening."

"What about the stress on the ship's hull?"

Supervisor Zhang leaned halfway out from the inside of the bridge, clutching a mechanical dial reading sheet in his hand.

"The stress on the hulls of the three ships is within the safety threshold. The starboard side of the Tanyuan has a slight deformation, which does not exceed 0.3 millimeters."

"The molecular structure of seawater".

The technician in the sonar room pulled out the latest set of passive sampling data and shouted it through the bulkhead.

"The surface seawater is normal, but below 800 meters, abnormal hydrogen bond arrangement begins to appear, but it has not yet reached the dangerous parameters described by Funina last time."

Chen Jianguo mentally reviewed the three sets of data.

His right hand gripped the receiver, his knuckles stretched to their tightest point, and a thin layer of sweat remained on the black plastic casing.

He knew what Funina was waiting for.

I also know why she asked this question at this time.

"Zhou Ruo".

"exist."

"Tell me, how long can she hold on in her current condition?"

Zhou Ruo swallowed.

"The gray area of ​​the mark between the eyebrows exceeds one-third, and the water sphere remains stable but is noticeably thinner than during the first dive."

She paused for a moment.

"She ate seventeen cream puffs and four liters of hot chocolate, but she consumed them far faster than she took them in. I can't calculate how many more hours she can stay down there."

Chen Jianguo closed his eyes briefly.

The encrypted connection to the underground conference room in Xishan, Beijing, was made at the same time.

The voices of several senior advisors came through the channel one after another.

The first to speak was someone from the Naval Staff.

"It is recommended that the fleet withdraw to a distance of 100 kilometers to preserve its manpower and use unmanned equipment to maintain sea surface monitoring."

The second voice had a technical accent.

"We could try deploying a deep-sea unmanned probe, carrying a communication relay module, down to a depth of 6,000 meters, to establish a data bridge."

Chen Jianguo interrupted both sides.

"A machine that goes down to 8,000 meters or less is just a pile of metal scrap. Have you forgotten how that thing that cost 200 million US dollars was crushed last time?"

His voice dropped a half tone.

"It's even simpler for people to go down there; they'll just turn into corpses."

The channel went silent again.

Chen Jianguo continued.

"The only thing we can do now is to hold the sea."

As Zhou Ru listened to these words on the deck, the wind blew her hair across her face, but she didn't have a free hand to brush it away.

She spoke, her voice low, but every word was transmitted into the communication channel.

"What she wants isn't procedure, it's a promise."

Chen Jianguo's breathing paused for a moment on the channel.

"Promises must be kept."

Zhou Ruo's lips pressed into a thin line, and the two sailors on the deck lowered their heads when they heard this.

Another throbbing sensation came from beneath my feet, heavier than before, and the metal plates at the bottom of the boat groaned.

Academician Qi's voice suddenly switched to the encrypted channel, speaking very quickly.

"Old Chen, the matching degree between the sphere command code and the new deep-sea pulse has been obtained."

"How many."

"Ninety-nine point seven."

Chen Jianguo's fingers stopped on the table.

Academician Qi continued, his voice carrying a urgency he had never shown before.

"It's looking for someone who can respond to it, Old Chen."

"Explain yourself."

"In the ancient holographic image projected by the sphere, the symbols on the fins of the giant red-gold fish are almost identical to the new pulse codes transmitted from the deep sea, and the seventh star on the tiger talisman in Zhou Dazhuang's palm is also jumping in sync."

Academician Qi drew a line on the paper with his pen.

"This is not a simple biological awakening; it is an ancient system rebooting, broadcasting the same question to all nodes that can receive the signal."

Chen Jianguo remained silent for three seconds.

"What's the problem?"

"I'm not sure about the specifics yet, but judging from the reaction of the tiger tally brand, it's confirming who is qualified to stand before it."

Chen Jianguo switched the phone from his left hand to his right, leaving a sweaty mark on the receiver.

He leaned back in his chair, then sat up straight again.

"Old Qi, you mean that what Fulina did down there wasn't just saving a fish?"

"She's accessing a system that we have absolutely no contact with, and I can't give you an estimate of how old that system is."

The line fell silent again.

At the stern of the Tanyuan, more crimson gold spots seeped from the edge of the blue channel, and the thermometer reading on the deck steel plate jumped from sixteen degrees to sixteen point seven degrees.

Zhou Ruo felt the 0.7 degree change in the sole of her shoe. She took half a step back, her heel hitting the edge of the drain, and her body swayed.

She went back to her original position.

Turning to a new page in the notebook, the force with which I gripped the pen cap made my fingernails turn white as I wrote seven words on the paper.

The pulsation began to affect the sea surface.

Suddenly another voice came through the communication channel.

It was very light and faint, yet carried an inexplicable sense of certainty.

"I don't want you to die with me."

It's Funina.

Her voice penetrated from a certain level of the deep-sea passage, the signal weak but clear.

It paused for a moment.

"I just want to know if there are still people on the sea when I turn around."

The lights in the bridge hummed.

The three officers on duty lowered their heads almost simultaneously, with the youngest of them, a lieutenant, pulling his hat brim down to cover his eyes.

Chen Jianguo rubbed his thumb against the edge of the table twice.

He pushed the chair away from the table and stood up.

"The fleet will not submerge."

Zhou Ruo's face paled.

Chen Jianguo's next sentence followed immediately, without any gaps in between.

"Because three steel ships sinking to a depth of 10,000 meters would only turn them into scrap metal; that's not bravery, that's waste."

His voice was off by half a note.

"The fleet will not withdraw."

The wind on the deck stopped for two seconds, then picked up again.

"As long as the sea allows steel to remain, we'll stay here."

Zhou Ruo loosened her grip on the communicator a little, then tightened it again.

Chen Jianguo's voice continued to come through the channel.

"All three ships are entering anchorage watch status, non-essential electronic equipment is turned off, and all recording devices are switched to mechanical backup."

He gave the order to Lin Yuan on the other end of the channel.

"With the Tanyuan as the center, the Yan'an and Kunlun ships each retreat 300 meters to form a triangular formation."

He added the last sentence.

"She guards the gate down below, and we guard the lights up above."

Lin Yuan's reply consisted of only two words.

"receive."

Thirty seconds later, the side lights of the Yan'an and Kunlun ships lit up simultaneously, and the low-power identification lights cast two short beams of light on the black surface of the Pacific Ocean.

The stern light of the Tanyuan was the last to be turned on.

Three beams of light spread out in a stable triangle on the sea surface, with each of the three vertices pointing to a different darkness, but the center point always aligned with the entrance to the blue channel.

At a depth of 9,000 meters, Funina sensed changes in the sea surface from inside the water purification sphere.

The three enormous metal objects did not retreat. Their propellers stopped spinning, the vibrations of their engines disappeared, but the presence of the hulls became even clearer, pressing firmly against the sea above.

Her lips twitched slightly.

The amplitude was very small, almost invisible in the deep indigo shimmer of the water.

Mirror One has seen it.

Her shoulder had loosened by about an inch.

Zhou Ruo wrote Chen Jianguo's exact words in her notebook without changing a single word, and then read them aloud to the direction of the passageway via the communication channel.

"The fleet will not submerge, nor will it withdraw. As long as the sea surface allows the steel to remain, it will stay here."

Furnessa's reply arrived eleven seconds later.

"Then I dare to make it wake up a little slower."

Zhou Ruo paused for a moment while holding the pen.

The lieutenant on the bridge raised his cap brim to look at the sonar panel, opened his mouth but didn't say anything.

Everyone understood the other meaning of the sentence at the same second.

She was scared just now too.

The pulse of the deep sea changed its rhythm in that instant.

Seven short, sharp impacts came in quick succession, causing the metal plates at the bottom of the ship to tremble seven times before coming to a long pause.

One second, two seconds, five seconds, ten seconds.

A faint ripple spread across the water film in Mirror One's palm. He closed his eyes and used the voice of his mind to capture the lingering thoughts in that pause.

Vague, fragmented, like the remaining syllables of some extremely ancient language after being crushed by water pressure.

It wasn't a cry for help.

He opened his eyes.

"It's confirming."

Funina turned to look at him.

"Confirm what?"

"It's confirmed that someone has responded."

In Beijing, Chen Jianguo turned off the communication channel and sat at his desk for a long time.

The cursor in the log file blinked more than thirty times before he started typing.

For the first time, humanity has responded to an ancient deep-sea node with a national action, with the fleet's triangular formation anchored directly above the Mariana Trench, not as a military deployment, but as a ritualistic response at the level of civilization.

His fingers hovered above the keyboard.

A chill ran up my spine from the base of my back.

He typed the last line.

The military orders of the old order are losing their effectiveness, and the new rules have yet to be named.

Save, encrypt, close.

Ninety-three meters underground in Xianyang, Academician Qi's instructions were transmitted to Zhou Dazhuang's earpiece via a communication cable.

"Dazhuang, take three more steps closer to the sphere and tell me its reaction."

Zhou Dazhuang took three steps forward, the soles of his shoes scraping against the red gold ground with a dry sound, and the brand on his right palm made him keep shaking his hand.

The dark red metal sphere's rotation speed increased as he approached, and the light from the inscriptions on its surface changed from dark red to bright orange, causing the six ribs of the dome to tremble.

Then the ball stopped.

Zhou Dazhuang tilted his head back, his neck aching and throbbing, but he dared not lower it.

The inscriptions on the surface of the sphere were rearranged, with the densely packed ancient symbols sliding to both sides, leaving a new line of engravings in the middle.

He didn't recognize those strokes.

But the meaning was directly injected into his mind, in the exact same way as the word "wait" last time, bypassing language and logic, and directly smashing into the deepest part of his consciousness.

"academician."

His throat felt tight, as if his vocal cords had been squeezed.

"explain."

"There's an extra line of text on the ball."

Academician Qi's breathing sounded twice as loud on the channel.

"What is it asking?"

Zhou Dazhuang stared at the line of engravings, the crimson-gold light shining on his face, flattening his entire shadow on the ground.

"It's asking, has the sea agreed?"