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

"Next map."

Jiang Ming's voice still lingered in the air of the luxury suite in Rome, while the image of Aleppo on the holographic control panel had silently collapsed.

A silver short cane, an underground hospital, soldiers recovering after losing their guns, and the eastern front after a four-hour ceasefire.

All the images were compressed into a single silver-white coordinate and pinned to a map of the Middle East.

The fourth nail, filed away.

The next second, a world map unfolded.

Congo Basin, Dhaka city, South Sudan refugee camp, East Aleppo.

Four points of light lit up from four directions, like four nails already driven into the foundation of the old order.

Jiang Ming leaned back on the sofa, the cold light from the holographic control panel in front of him reflecting on his face, cutting a sharp shadow along his jawline.

He didn't urge him.

Mirror image number two begins the filtering process.

Global abnormal death data, disaster relief delay data, refugee movement data, border conflict data, and government responses to the first four conceptual armaments over the past 72 hours were simultaneously accessed into the console.

Tens of thousands of red dots are flashing on the holographic Earth.

Remove those that are not sharp enough.

Eliminate those with insufficient transmissibility.

It cannot change the elimination of international rules.

Areas already covered by the first four nails have been eliminated.

Finally, the dense red markings converged in the central Mediterranean.

Tripoli.

Lampedusa Island.

A blood-red corridor, woven from smuggling routes, distress signals, shipwreck records, and the Coast Guard's delayed response time, slowly lit up in the center of the screen.

The voice of Mirror 2 came from the panel.

"Filtering complete, target area locked."

The holographic screen switches to display a heat map of shipping routes in the central Mediterranean, with dense red markings resembling a network of blood vessels, concentrated in the international waters between Tripoli and Lampedusa.

"Data from the past 72 hours."

Number 2 will continue broadcasting.

"Three refugee inflatable boats departed from Tripoli, one of which had its engine stall halfway through the journey, and 17 of the 61 people on board drowned, including four children."

Jiang Ming did not move.

"The Italian Coast Guard received the distress signal nine hours after the incident."

The second satellite zoomed in on a screenshot, showing the wreckage of an inflatable boat floating on the deep blue sea, like a torn garbage bag.

Jiang Ming didn't watch it a second time.

He opened the artifact crafting workbench on the control panel, a blank template popped up in the new blueprint panel, and the cursor blinked in the name field.

He typed five words.

Wings of Hermes

"Core rules, enter."

Jiang Ming's fingers tapped on the virtual keyboard, the sound steady, like he was filling out a form.

"Within designated sea areas, civilians who are forced to flee their place of origin due to war, famine, political persecution, or extreme poverty, and whose vessels are out of power, flooded, overloaded, or encountering deadly sea conditions, will be lifted up by an invisible wing current."

He paused for a moment, then continued typing.

"The wing-flow does not make the ship fly, but reduces the probability of the hull sinking to near zero, stabilizes the surrounding waves, automatically corrects course deviations, and delivers it to the nearest legal rescue vessel or safe coastline with thrust not exceeding a safe speed."

The notification sound for number two beeped.

"Triggering conditions?"

Jiang Ming leaned back.

"There must be at least one civilian on board who was forced to board for the reasons mentioned above and who has never before engaged in human trafficking or armed activities and is in danger of death."

"Exclusivity rule?"

"Snakeheads, human traffickers, armed personnel, and brokers profiting from the chaos cannot trigger Wing Stream."

He tapped his knee twice with his fingertips.

"If such individuals attempt to manipulate the course or intercept the vessel, Wingstream will circumvent their will and protect only the genuine refugees on board."

"Coverage pattern?"

Jiang Ming raised his eyes and looked at the winding red route on the heat map.

"Airline type".

He said.

"After the main body falls into the sea, it unfolds an invisible wing-shaped channel along the most common smuggling route between Tripoli and Lampedusa. The triggerer does not need to physically contact the artifact's physical form; they only need to enter the rule's coverage area in a desperate situation."

On the holographic screen, each node of the blueprint logic tree lights up with a green light in sequence, confirming the rule closure.

Jiang Ming glanced at it.

"The first four nails were driven into energy, land, food, and healthcare."

His tone was indifferent, as if he were reading a list.

"The fifth one, nailed into the border."

He paused for a moment.

"It's not about letting everyone go wherever they want, but about ensuring that those who have been driven into the sea by war and famine at least have the right to reach the shore."

[Estimated system consumption: 350 million emotion points.]

"buckle."

The numbers on the panel jumped for a moment, the eleven-digit balance fluctuated slightly before stabilizing again, remaining within a range sufficient to support the next large-scale casting.

[Casting progress bar initiated, estimated time: 38 minutes.]

The air in the room changed at the same moment.

A very faint scent of sea salt seeped in from somewhere, mixed with the cool, salty, and damp atmosphere of the deep ocean.

A thin layer of mist condensed on the outside of the window sill, as if some unseen tide was surging in from the direction of the Mediterranean.

Jiang Ming did not get up, but just turned his head to look at the window.

The water mist shimmered with a faint pearlescent luster in the morning light, slowly trickling down the glass.

He looked away and leaned back on the sofa.

"When the casting is underway, bring up the feedback from Aleppo."

Response No. 2.

"The three videos uploaded by Fatima have accumulated over 1.1 billion views across multiple platforms within six hours."

Jiang Ming raised an eyebrow.

"Including copied, edited, and translated versions in various languages, the data without deduplication has lost its statistical significance."

Number two continues.

"The 40-second clip—the soldier releasing his gun and his wound healing—was shared over 300 million times, becoming the fastest-spreading single piece of content during this period."

"Government reaction?"

"Neither the Syrian government nor the opposition has made a public statement, but a ceasefire has actually been in effect for more than four hours in eastern Aleppo."

Jiang Ming tapped his fingers lightly on the armrest.

"Four hours is long enough."

"The ceasefire reached by frontline commanders via radio marks the longest period of calm in eastern Aleppo in the past fourteen months."

"What about the United Nations?"

"Emergency consultations at the Security Council have been put on the agenda, with French representative Moran citing the previously proposed draft international legal framework for extraordinary phenomena, demanding a restart of discussions."

Jiang Ming nodded without offering any comment.

"Over there in the US."

Number Two's tone remained unchanged.

"By intercepting encrypted internal CIA communications, Patterson labeled the Aleppo attack as the 'fourth nail,' which is exactly what you said before."

Jiang Ming's lips twitched slightly.

"The analysis still points to an unknown manufacturer, with no clues pointing to a specific individual."

"He learns very quickly," Jiang Ming said.

Number Two waited for two seconds.

"Do we need to interfere with the Hunter Project?"

Jiang Ming shook his head.

"No need, let him continue learning."

He picked up the now-cold coffee cup, spun it halfway around, and then put it down again.

"The smarter the student, the better their expression during the exam."

The casting progress bar moved steadily across the panel, the number jumping from 27% to 28%.

The mist outside the window grew thicker and thicker, like the breath of the entire Mediterranean Sea pressing against this glass across thousands of kilometers.

Thirty-eight minutes later, the panel emitted a low notification sound.

Jiang Ming opened his eyes.

A pair of translucent, wing-like objects, about thirty centimeters in wingspan, floated in the center of the beam of light, with flowing light blue patterns along their edges.

Thin as a cicada's wing, so light that its mass is almost imperceptible, yet the flowing blue veins on its surface faintly resemble the contour lines of a nautical chart, each curve moving slowly, like a living nautical chart.

Jiang Ming reached out and lifted him up.

The sensation from my palm was almost imperceptible, only a slight coolness, like the first wisp of mist on the sea in the morning brushing against my skin.

He placed the wings into the space delivery module and imported the coordinates.

"The midpoint of international waters between 12 nautical miles off the coast of Tripoli and Lampedusa Island."

Confirmed on the 2nd.

"The delivery mode is a route extension type. After the main body arrives at the center coordinates, it will automatically expand and cover along the preset route without the need for secondary activation."

[Delivery countdown: 26 minutes.]

Jiang Ming watched as the wings spun half a circle in the pillar of light before disappearing, the blue veins flashing for a final moment.

"This one won't explode as quickly as the previous four."

He turned and walked to the window, putting his hands in his pockets.

"There's no mining area surveillance at sea, no aerial photography of cities, and no 3,000 cell phones in refugee camps. It won't be seen by the whole world in the first second."

Number Two responded quickly.

"But those who survived can speak."

Jiang Ming did not respond.

The sky in Rome was already bright, the outline of the bell tower was sharply defined in the golden morning light, and flocks of pigeons took off from the dome of the church opposite and soared across the azure sky.

He stood by the window, his gaze sweeping across the city skyline, as if looking at some unseen sea.

Five nails.

His voice was very soft.

"Energy, space, food, healthcare, borders."

He tapped his finger five times on the glass.

"Five cracks are wedged into the foundation of the old order from five directions."

"But the foundation hasn't collapsed yet."