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

On the other side, in Xianyang.

2:17 a.m.

As the last elderly man taking a late-night stroll turned into the gate of the residential area, a large drilling rig started up inside the construction site.

The sign hanging outside the fence reads "Municipal heating pipeline maintenance".

The things inside the fence have absolutely nothing to do with the heating pipe network.

The drill bit has a diameter of 120 mm and the cutting edge is made of polycrystalline diamond, designed to penetrate to the level of granite.

The drilling rig's base is anchored to a temporary concrete platform with eight expansion bolts. Three layers of vibration damping pads are laid under the platform to keep the noise level below 60 decibels.

Standing next to him was an archaeologist, not very old, in his early thirties, with a plastic bag clipped to his arm, which he used to collect rock cuttings samples brought up by the drill bit.

Drilling begins.

The first thirty meters were completely normal; what it penetrated was a layer of mixed soil from modern urban backfill, with broken bricks, cinders, and cement blocks all mixed together.

After reaching a depth of 18 meters, the geological composition begins to change, becoming darker in color and denser in texture.

Archaeologists retrieved the first valuable rock fragments at that depth.

"This is from the Tang Dynasty."

He shone his headlamp on the pieces inside the plastic bag and rubbed the edges with his thumb.

"A fragment of celadon glaze, made using the Tang tri-color technique."

He sealed the bag, labeled it with the depth and time, and put it into the insulated box behind him.

Another batch was found at a depth of 23 meters. This time it was corrugated tile fragments, made of gray pottery, with obvious traces of hand-trimming on the cross-section.

"Song".

The archaeologists made their judgment after just one glance.

"It may be the transitional period between the late Tang Dynasty and the Northern Song Dynasty."

Drilling continues.

At a depth of 35 meters, the drill bit's feel suddenly changed, and the tachometer needle dropped a bit.

The operator glanced at the torque data.

"We've hit something hard; it's a granite base."

The drilling speed dropped from nearly ten meters per hour to 1.2 meters per hour. The sound of the drill bit cutting into the dense granite came from underground. The diamond cutting edge ground against the hard rock surface at a high frequency. The cooling circulating water in the water tank next to the control panel became turbid.

The drilling took nearly 15 hours, covering a granite layer 18 meters thick and ranging from 35 to 53 meters in height.

Two shifts were changed in the middle, and it got light and dark again outside the fence.

By the early hours of the next day, the depth gauge indicated 54 meters.

The operator's hand rested on the feed control lever. After fifty-four meters, the cutting sensation of the drill bit began to change. One second it was the stable and resilient resistance of granite grinding continuously, and the next second it turned into an iron wall.

Feed rate is set to zero.

The torque gauge needle jumped from 90% to 170% of the rated value in 0.3 seconds.

The overload alarm screamed.

The operator slammed down the emergency stop button, and the drill rod's rotation dropped from full speed to zero within two seconds. The last rotation produced a piercing metallic scraping sound that echoed up from 54 meters underground, reverberating through the enclosure in the early morning.

"Stretch! Stretch quickly!"

The extraction device is activated, and the drill rod is pulled out of the hole section by section.

The operator stood beside the borehole, waiting for the last section of drill rod to emerge. When the drill bit broke through the ground, he bent down to take a look, then straightened up and turned to look at Engineer Zhao standing behind him.

"The drill bit is ruined."

Engineer Zhao walked over and squatted down next to the drill bit.

One-third of the polycrystalline diamond cutting edge developed micro-chipping. The chipping was not the smooth arc surface of wear, but a brittle fracture caused by an impact exceeding the material's limits. The edges were sharp, and the fragments were embedded in the metal matrix.

This type of damage only occurs when the drill bit encounters a material that is several times harder than granite.

Polycrystalline diamond is a man-made material with the second hardest hardness in nature after natural diamond. In his twenty years of drilling career, Engineer Zhao has never encountered anything that could shatter it.

He reached out and scraped a small pinch of powder from the chipped edge of the drill bit, then held it up to his headlamp to examine it.

The powder reflects a dark red metallic luster under the light.

Zhao Gong's fingers rubbed the powder; it felt heavy and extremely dense. The same volume of iron powder in his palm would definitely not have this weight.

He stood up, turned around, and called out.

"Notify Academician Qi."

Forty minutes later, Academician Qi arrived at the drilling site.

The 63-year-old man was wearing a military overcoat, his hair was messy from the wind, and he was carrying an aluminum alloy box containing a portable X-ray fluorescence analyzer, which he had brought with him when he left the Qinling base.

He squatted down next to the drill bit, took the sealed bag containing dark red rock cutting powder from Engineer Zhao, and poured a small pinch onto the analyzer's detection window.

An X-ray fluorescence scan takes approximately ninety seconds.

Academician Qi squatted in place and waited, while data jumped on the small screen of the analyzer.

Ninety seconds later, the elemental analysis results came out.

Common elements: iron, copper, tin, and manganese, with content within a reasonable range.

Unconventional elements: three types.

Three trace elements for which there are no matching records in the known element database.

Academician Qi stared at the three blank element label bars on the screen for five seconds.

He stood up.

"This is made of the same material as the tiger tally."

His voice echoed briefly through the construction site fence in the early morning.

He pinched a small piece of rock fragment from the sealed bag and placed it in his palm. It was a thin piece, less than the size of his little fingernail.

weight.

It is at least twice as heavy as steel of the same volume.

Academician Qi held the rock fragment up to his headlamp and rotated it several times. The dark red metallic luster shimmered under the light, its color exactly the same as the dark red lines in the new tissue branded on Zhou Dazhuang's right palm.

He picked up the walkie-talkie and pressed the call button.

"Starting from a depth of 54 meters, we encountered things from the Qin Dynasty."

The walkie-talkie connects to the duty room at the Qinling base.

"The alloy protective shell is fourteen meters thick, and the drill bit can't penetrate it."

There was a three-second silence on the walkie-talkie.

The voice from the duty room trembled.

"Fourteen meters thick?"

"The top of cavity A is at -68 meters. We encountered the protective shell at 54 meters. 68 minus 54 equals 14 meters."

Academician Qi turned off the analyzer and put it back in the box.

"The cavity wasn't exposed in the rock strata; it was covered by a layer of Daqin alloy. When the drill bit hit it, it felt like hitting a wall."

He picked up the suitcase and glanced at the still dark night sky.

"I need to go back to the base. Tomorrow morning, I'll have Zhou Dazhuang prepare to leave for Xianyang."

There was a pause on the other end of the walkie-talkie.

"Teacher Qi, he's sleeping right now. As for the medical team..."

"Don't wake him, let him get enough sleep."

Academician Qi interrupted the other party.

"But tell him tomorrow morning that we need him to bring the tiger tally to Xianyang."

He tucked the walkie-talkie back into his waistband, then thought for a moment and picked it up again to press a button.

"Prepare a brand new set of combat boots for him."

"...What?"

"He has a long way to go."

Academician Qi put down the walkie-talkie, bent down, and took another look at the dark red metallic rock fragments.

Fourteen meters thick.

More than two thousand years ago, the people who built this thing created a 14-meter-thick alloy protective shell 68 meters underground, sealing something inside tightly.

It uses materials whose composition cannot be analyzed using modern technology.

What exactly are they protecting?