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

At the same time, in Egypt.

The desert wind dispersed some of the smell of blood, but it couldn't blow away the corpses on the ground.

Chris Jackson killed the last two people; the details are not worth going into.

He stabbed one man in the back through the carotid artery with a dagger, while the other man exchanged fire with him at close range. The other man hit his bulletproof plate, while he hit the other man in the temple.

When Jackson stood up from the corpse, he had been shot once in the left arm and once in the right rib. In addition to the previous penetrating wound to the deltoid muscle, he had three holes in his body. He had two tourniquets, and he had run out of bandages. He had torn a strip from his shirt sleeve to cover the last wound.

He walked toward the scales, his footsteps leaving two crooked trails in the sand.

Seven billion people around the world watched him extend his bloodstained hand toward the scales.

No response.

The scales floated in the very center of the altar, their golden light soft and steady, their ends empty and the tray perfectly still.

Jackson stretched out again.

There's still nothing there.

His hand passed through the base of Libra, not through physical penetration, but because Libra simply didn't acknowledge his existence. To him, that thing was no different from a holographic projection; he couldn't touch it.

The live chat exploded.

[What the hell? Killing everyone and still not getting it?]

So this wasn't meant for him at all???

[Killed three teammates for nothing, huh? Hahaha, that's hilarious!]

[I can't laugh, this person really killed someone...]

Jackson stood in front of the altar for about ten seconds.

Ten seconds later, he heard footsteps behind him.

It was very light and slow, making almost no sound when stepping on the sand.

He turned around.

A gaunt old man was walking out from behind the sand dunes. He had sparse white hair, dark skin, and was wearing a faded gray suit jacket with the top button fastened.

Hassan Ali Mohammed, 72, is the former director of the Egyptian National Museum.

Three days ago, he was "invited" from his apartment in Cairo by the CIA, ostensibly as an "artifact appraisal consultant," but in reality, he was a hostage. Jackson needed someone who understood ancient Egyptian to help him read the inscriptions, and this old man was the most authoritative hieroglyphic expert in all of North Africa.

Hassan's hands trembled as he walked, not out of fear. After being detained by the CIA for seventy-two hours, he had developed an antibody to fear—it was Parkinson's disease.

His gaze swept over the corpses on the ground, but he didn't linger. He walked straight to the altar.

Jackson instinctively reached for the gun at his waist, only to find it missing; it had fallen during the struggle and was buried under a corpse.

"Stop right there."

Hassan ignored him.

The old curator stopped two meters in front of the altar, looked up at the suspended scales, and began to mutter something.

It's not English, and it's not Arabic.

It is an ancient Egyptian word.

A prayer text, using the grammatical structure of the Middle Kingdom period, with each consonant pronounced extremely accurately.

No one else present could understand it, but in the live stream's chat, several graduate students majoring in Egyptology were typing frantically:

That's Chapter 125 of the Book of the Dead! The opening prayer of the heart weighing ceremony!

Hassan finished reciting the prayer and took a step forward.

He stretched out his right hand, which was covered with age spots, with neatly trimmed nails, and calluses from years of holding a pen on the second joint of his middle and index fingers.

The moment the palm touched the base of the Libra, a burst of crimson-gold light erupted.

The scales have shifted.

It wasn't a mechanical movement triggered by a mechanism; rather, the entire object actively shifted its direction, the two trays tilted slightly, and slowly rotated in the light. Finally, the base detached from the altar and gently landed in Hassan's palm.

The golden light faded, and the desert returned to silence.

A seventy-two-year-old scholar, unarmed, stands amidst a pile of corpses, holding the relics of a deity that all of humanity has been fighting over.

Jackson stared at the scene without saying a word or moving.

It wasn't that he didn't want to move, but that he couldn't. The moment Libra recognized him as its master, the air around the altar changed its texture, and a pressure squeezed in from all directions, pinning him to the spot. It didn't hurt, but all the bones in his body were creaking.

Hassan turned around and glanced at Jackson.

The old man's eyes were cloudy and sunken, but the content of that glance was complex; it was not contempt, nor the arrogance of a victor, but rather closer to regret.

Then, holding the scales, he walked out of Jackson's sight, step by step.

Twenty minutes later, an armored convoy of the Egyptian Third Army arrived at the altar. Hassan was led to a bulletproof command vehicle, and a convoy of thirty-six T-90 main battle tanks and twelve infantry fighting vehicles escorted him back to Cairo.

In a national address that evening, the Egyptian president declared the Anubis Scales a "supreme national heritage," and its holder, Professor Hassan, would enjoy head-of-state security treatment. The speech concluded with the statement: "Egypt's destiny is written by the Egyptian people themselves."

There was no name mentioned, but everyone understood who this was addressed to.

........

Three days later, Cusco, Peru.

In the global live broadcast, a Gobi desert area of ​​about two square kilometers is turning green.

It's not the kind of gradual greening that comes from fertilizing, irrigating, and planting grass; it's a greening that's visible to the naked eye, like a time-lapse photograph.

The cracked ground first seeped out moisture, then sprouted tender shoots. Within hours, the shoots grew to knee height and bore heavy fruits: corn, potatoes, quinoa—a complete variety, with incredibly plump grains.

The Inca's Golden Corn is placed on a stone platform in the middle of the Gobi Desert. The Peruvian government has built a fence and observation station around it, but no one dares to touch it.

No need to touch it, that thing works on its own.

Standing on the edge of the oasis, the Peruvian president announced to the cameras that the first batch of food produced by the "Andean Eden" project would be donated free of charge to famine-stricken areas in Africa, with the transportation costs borne by China.

The comments on the screen were divided into two distinct camps.

Those who criticized it said it was a political show, while those who praised it said who cares, as long as we can eat our fill.

But both sides agree on one thing: the US has lost badly this time.

At a Pentagon press conference, when a reporter asked the spokesperson how he would evaluate the outcome of the acquisition of the three artifacts, his lips moved three times, but he couldn't utter a single complete sentence.

Three magical artifacts.

In China, the owner of this item is a private from a rural area in Sichuan. Behind him stands the world's largest industrial system and the most complete military industrial chain.

In Peru, the president just signed a $30 billion infrastructure deal with China last week, and the new deep-water port in Cusco will be built entirely to Chinese standards.

In Egypt, a 72-year-old scholar holds it, with the Egyptian Third Army standing behind him, having just surrounded the American embassy.

There was no harvest.

The US Secretary of State flew to three countries overnight, only to be turned away three times. After returning, he sat in the White House basement all night, reportedly smashing two ashtrays.

Meanwhile, in the re-sealed underground arsenal deep in the Qinling Mountains, a joint team of China's top materials scientists, mechanical engineers, and military experts has moved in.

The first report arrived in the capital 48 hours later.

The report concludes in just one sentence:

"The bronze alloy composition of these mechanical puppets contains three trace elements that modern science has never discovered before. Their internal fluid piping system is completely consistent with the underlying logic of contemporary hydraulic transmission technology, but with two orders of magnitude higher precision."

The report concludes with a question that remains unanswered:

"What exactly did the people who built them possess?"