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

The sphere stopped.

The transition from rotation to stillness is instantaneous, without even a half-second pause.

two seconds.

Then the sphere projects a beam of light downwards.

Zhou Dazhuang didn't know what kind of technology it was. He had seen screen projections in the county cinema and PPTs in the school's multimedia classroom, but the image that appeared three meters above his head had nothing to do with those things.

A sea appeared before him.

The deep blue sea.

It is so large that you can't see the edge.

The seawater was flowing, the waves were surging, and the sunlight was shining down from above, warm in a way that didn't belong to any season he knew.

There is a fish in the sea.

A huge, crimson-gold fish swam slowly in the deep blue water, surrounded by countless tiny, glowing creatures, layer upon layer, stretching to the horizon.

Zhou Dazhuang's flashlight slipped from his hand, bounced twice on the ground, and he completely forgot to pick it up.

His face was bathed in a golden light.

He stared at the sea for more than ten seconds, his gaze sweeping over the outline of the coastline and the shape of the continent.

"academician."

The sound was squeezed out of his throat, extremely dry.

"The sea looks wrong. The locations of the continents are all wrong; none of them match the world map in my junior high school geography textbook."

He checked it again.

"Academician...this isn't our Earth, is it?"

In the ground command center, Academician Qi's hands were pressed on the edge of the control panel, and the joints of his ten fingers were so tense that they turned white.

Every frame transmitted back by the camera is being written to an encrypted hard drive in real time.

He stared at the ocean on the screen that didn't belong to this planet, at the giant crimson-gold fish, and at the continents that were all out of place.

The notebook turned to a new page.

The tiger tally, a sphere, is a holographic projection, not a Qin Dynasty technology. It depicts ancient marine life forms and closely matches a 0.14 Hz signal source from the deep sea.

He drew three horizontal lines.

High probability hypothesis: The First Emperor was merely a discoverer. He found the legacy of an ancient civilization and attempted to replicate and preserve it.

The tiger tally served as a receipt, further confirming this finding. The upper limit of this system's date far exceeds the Qin Dynasty.

He put down his pen, picked up the encrypted phone, and dialed Chen Jianguo.

After two beeps, the call connected.

"Old Chen, the results for Hollow B are in."

"What was the result?"

"The First Emperor was just someone who picked up things."

There was a four-second silence on the line.

"Old Qi, explain yourself clearly."

"At -93 meters, there's a sphere projecting a holographic image. Oceans, giant crimson-gold fish, and continental structures that don't belong to any of Earth's current geological eras. The inscriptions on the sphere are from the same source as the Tiger Tally, but much older; they're the original. Old Chen, I can't calculate the age of this thing."

"Is it safe over there with Dazhuang?"

"Vital signs are normal, and the images are not aggressive. Let him continue to be observed."

"Don't stop recording."

"clear."

Academician Qi hung up the phone.

On the screen, Zhou Dazhuang was still standing directly below the stone platform, his neck tilted back, with the crimson light shining down from above, pressing his shadow down to his feet.

Then he moved.

"academician."

"exist."

"There is a black crack beneath the sea."

Academician Qi's fingers were resting on the cover of the notebook.

"What kind of crack?"

"Something dark purple was flowing and wriggling along the edge of the crack."

Zhou Dazhuang's voice dropped half a tone.

"I've seen it in the news. In those photos after the Holy Grail War, the debris from the deep sea was this color. Exactly the same."

The brand on his right palm burned intensely, and he pulled his hand back, clenched it into a fist, and pressed it against his chest.

"Academician, that black thing..."

He paused, his throat tightening.

"It didn't just happen during the Holy Grail War. It happened once before, a long, long time ago."

The communication channel was silent.

For more than ten seconds, no one spoke.

The three researchers in the ground command center all turned their attention to Academician Qi.

Academician Qi leaned back in his chair, his back moving away and then back to its original position, the pen in his hand twirling twice between his fingers.

He turned to the last blank page of the notebook and wrote the last line.

The invasions of the Abyss are cyclical. The self-destruction of the Holy Grail is merely the re-opening of reality in this cycle. The ancient civilization has already undergone the previous round of cleansing. This underground facility is a legacy or early warning system left over from the previous cycle.

He closed the laptop and picked up the red phone.

"Old Chen."

"explain."

"The situation is much bigger than we thought. It's not a one-off disaster; it's cyclical."

Academician Qi's voice was so low that it could only be heard at the two ends of the phone.

"The previous civilization was wiped out by this thing."

Inside the red encrypted circuit, only the background noise of the current hummed.

Chen Jianguo's breathing paused for two beats before resuming.

"Besides you and me, who else knows this judgment?"

"There are three people in the command center, plus Dazhuang."

"From this moment forward, all data on Void B is upgraded to Red Star classified documents, and all participants must sign a lifetime confidentiality agreement. I will sign and send the document in twenty minutes."

"receive."

The phone hangs up.

Nine thousand kilometers away, ninety-three meters below the surface of Xianyang, Zhou Dazhuang was still standing in that crimson light.

A holographic image of the ancient ocean enveloped him, with giant fish swimming slowly through the deep blue water.

Something dark purple was still wriggling inside the black crack.

His legs had been weak for a while, but the warmth from the golden ground beneath his feet kept him balanced, preventing him from retreating or falling.

.........

In the oval-shaped analysis room, three stories underground in Langley, Virginia, the lights have been on for fifty-two hours straight.

Gray projected the second round of analysis reports onto the main screen. Collins stood next to the whiteboard, holding a remote control pen, with dark circles under his eyes.

Paterson sat at the end of the long table, with four printouts spread out in front of him, corresponding to the Kolwezi mining area in Congo, the Dakabogra district, the Juba refugee camp in South Sudan, and the eastern district of Aleppo.

"Speak."

Patterson didn't look up; his gaze remained fixed on the last page of the Aleppo printout.

Collins pressed the remote pen, and four coordinate points and a set of energy waveforms appeared on the main screen.

"The latest achievement from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). In-depth energy signature comparison of four activation points is complete."

He walked to the screen and touched the thin line at the bottom of the waveform graph, which was almost touching the baseline, with the tip of his pen.

"The conclusion is that each of the four new weapons generated an extremely weak, directional energy pulse at the moment of activation. The pulse lasted for less than a millionth of a second, and the directions of the four pulses were highly consistent."

Patterson shifted his gaze from the paper to the screen.

"Where does it point?"

Collins zoomed in on the map, and four thin lines radiated from the four coordinate points, converging into a rough fan-shaped area.

"Europe. Central Mediterranean."

Patterson leaned forward two inches.

"How precise?"

"Inaccurate".

Collins marked the boundaries of the fan-shaped region, stretching from Barcelona in the west to Athens in the east, a span of over two thousand kilometers.

"General, this is not a location, not a coordinate, and not a traceable communication signal source. It is closer to a certain direction of backflow left by the four deployments at the conceptual level. Moreover, each time it was severely disrupted by some unknown shielding mechanism, leaving only this fan-shaped area more than two thousand kilometers wide."

Patterson stared at the fan-shaped area for five seconds.

"So you're telling me the target is most likely near the Mediterranean, but you can't tell me exactly which city, which building, or which person."

"Yes, General. With current technology, we cannot pinpoint the exact location. We can't even locate a specific country."

Patterson tapped his fingers three times on the table.

Gray took the remote pen from Collins and switched to the next page.

The screen displays a location map of four events and a behavioral logic analysis framework.