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

The dock was so quiet that you could hear the waves lapping against the sides of the boats.

Mirror One moved its lips slightly as it faced the screen, but did not speak immediately.

His answer was a beat slower than expected, but he spoke very steadily, picking out each word carefully from his throat.

"I've never changed."

He paused for a moment.

"It's just that I only truly understood many things after I died once."

Water dripping from the hem of the trench coat pooled at my feet, the early morning tropical sea breeze giving the water stains jagged edges.

"Before I died, I felt that nothing was urgent. Only after I died did I realize that I should have done the things that needed to be done now."

The old man on the screen looked at him for three seconds.

Three seconds later, the old man nodded, reached his hand towards a spot below the camera, and the screen went black.

Communication was cut off.

Chen Jianguo stood to the side, his right hand, which had been clenched in his pocket, loosened, leaving four white marks where his five knuckles bent.

He breathed a sigh of relief, but only half of the breath escaped through his nose before he forced it back in.

The major general guided them to the vehicles, the convoy started, the tires made a soft sound as they rolled over the damp cement ground of the dock, and drove away from the port gate.

Mirror One sat in the back right of the second car. The windows were covered with dark heat-insulating film. The lights of Sanya city flickered sparsely in the early morning, turning into fluffy orange spots of light through the film.

Chen Jianguo sat to his left, leaning back in his seat, his gaze fixed on the back of the driver's head, remaining silent for a full three minutes.

Mirror One is waiting for him.

At 3 minutes and 4 seconds, Chen Jianguo spoke.

"You should understand what it means for 000 to personally show up."

Mirror One did not turn its head.

"This is more than just an inquiry."

Chen Jianguo's voice was very low, so low that the driver and passenger in the front seats could only hear a faint buzzing sound.

"It's a qualitative assessment."

He tapped his knee twice slowly with his right index finger.

"Your answer will determine whether the framework for handling you at the national level can remain on the side of cooperation."

He didn't say the other word.

Mirror One spoke for him.

"Still containment."

Chen Jianguo remained silent for a second.

"You said it."

Mirror One rested his head against the car window, the heat-insulating film against his temples, feeling slightly cool.

"Uncle Chen, I know."

His voice sounded unusually quiet in the cramped space of the carriage.

"So every word I say is true."

The convoy drove out of Sanya city and onto the dedicated road leading to Phoenix Military Airport.

The streetlights receded one by one outside the car window, their orange beams sweeping across the roof at even intervals.

On the deck of the Abyss, Funina stood at the stern, holding the forty-fifth cream puff box that Louis had just made, watching the taillights of the convoy shrink into three red pinpoints before finally disappearing into the darkness outside the dock gate.

Zhou Ruo stood a step to her right, her notebook turned to a new page, the pen hovering there without falling.

The sea breeze blew Funina's short, white and blue hair across her forehead, obscuring half of her eyes.

She didn't dial.

The silence lasted for nearly twenty seconds.

Funina spoke, her voice thinned by the sea breeze, sounding light and airy.

He'll be alright.

Zhou Ruo looked up at her.

Funina took a bite of the cream puff, and cream spilled from the corner of her mouth, which she wiped off with the back of her hand.

I chewed it twice and swallowed it.

"He worked silently behind me for twelve hours underwater, and even when his mental strength was almost depleted, he never once said that he couldn't hold on any longer."

She switched the puff pastry box to her other hand, her fingertips still covered in crumbs.

"A person who can endure this much won't be exposed when faced with a few questions."

Zhou Ruo looked at her profile; the faint blue teardrop mark was faintly visible between her eyebrows.

This was the first time that Funina had made such an evaluation of another person in front of her.

The wording was very restrained, and the tone even carried a hint of nonchalance.

But the content is very practical.

Zhou Ruo closed the notebook and clipped the pen to the elastic band on the cover.

"You believe him."

Funina tilted her head and glanced at her; her heterochromatic eyes, blue on the left and purple on the right, shone brightly in the white light of the dock's guide lights.

"I trust my own judgment."

She stuffed the last piece of cream puff into her mouth, her cheeks puffing out slightly, and mumbled a sentence.

"The person who helps me carry things at a depth of 10,000 meters is at least not stupid enough to kill themselves on the shore."

As the convoy passed an intersection on the edge of Sanya city, a shadowy raven silently hovered on the power line above a streetlamp, its wings folded, its body completely black, with only a faint reddish-gold glimmer deep in its pupils.

Nobody saw it.

Mirror One, with its eyes closed, leaned against the car window, its consciousness traversing the mental link and crossing a physical distance of 6,400 kilometers in 0.3 seconds.

Rome, luxury suite.

Jiang Ming's index finger hovered over the edge of the panel and caught the message.

"Inquiries will begin at 10:00 AM tomorrow. 000 has already set the tone; the basic direction is cooperation."

His thumb tapped the panel lightly, sending back three words.

"Follow the script."

Above the power line, the shadow crow folded its wings, transformed into a wisp of black mist, and disappeared into the night sky.

.......

Western Hills of Beijing.

The underground facility is on the third basement level. The corridor lighting is rather cold, and the walls are coated with a sound-absorbing material, so that even the sound of your own heels is reduced to about a third of the volume when you step on them.

The door to the windowless conference room was pushed open at 9:58 a.m.

The room temperature is kept constant at 22 degrees Celsius, the lighting is cool white, and the air conditioner vents are soundproofed, so there is only a very slight airflow sound when it is running.

The long table is custom-made, made of matte anti-reflective material, and its stainless steel legs are bolted to the ground, making it impossible to move.

At one side of the table, Chen Jianguo sat in the center, with two plainclothes recorders on either side. In front of each of them was a local storage laptop without a network connection, with blank documents lit up on the screen.

There is only one chair on the other side.

Mirror One pulled out a chair and sat down, with a glass of water and a blank pen and paper in front of him.

He changed his clothes, wearing a black turtleneck sweater with dark gray trousers and black canvas shoes temporarily allocated by the military logistics department, which were half a size too big.

The opposite wall is a one-way glass panel that occupies the entire wall, and from the inside of the conference room, it looks like just a gray matte mirror.

Behind the glass is an observation room that can accommodate thirty people.

There were eleven people standing in the observation room at that moment.

Two major generals from the military intelligence agency stood side by side in the second row, their gazes fixed on Mirror One's face through the glass.

The National Security Committee liaison officer stood on the far left, holding a pen but no notebook.

The director of the Policy Research Office of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs leaned against the side wall, adopting a listening posture.

The deputy director of the Department of Basic Research of the Ministry of Science and Technology and the director of a laboratory of the Institute of Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences stood together. The latter's gaze swept back and forth between the hands of Mirror-1, as if he were assessing the surface features of some kind of instrument.

000 stood in the last row against the wall, with her hands behind her back and her back about five centimeters away from the wall, neither leaning nor leaning forward.