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

Rome, 4 a.m.

Jiang Ming leaned back in his office chair in the hotel suite, with three layers of holographic screens spread out in front of him.

The outermost layer is a real-time situational map of the formation.

Mirror 2's data manipulation capabilities extracted the core data of Funina's latest buoy signal from the encrypted audio information stream that the formation was outputting to a specific channel in a limited manner.

Military encrypted communications are indistinguishable from plaintext in front of Mirror2.

"Depth 6,000 meters, pulse source distance 3,800 meters."

He did a mental calculation and figured that at Funina's current sinking speed, it would take about four to five hours to reach the pulse source location.

The middle layer is the Raven God Remodeling Panel, and the system log keeps showing the same message.

[Waiting for physical locking - Anchor point event not triggered.]

He was well aware of the anchoring conditions: Funina had to personally place her palm on the contaminated surface left by the Mirror 1 explosion at a depth of 10,000 meters.

Only when her authority over water makes direct, conceptual contact with the remnants of the abyss can she provide the spatial turbulence reference coordinates needed for the shattered Raven God to be reshaped.

This condition is beyond his control.

Fu Ningna's dive was an operation by the Great Xia Navy. When she would arrive, and whether she would touch that surface after arriving, all depended on how things developed.

All he could do was wait.

The waiting time should not be wasted.

Jiang Ming turned off the reshape panel and switched to the innermost screen.

Two draft blueprints for conceptual armaments were laid out side by side on the holographic panel.

The first item, the first deck of the ark.

Conceptual definition: The unyielding foundation that bears everything.

He set two core rules in the blueprint.

Article 1: Water rewritten by this artifact will gain permanent solid structural strength, but retain the temperature and thermal conductivity of a liquid. It can be used to build structures, but will neither freeze nor heat up.

Article 2: Any living being that touches the rewritten water surface will not be trapped or stuck, and can pass through it at will. The rewriting effect only responds to the construction intention.

He chose the Char River Delta in Dhaka, Bangladesh as his target.

Every year during the monsoon season, floods inundate more than 40 percent of that area, displacing millions of people.

The world's largest floodplain.

The original design concept of the Ark's deck was to create a house made of water that would never drown a person.

The second item is the torch of Prometheus.

Conceptual definition: An eternal flame that dispels darkness.

There is only one core rule: the efficiency of all energy conversion processes within the scope approaches 100% infinitely; this applies to chemical reactions, nuclear reactions, the photoelectric effect, and biological metabolism.

This means that a candle can emit light and heat at the level of the sun within its range.

One battery can power a city.

Target: Kolwezi cobalt mine in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the world's largest cobalt mining area, where thousands of child laborers dig for raw materials for mobile phone batteries with their bare hands every day.

"The place where suffering is deepest."

Jiang Ming whispered these four words.

The corners of his mouth were not curved.

His logic for choosing targets was clear to the point of being ruthless: Bangladesh and Congo are among the regions with the highest suffering index in the world. Deploying conceptual weapons there would generate the greatest emotional shockwave, the highest media dissemination efficiency, and the most substantial emotional rewards.

Making the world a better place is the product's packaging.

Harvesting emotional value is the real business model beneath the surface.

But are these two things contradictory?

Jiang Ming thought for three seconds.

Not contradictory.

It's not contradictory that cream puffs are delicious and cream puffs can make money. Making the world's best cream puffs and selling them while making a lot of money is not hypocrisy, it's business logic.

He archived the two draft blueprints and turned off the innermost screen.

The holographic panel shrank back to two layers.

On the formation situation map, Funinga's estimated depth label is updated once per minute.

6,073 meters.

6,100 meters.

6,130 meters.

Jiang Ming shifted his gaze from the depth data to another set of data marked in the corner of the situation map.

The global reach of Watanabe's Space Dragon photos.

Previously, after the retired Chilean teacher uploaded 14 high-resolution photos taken with a telescope showing a pterosaur tearing apart an American space-based platform to a forum, the photos were forwarded more than 20 million times within 40 minutes, and to date, the cumulative global reach has exceeded 2.3 billion.

The increase in emotional value brought about by this number has passed its inflection point, and the growth rate is declining.

Even if the photos circulate for another three days, there won't be much increase in their number of views.

He needs the next explosive moment.

Jiang Ming leaned back in his chair and stared at the hotel's crystal chandelier on the ceiling.

The message "Waiting for physical locking" on the Raven God Remodeling panel is still flashing.

If Frynn touches that surface at a depth of 10,000 meters, if the Raven God's reshaping anchor is activated, if this being that survived the self-destruction of the original sin body and returned from the abyss reappears in this world.

What does this mean?

This means the existence of a creature whose photos have been seen by 2.3 billion people worldwide, a terrifying creature that tore apart the US's space-based weapon platform, a raven god that once caused global panic, has returned from the abyss.

To die and be brought back to life.

Returning from the abyss.

Jiang Ming tapped his fingers lightly twice on the armrest of the chair.

How much emotional value is the first photo of the Crow God's return worth?

......

7,500 meters below the water surface.

Fu Ningna's descent speed remained stable at about twenty meters per minute. The blue teardrop mark between her eyebrows illuminated an absolute territory of ten meters around her, with clear boundaries and a clean cutoff of light.

The absolute domain of concepts she established at a depth of 5,200 meters remains effective. Every conceptual attack that attempts to tamper with the definition of water will dissipate on its own when it reaches the boundary, without even touching her.

But the environment has changed.

The concentration of abyssal debris nearly tripled during the 700-meter descent, and the density of purple particles suspended in the water has become so high that they are visible to the naked eye.

These particles are not directly dissolved when they adhere to the outer wall of her ten-meter domain. Their corrosive substances form a layer of purple crystalline patterns on the surface after contacting the water film. The patterns are irregular in shape and a new one is covered every few seconds.

Funinna used her willpower to erase those patterns.

It grew back after three seconds.

Apply again.

Longer still.

This isn't a battle; it's cleaning work.

But cleaning work also requires a lot of concentration.

The absolute defense at the conceptual level needs to be maintained, and the purity of the water film at the physical level also requires extra effort to maintain. The resource allocation for the simultaneous operation of the two systems is becoming strained.

Fu Ningna frowned.

"bother."

She uttered a single word to the empty, deep sea.

Seven thousand eight hundred meters below the water surface.

The sinking speed was forced to be reduced to less than ten meters per minute.

The cause wasn't water pressure or noise; it was a large number of suspended black particles in the water ahead.

These particles float in the deep-sea currents, their movement exhibiting an unnatural tendency to converge; whenever she gets a certain distance away, the particles slowly gather in her direction.

Fu Ningna paused for a second, then pushed forward a water pressure pulse with her right hand.

The black particles within a 20-meter radius in front were all dispersed, and the water briefly returned to its clear state.

She continued on her way.

The particles converged again from all directions, filling the passage in front of her again after thirty seconds.

Push again.

Fill it in again.

Funina showed no impatience with the task, advancing twenty meters with each push, a slow but steady process.

Eight thousand meters below the water surface.

A violent physical impact came from the outer wall of the shield.

This is not a conceptual erosion, but a real and tangible impact on quality.

Funina's foot slid half a step on the blue platform, her body swayed slightly, but she quickly regained her balance.

She looked up.