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

The silver halo did not remain only seven meters underground.

The three-kilometer radius coverage penetrated the concrete layer and gravel surface, spreading upwards like an invisible veil, silently enveloping the streets of eastern Aleppo where fighting was taking place.

There was a different smell in the air.

The cool, refreshing liquid, like high-concentration medical alcohol mixed with some ancient herbs, seeped from every crack in the ruins, overpowering the smoke and blood.

On the government army's front-line position, a squad leader looked up and sniffed.

"Who's burning the medicine?"

No one answered him.

Three hundred meters away in the opposition stronghold, a militiaman crouching behind a window with a submachine gun also smelled the same odor and turned to look at his companion.

"Can you smell it?"

"I can smell it, it smells like a hospital."

"Where did this awful place get that hospital smell?"

The officers were not the first to discover the rule.

Behind the ruins of the government army's left flank, 22-year-old Private Khalid lay on his side on the broken bricks, his abdomen ripped open by shrapnel, a 15-centimeter gash revealing his intestines.

Silver light flowed over his body, over his wounds, and over his exposed internal organs.

Nothing happened.

Blood was still gushing out, the flesh showed no signs of closing, and the pain did not lessen at all.

Khalid's consciousness began to blur, his fingers spasming as he gripped the rifle handle, then slowly slipped away.

The gun slipped from his hand, slid across the broken bricks, and struck a pile of rubble three meters away with a dull thud.

The moment his hands were completely removed from the weapon, thin silver lines appeared at the edges of the wound.

The blood stopped gushing out.

The torn muscle fibers, as if pulled by invisible needles and threads, slowly moved closer to each other, connecting little by little.

Khalid stared wide-eyed down at his stomach, his lips trembling before he managed to squeeze out a single word.

"this……"

Two meters away from him, another government soldier was kneeling and firing his rifle at the opposite side. The bullet wound on his shoulder remained unchanged in the silver light, the blood still flowing and the flesh still rotting.

The soldier who fired the shot turned and glanced at Khalid.

"Why is your wound healing?"

Khalid's throat was dry.

"I don't know, it started after the gun fell."

"Did you drop the gun?"

The soldier who fired the shot paused for a moment, looked down at the rifle in his hand, and then at the bullet hole in his shoulder that was still bleeding.

He didn't let go.

Within minutes, the same scene repeated itself on both sides' positions.

Behind a window in the opposition stronghold, a militiaman with a broken left arm continued firing with a submachine gun in one hand. The broken bone remained motionless in the silver light, the displaced bone fragments pressing against his skin.

Next to him, a young man whose right leg had been blown off had already dropped his weapon and collapsed on the ground, pink new tissue slowly growing from the stump of his limb in the silver light.

The militiaman with the broken leg turned his head and stared at the severed limb; his voice had completely changed.

"How come your legs are getting longer?"

"It started after I threw away the gun!"

Behind the government forces' positions, three members of the mortar crew suffered multiple shrapnel wounds all over their bodies, one of whom had severe burns to his face, and his skin had begun to ulcerate.

The silver light flowed over them, their burns continued to worsen, and their shrapnel wounds persisted with infection.

The three men's hands never left the mortar.

The message spread rapidly along the radio channels on both sides of the front line.

"Command post, position three: someone has laid down their weapon and their wounds have healed automatically. Those still armed are ineffective. Please confirm!"

"Same situation at Position One!"

The opposition channel on the other side was filled with noise.

"Attention everyone, something is glowing underground. Those with weapons can't handle it!"

The frontline commanders on both sides realized the same thing almost simultaneously.

This light does not save those who are still killing.

The ceasefire was not due to anyone having a change of heart.

This is because, for the first time on the battlefield, a rule even stricter than military orders has emerged.

If you want to live, put down your gun first.

The government commander's voice came through the radio, hoarse and short.

"Ceasefire across the board, repeat, ceasefire across the board."

The ceasefire order from the other side was issued less than two minutes late.

The sound of metal clashing echoed across the position; rifles were thrown onto the rubble, submachine guns struck broken bricks, and grenades were pulled from pockets and placed on the ground.

The wounded soldiers, having lost their weapons, slowly stopped bleeding in the silver light, and their basic wounds began to close, but the healing speed was noticeably slower than that of the civilians in the underground hospital.

They weren't given deep repair.

Seven meters underground, Lyra crouched beside the silver staff, holding a pen and a piece of cardboard torn from a cardboard box.

Fatima leaned closer, her voice still trembling.

"Laila, what are you writing down?"

"rule."

Leila wrote four lines on the cardboard: "Patients near death recover the fastest, those confirmed dead are ineffective, the healthy are unaffected, and treatment for armed attackers is zero."

Omar stood at the door, his expression complex.

"Someone has been carried down from outside."

A young militiaman was carried in by two companions. He had been shot in the thigh and his trousers were soaked, but he was still clutching a pistol in his right hand.

Silver light flowed over his entire body.

The bullet hole in his thigh remained unchanged.

Leila stood up, walked over to him, and glanced at the hand holding the gun.

Her voice was very soft.

"Put the gun outside the door."

The young man looked up.

"Who are you?"

"The doctors here."

Leila pointed to his thigh.

"You see, holding that thing won't help you."

The young man hesitated for a few seconds, his gaze sweeping back and forth between Leila and his own bleeding thigh.

He placed the pistol on the ground outside the door.

A faint silver line appeared at the edge of the wound, and the bleeding gradually stopped.

The young man looked down at his legs, his lips trembling slightly.

"What is this?"

Lyra didn't answer. She turned and walked back to the silver staff, adding a line to the cardboard: "Basic first aid effects are restored after voluntary disarming. Deep repair is not provided."

Omar asked a question quietly from the side.

"How do you know it's okay to just put down the gun?"

Lyra clipped the pen to the edge of the cardboard.

"Because its logic is very simple: whoever is hurting others will not be saved."

Fatima used her old, cracked cell phone to film three scenes.

In the first scene, Karim slowly opens his eyes in the silver light, his abdominal cavity already completely closed.

The second segment features a close-up of a soldier with a gun whose penetrating shoulder wound remains unresponsive in the silver light.

The third segment, showing the entire process of the same soldier releasing his gun and the bleeding stopping, takes no more than forty seconds.

She uploaded the video via the remaining satellite network; the image quality was extremely poor and the video was very shaky, but the impact of the content did not require high definition.

Rome, luxury suite.

Jiang Ming leaned back on the sofa armrest, the holographic screen in front of him playing the forty-second video.

The soldier loosened his gun barrel, and a silver thread crawled up the wound, stopping the bleeding.

He looked at it twice, then picked up his coffee and took a sip.

"The fourth nail."

The panel on the side of Mirror 2 is lit up, awaiting instructions.

Jiang Ming placed the coffee cup back on the armrest.

"Congo cuts off energy monopoly, Dakat cuts off disaster management, South Sudan cuts off food control, and Aleppo cuts off the right to life and death on the battlefield."

He paused for a moment and tapped his fingers twice on his knee.

"Four nails, four cracks, but not deep enough."

He turned to the panel.

"Number Two, next map."