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

East China Sea, Tanyuan deep-sea rescue ship.

Funina stepped onto the aluminum gangway of the 6,000-ton warship.

The hard soles of the black court shoes with bows made the first crisp sound as they hit the floor. Zhou Ruo, following behind, struggled to pull forward by the handles of two black polycarbonate suitcases.

Funin took her second step across the red-painted boundary of the deck.

The anomaly occurred in that second.

A deep, muffled metallic hum erupted from the deepest part of the ship's hull, not the roar of a mechanical engine.

The red fire-fighting pipes attached to the side wall of the corridor, the coolant circulation network extending into the reactor base, and even the drinking water in the water purification filter box—hundreds of tons of various liquids throughout the ship simultaneously erupted with high-frequency resonance.

The three sailors standing at attention on the deck suddenly reached for their sidearms at their waists, while the chief engineer leaned halfway out of the lower hatch, looking completely astonished.

The resonance lasted for a full two seconds before abruptly stopping.

The captain opened the nautical logbook on the worktable and heavily underlined a line with a pen.

Five minutes later, the damage control console called the internal line. The engineering department used various sonar and endoscopic equipment to check the entire pipeline. No valves had burst and no welds had been damaged.

The water made a single, rhythmic sound.

This is the absolute submission of lower-order elements to higher-order authority.

The medical operating room in the lower deck, which had been temporarily emptied, is now filled with marble cutting boards and commercial electric ovens.

Louis Bernard gripped a silicone spatula, staring intently at the ticking numbers on the digital thermometer.

This 43-year-old French pastry expert has spent most of his life working with flour. Just over ten hours ago, he was sitting in the head chef's seat at a top restaurant on the Bund in Shanghai, mixing vanilla pods, when several people dressed in black casual clothes came in to invite him for tea.

After signing a 47-page confidentiality agreement, Louis was thrown directly onto the ship by a military helicopter.

The terms of the agreement were so blunt that there was no room for negotiation.

After leaving the ship, any leak of even a single word regarding the quantity or ingredients of any desserts made there, let alone the appearance of the people on board, will result in a fifteen-year prison sentence.

The butter batter expands to its limit under high temperature.

Under the watchful eyes of a group of plainclothes bodyguards, Louis managed to place thirty freshly baked cream puffs on a tray within the 45-minute time limit.

A temporary rest area next to the top-floor command center.

Funina stretched out two fingers, pinched the edge of the flaky pastry at the top, took the first bite to break the crust, chewed a few times, and then swallowed it all.

Zhou Ruo handed over a tissue and then turned to the quartermaster standing ramrod straight beside her to relay the message.

"The Water God has made his judgment." Zhou Ruo said clearly, "It's barely acceptable, but the whipped cream at the bottom layer is still 20% lacking. Next time, we'll use a different proportion of animal-based cream and lower the temperature by two degrees."

The messenger threw the conclusion back into the hold.

Upon hearing the relayed message over the walkie-talkie, Louis slammed the dry towel onto the marble countertop, his face turning bright red, but he didn't dare utter a single curse word.

The Tanyuan sounded its main horn, with two Type 055 destroyers positioned on either side.

Chen Jianguo, clutching a terminal device fitted with a heavy anti-eavesdropping casing, walked into the rest area.

"I must make the bottom line from Beijing clear." Chen Jianguo placed a black miniature underwater communication buoy on the table. "First, this must be carried throughout the entire dive operation. It will establish an acoustic link in deep water and automatically send a status signal to the surface every thirty minutes."

Funina nodded without moving a finger.

"Second," Chen Jianguo said in a low voice, emphasizing each word, "once the sonar system determines that the activity level of the abyssal debris has reached an unpredictable level of danger, you must immediately cease all operations and return to the surface."

Funina put down her bone china teacup.

She reached for the last remaining cream puff on the tray, popped it into her mouth, and crunched it loudly, causing her top hat, adorned with an iris emblem, to tilt slightly.

No one received a reply.

Chen Jianguo turned and walked out of the cabin, uncapped his pen, and wrote two words in the risk prevention column of the special operations work log.

ignore.

He then strode down the aluminum gangway and returned to the cold concrete dock, watching the small "Jingyuan" fleet sound its long whistle and slowly sail away from the East China Sea naval port, heading towards the unfathomable depths of the ocean.

At the same time, deep in the Atacama Desert of Chile.

Outside a makeshift astronomical station made up of four shipping containers, more than twenty satellite broadcasting vans bearing the logos of NHK, BBC, and CNN and equipped with high-powered antennas were parked.

Makoto Watanabe tightened the inner latch of the roller shutter door, the heavy metal hinges blocking out the shouts from outside with a muffled thud.

With 400 million views worldwide, the term "Space Dragon" has jumped into the top three of the global trending search list.

Behind these numbers lies the complete collapse of America's strategic credibility, with the Pentagon just blaming the drifting space debris on the decommissioning and dismantling of aging satellites.

These fourteen high-resolution, uncompressed photos were a slap in the face to them.

Three international image verification firms, which are at odds with each other, issued a joint statement overnight, stating that the bronze mechanical claw tore open the pixels of the titanium alloy radar plate and there were no traces of post-processing.

Two hours ago, JAXA Japan sent a sincere official email, proposing to retrieve the original film and EXIF ​​data for advanced technical verification.

This is official rhetoric about confiscating the original documents, and several leading figures in China's astronomical community are also contacting each other to request a closed-door meeting.

Watanabe slid down onto the base of the Schmidt telescope.

He opened the management backend of the astronomy enthusiasts' forum and typed a reply to the hundreds of thousands of messages below.

"I only photographed the damn glowing object, what's so special about that? All the explanations are your job, big shots."

Press the Enter key, and the network cable will be physically disconnected.

Watanabe lifted a wooden panel at the bottom of the container, revealing an SD metal card about the size of a fingernail.

He stuffed the hard card into a kraft paper envelope, sealed the edges with wide tape, and wrote down his daughter's postal code in Koto Ward, Tokyo.

........

In Washington, D.C., the air in the Pentagon's underground bunker conference room on the second basement level was so thick it felt like it was about to solidify.

Acting Secretary of Defense Paterson grabbed the top-secret plan book with the CIA logo embossed on it and slammed it onto the oval solid wood table. The hard cover hit the water glass next to it, splashing water all over the table.

"Five million dollars to cover it up, plus a fabricated statement? And then a team of field agents to physically remove it and classify it as an AI deepfake?" Patterson's finger nearly poked the intelligence chief's nose. "Are your brains filled with Capitol Hill donations?"

The meeting room was deathly silent, and the supervisor's back was taut.

"More than 7,000 offshore server arrays have been completely synchronized with the original image, and 20,000 tamper-proof blockchain public nodes have been directly locked with evidence storage locks." Patterson slumped back in his large chair, his entire body weight sinking into the floor.

"What's the point of killing that Japanese guy now, other than admitting to the world that this is true?"

The intelligence chief remained silent.

"Immediately recall those old foxes who were trying to bluff their way out of the TV station. No one is allowed to admit it, and no one is allowed to deny it." Patterson unbuttoned his collar. "Mobilize all available media resources and fix the world's pitiful attention on that poisonous purple spot beneath the Mariana Trench!"

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