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

"Director Chen, this is Qi Yuanshan."

"explain."

"I need the precise timestamp of the most recent 0.14 Hz pulse recorded in the sonar chamber of the Exploration submersible, accurate to the millisecond."

Chen Jianguo paused for two seconds.

Why do you need this?

"Because Zhou Dazhuang's palm is receiving that signal."

The silence on the other end of the phone lasted for nearly four seconds.

I'll send it to you within fifteen minutes.

The cross-departmental data comparison took twenty minutes.

After obtaining the timestamp of the Abyss probe, Academician Qi aligned the flashing peaks of Zhou Dazhuang's seventh star one by one.

The moment the results were displayed on the screen, the youngest of his three assistants stood up, his chair leg scraping against the concrete floor with a sharp, short sound.

The time deviation is less than 0.2 seconds.

Every single time, every single peak, they all matched perfectly.

Zhou Dazhuang's right palm was receiving signals in real time from the giant red-gold fish in the deep sea, 10,000 meters below the surface.

The transmission mechanism penetrated 9,500 meters of seawater, thousands of kilometers of earth's crust, 68 meters of underground fortifications, and a dark red metal shielding layer, reaching the palm of a young man in rural Sichuan.

Physics has nothing to say about this.

Electromagnetic waves cannot do it, sound waves cannot do it, and no known medium can do it.

Academician Qi took off his reading glasses and placed them on the table. He interlaced his fingers and stared at the perfectly overlapping contrast curves on the screen.

No one spoke in the control room.

Then he pressed the talk button on the walkie-talkie.

"Zhou Dazhuang".

"exist."

"There is a direct connection between you and that thing."

His voice was lower than usual, and each word was slowly squeezed out from between his teeth.

"The Tiger Tally gives you more than just a key."

He paused for a moment.

"It is also an antenna, a directional antenna, with signals coming from 10,000 meters below the Pacific Ocean."

There was a three-second silence in the passageway.

Zhou Dazhuang clenched his fist and then relaxed it. The crimson-gold light in his palm flickered in the darkness, its rhythm perfectly synchronized with the deep-sea pulses ten thousand kilometers away.

"Academician Qi."

His voice was dry and hoarse, and his throat felt blocked.

"What should I do now?"

Academician Qi's reply came very slowly, so slowly that Zhou Dazhuang could hear a faint humming sound from the air conditioning vent in the control room on the other end of the walkie-talkie.

"Do nothing."

His tone was firm, leaving no room for negotiation.

"Let me first find out who created this link, why they created it, and when they created it."

His fingers pressed against the edge of the walkie-talkie, his fingertips turning white from the pressure.

"Then we'll decide on the next step."

Zhou Dazhuang placed the walkie-talkie on his lap and looked down at his right hand.

The seven stars pulsed slightly in my palm, six of them moving at a steady rhythm, in sync with the flickering lights of the distant city.

The seventh signal was urgent and bright; something on the other side of the Earth was desperately trying to transmit a signal, and his palm happened to be the only window on this planet that could receive the signal.

He clenched his fists.

Golden light leaked through the fingers, illuminating the eroded grooves left by the heavy bronze figurines dragged across the passageway floor two thousand years ago.

In the control room, Academician Qi turned off the walkie-talkie, stood up, and walked to the bookshelf to get his coat.

He wasn't wearing a coat; he just needed a reason to stand up.

After standing there for five seconds, he turned around, picked up the encrypted phone on the table, and dialed Chen Jianguo again.

"Director Chen, it's me."

"What's wrong now?"

"Drilling of cavity A must be accelerated."

There was an urgency in his voice that shouldn't be present in a scientist of Qi Yuanshan's caliber.

"That thing in Zhou Dazhuang's palm, that's not Qin Dynasty technology."

I could hear the change in Chen Jianguo's breathing rhythm on the other end of the phone.

"The Qin Dynasty was merely a replica."

Academician Qi looked up at the miniature map of Xianyang City hanging on the wall of the control room, his gaze fixed on the spot marked with the character "Emperor".

His fingers gripped the phone tightly.

"I need to go under that stone platform and see what's buried beneath that inscription."

.......

The afternoon sun in Rome slanted through the French windows onto the carpet. Jiang Ming leaned against the edge of the sofa and gently swirled the crystal wine in his hand, the scarlet liquid forming a rich arc on the glass.

"Number Two, switch to the live surveillance footage from Congo and Dhaka."

Mirror 2, standing in the shadows, immediately raised its right hand, and an invisible torrent of data rapidly intertwined in the air, instantly constructing two huge holographic projection panels.

"Boss, the three multinational mining companies in the Kolwezi cobalt mine are in complete chaos. Their data monitoring centers triggered the highest level of red alert five minutes ago."

Jiang Ming turned his gaze to the red-glowing screen on the left, watching the production curves soar wildly, and took a satisfied sip of his wine.

"Their reaction was a little slower than I expected. It seems that those sitting in air-conditioned rooms really lack the sensitivity to the real situation at the bottom."

Inside the joint control center of the Kolwezi cobalt mine, piercing alarms nearly blew off the bulletproof glass dome, and red warning lights flashed wildly at every workstation.

David, the engineer on duty, was sweating profusely as he typed away at his keyboard, dragging one outrageous set of data after another onto the central screen. His fingers trembled violently from excessive tension.

"Supervisor, there's a major problem with the real-time mining data for Mine No. 2. The ore output has quadrupled in the past three hours!"

The regional supervisor shoved aside the assistant blocking his way, strode over to David's workstation, and slammed his hands heavily on the solid wood table.

"Is your brain filled with slag? Four times the value in three hours? That's an open-pit mine, purely manual labor with picks! Do you think it's a fully automated money-printing machine?!"

David pulled up the thermal image of the power system, pointing to a strangely bright white area on it, sweat dripping from his forehead onto the keyboard.

"It's not just the mining volume; look at the feedback from the back-end sensors of these excavating equipment and generator sets—all the mechanical wear rates have dropped to absolute zero."

Richard's eyes widened, and he ripped off the tie around his neck, the tie clip falling to the ground with a crisp metallic clang.

"Absolutely zero! If you dare tell me today that those scrap metal pieces have suddenly turned into a perpetual motion machine, I'll shove you into a mining shredder and run you through the factory settings again!"

David pulled up another environmental monitoring report, turned the screen brightness to its maximum, and tried to make his boss see the numbers that were completely contrary to common sense.

"What's even more outrageous is the carbon emission data. Seventy-two heavy-duty diesel generator sets were running at full capacity on site, and the exhaust emission levels in the air remained at the zero mark."

Richard grabbed David by the collar and half-lifted the poor engineer, spitting almost onto his face.

"I'll ask you one last time, is the system malfunctioning, or are the sensors clogged with that damn mineral dust?!"

David shook his head frantically and held up a newly generated cross-reference log in front of Richard, the paper rustling in mid-air.

"The three independent systems each underwent four self-tests. The hardware was intact, and the data transmitted back by the sensors was all true and valid."

Richard released his grip, turned around, grabbed the radio microphone from the communications officer, and pressed the forced call button, his knuckles turning bluish-white from the excessive force.

"Calling the site supervisor at Mine Pit 2. This is Richard. Report the actual situation there to me immediately!"

A series of heavy breathing sounds came through the radio, accompanied by the deafening roar of pickaxes striking rock, a sound that seemed to pierce through the earth's crust.

"Foreman, this is Mine Pit Two. These black guys have all gone mad today!"