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

Mirror One closed its eyes.

The lighting and temperature in the conference room remained unchanged, and the airflow from the air conditioning vents continued to be faint and even.

The change happens in the shadows.

The shadows under the table legs, the shadows at the bottom of the chairs, the shadows where the corners of the walls meet the ground—in all the gaps where no light can reach, a thin layer of black begins to loosen, its undulating state perfectly mirroring the surface of water being blown by the wind.

Then blackness seeped out from the crack.

One, five, ten, thirty.

The pitch-black shadow crows split out from the shadows beneath Mirror One's feet, without a sound, without the rustling of feathers against the air. Their wings were indistinguishable from silhouettes cut from the darkness, with sharp edges that reflected no light.

The shadow crow flew through the wall.

Sound-absorbing coating, reinforced concrete, explosion-proof door frame—all physical structures are no different from air to them.

The recorder on the left had his hand hovering above the keyboard, his fingertips white.

The recorder on the right moved his chair back ten centimeters, a very light movement, but the table leg scraped against the floor with a short, piercing sound.

Behind the one-way glass, the deputy director of the Ministry of Science and Technology opened his mouth slightly, then closed it again.

The director of the physics laboratory took off his glasses and wiped the same lens three times with the corner of his clothes; the rhythm of his fingers betrayed his inner turmoil.

The two major generals exchanged a glance, a glance that contained more information than a ten-thousand-word report.

000 stood in the last row, his hands behind his back unchanged, but his body leaned forward by about two centimeters.

three minutes.

Mirror One opened its eyes.

"Found it."

His voice entered the conference room just like the sound of a pebble being thrown into still water.

"Six kilometers northeast of Sanya city center, on the top floor of office building No. 1 Jinhai Road, a man between 35 and 40 years old is packing up his telephoto lens, preparing to leave."

His gaze turned to Chen Jianguo.

"After taking the photos, he used an offline laptop to edit them and exported them to an encrypted USB drive, which is now in his left trouser pocket."

Chen Jianguo had already picked up the walkie-talkie.

"Where's your face?"

"Front view, side view, 45-degree angle, Shadow Raven took all the shots, at a distance of three meters, clearer than his telephoto lens."

Mirror One raised its right index finger, and a tiny black dot the size of a pinhead was spinning at the tip of its finger.

"Can the image data be directly transmitted to your device? What format do you require?"

Forty seconds later, the database comparison results for the ninth game came out.

Chen Jianguo looked down at the file photos that popped up on the screen, his brows furrowed into a deep wrinkle.

"A field agent of a domestic commercial investigation company has a prior record of providing sensitive locations for filming to overseas organizations."

The intelligence analyst's voice came quickly from the other end of the walkie-talkie.

"His client list includes a shell company registered in Vienna. That address has an indirect connection with a CIA front-line agency, two layers away, but the link is traceable."

Chen Jianguo put down the walkie-talkie.

There was a four-second silence in the conference room.

Mirror One recalled Shadow Ravens, and a hundred jet-black birds simultaneously transformed into black smoke, retreating back to the shadows beneath his feet along the original path. The entire process took no more than two seconds.

The lights have returned to normal, and there are no visible signs of alteration.

But everyone knows what happened.

Mirror One turned to the one-way glass, and he knew who was standing behind him and what kind of looks they were giving him.

"My abilities are completely transparent to you."

His voice wasn't loud, but in the enclosed space formed by the sound-absorbing walls, every word was crystal clear.

"You can keep staring at me, and I'd like to be stared at too."

He tapped his index finger lightly on the table.

"That way, the people around me won't be suspected of having secret deals with me."

He paused for a moment, letting his words carry a heavy weight in the air.

"A collaborator who is openly monitored is more valuable than a tool hidden in the shadows."

There was a five-second silence in the observation room.

000 spoke a sentence to Chen Jianguo through the encrypted earpiece. The voice was very soft, and only the ear that was touching the earpiece could hear it.

"He understands politics better than we thought."

000 pressed his thumb on the back of his left hand, the exact same action as Mirror One after he finished speaking at the dock yesterday.

"Adjust the evaluation framework; don't use the template of an extraordinary individual to describe him, but use the standards of a politician."

Chen Jianguo's Adam's apple bobbed, and he swallowed 000's words.

The second half of the inquiry proceeded rapidly.

The information output density of Mirror One kept the two recorders' keyboards almost constantly in use.

"The crystal cocoon is 302 meters high and 248 meters in diameter at the base. The measurement error is within plus or minus two meters. I used Shadow Raven to calibrate it three times."

He picked up the refilled water glass and took a sip.

"The abyssal debris on the outer shell is not evenly distributed. It is thickest on the north side, about sixty meters, and thinnest on the south side, about forty-one meters. The thinnest part is the back side from which the shock wave from the Holy Grail explosion came."

Chen Jianguo's pen tip flew across the tablet, marking rapidly.

"After the crack opened, I went inside to look at the internal structure. The core cavity was about eighty meters in diameter, and there was a live, reddish-gold fish curled up inside."

He put down his water glass and folded his hands on the table.

"It is about 60 meters long, and the scales are still glowing, with the light and dark rhythm perfectly synchronized with the 0.14 Hz pulse."

His gaze shifted to the position where the director of the physics institute was standing behind the one-way glass.

"The symbols engraved on the fins belong to the same system as the unknown symbols on the Libra base. I compared seven independent characters, and the geometric deviation is within two percent."

The recorder on the right typed much faster.

Mirror One leaned back in its chair.

"This fish is directly related to the remnants of the Holy Grail War."

His tone shifted from a calm, reporting style to one that carried a real weight.

"The outer shell of the crystal cocoon was made up of layers of abyssal debris that sank to the bottom of the sea after the Holy Grail exploded. It was trapped inside for at least forty-seven days."

He looked at Chen Jianguo.

"If it gets out of control or is interfered with by external forces, it's not just a particular city that will be threatened."

He drew a large circle on the table with his index finger.

"It includes all countries along the Pacific coast."

The inquiry ended at 1:17 PM.

When Chen Jianguo received the electronic version of the preliminary conclusion report, Mirror One had already been taken to the rest room at the other end of the third basement level, where someone brought him a boxed lunch and a bottle of mineral water.

The report title line, in bold red text, reads: "Internal code A-001 confirmed, Guiya."

Qualitative maintenance allows for collaboration with exceptional individuals.

It is recommended that his public identity and activity privileges be restored as soon as possible to counter the negative public opinion surrounding his detention by the military.

Security level assessment: high risk, high value; the benefits of cooperation far outweigh the costs of confrontation.

Chen Jianguo locked his tablet and looked up at the closed door of the lounge at the end of the corridor.

He silently pondered 000's words in his heart.

Use the standards of politicians.

A 22-year-old, after dying once, learned to use three minutes of cooperation to change the entire evaluation framework, transforming himself from the interrogated person into a partner.

Chen Jianguo wiped the fingerprints off his glasses and walked toward the observation room to make a final confirmation with 000.