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

Rome, Presidential Suite at the InterContinental Hotel.

Jiang Ming closed his laptop and reclined his swivel chair at a 30-degree angle.

The system panel hovered in front of his retina, the numbers ticking slowly: 110 million. The emotional value contributed by the Yokosuka farce was 15 million more than he had estimated.

Fu Ningna's performance exceeded expectations.

This wasn't in his script.

The artifact known as the Flawless Heart of the Sea God resonated with Frynn's spirit origin in a way he had never foreseen.

Jiang Ming picked up his teacup, took a sip, put it down, and used his fingertips to open a blank concept modeling document on the panel.

The draft of the fourth artifact.

He didn't rush to fill in the parameters, but stared at the blank frame for a long time.

The three artifacts have already stirred up a mess of geopolitics, and the timing and landing coordinates of the fourth artifact require even more precise calculations.

The depletion of emotional points is one aspect, but more importantly, it depends on where the next piece is placed to push the game towards the desired endgame.

....

Qinling Mountains, underground base test site.

Zhou Dazhuang had thirty-two medical electrodes attached to his head, with wires running from the back of his head to the signal processor next to the control panel.

He took off his goggles, and the inside of the lenses was covered in condensation. He wiped them with his sleeve and then put them back on.

Heart rate 90, blood oxygen 97.

The medic reported a set of numbers.

Academician Qi transmitted instructions over the walkie-talkie in the observation room: "Activate the second-stage translation terminal, input data across the entire frequency band, and do not miss any data."

Zhou Dazhuang clenched the tiger tally in his palm.

The gold-inlaid patterns followed his palm lines. The temperature of the metal was two or three degrees lower than his body temperature, but as the contact area increased, those patterns left fine marks on his palm, creating the illusion of piercing his flesh.

Five hundred nodes lit up simultaneously.

Unlike last time, this time there was no feeling of an ice pick piercing my brain.

After seventy-two hours of hypnotic indoctrination, his mental framework had been bridged with the Tiger Talisman. The five hundred light points were neatly arranged, twenty-five horizontally and twenty vertically, forming the square formation he knew by heart on the training field.

"The connection is stable."

The AI ​​engineer confirmed this on the side monitoring console.

Zhou Dazhuang closed his eyes and focused his attention on the five hundred bronze terracotta warriors.

They are in an underground palace 47 kilometers away, dark and damp, where they haven't seen the light for two thousand years.

But he could feel the flow rate of the dark red power fluid inside each bronze terracotta warrior, the vibration of the meshing gears, and the friction coefficient of the ball joints.

"Issue the order."

Academician Qi's voice came through the walkie-talkie.

Following the test plan, Zhou Dazhuang mentally conceived a basic tactical maneuver for a modern infantry squad, requiring them to advance in a three-three skirmish line, with the front ranks spaced three meters apart, and to take turns leaping forward.

The instructions left his brain, were encoded by the translation terminal, and became a series of pulse signals that were sent into the underground palace.

Feedback came immediately.

Forty-seven kilometers away, the internal gears of five hundred bronze terracotta warriors revved up, the flow of power fluid accelerated, and their bodies leaned forward, ready to execute the mission.

Then it got stuck.

"The three-meter spacing order was rejected."

The AI ​​engineer stared at the error logs on the screen, raising his voice by half an octave, "The default standard queue width for the bottom layer of the bronze terracotta warriors is 1.8 to 2.1 meters. Values ​​exceeding this range are directly filtered out."

In the surveillance footage of the underground palace, the bronze terracotta warriors in the front row attempted to spread out to the sides, but stopped after moving less than half a step.

They worked very hard, their internal gears screeching, their ball joints twisted to their mechanical limits, but two meters is two meters, and the parameters hard-coded into the execution layer do not accept any modification.

The right arms of the three bronze figurines are stuck during the forced stretching, the bronze joints are misaligned, and the long halberds in their hands are tilted to one side.

"termination."

Academician Qi called out.

Zhou Dazhuang did not disconnect.

Give me one more minute.

"Your brainwaves are already disordered."

I said, "Give me one more minute."

Academician Qi glanced at the monitoring screen and saw that the EEG waveform was indeed shaking, but it did not cross the red line.

He hesitated for two seconds, then pressed the intercom button: "Sixty seconds. I'll force a cut when the time is up."

Zhou Dazhuang did not reply.

He stared at the five hundred points of light deep within his consciousness, a primal will that was neither textual nor pictorial, feeding back into his nerves from the bronze terracotta figure through the connection.

resist.

This was not an execution failure caused by mechanical malfunction.

The bronze figures were resisting his commands.

He sensed a kind of contempt in it, the scrutiny of a veteran soldier towards a new recruit platoon leader, the implication being that the recruit was unworthy to give the order.

Zhou Dazhuang suddenly remembered the stuff that had been stuffed into his brain during the hypnotic indoctrination.

The Book of Lord Shang, Eighteen Kinds of Qin Laws, Qin Bamboo Slips from Yunmeng.

He remembered clearly that the underlying logic of the Qin army had nothing to do with tactical maneuvers, but only with the military merit system.

You are what you kill.

The concepts of skirmish lines, alternating advances, and fire suppression are meaningless in the context of the Qin army.

The Qin army sought only one thing: to charge forward, cut off enemy heads, and exchange their severed heads for their own titles.

Zhou Dazhuang made a decision.

He threw away all the fragments of modern infantry training materials in his mind.

A large part of the content he received during the 72 hours of hypnosis was original texts on Qin Dynasty military systems and tactics. He didn't take it too seriously at the time, but now he's digging those things out again.

One hundred generals.

The smallest command unit in the Qin army was responsible for one hundred people.

No communication equipment or tactical manuals are needed. All the generals need to do is one thing: lead the charge and be the first to charge.

Zhou Dazhuang changed his identity in his consciousness.

He abandoned his identity as a remote control operator inputting commands from the rear, and instead projected his will as a centurion leading the charge, wielding a long spear.

The signal his mental frequency sent to the five hundred bronze terracotta warriors had transformed from cold code into a single word.

Follow me.

The tiger tally was burned.

That was not a metaphor, but a literal description of intense heat.

The gold-inlaid patterns emitted a crimson-gold light, illuminating Zhou Dazhuang's entire right arm until the light penetrated even the veins.

The medic squinted at the blinding light and involuntarily took a step back.

Forty-seven kilometers away in the underground palace, the heads of five hundred bronze terracotta warriors turned in the same direction at the same second.

From the joints of the three stuck bronze arms came a series of clicking sounds. The misaligned gears found their correct meshing angle, the arms were reset, and the long spears stood upright.

All the bronze terracotta warriors raised their spears in unison.

The blades of five hundred bronze halberds pointed towards the ceiling, and dark red power fluid seeped out from the gaps in the ball joints, dripping onto the stone floor that had not been swept for two thousand years.

"Intimacy level... is increasing."

The AI ​​engineer's voice sounded a little smug: "It's rising very fast, thirty-seven percent, forty-one percent, forty-five percent... They've accepted him."

Academician Qi stood up from his chair.

Zhou Dazhuang didn't open his eyes.

His lips moved slightly, uttering a single syllable.

"Charge into battle."

The pronunciation was not Mandarin.

The hypnotic indoctrination involved a complete pronunciation system of the ancient Guanzhong dialect. When the word rolled out of his throat, even he himself didn't realize it, but Hu Fu did.

The crimson-gold light surged threefold.