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

Sakura Country, Yokosuka Underground Medical Center, B3 Floor.

The life support capsule's temperature control system has maintained a constant 36.5 degrees Celsius for the past 47 hours.

The ECG waveform on the monitor had been flat for two days, and no one expected it to start beating at this moment.

But it jumped.

It wasn't a slow, waking-up fluctuation, but a steep, aggressive spike that pulled the heart rate directly from a dormant 42 to 112.

The duty medic lieutenant was leaning back in his chair scrolling through his phone when the alarm jolted him awake. He rushed to the life support pod, but the view through the observation window left his hand hanging in mid-air, forgetting which button to press.

Inside the cabin, Funina opened her eyes.

It wasn't the weak, confused opening of eyes after being seriously injured and unconscious. The heterochromatic pupils were clear the moment they opened; the left eye was azure, and the right eye was light purple. Deep within the pupils, extremely fine points of light flowed irregularly, like phosphorescence beneath the surface of water.

The blue teardrop mark between her eyebrows was glowing.

The light was so weak that it was almost invisible to the naked eye, but the medic lieutenant noticed a detail: all the water droplets condensing on the walls of the life support capsule were moving upwards, defying gravity, slowly and irresistibly converging towards the top of the capsule.

"Whiskey-3 calling command center." The medic lieutenant pressed the communicator, his throat tightening. "Subject awake, repeat, subject awake, vital signs..."

He glanced at the monitor, and the rest of his sentence caught in his throat.

Cell viability index: 500x.

This number was 1.7x three seconds ago, which is higher than the average person, but still within a understandable range.

Now it has jumped directly to 500 times, and the numbers are still climbing: 501, 503, 507. The maximum range of the monitor is 999x. At this rate, it will exceed the limit in less than two minutes.

The military medical lieutenant did not receive a reply from the command center.

The communicator died in his hands; there wasn't even a crackling sound of electricity before the screen went completely black.

At the same time, all the electronic devices in the underground medical center flashed.

The lights, surveillance cameras, access control, and air conditioning all jolted at the same moment before returning to normal.

No, it's not completely back to normal.

The communication system has not been restored.

The entire internal communication network of B3 was cut off at that moment.

It wasn't a malfunction; it was physically severed. The copper core at the cable interface oxidized within a fraction of a second, turning into a layer of green rust.

The medic lieutenant stared at the black-screened communicator in his hand, not even having time to finish thinking about "what's going on," when the hatch of the life support capsule popped open by itself.

It wasn't pushed open from the inside.

The water droplets condensing on the inner wall of the hatch expanded into ice at the same instant. The volume of the ice pushed open the sealing strip, and the hatch lost its airtightness, causing it to bounce up under the pressure difference between the inside and outside.

Funina sat up.

Her movements were slow, unlike someone who had just woken up from a serious injury and coma; she seemed more like someone who had overslept and hadn't fully adapted to her surroundings yet.

Her short hair, with its white and blue highlights, was a little messy, with a stubborn tuft of hair sticking up, and dried bloodstains on her blue jeweled sash.

She glanced down at her right shoulder.

The wound has completely healed, and the skin is smooth and intact, only slightly whiter than the surrounding area.

She raised her hand again and touched her brow.

The moment her fingertips touched the water droplet imprint, a surge of information flooded into her consciousness. She knew where she was, how many people were outside, the density of water molecules in the air, and what was flowing in every pipe of the building.

Funina rolled her legs out of the life support pod and stepped barefoot onto the cold metal floor.

The military doctor lieutenant took two steps back and bumped his back against the control panel.

"You, you don't move..."

Funina didn't look at him.

Her attention was drawn to the footsteps coming from the end of the corridor—many people, very orderly, the sound of metal clashing against metal, and guns.

Yokosuka Naval Base, headquarters of the U.S. Pacific Fleet.

Three minutes ago.

Brigadier General Richard Coleman finished reading the telegram marked "FLASH" priority and put the paper into the shredder.

The telegram came from the Pentagon and was signed by the Deputy Secretary of Defense; it contained only two paragraphs.

First paragraph: Immediately sever all physical and network connections between the underground medical center and the outside world, including but not limited to wired communications, wireless signals, fiber optic links, and personnel access channels.

The second paragraph states that the authority to handle objects on B3 level rests with the Department of Defense's "Prometheus" project team, and delegations from any country are prohibited from contacting the objects, and no media signals may be leaked.

Coleman picked up the red phone on the table.

"This is Brigadier General Coleman, codename 'Iron Curtain,' to be executed now."

Two hundred Marines completed their deployment in four minutes.

All six entrances and exits of the medical center were simultaneously sealed off, with a full fire team deployed at each exit, armed with M4A1 rifles and ammunition provided according to combat standards.

All three elevators leading from the ground floor to level B3 were powered off and locked, and a sentry stood guard every half floor in the stairwell.

At the same time, the base's communications department cut off all external lines to the medical center.

The WiFi base stations were physically removed, the fiber optic interfaces were clamped off, and even the cell phone signal jammers in the underground level were turned up to maximum power. In this building, not even an ant could send a text message.

The temporary office of the Chinese delegation was located on the second floor of the medical center.

The security supervisor, surnamed Han, was 41 years old and a Level 2 Protector. He noticed the anomaly 30 seconds earlier than the US military had predicted, not because he was particularly alert, but because he was sending an encrypted text message back home on his mobile phone when the signal was lost.

Manager Han put his phone in his pocket, walked to the window, and glanced outside.

There were more people in the corridor, dressed in Marine Corps uniforms, fully armed, moving towards the elevator.

He glanced back at the three people accompanying him in the office, said nothing, walked straight to the gray briefcase in the corner of the room, entered a six-digit password, and opened the lid.

The box contained a shortwave transmitter.

It's not some high-tech device; its principle is similar to radios from World War II—low frequency, long wavelength, capable of bypassing most civilian signal jammers. This thing was stuffed into the luggage by the higher-ups before departure. At the time, Supervisor Han thought it was unnecessary; it's 2025, who still uses shortwave?

Now he doesn't feel superfluous anymore.

Supervisor Han pulled out the antenna, tuned it to the preset frequency, and pressed the transmit button with his thumb.

The signal is pre-coded and does not require typing; a three-second pulse is sufficient. The message conveys only one meaning: our personnel and those under our protection are at risk of forced detention, and we request the highest level of response.

three seconds.

The pulse signal penetrated the concrete walls and signal shielding of the Yokosuka base, spreading out in the form of low-frequency electromagnetic waves.

Seven thousand kilometers away.

Chen Jianguo's encrypted phone rang as he returned to Beijing to give a report.

He glanced at the code name on the screen and paused for two seconds.

"Activate the Great Wall, highest level of response."

The person on the other end of the phone didn't say a single word of confirmation and hung up immediately.

"Great Wall" is the highest-level code name in the overseas evacuation emergency system. The last time this code name was activated was during the evacuation of Chinese citizens from Libya.