141: Chapter 142 An Insurmountable Billion-Dollar Black Hole! Wall Street and the Capital Mount Tai of Exiled Clans

Stopping his unconscious movements, Shen Du temporarily pushed aside the complex capital chain deductions in his mind.

He composed himself, looked toward the locked door, and called out in a casual tone: "Come in."

The lock made a slight "click" sound, and the heavy mahogany door was slowly pushed open.

Shen Du leaned back in his office chair, looking toward the doorway with a calm gaze.

The person who walked in was not General Manager Chen Shengqiang, who had left and returned, nor was it Lin Zimo, who stayed deep in the basement server room.

The newcomer's footsteps were steady, carrying a certain specific rhythm.

Qin Tiankuo, dressed in crisp casual clothes, closed the door behind him.

Seeing Qin Tiankuo's furrowed, unsmiling face, a clear flash of alertness flickered deep in Shen Du's eyes.

The Qin Family was the vanguard force sent down from the Beijing Circle to Shanghai back in the day.

Although after experiencing several reshuffles of interests, they chose to deeply bind themselves with local Shanghai forces for self-preservation.

Yet their informants and intelligence networks left in the North were still firmly entrenched in the most core strata.

At this critical juncture, the fact that Qin Tiankuo had rarely restrained his playful, second-generation heir tone and appeared here with a grave expression meant that some kind of irreversible major earthquake must have occurred in the capital landscape of the North.

Shen Du did not show any impatience, nor did he speak to sternly question him.

He stood up from his large office chair. Walking around the mahogany desk, he gestured toward the leather sofa in the guest area: "Brother Tiankuo, sit."

Shen Du walked to the tea station and took out a set of clean celadon tea sets. His fingertips steadily scooped in a little green tea, and he lifted the kettle to pour in boiling water.

The pale green tea leaves rose and fell in the boiling water, emitting a faint, bitter, herbaceous fragrance.

He steadily pushed a cup of tea at the perfect temperature in front of Qin Tiankuo. Then, he sat down on the single sofa opposite him, his tone steady:

"After the previous rounds of maneuvering, the Qin Family can be said to be sailing smoothly in Shanghai now. For Brother Tiankuo to run over to my place early in the morning without even a heads-up, it must be that something capable of overturning the table has happened over in the North."

In the past, even if the Qin Family came to deliver intelligence, no matter how much, they would always cut off a piece of fat from Shen Du's hands as a bargaining chip. But this time, Qin Tiankuo did not mention any compensation, and didn't even mention Yonglu, where they usually went.

He picked up the slightly hot celadon teacup with both hands, lowered his head, and took a small sip, swallowing the slightly bitter tea down his throat.

He placed the teacup heavily on the glass coffee table, making a crisp clinking sound. Only then did he raise his eyes, which were slightly bloodshot from exhaustion, and stared directly at Shen Du: "Young Master Shen, once this cup of tea is finished, what follows might not be so easy to swallow."

Qin Tiankuo's voice was very low, carrying a hint of hoarseness and undisguised palpitations: "This time, my old man in Kyoto used one of the most core 'deadlines' from back in the day. He forcibly held back the news for half an hour before it passed the gate, and had me come personally to deliver the message."

"The situation... is on a completely different magnitude than the pure money-burning business wars you had with them before."

"Last time, during the Shanghai business war, you directly drained five hundred million US dollars in cash flow from those few Beijing Circle companies. The hole left by this money was too big; the actions taken to balance the books couldn't be hidden from the higher-ups at all."

Qin Tiankuo leaned forward slightly, resting his elbows on his knees, his fingers tightly clasped together: "The national leadership used the opportunity of investigating this abnormal capital flow to follow the vine and pluck the melon. Over the past few months, they have directly severed several intricate protective umbrella lines behind the Beijing Circle."

Shen Du sat on the single sofa opposite, listening quietly, his deep eyes not rippling with the slightest wave.

He knew very well that once the intensity of a financial business war aroused the vigilance of the state apparatus, what followed would inevitably be a ruthless bottom-up purge.

"That bunch of Northern families have been deeply entrenched in Kyoto for decades; the last thing they lack is this kind of political instinct for having multiple boltholes."

Qin Tiankuo took a deep breath, his chest rising and falling slightly. Then he reported a number that would make any top venture capital firm tremble on the spot:

"Facing the high pressure of anti-corruption and liquidation that uprooted them, several of the most core aristocratic clans, in order to protect themselves, cut off their domestic physical industries at any cost within an extremely short period. Through the most secretive underground banks and offshore financial channels, they frantically transferred over five billion US dollars in massive assets overseas."

Five billion US dollars. At this point in time in 2012, this terrifying sum, which converts to over thirty billion RMB, was enough to buy up more than half of the domestic mobile internet track that had just started.

"Having completely lost their domestic foundation, these people are equivalent to withered trees with their roots severed. But their offshore accounts are piled high with blood-sucking real gold and silver."

Qin Tiankuo stared straight at Shen Du's cold, hard face, his voice so low it sounded like it could scrape ice: "They can do nothing against the state apparatus; they don't even have the qualification to protest. Therefore, this bunch of desperate outlaws have pinned the blood debt of having their foundations raided and being exiled overseas entirely on you and the Shen Family."

Qin Tiankuo extended his index finger and tapped heavily on the glass coffee table in front of him: "This time, taking advantage of the policy opening just relaxed by the state for foreign investment access, this batch of 'ghost capital' that fled overseas has perfectly donned the compliant vest of foreign investment and made a comeback as a matter of course."

"Mr. Shen, their acquisition of the equity of those three competing products by throwing money around is not for commercial profit at all." Qin Tiankuo's tone revealed a deep sense of dread: "They are holding a true determination to die together. They are prepared to use this five-billion-dollar cash flow to crush Jiyuan Technology to death on domestic soil."

Hearing "five billion US dollars," this number carrying a strong scent of blood, Shen Du sat on the sofa, his expression still maintaining that machine-like dead silence and cold hardness. But his brain, already like an ultra-high-frequency quantitative server, instantly pulled up a cold balance sheet, conducting a soulless bottom-layer calculation.

Five billion US dollars in pure cash reserves—if all converted into US dollar subsidies for the sinking market, this completely exceeded the physical limits of conventional commercial competition.

Shen Du quickly took stock of the chips in his hand. He did have the backing of the national level, holding ten billion US dollars in special strategic funds approved by the authorities. Once this money was thrown into the internet market, it would be enough to instantly grind any opponent into powder.

But he knew better than anyone that the nature of this money was special funds for the nation's heavy equipment. Five billion of it had already been locked tightly overseas, used to order core magnetic confinement foundry equipment. One billion was allocated to Li Jianfeng's heavy industry laboratory for trial and error in precision engineering technology. Another one billion had already been given to Hong Yun to start sweeping up various skyrocketing opportunities in the future. The remaining three billion was the "life-saving money" Shen Du had reserved for the research and development of domestic chip architecture.

For these ten billion US dollars, every single cent had to be thrown into hardware infrastructure. If he dared to cross the red line, misappropriating even a single cent to fight such a bottomless traffic subsidy war in the internet sector, the Beijing Circle wouldn't need to lift a finger. The reverse liquidation from the national level would directly wipe him and Jiyuan Technology off the face of the earth.

Since the state-owned capital bottom line could never be touched, he could only rely on local capital to resist head-on. In his mind, Shen Du quickly called up the current cash flow status of local Shanghai capital. In the last strangulation war against the Beijing Circle, the major aristocratic clans in Shanghai had also been severely injured and were currently in a recovery period. Even if he drained all the liquid capital that could be mobilized in Shanghai right now, the maximum amount of ammunition he could scrape together would be no more than a billion or so US dollars.

His side's billion-plus, going head-to-head against the opponent's solid five billion in offshore US dollars—no matter how superb the leverage techniques Shen Du used to pry the market, in the face of such a desperate book gap of over three billion US dollars, any financial trick would be ruthlessly crushed by the absolute quality of the capital.

At this moment, Shen Du's capital chain deduction completely fell into a deadlock that could not be filled in a mathematical sense.

Qin Tiankuo, sitting opposite, slowly put down the celadon teacup in his hand. "Click." The crisp sound of the cup bottom colliding with the glass coffee table interrupted Shen Du's deduction.

Qin Tiankuo raised his head and coldly added the most fatal blow: "Mr. Shen, if you think those five billion US dollars are their limit, then you are underestimating the greed of those vampires on Wall Street."

Qin Tiankuo's voice revealed a desperate sense of oppression: "This time, the opponent is not just those Northern families who fled. The terrifying ability of Jiyuan Technology and Meituan to suck up money in the sinking market had long ago aroused the covetousness of overseas capital. Taking advantage of this excellent opportunity of the policy opening for foreign investment access, top venture capital institutions on Wall Street have directly entered the field to co-invest."

"They didn't hesitate to add an equivalent amount of real gold and silver, forcibly inflating the Beijing Circle's five-billion-dollar revenge principal by another fold!"

Pure international giants from Wall Street, the overseas Beijing Circle fleeing with blood debts, plus the remaining Beijing Circle agents cooperating domestically—three massive capital forces completed a flawless, bottom-layer merger at this node.

A cross-border subsidy capital pool of over ten billion US dollars was no longer just floating data on a financial statement. Instead, it had transformed into a Mount Tai of raw iron, cast from pure US dollars, hanging brutally directly above the domestic mobile internet track.

Shen Du held the cup of warm tea, his hand, originally prepared to bring it to his lips, froze rigidly in mid-air.

In the face of a capital volume exceeding ten billion US dollars, any advanced business model, exquisite financial leverage, and trading technique had been completely stripped of their room for operation.

This was a financial black hole that could not be filled in terms of mathematical logic.

Shen Du did not speak, nor did he show any emotion of anger. He just maintained the action of holding the tea, his gaze lowered, quietly looking at the few green tea leaves standing upright in the celadon cup. He let the large president's office fall into a heart-palpitating, even suffocating, dead silence.