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

At 1:43 a.m., the sonar room reported an anomaly.

The uniform water pressure fluctuation lasted for 0.3 seconds, covering a radius of no less than several kilometers. All frequency bands increased synchronously by about 12% before instantly dropping back. There were no secondary pulses or subsequent oscillations. It was as if a giant hand squeezed the entire sea area from underwater and then released it.

The speaker searched through the manual but couldn't find a matching entry. After hesitating for ten seconds, he pressed the encrypted channel call button.

Chen Jianguo's voice came through the communication terminal, sounding as if he hadn't slept at all.

"What's going on?"

"At 1:43, a passive sonar captured an omnidirectional uniform water pressure pulse, lasting 0.3 seconds. The pulse was of moderate intensity and non-directional, unlike natural geological activity or any known underwater weapon characteristics."

Chen Jianguo remained silent for four seconds.

Has the stern passageway changed?

The soprano turned his head and glanced at the deck surveillance footage handed to him by the watchman. The blue water was still swirling, and the brightness and rotation speed of the dark indigo halo were no different from the screenshot taken half an hour ago.

"no."

"That's her business." Chen Jianguo's tone was calm, as if he was used to making only limited judgments in the face of the unknown. "Keep listening, don't send any signals."

The communication terminal fell silent.

The soprano wrote a record in the duty log, including the time, characteristics, and handling opinions, and added a note at the end: The source is inferred to be the initiative of the Water God, which cannot be verified and will be archived for future investigation.

After that, nothing happened.

There were no buoys, no pulses, no acoustic anomalies. The area ten thousand meters below the seabed was as quiet as a covered well.

An hour and a half has passed.

The stern deck of the Tanyuan was chilled by the night wind from the Pacific Ocean. Zhou Ruo's shoes had lost all feeling as she stepped on the iron plate. She glanced down at her watch, which showed that it was 3:17 a.m.

The stern deck of the Tanyuan was chilled by the night wind from the Pacific Ocean. Zhou Ruo's shoes had lost all feeling as she stepped on the iron plate. She glanced down at her watch, which showed that it was 3:17 a.m.

Four hours and nine minutes.

She stood beside the entrance to the blue passage, without moving an inch.

The water at the entrance of the channel was still swirling, and the deep indigo halo had expanded slightly compared to five hours ago, but its brightness and rotation speed remained unchanged, as stable as a machine that would never stop.

The last buoy signal was received five and a half hours ago.

No further direct information was received from underwater after that.

Zhou Ruo opened the notebook and looked at the page of records by the blue light from the passageway. Next to each of the five line segments was a solid circle, representing five confirmations received from the buoy. The empty circle next to the sixth line segment hung alone on the paper, not filled in.

She closed the notebook, pressed the cover for two seconds, and turned to walk towards the lower deck.

As she reached the hatch, she glanced back at the passageway. A blue light swirled in her pupils. She stuffed her notebook into her coat pocket and opened the hatch.

The lights in the lower deck corridor emitted a low hum, and the air was filled with the sweet aroma of butter and caramel. The aroma grew stronger the further she went, until it was so strong that she was almost enveloped in warmth when she pushed open the kitchen door.

Louis Bernard stood in front of the workbench, his white apron stained with flour and butter, his sleeves rolled up above his elbows, the muscles on his forearms taut under the light.

Forty-two finished cream puffs were piled on the worktable, arranged in seven groups on the warming rack according to their baking time. Next to each group was a note with the precise production time marked in very small print, down to the minute.

The earliest batch of notes read "22:04", which is more than five hours ago.

Louis picked up one of the cream puffs from the first set and pressed the shell with his fingertip. The shell bounced back a fraction of a second slower than he expected. He looked at the cream puff, frowned, and hesitated for two seconds.

Then he swept all six of them into the waste bin on the right side of the workbench.

Zhou Ruo stood at the door for a while, watching him start kneading a new batch of cream puff shells from the dough again.

Louis didn't even look up, his hands never stopping.

Do you know when she'll be back?

"have no idea."

Louis divided the dough into six equal portions, each weighing less than two grams. He paused his finger above the electronic scale and made a slight adjustment to the weight of one portion.

"Then I'll continue."

He picked up the piping bag, squeezed a small amount of cream onto his fingertip with the opening facing down, tasted it for two seconds, then put the piping bag back on the counter and turned to open the refrigerator.

"I adjusted the whipping degree of the cream by another 1.5%."

He took a carton of animal-based cream from the refrigerator; the words "Seventh Edition" were written on the bottle in marker.

"Last time she said it was 20% off, so you made a version, and I made another version based on yours. I increased the proportion of butter by half a percent and lowered the filling temperature by two degrees. Theoretically, the deviation should now be within 5%."

Zhou Ruo approached the workbench and looked at the latest batch of six cream puffs on the warming rack. The color of the outer shell was more uniform than the previous batches, with the caramel color transitioning from top to bottom without any breaks.

She reached out, picked one up, and took a bite.

The shell cracked crisply between the incisors, and the cream filling was thicker than the previous batch—the one that Funina had only disliked once but still finished eating, as she remembered it.

"It's better than before."

Louis finally looked up at her; his eyes were bloodshot, but his gaze was bright.

How do you know her standards?

"I have no idea."

Zhou Ruo put the half-eaten cream puff back on the warming rack, rubbing her fingers off a few crumbs from the shell.

"Just do what you're satisfied with. If she's not satisfied, she'll say so."

Louis stared at her for two seconds, his lips twitched as if he wanted to say something, but in the end he didn't speak, and lowered his head to continue filling the cream puff shells.

Zhou Ruo leaned against the workbench, her hands in her coat pockets, watching him squeeze the filling into the forty-third cream puff shell. He held the piping bag at a steady angle in his palm, and the cream flowed out of the bag at a uniform speed, with the filling amount so precise that the visual error was no more than half a milliliter.

"When did you start doing this?"

"It's your second day after you departed."

Louis placed the filled cream puffs on the warming rack and wrote "03:21" on the note.

"I signed a confidentiality agreement. When the plainclothes officers shoved me onto the warship, I thought I was going to be thrown into the sea to be fed to sharks. After boarding, a man surnamed Chen told me that we had a very important guest who only ate sweets and needed to have them made fresh. I said okay. Then he said that the guest took a bite and spat it out because she thought the cream was 20% under-whipped."

He paused for a moment, his lips twitching slightly, his expression a complex mix of offense and forced acceptance that the other person was right.

"Twenty percent, do you know what that means?"

"have no idea."

"This means that her tongue can distinguish a difference of less than one percent in the degree of whipping. I studied at Le Cordon Bleu in Paris for three years, and pastry chefs who have won the MOF Silver Award can only perceive a difference of up to three percent. She said it was 20 percent off as soon as she opened her mouth, and when I went back to retest her, I found that she was right."

Louis filled the last cream puff shell, placed it on the warming rack, straightened up, and wiped the sweat from his forehead with his forearm.

"This isn't being picky, it's talent, or rather, it's not talent."

He looked at the seven neatly arranged cream puffs on the worktable, his gaze sweeping from the newest set to the oldest set and back again.

"She really understands."

Zhou Ruo didn't reply. She took her hand out of her pocket and touched the outline of the notebook in the inner pocket of her coat.

"I'm going back to the deck."

"Go."

Louis turned around, opened the flour cabinet, and took out a new bag of cake flour.

"The eighth batch will begin immediately."

Zhou Ruo paused at the door without turning back.

Louis.

"Um?"

"Thanks."

Louis paused for a second while opening the flour bag, then continued.

"You're welcome. If she comes back and still says she's short 20%, I'll burn this apron and retire on the spot."

Zhou Ruo smiled slightly, pushed open the cabin door, and walked into the corridor.

The sweetness was cut off by the crack in the closed door behind him, and only the hum of the lights and the echo of footsteps remained in the corridor.

She had just reached the top of the stairs when the loudspeaker came on.

This is not a buoy signal.

We've run out of buoys.