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

The inscriptions on the surface of the sphere are still changing.

Zhou Dazhuang craned his neck to its limit, and the crimson-gold light shone straight down from a height of three meters, his forehead covered in sweat.

A new engraving emerged from the center of the sphere, deeper and heavier than the previous one. As the strokes embedded themselves into the dark red metal surface, the entire dome trembled.

He didn't recognize the strokes.

But the meaning transcends language and logic once again, pouring directly into the deepest level of consciousness.

Does the sea respond?

He felt a tightness in his chest, and breathing suddenly became very difficult. It felt like something was pressing on his ribs; it didn't hurt, but he just couldn't catch his breath.

"academician."

"exist."

"It spoke again."

"What content?"

Zhou Dazhuang opened his mouth.

"Is the sea responding?"

The communication channel was silent for three seconds.

Academician Qi's voice came through, but he spoke slower than usual.

"Dazhuang, don't translate it yourself. Just tell me your raw feelings, word by word. Don't process them, don't organize your thoughts, just say whatever comes to mind."

Zhou Dazhuang closed his eyes, letting the fluid that had been injected flow through his consciousness once more.

"It's not asking which ship."

He paused for a moment.

"It's not about which country."

I paused again, and my throat felt tight.

"It's asking... whether these things living on the sea are willing to talk."

The three researchers in the command room all turned their attention to Academician Qi.

No one spoke.

Academician Qi's fingers tightened and then relaxed as he gripped the pen. He stared at the real-time dome image transmitted back on the screen for five seconds before turning to the communication terminal.

"Get Chen Jianguo's fleet commitments out of the water."

The researcher opened the encrypted archive, and the communication record was projected onto the main screen.

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

Academician Qi began to break down the sentence.

"Convert this passage into a deep-sea symbol matrix, using the basic unit of sphere instruction encoding as a template."

The keyboard clicked for about ten seconds.

A young researcher's hand hovered above the Enter key, hesitant to press it.

"academician."

"Um."

"Are we... qualified to answer this on behalf of humanity?"

Academician Qi shifted his gaze from the screen to the young man's face.

"You have to answer the phone even if you're not qualified."

His voice dropped a half tone.

"If you don't accept it, you'll never be eligible."

The researcher pressed the Enter key.

The data is fed into a communication repeater 68 meters underground along an encrypted link, and then transmitted along the cable to a depth of 93 meters below ground.

The sphere has been received.

The inscription began to spin rapidly, and the temperature of the crimson gold platform rose by three degrees in five seconds. The heat from Zhou Dazhuang's feet burned up through the soles of his shoes, and the burning pain of the tiger tally brand shot from his palms to his forearms.

He clenched his teeth and didn't back down.

"Why is this shabby door always so hot?"

The words were spoken in a swearing tone, and his voice trembled.

The sphere's rotational speed slowed down after reaching a certain peak, the inscriptions rearranged, and the crimson gold beam flashed twice.

Academician Qi's voice burst out from the channel.

"Dazhuang, has it accepted it?"

"It didn't connect completely." Zhou Dazhuang stared at the sphere, beads of sweat dripping from his chin onto the golden floor and turning into white steam. "Academician, it picked through what you said, keeping some and discarding others."

"Which part did it want?"

"Two." Zhou Dazhuang's mind was once again flooded with clear fragments of concepts. He tilted his head to confirm that he hadn't misunderstood. "The first one, don't retreat. The second one, watch out."

"What about the others?"

"Military, national, fleet, formation, triangular formation, all abandoned."

The sound of Academician Qi's pen scratching on paper could be heard over the communication channel; he wrote for seven or eight seconds before stopping.

"It does not acknowledge these concepts."

The researcher looked at the phrases that had been removed from the screen.

"An academician? Then what does it acknowledge?"

Academician Qi twisted the pen cap back on, and the pen tip left a line of words on the paper.

"It only looks at what you do, not which flag you're waving."

The inscriptions on the sphere's surface stabilized in their new arrangement, and the crimson gold beam of light re-unfolded its projection.

This time it's not the ancient ocean.

A circular structure diagram appeared before Zhou Dazhuang's eyes, suspended directly below the dome, its diameter covering the entire space.

Five nodes on the ring are glowing.

He couldn't recognize the specific markings, but fragments of memory remaining in the tiger tally brand helped him identify three of them.

"Academician, a circle with five lit dots on it."

"Can you describe the location?"

"Scattered, unevenly spaced. The brightest one in the middle is a fish."

Academician Qi's breathing became twice as heavy.

"Five ancient nodes: the scales, the sword in the stone, the coin, the spark, and the tiger tally. At the center is a giant crimson gold fish."

"Academician," Zhou Dazhuang's voice suddenly lowered. "There's an empty space outside the circle."

"Empty?"

"There's nothing there, but it's still unsettling." He rubbed his chest, his expression strained. "This place... used to have something there, but someone dug it up."

Academician Qi pressed his fingertips against the table, his knuckles turning white from the force.

The image of the hexagonal geometric lattice cut of the twenty-third relief of the gods on the base of the Cairo Scales flashed through his mind.

"It's not your guess, it really was deleted."

He picked up the encrypted terminal, retrieved the twenty-third missing data that Professor Hassan had filled in, and started synchronous transmission.

The moment the data was fed in, half a symbol appeared on the surface of the sphere.

Ripples.

The water ripples are incomplete, with only half of the strokes visible and the other half left blank.

At the same time, Zhou Dazhuang felt a concept being pushed into his consciousness.

He paused for two seconds.

"Academician," it said, using the word.

"What word?"

"Witnesses in the Tides"

Academician Qi's pen slid across the notebook.

Three thousand kilometers away, in the underground restoration hall of the Cairo National Museum.

At the same second.

The scales in front of Hassan wobbled slightly, tilting by no more than two millimeters, before returning to level.

The scarab's compound eyes lit up.

A beam of crimson gold shot out half a symbol from the compound eye, landing on the notebook that had been opened in front of Hassan.

His hands were shaking.

It's not Parkinson's disease.

The tremor suppression within a two-meter radius of the scales was still in effect. His fingers held the pencil steadily, tracing the half of the symbol stroke by stroke.

After finishing the last stroke, he wrote a line of Arabic script next to it.

The translation is just one sentence: Group 23 begins to return to their positions.

Over the Pacific Ocean, the sonar chamber of the Exploration submersible recorded a 0.14 Hz pulse signal at the same time.

Three locations, at the same second, on the same frequency.

Ninety-three meters underground in Xianyang, Zhou Dazhuang's right palm was branded so hot that he couldn't clench his fist.

All seven stars are lit up.

Instead of lighting up one by one, all seven lit up at the same time, the light seeping from his palm, penetrating his skin, and turning his five fingers into a translucent reddish-gold.

His hands were trembling, but his feet didn't move.

"academician."

"exist."

"All seven are lit up."

Academician Qi turned to a new page in his notebook and pressed his finger against the corner of the paper.

"Dazhuang, what do you feel like to be right now?"

Zhou Dazhuang stared at the seven bright spots in his palm, his lips moved twice before he managed to squeeze out a sound.

"Hello... I'm not here to open the door."

Academician Qi stopped holding the pen.

"You've come to prove that we will respond."

The crimson-gold beam of light from the sphere began to weaken after those words.

The projected image switched from a circular structure diagram to a very short video, lasting less than four seconds.

Ancient coastline.

The sky's color is wrong, the sea's color is wrong, and the angle of the light is wrong.

A group of intelligent beings, whose forms are completely outside the scope of human cognition, gathered around a stone slab. They were all different in appearance but moved in unison: they lowered their heads, extended their forelimbs, and traced the engravings on the surface of the stone slab stroke by stroke.

Standing nearby were even smaller members of the same species.

Larva.

They tilted their heads, intently studying the symbols on the stone slab, their forelimbs mimicking the movements of the larger individuals.

Then a black crack tore open from the bottom of the image, and something dark purple surged out, swallowing the coastline, the stone slabs, and the group of lives that were teaching and learning.

The video cut out.

The sphere returned to its dark red low-light state, and the projection disappeared.

Academician Qi stood up from his chair and placed his hands on the operating table.

"Did you capture it?"

The researcher's voice trembled.

"It's been cut off. There's a missing frame in the last 0.7 seconds, but the first three seconds are recorded completely."

Academician Qi sat back down and played the fragmented frame by frame.

The engravings on the stone slab surface are clearly visible when magnified: the basic symbol structure is of the same origin as the original tiger tally.

He stared at the images of those non-human intelligent beings teaching young children to recognize characters, twirling the pen in his hand twice.

"They tried to pass things down before they came to the abyss."

The researcher asked in a low voice.

"Has the message been passed on?"

Academician Qi did not answer.

He placed the screenshot alongside the original inscription of the Tiger Tally on the screen, and the basic strokes of the two sets of symbols overlapped by more than 80%.

These symbols were replicated during the Qin Dynasty two thousand years ago.

The civilization that first wrote these things couldn't even preserve its name.

Zhou Dazhuang's voice came through the communication channel, much softer than before.

"academician."

"Um."

"I've barely even left the county town before."

He rubbed his burning right hand, the back of which was covered in dried sweat.

"How come we're now connecting ancient phones for humans?"

He wanted to laugh, but his throat was so dry it felt like it was on fire. In the end, he only managed to say one sentence.

"Could you please provide me with thicker shoes next time? This floor is so hot it's practically cooking my feet."

Academician Qi remained silent, but the young researcher in the command room smiled slightly before straightening up again.

Rome, 9,000 kilometers away.

The suite was dimly lit in the early hours of the morning, with only the faint glow of the panel illuminating Jiang Ming's profile.

Mirror2 pushes the summary of the fragmented frames intercepted by Xianyang to the main screen.

Ancient coastline, non-human intelligent beings, stone slabs, juvenile identification symbols.

Jiang Ming leaned back on the sofa armrest, his gaze fixed on the scene, without saying a word.

Mirror 2 stood there for about ten seconds before speaking.

"Will you choose another education-related area for your next purchase?"

Jiang Ming did not answer immediately.

He tapped the rim of the glass twice with his fingers, the sound clearly audible in the quiet room.

"Not a popular area for education."

Mirror 2 looked up at him.

Jiang Ming shifted his gaze from the screen to the night view of Rome outside the window.

"It's a place where they are deliberately prevented from learning to read."

(End of the book)