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

In the surveillance footage, tens of thousands of golden corn plants in the westernmost part of the core production area left the soil at the same time. Their roots were suspended in the air, wrapped in a thin layer of golden light, clean and without a single grain of soil.

Sofia's report stopped, and everyone in the meeting room stared at the screen.

The corn, suspended in the air, did not fall over; the brightness of the golden veins on its leaves continued to increase; the base of its stems even began to swell; and its cells were dividing and multiplying at a visible rate.

González walked up to the screen and looked at it closely.

Extremely fine, translucent filaments grow from the edges of corn leaves. These filaments extend into the air like antennas, where carbon dioxide, water vapor, and trace amounts of nitrogen compounds in the air undergo rapid chemical reactions on the surface of the filaments.

Carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen—the four basic elements—are directly transformed from the gaseous state into biological mass, continuously filling the expanding stem cells.

This thing is actually swallowing air directly.

The power of abundance is at work, completely bypassing all agricultural common sense and drawing all the raw materials needed for plant growth directly from atmospheric components.

The first drone crashed in the bushes on the north side of the production area three minutes later.

"What is that?"

González pointed to a scene flashing in the corner of the screen.

A golden vine shot out from the top of the nearest corn plant, moving so fast that a high-definition camera could only capture a blurry arc. It precisely wrapped around the landing gear of the second drone, which was still on its return journey, and forcefully dragged it down.

The third aircraft was also shot down after it pulled up to 700 meters. This time, the vines it fired were over 800 meters long and had the serrated edges of corn leaf sheaths at the end.

Thirty hours later.

Sofia received a new soil sample in the laboratory, collected from the farmland on the west side of the production area that was the first to break away from the soil.

Just four minutes after being placed in a petri dish, the rust-7 colonies showed dramatic morphological changes.

The hyphae began to break, and a pale golden liquid seeped out from the broken ends. Sophia immediately used a mass spectrometer to analyze the molecular structure of the liquid.

She ran the data three times before she dared to believe the final result.

"Reverse assimilation enzyme".

She handed the report to Paredes, her hand trembling slightly with excitement.

"A specific hydrolytic enzyme that uses chitin from fungal cell walls as a substrate, and the hydrolysis products are directly ammonium ions and organic carbon."

Paredes quickly flipped to the last page of the report.

"It turns fungi into fertilizer."

"It's about turning waste into treasure at the molecular level."

Sofia picked out a piece of culture medium from the petri dish.

"Look at this area, the rust-7 colonies have all disappeared, replaced by a high concentration of readily available nitrogen, which has a nitrogen content that is 12 percent higher than that of commercially available urea."

González tore up the half-written statement of despair.

Two days later, the golden corn in the Cusco region took root again—no, saying "re-" isn't quite accurate; it took root in a different way.

Wherever the roots reach, the remaining rust-7 spores are broken down one by one by the reverse assimilation enzymes and transformed into highly efficient natural nitrogen fertilizer, and the nitrogen content of that land tripled within a week.

As a result, the production of golden corn has increased rather than decreased.

At a subsequent press conference held by the Peruvian Ministry of Agriculture, González announced that the second shipment of 100,000 tons of corn would begin 15 days ahead of schedule.

Three minutes after the opening of the New York and Chicago Mercantile Exchanges, the stocks of Cargill, ADM, Bunge, and Louis Dreyfus triggered Level 1 circuit breakers.

Rome, Presidential Suite at the InterContinental Hotel.

Jiang Ming's system panel flickered.

[Sources from Peru, sentiment score: 12 million]

He casually turned off the panel and looked down at a coin lying still on the desk.

It was a one-dollar coin, with Lincoln's profile facing up, copper core and zinc casing, produced by the Philadelphia Mint in 2024.

He picked up the coin and flipped it lightly between his fingertips.

The eagle emblem faces upwards.

Jiang Ming stood the coin upright on the table and then loosened his grip.

The coin did not fall over.

It just stood there, completely still.

On the other side, the electronic screens at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange turned a glaring green ninety seconds after the market opened.

That wasn't the healthy green that symbolizes rising prices, but rather a chilling, dismal green formed by a screen full of stocks hitting their daily limit down.

The main corn futures contract ZC2412 hit the minimum price set by the exchange, with zero buy orders and 470,000 sell orders piling up with no takers.

Soybean contracts followed suit and plummeted, and wheat was not spared either. The three major agricultural commodity indices collapsed in unison, and the speed was so fast that even high-frequency trading algorithms could not place stop-loss orders in time.

At Cargill's trading office on South Walker Avenue in Chicago, seven screens were simultaneously flashing red.

Chief Trading Officer Matthew Cohen's shirt was soaked through; he had worked two consecutive all-nighters in the past 48 hours, his eyes were sunken, and his hand holding his eleventh cup of black coffee trembled slightly.

"Dispose of another batch."

When West called, little of his composure remained in his voice.

"Where should I throw it?"

Cohen's gaze fell on the empty buy order book.

"There's no one on the other side, Richard. No institution is willing to take over at this price."

He paused, his voice filled with exhaustion.

"As soon as the announcement of the second batch of 100,000 tons of cargoes being shipped from Cusco came out, all the funds that were bullish on the stock ran away."

There was a three-second silence on the phone.

"Rust-7 failed."

West's voice was so dry it was peeling.

Cohen had already heard about this through internal channels.

The gene-edited fungi that were highly anticipated were converted into nitrogen fertilizer by the golden corn in less than three days after being introduced into the production area, resulting in an increase in yield per acre instead of a decrease.

Anne Black's biosafety lab is now eerily quiet; three of the six core researchers have submitted their resignations.

Cohen hung up the phone and pushed his coffee cup aside.

The bottom of the cup was covered by a Bloomberg news bulletin printed from a terminal, with only one line of headline announcing that the Peruvian government's third batch of aid food would be shipped to Bangladesh and Myanmar, with the shipping costs fully borne by China.

He flipped the paper over, not wanting to look at it a second time.

Meanwhile, in Long Beach, California.

A Panamanian-flagged bulk carrier, the Santa Rosa, waited at anchor for six days.

The ship was carrying 32,000 tons of Peruvian golden corn, originally destined for transshipment at the port of Manzanillo, Mexico. However, Long Beach Customs detained the entire cargo two days ago on the grounds of inspecting the biosecurity of invasive alien species.

Customs-supervised warehouse C-17.

The thermometer shows the outdoor temperature is 34 degrees Celsius.

Senior Quarantine Officer Daniel O'Brien signed a cargo sampling and destruction order, deliberately avoiding the word "destruction" and instead using the more sophisticated term "precautionary disposal."

A ton of golden corn samples were pulled out of a refrigerated container by a forklift, loaded into four standard biological waste transfer containers, and transported overnight by military trucks to the Federal Agricultural Research Institute in San Diego, 160 kilometers away.

O'Brien's hand was very steady when he signed.

The instructions he received came from the office of the Under Secretary of Agriculture in Washington. The email was very polite, stating, "Given that the crop has not passed the FDA's GMO safety assessment and the EPA's environmental risk review, it is recommended that the samples be inactivated under controlled conditions."

In layman's terms, it means burn it.

The San Diego Federal Agricultural Research Institute occupies twelve acres, and behind the main building are two industrial-grade bio-waste incinerators, numbered F-1 and F-2.

The design temperature limit is 1,200 degrees Celsius, the daily operating temperature is 800 degrees Celsius, and it has processed everything from mad cow disease cattle bones to avian flu chicken carcasses.