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

After leaving the bridge, Fu Ningna returned to the lounge, where Zhou Ruo was already sitting in the chair opposite the sofa, with the encrypted tablet propped up on her lap and the red light on the voice recorder on.

Funina sat down, picked up the last cream puff on the table, and instead of eating it right away, she twirled it between her fingers.

"I'll go down after I get there."

Zhou Ruo placed her finger on the edge of the tablet and tapped the record button twice to confirm that she was recording.

"Without any equipment?"

"Need not."

Funina brought the cream puff to her mouth, and the crisp sound of her teeth breaking through the flaky pastry was particularly clear in the quiet cabin.

"No need for oxygen supply, no need for decompression, no need for your metal shells."

She chewed twice and swallowed, then wiped a bit of cream off the corner of her mouth with her thumb.

"Water will not crush water."

Zhou Ruo paused on the notebook for a second before continuing to write.

"What about the communication buoy that Chen Jianguo mentioned before?"

Funina raised her chin.

"You can take that little thing with you. It will float up on its own when you reach the depth of the acoustic relay and send a signal every half hour to let you know that I am still alive."

After Zhou Ruo finished writing this, he closed his pen and looked up at Funina.

The silence lasted for a long time, long enough that the sound of a sailor's footsteps approaching and fading away in the corridor outside the cabin, disappearing with the click of the watertight door closing.

"Can I come down with you?"

Fu Ningna paused for a second as she tore open the puff pastry wrapper.

She looked up at Zhou Ruo, her gaze lingering on his calm face for three seconds.

"no."

The voice was not loud, even with a slightly lazy drawl, but there was no space for discussion between the words.

"You are human. The pressure of 10,000 meters of water will crush your bones into powder, leaving not even a trace."

Zhou Ruo's eyelashes trembled, drooping down and then lifting up again.

"Then I'll wait for you on the ship."

Funina's fingers held the crumpled wrapper, neither throwing it away nor tearing it further.

She turned her face toward the deep blue sea outside the porthole, her jawline tightening for a moment before relaxing, her voice lower than before, almost drowned out by the sound of the cabin's air conditioning.

"Okay, just wait."

Zhou Ruo gripped the hard cover of the record book on her knee, her nails digging into the plastic coating, but her voice remained steady.

"Your perception range is several thousand kilometers above the sea, but what about once you're down there?"

Funina looked away, swung her legs, and gently tapped her heels on the wooden frame at the bottom of the sofa.

"It will shrink a lot, maybe only a few hundred kilometers left."

She casually tossed the wad of wrapping paper into the trash can and sank back into the sofa.

"The water on the surface of the sea is clean and connected, and my senses can spread out along the world's water bodies like traveling on a highway."

She stretched out her right hand, spreading her five fingers in the air, making a gesture that radiates outwards.

"But the situation is different down below."

He clenched his fingers into a loose fist.

"The filthy things in the abyss have turned the water in that area into a murky mess, so the signal can't travel far."

She turned her head to look at Zhou Ruo, as if thinking about how to explain it in a way that the other person could understand.

"It's like shouting in a storm; the closer you stand, the less clearly you can hear because the noise is too loud."

Open your fist, turn your palm over so that it faces upwards.

"I need to tighten my perception to the vicinity of my body, trading precision for scope."

Zhou Ruo wrote down these words word for word, her pen moving twice as fast as usual.

She didn't ask any further questions.

Hurried footsteps echoed in the corridor outside the cabin. The communications officer paused at the door and knocked twice.

Zhou Ruo got up to open the door and took a folded, sealed paper strip.

The note contained the newly updated passive detection briefing from the sonar chamber.

She glanced at the contents, her pupils contracting slightly.

"Sonic room report: The target we were tracking has increased its speed. It is estimated that its speed has increased by two to three knots compared to three hours ago. It is closing the distance, and the current horizontal distance has been reduced to about 160 kilometers."

After Zhou Ruo finished reading, she looked up at Funina on the sofa.

Funina had her eyes closed, the back of her head resting on the top of the sofa, and her two bare feet crossed on the edge of the coffee table, looking as if she were taking a nap.

But the corner of her mouth twitched slightly.

"I know without looking at the report."

She didn't open her eyes, and her voice carried a hint of something that was hard to define—whether it was disdain or boredom.

"That iron pipe is speeding up; the pump inside it that's circulating hot water is spinning faster than before, and the temperature is a little bit higher."

She lightly pointed her right index finger toward the outside of the porthole.

"We're about 100 kilometers away now. What took you three hours to hear, I sensed half an hour ago."

Zhou Ruo combined the sonar briefing and Funina's original words into an urgent text message and sent it to the bridge via an encrypted terminal.

After receiving the information, the bridge watch officer updated the submarine's position on the tactical chart. A dark red arrow jumped from 310 kilometers to 160 kilometers, pointing to the side and rear of the formation's course.

The captain stood in front of the chart table, staring at the arrow for ten seconds, then tapped the edge of the table three times with his right index finger.

He picked up the intercom.

"All positions shall remain silent. The anti-submarine team shall remain at the same level of readiness. No one shall activate the active sonar without authorization."

He put the microphone back in the slot and glanced down at the latest coordinate progress in the nautical log.

We are still three hours away from the dive site designated by Funina.

.........

In the core area of ​​the Qinling underground base, the encrypted fax machine in Academician Qi's office printed out the last page at 1:17 a.m.

Eleven hours.

From the time he reported the precise matching data of the three voids with the star markers on the map to the time the approval document was issued, only eleven hours had passed.

This speed ranks among the top three in his 37-year military industry career.

Academician Qi pulled his reading glasses down from his forehead and placed them on the bridge of his nose, flipping through the approval documents page by page.

Code name: "Return to Ruins".

The authorization level was the one he had only seen before in the nuclear weapons testing process.

Seventeen safety restrictions and thirty-two emergency plans were packaged together, each stamped with the red seals of three different departments. The name in the bottom approval column made his finger pause on the paper for two seconds.

He didn't stop for longer.

Academician Qi neatly arranged the approval documents, locked them in the combination lock cabinet on the right side of the desktop, and then picked up the intercom and dialed the duty number of the engineering team.

"Old Zhao, wake up the drilling team."

A muffled response came from the other end of the phone, clearly indicating that the other person had just been dragged out of their cot.

Academician Qi did not give him time to regain consciousness.

"The drilling program for Cavity A has been initiated, codenamed Guixu. I need you to complete all preparations for directional drilling within forty-eight hours."

He hung up the phone, took out a half-open package of compressed biscuits from the drawer, tore open the packaging, took a bite, and the dry, hard crumbs got stuck between his teeth.

He chewed twice and then picked up another microphone.

This number leads to the medical intensive care unit at the end of the corridor.