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

Old Liu didn't answer. He squatted by the pit, staring at the line of small seal script inscriptions that were still faintly glowing, his lips moving several times.

"That's right, but we're going in the wrong direction."

He stood up, and his knee clicked.

"Director Chen, I've been thinking about something. Each of these famous swords has its own soul, its own legend, and its own master. They are independent 'weapons,' famous swords, the pinnacle of weaponry."

"But did you notice that the prefix 'Empire' is 'Blade of the Empire'?"

Chen Jianguo frowned.

"The empire's sharpest weapon is not a single sword." Old Liu's voice was a little dry. "It refers to a 'concept.' A combination of 'killing' and 'protecting' belonging to the Qin Empire. It is not necessarily a physical object, not necessarily a metal-cast tool, and it may not even be a 'sword' at all."

"Then what is it?" Chen Jianguo pressed.

Old Liu opened his mouth, but didn't say anything; he himself had no answer.

"Chief!"

A shout interrupted their conversation.

At the bottom of the pit, a young soldier in his early twenties was moving the cleared rubble. His cotton gloves were cut by a sharp-edged stone, and blood seeped from his palm, a few drops falling onto the sand.

He didn't take it seriously, shook his hand, and continued bending down to move stones.

As the next stone was moved, his hand touched the edge of the bronze coffin lid.

A drop of blood, slipping through his fingers, fell onto the endlessly flowing crimson runes on the coffin lid.

Everyone thought nothing would happen...

Just like the hundreds of meaningless encounters before.

But this time is different.

The drop of blood did not remain on the surface of the coffin lid; it was absorbed, not through penetration or evaporation, but actively "eaten" by the runes. Red light spread outwards from where the blood drop fell, and the brightness of the runes suddenly tripled.

The entire bronze coffin emitted a muffled tremor.

Everyone was so shocked that they took a step back.

"What's going on!" Chen Jianguo jumped into the pit.

In the very center of the coffin lid, a crack was slowly opening.

It wasn't split open by external force; the coffin lid moved on its own, and the two heavy bronze plates slid to the sides, revealing a gap of less than ten centimeters.

An indescribable aura wafted out from the crevice; it was neither rotten nor musty, but rather an extremely dry, ancient scent with a metallic, rusty quality.

Something is rising from the crack.

All the high-powered flashlights shone over at the same time.

That was a tiger tally.

The palm-sized bronze vessel slowly rose from the bottom of the coffin, hovering thirty centimeters above the lid, and rotated on its own.

The left half is engraved with mountains and rivers, and the right half is engraved with the sun, moon and stars.

The two copper pieces fit together perfectly, with fine, hair-like gold inlay patterns at the joint. Over countless years, the gold threads have not dimmed; on the contrary, they are brighter than all the powerful flashlights combined at the bottom of the pit.

It was a dry, rough light, carrying the scent of rust and war.

Chen Jianguo's first reaction was not shock, but cursing.

"The Military Commander's Seal... it's a tiger tally?" He glanced back at Old Liu. "The 'Blade of the Empire' you mentioned, is this it?"

Old Liu was no longer able to speak.

He has studied ancient scripts for forty years and has seen more bronze artifacts than most people have eaten meals.

But this piece—no, this tiger tally—had a casting technique that exceeded his understanding of all metallurgical techniques used in the pre-Qin period.

The precision of the gold inlay pattern is so high that it seems impossible for a human hand to carve it.

And he noticed something else.

The tiger tally is still spinning.

Without any external force, without a magnetic field, without any airflow, it just hangs in mid-air, rotating at a constant speed of one revolution every three seconds. Ten famous swords begin to shatter with mournful cries three meters away, while this thing is laughing.

It's not a metaphor.

Each time the tiger tally rotates, the gold-inlaid patterns at the seam emit a very faint "hum," with a constant frequency, like the heartbeat of some kind of mechanical device.

Just as Chen Jianguo was staring blankly at the tiger tally, the global live broadcast changed.

On the large screen, the 3D projection of the "First Emperor's Military Command Symbol," which was originally floating on the right side of the screen, began to shrink.

It didn't shrink gradually; it contracted rapidly at a visible speed, compressing from a gigantic projection the size of a three-story building to the size of a fist, and finally...

It crashed directly into the floating tiger tally.

A flash of golden light.

The tiger tally stopped spinning.

The light from the inlaid gold pattern surged to a blinding level, then subsided within a fraction of a second—the whole process was so fast it took only a blink of an eye.

A voice echoed in everyone's mind at the same time.

It's not something you hear with your ears; it appears directly in your consciousness.

The Seal of the Lord of War has appeared in the world.

Six words, devoid of emotion and warmth.

But seven billion people around the world heard it clearly.

There was silence at the bottom of the pit for about two seconds, and then everyone started talking at the same time. The channel became a mess. Chen Jianguo shouted "Shut up" three times into the walkie-talkie before he could quiet down.

He stepped toward the tiger tally.

Three meters, without a sound of lamentation.

Two meters, and nothing happened.

One meter away, the tiger tally hung quietly in front of him, its surface radiating a soft, warm light through its inlaid gold patterns.

Chen Jianguo extended his right hand.

When his five fingers were less than ten centimeters away from the tiger tally, a force pushed out from the surface of the tally. It was not heavy, but irresistible. His hand was bounced away, as if he had touched an invisible rubber wall.

He tried again.

The same result.

"You don't recognize me?" Chen Jianguo's brows furrowed.

The third attempt was made by his deputy, who held the rank of lieutenant colonel and had followed Chen Jianguo for twelve years, making him more senior than most others.

The result was the same; it bounced off.

The fourth one is Old Liu.

It bounced off.

"Chief, let me give it a try."

The voice came from a corner at the bottom of the pit. It was the young soldier whose hand had been cut by a stone. He was a private, 21 years old, from Sichuan, and had been in the army for less than two years. His name was Zhou Dazhuang.

He stood there, clutching the torn cotton glove in his left hand, while blood still seeped from the wound on his right palm. It wasn't bandaged, and no one bothered to bandage it for him.

Chen Jianguo glanced at him.

The squad leader next to Zhou Dazhuang gave him a push: "Go ahead, it won't kill anyone anyway."

Zhou Dazhuang's legs were trembling as he walked over, not from fear, but from the cold. The temperature at the bottom of the pit was more than ten degrees lower than the ground. He was also covered in sweat, and his cotton training uniform clung to his back, feeling chilly.

one meter.

Half a meter.

He stretched out his right hand, palm up, fingers slightly curled, blood flowing down the palm lines from the wound, forming a thin stream at the wrist bone.

There was no resistance.

His hand passed through the invisible barrier, and his fingertips touched the tiger tally.

The metal feels cool and smooth, similar to touching a pebble.

Then he took it.

The light at the bottom of the pit changed.

All the gold-inlaid patterns on the tiger tally lit up at the same time, not with the soft, warm light of before, but with an extremely intense, blood-red, crimson glow.

Light burst forth from the lines, spreading along Zhou Dazhuang's fingers, palms, wrists, and forearms.

The blood from the wound on his palm was absorbed by the tiger tally.

Not much, probably just a few drops.

But as these few drops of blood entered the gaps in the tiger tally, something flowed back from the tally.