It was the eighth night since Mediva disappeared, and there was still no sign of that raven. The Imperial Soldiers racing across the globe had given up searching for the bird days ago and turned their attention to dealing with all the problems it had left behind. Over the past few days, they had unearthed swords and blades in Europe, calmed primitive tribes in Africa that had been frightened by the "Raven God," repaired mountain peaks in the Andes Mountains, treated penguins in the Antarctic Circle for shadow contamination, and even provided psychological counseling to several middle-aged women: on the second day after Mediva disappeared, it had swept over Henan, where a few women returning home after late-night mahjong had seen the giant Raven God gliding through the sky. They thought it might have something to do with the end of the world...
So I felt the Imperial Soldiers had spent a very fulfilling vacation: working as unpaid social workers for Earth. And to some extent, they had even slightly changed human society: system discs could now be bought for five yuan apiece in parts of London, with payment settled in euros...
As for Mediva, I had also discovered something interesting. Based on estimates, that bird had stopped its activities on Earth six days ago. Since then, the energy hotspots it had left around the planet had slowly cooled and calmed, and the effects it left behind should have faded as well. Yet the opposite had happened. Some things that had come into contact with it were still changing over time, such as several ancient swords and blades recovered from Europe, as well as two tribal totems found in Africa. The latter were believed to have once served as Mediva's perches. They had originally been wood, but were now harder