177: Chapter 178 A Balance of Mutual Understanding!

The cold, white, early summer dawn light filtered through the wooden lattice windows of the west wing.

Shen Du stood before the mottled tiled sink, turned on the brass faucet, and cupped a handful of cold water, splashing it heavily onto his face.

The bone-chilling cold pierced through his pores and straight into his nerves, forcefully stripping away the last vestiges of drowsiness from the previous night.

He raised his head, looking at the face in the mirror—drenched in water droplets, cold and hard, devoid of any unnecessary emotion.

After a night of high-intensity computational restructuring, his brain, which rivaled a supercomputer, had completely swallowed and digested this blood relationship that could trigger a massive earthquake in the domestic political and business circles.

The Shen Family gate would have to be acknowledged sooner or later; that was an iron rule carved into his genes.

But that was absolutely not now.

At this critical juncture, before Jiyuan Technology had completely welded shut the moat of the Cold Etching Machine, this trump card must not be easily revealed.

Casually grabbing a stiff cotton towel to wipe off the water, Shen Du pushed open the door and walked into the main room.

The kitchen was already filled with the faint, smoky scent of porridge cooking over firewood.

Wang Hanmei was placing two dishes of homemade pickled vegetables onto the old Eight Immortals table.

Hearing the steady footsteps on the wooden floor, her movements paused slightly.

Looking at her son's high-end suit, now wrinkled from sleeping in his clothes, and the bloodshot eyes he was trying hard to suppress, the toughness belonging to a woman of a prominent family that Wang Hanmei had displayed last night was completely shattered, leaving only deep hesitation and guilt.

"Du'er..."

Wang Hanmei wiped her hands nervously on her coarse apron, her voice raspy from a night of torment: "Don't blame the Shen Family. For these twenty years, it has been Mom who was too willful."

Watching the steam rising from the porridge on the table, the muscles at the corners of her eyes twitched slightly, her tone full of repressed self-denial: "If I had been willing to lower my head back then and admit my mistake to your grandfather... you would have been living a secure and comfortable life in the compound, and wouldn't have had to go out and risk your life alone."

Shen Du pulled out the weathered long wooden stool; the mortise-and-tenon structure let out a dull creak.

He sat down, not reaching for the bamboo chopsticks, but instead crossing his hands on the edge of the mottled tabletop.

Facing the almost overflowing regret in his mother's eyes, his gaze was calm, without a ripple.

"Mom, you're overthinking it."

Shen Du's voice was steady, his tone like cutting through a valuation report in a board meeting: "Struggling at the bottom—that's what's called risking your life. But what I'm holding in my hands right now is the cash flow lifeline of the entire domestic internet industry. This is called setting the rules."

He knew all too well what the four words "Shanghai Shen Family" truly weighed on this land.

That was not some corrupt amateur troupe relying on approval slips, land grabbing, and power rent-seeking to make a living.

That was the indispensable foundation stone capable of truly suppressing China's economic base.

Such a top-tier family held a near-obsessive regard for their reputation.

The internal rules and treaties were an iron barrier that ordinary people could absolutely never touch.

"If you had really lowered your head back then and brought me back to that high-walled compound..."

Shen Du's eyelids drooped slightly, his extremely rational deductive logic interlocking rapidly in his pupils: "With the old man's strict bottom line of demanding absolute neutrality and not getting involved in any commercial cause-and-effect, I would at most only be able to be pressed into the system for the rest of my life, or go do a few designated projects with guaranteed returns."

He raised his eyes, his gaze piercing through the rising white mist in the kitchen like a scalpel.

"Under those strict rules, how do you think they could have allowed a direct descendant of the Shen Family to spend these past two years in Shanghai, doing whatever it took to smash the market and short stocks, using bloody tactics to uproot those foreign capital and local conglomerates?"

The corners of Shen Du's mouth pulled into a rare, cold arc: "It was precisely your 'willfulness' back then that cut through those red tape and constraints, leaving me a vacuum where I could grow wildly outside the rules."

Shen Du reached out with his bony hand and picked up the bamboo chopsticks, which had been washed until they were slightly white.

He naturally picked up a chopstick of mustard greens pickled in coarse salt and placed it into the steaming bowl of white porridge in front of him.

"So, I spent the whole night thoroughly seeing through this game."

He didn't use his chopsticks immediately, but instead looked at the soy-sauce color gradually spreading at the bottom of the bowl, his tone revealing an extreme rationality like that of a well-matched opponent: "The encrypted phone Secretary Shen Hai gave me, and the 10 billion in non-audited funds from Shen Che—those are the trump cards they gave me. But they opened the door wide, yet never sent anyone to poke through that last layer of window paper. It's not because the threshold of a big family is high..."

Shen Du raised his eyes, his gaze meeting Wang Hanmei's sharply: "They are building a firewall to isolate politics."

Wang Hanmei was slightly stunned, her hand holding the porcelain bowl suspended in mid-air.

"These years, the Shen Family has indeed opened a small gap, allowing some peripheral descendants to go out and do some 'designated' business. But in the open or in the dark, not a single person the Shen Family has let out in these years has made even the slightest mistake."

Shen Du's mind quickly flashed through the survival rules of those top-tier red-capitalist merchants in the country, his voice lowered: "Because that old man watches too closely. His bottom line is an insurmountable iron gate. Everyone doing things outside under the Shen Family banner must be clean; they must absolutely not leave any handle for political enemies."

He sneered, as if dissecting an exploitation case that had nothing to do with him: "But look at what I've done in Shanghai. Savage acquisitions, smashing the market, shorting, using the bloodiest tactics to rub foreign capital into the ground. This isn't some law-abiding 'designated business' at all; this is frantically grabbing food from the bowls of countless local tyrants."

Shen Du put down his chopsticks, his bottomless eyes flashing with a chilling cold light.

"As long as I haven't officially stepped into that high-walled compound, no matter how big the waves I stir up in this sea of commerce, it remains limited to the category of commercial slaughter. But once I officially acknowledge the family lineage and am labeled with the official tag of 'Shen Family direct descendant'..."

His fingers tapped heavily on the rough tabletop, emitting a dull warning sound: "Every one of my commercial expansions over the past two years, which left no retreat, would instantly change in nature. I would be directly dragged into the dangerous high-level political struggle, becoming the sharpest knife for political enemies to tear at the Shen Family."

"So, acknowledging the family lineage is a matter of time, but it absolutely cannot be now."

Shen Du picked up the bowl of white porridge and took a slow sip: "In this game, I must maintain this subtle balance with them—where we both know, but absolutely never spell it out."

Wang Hanmei didn't speak, just stared fixedly at her son.

She really didn't understand the internet, nor did she understand financial valuations. But having been immersed in that center of power since childhood, her sense of smell and sensitivity to the high-level political ecosystem were far beyond that of ordinary people.

Shen Du put down the coarse porcelain bowl and held up two bony fingers, thoroughly dissecting the most fatal bottom-line logic: "Mom, you might not have an accurate concept of the current scale of Jiyuan Technology. First, the 'Magnetic Confinement Cold Etching Technology' I hold in my hands is not only the company's moat, but also a heart-level piece of heavy equipment that the entire national semiconductor industry is currently extremely desperate for."

"Second..."

Shen Du's gaze suddenly turned cold, his voice striking a suffocating weight in the quiet main room: "Jiyuan Technology currently has a net profit of two billion every month on its books."

Wang Hanmei's hand holding the bowl trembled violently, and a few drops of warm rice soup splashed onto the mottled wooden table.

Even though she had been mentally prepared, when the raw number of 'two billion a month' was dropped, the devastating scale of wealth still made this woman from a prominent family feel a strong sense of dizziness.

"One month, two billion in real money, net profit."

Shen Du had no emotional fluctuations, just coldly stating the fact: "If I were just a pure businessman without any official background, no matter how huge my scale expanded, as long as I didn't break the law, the authorities would protect me at all costs for the sake of this Cold Etching Machine and the overall situation of tax revenue and employment. No one could easily touch me."

His finger tapped heavily on the table, each word like a knife: "But once I acknowledge the lineage and am forcibly labeled with the 'Shen Family' tag, this terrifying monthly cash flow of two billion, and this Cold Etching Machine that is choking the industry's throat, would overnight become the most dazzling and fatal political soft underbelly of the Shen Family!"

Shen Du leaned back in his chair, his eyes as deep as a bottomless cold pool: "By that time, all the political enemies who have been staring at the Shen Family, waiting to tear into them, would pounce like sharks smelling blood. They would take magnifying glasses and put every single one of my company's accounts, every technology acquisition, and even every word I've signed, on the fire to be frantically roasted. This target is too big—so big that even that old man might not be able to protect it without paying a price."

After hearing this analysis of the cruel political and commercial risks that laid bare all the trump cards, Wang Hanmei fell into a long silence.

The main room was very quiet. Only the unburnt firewood deep in the stove occasionally made a slight cracking sound.

A long while later, her tense shoulders finally relaxed.

This woman from a prominent family who had endured in the countryside for twenty years felt the last trace of hesitation and unease in her eyes vanish completely in front of Shen Du's airtight, rigorous logic.

She nodded.

"Although I don't fully understand the ins and outs of your business," Wang Hanmei looked at her son, who now possessed complete capability, her tone filled with a sense of thorough relief: "But as long as they know your identity in their hearts, that's enough."

She placed her hands back on the table and made a final judgment: "Separated by this layer of window paper that hasn't been poked through, when it really comes down to a life-or-death juncture, no matter what it is, they will absolutely not stand idly by."

Between mother and son, a consensus was reached at this Eight Immortals table.

After letting go of her worries, Wang Hanmei pushed the empty coarse porcelain bowl to the side.

"As for what you said at the beginning about picking me up and moving to Shanghai to live..."

She shook her head, her gaze fixed on the familiar soil outside the door that she had been looking at for twenty years: "Mom doesn't want to go yet."

"The circle outside is too complicated. Even if I go, I won't be able to help you with anything. For now, I just want to stay here quietly."

Shen Du didn't continue to persuade her; he decisively put down the bamboo chopsticks in his hand.

Two lifetimes of struggling allowed him to know better than anyone that comfort imposed on others is meaningless; only on a foundation one absolutely controls can true security be established.

"Alright."

Shen Du nodded, without any hesitation: "Since you like it here, then stay here."

"The funds and engineering team I brought back this time are on standby in the town. Next, I will have people come in directly to flatten and redo the layout of the entire village. No matter how much it costs, I will build this place into something decent."