182: Chapter 183 Feigning Weakness to Lure Short Sellers and Lock Up Market Shares! The Bloodiest Short Squeeze in Hong Kong Stock Market History

The air in the private room seemed to freeze for a split second due to the final remark Shen Du threw out: "Harvesting foreign capital."

"Harvest foreign capital from the stock market?"

Zhou Zhenghai pushed up the gold-rimmed glasses on the bridge of his nose. The ambition that had just been ignited was now replaced by intense doubt.

He leaned forward involuntarily, his brows furrowed into a deep frown: "How is that possible?"

Wu Tianheng, Zhu Qingshan, and the others present also exchanged glances, their eyes filled with shock and suspicion.

As old foxes who had been struggling and climbing in the capital market for half their lives, they knew all too well how deep the waters in that domain were.

"Mr. Shen, it's not that I'm boosting others' morale."

Zhou Zhenghai's voice was very low, revealing a sense of apprehension toward unfamiliar territory: "On that capital stage in Hong Kong, foreign capital not only holds massive amounts of chips, but they also set the underlying financial rules.

"To this day, none of the domestic companies that have gone over to ring the bell have ever truly managed to get any benefits from the hands of foreign capital!"

Facing this query from Zhou Zhenghai, which carried significant realistic weight, Shen Du showed no anger at being offended.

He leaned back into the broad backrest of the main seat. His slender fingers gripped the thin stem of his wine glass, gently swirling it with rhythmic precision.

The crimson wine swirled against the crystal glass walls, refracting a cold, hard light.

"Uncle Zhou is right. An average person going there naturally has no way to pick the pockets of foreign capital; they can only be treated as fat sheep pressed onto the chopping board to be bled dry."

Shen Du stopped swirling his wine glass. His deep gaze pierced through the air, coldly meeting Zhou Zhenghai's eyes, and a curve of extreme confidence tugged at the corner of his mouth: "But the opponent they have encountered this time, happens to be me."

He gently placed the wine glass onto the smooth marble tabletop, creating a crisp clinking sound, and directly threw out the springboard for this epic strangulation: "I will perform a foundational architectural split of the original Jiyuan Technology. I plan to take the split-off 'Jiyuan Entertainment' to Hong Kong to ring the bell and go public next year!"

Shen Du raised one finger, directly throwing out the first step of this transnational strangulation: "This first step is called feigning weakness to cast bait, an extreme short-selling lure."

His gaze shifted from Zhou Zhenghai's face to survey the tycoons present, his voice as cold and hard as a poison-quenched blade: "When Jiyuan Entertainment goes public in Hong Kong, that publicly released prospectus will be the first piece of bloody bait we cast to Wall Street."

"In this document, we will conduct compliant 'concealment.' We will thoroughly hide the true R&D progress of the Cold Etching Machine and the top-tier architecture in the Zhangjiang Semiconductor Park. We will package this business exactly as it is into a high-risk, money-burning, and short-term hopeless financial black hole!"

Upon hearing the four words "financial black hole," Chen Mingyuan, who was in charge of e-commerce, had a sudden flash in his eyes, as if he had grasped a certain vicious operational logic.

Shen Du noticed his reaction, a cold smile tugged at the corner of his mouth, and he continued to up the ante: "It's not just me who needs to feign weakness. Next, I need your cooperation. We need to release rumors through media and underground channels, hinting that you traditional tycoons present here are experiencing tight capital chains in your respective main businesses because of blind investment in this bottomless pit of semiconductors."

Shen Du clasped his hands together, resting them against his chin, aggressively outlining the facade in the eyes of foreign capital: "We need to create a realistic illusion for foreign capital. This so-called Nine-Person Hundred-Billion Alliance is nothing more than a makeshift, cobbled-together group whose capital chains are about to break. Jiyuan Entertainment's upcoming Hong Kong IPO is not for development, but to raise money to save its own life!"

The breathing in the private room gradually calmed down, a physiological reaction to extreme focus.

"Capital is bloodthirsty." Shen Du hammered down the conclusion, enunciating every word: "As long as they smell this scent of weakness and blood, those overseas institutions that started by short-selling, such as Muddy Waters, Citron, and those greedy hedge funds on Wall Street, will absolutely not let go of this fat meat delivered to their mouths. They will definitely borrow Jiyuan Entertainment's stock in large quantities, preparing to smash the market on the first day of listing, attempting to make a killing by shorting us."

After this deduction, which fit the logic of financial predation, was thrown out, one could hear a pin drop in the private room. Wu Tianheng, Li Jianfeng, and the others were frantically deducing the feasibility in their minds.

Reasonably and logically, this trap, tailor-made to exploit the arrogance and greed of foreign capital, had no flaws in its logic. No one expressed any opinion. This group of oligarchs, whose mere stamp of the foot could cause an earthquake in the business world, were like extremely focused hunters at this moment, quietly lurking in the night. Holding their breath, they waited for Shen Du to throw out the next hunting order.

Seeing that everyone tacitly maintained silence, Shen Du did not pause and directly raised his second finger. "Step two: Secretly crossing the border, breaking the whole into parts!"

Shen Du's gaze became deep, his tone revealing a coldness about to stir up a storm in the dark web of capital: "If the hundreds of billions of funds in your hands were to be thrown into the Hong Kong Stock Market openly, even if only one-tenth were used, it would absolutely trigger the highest-level red alert from the Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission and foreign institutions instantly. Therefore, this massive amount of funds must be completely invisible."

He turned his head, his gaze sweeping over Wu Tianheng and Fu Zhaonan, who were extremely seasoned in overseas capital operations. "I want to use the deepest and most secretive underground channels and overseas contacts in your hands. In an extremely short period of time, in tax havens like the Cayman Islands and the BVI, quickly register hundreds or thousands of offshore shell companies that cannot be traced to any connection in their equity structures."

Shen Du's hands suddenly split apart in mid-air, making an extremely forceful tearing motion: "Then, completely break up this huge amount of capital we have prepared! Disguise it as the most inconspicuous retail hot money in the market, and as the most ordinary foreign institutions. Following those secretive cross-border channels, like capillaries, silently and fully infiltrate the seats of dozens of large and small brokerage firms in Hong Kong."

Shen Du lowered his voice slightly, like a demolition expert deploying a devastating minefield in enemy territory: "I want to make this money, enough to flip the entire Hong Kong Stock Market, become an absolute dark web under the very noses of those Wall Street tycoons that they can neither see nor touch."

Hearing such surgical-level precise and secretive capital deployment methods, none of the hundred-billion tycoons in the private room interrupted. Wu Tianheng put down the cigar in his hand, Zhou Zhenghai nodded slightly, and a flash of extremely intense appreciation flickered in Qin Zhengye's eyes. They were all top-tier masters of manipulating capital and naturally recognized this high-level lurking technique. Without any extra suggestions or nonsense, everyone sat quietly in their places.

Seeing that this group of old foxes in the private room had eyes flashing with extreme approval and bloodthirst, Shen Du raised his third finger without hesitation. "Step three: Closing the door to beat the dog, extreme market locking!"

Shen Du's voice dropped suddenly, carrying a chilling, murderous aura: "On the first day of listing, those foreign investors stimulated into excitement by our prospectus and false news will inevitably borrow massive amounts of chips. They will throw out massive short orders as soon as the market opens, attempting to create a bloody stampede panic and forcibly smash our stock price below the issue price!"

"In the face of this market smashing, we will superficially do nothing." Shen Du leaned back against the chair, looking coldly into the void, as if he had already seen the tragic market scene on the day of listing: "Let them smash! Let the retail investors in the market panic and sell off, letting foreign capital think that Jiyuan Entertainment's market has truly completely collapsed!"

All the big shots held their breath, listening to this near-suicidal tactic. Shen Du's body leaned forward suddenly, his hands pressing heavily on the table: "But! When the stock price falls through the bottom, when foreign capital thinks they are about to achieve a complete victory and begins to frantically add leverage to short sell... our offshore shell groups lurking in various brokerage firms will instantly activate!"

"However many chips foreign capital throws out, our dark positions will open their bloody maws and eat up that many chips! And we will absolutely not pull up the stock price by a single cent, only doing covert bottom support. It's like a huge sponge, sucking up the bloody chips in the market completely!"

Shen Du's eyes revealed an extreme cruelty, the cold-bloodedness unique to capital traders: "Keep sucking, suck until those short sellers on Wall Street have sold short all the stocks they can borrow on the market. At that time, they will discover one fatal thing with horror—"

He paused, his highly oppressive gaze sweeping over every tycoon present: "More than ninety percent of the Jiyuan Entertainment stocks circulating in the market have already been tightly locked by our nine offshore base positions! In the entire Hong Kong Stock Market, they will never be able to buy even a single circulating share!"

The air pressure in the private room seemed to drop by a dozen degrees in an instant. This barbaric, bloody market control made the breathing of this group of business tycoons become heavy. They knew all too well what it meant for those foreign investors holding massive short orders if the circulating shares were completely locked—it meant an irredeemable hell.

Shen Du watched this group of completely shocked old foxes. He slowly withdrew his hand, leaned back, and a cold smile of absolute control tugged at the corner of his mouth. "As for this next fourth step..." Shen Du picked up the water glass in front of him and took a calm sip: "I don't need to say it, you all know what to do, right?"

The eight people present were all top-tier predators who had struggled and climbed out of the capital meat grinder. There was no need for Shen Du to poke through that layer of window paper. In their minds, they had already automatically completed the bloody slaughter scene of the fourth step.

When foreign capital held massive short orders that must be closed, but could not buy even a single circulating share on the market, Shen Du only needed to directly throw out the epoch-making, nuclear-bomb-level good news of "Cold Etching Machine breakthroughs physical blockade" at this critical juncture. Jiyuan Entertainment's stock price would absolutely explode on the spot, and it was possible for it to skyrocket by several hundred percent within a day!

By then, the Wall Street tycoons facing the crisis of forced liquidation and bankruptcy would only be able to kneel on the ground like fat pigs waiting to be slaughtered, buying back the chips they had originally thrown out at the "sky-high price" set by the Nine-Person Alliance. This was a textbook-level, unsolvable, epic short squeeze!

Just as the temperature in the entire private room soared to its peak because of this perfectly deduced harvesting game, "Wait." Zhou Zhenghai's voice abruptly cut into this excitement. He frowned slightly. The eyes behind his lenses were not blinded by the impending windfall, but revealed a sharp clarity and confusion.

The gazes of Wu Tianheng, Li Jianfeng, and others instantly turned to him. Zhou Zhenghai stared fixedly at Shen Du in the main seat, sharply grasping the anomaly underlying this perfect logic: "Mr. Shen, according to your deduction, from feigning weakness to lure short-sellers, lurking with dark positions, to extreme market locking, the entire plan can be said to be seamless and very smooth."

He crossed his hands, leaned forward slightly, and directly threw out that soul-touching core question: "But if that's the case, then where exactly is the real difficulty of this battle? Those people on Wall Street may be greedy, but they are definitely not fools that we can manipulate at will."

Facing this poignant, direct hit from Zhou Zhenghai, Shen Du had no anger at being questioned; instead, a flash of extremely intense appreciation flickered in his eyes. He put down the water glass in his hand and met Zhou Zhenghai's gaze. He also swept across the surrounding hundred-billion oligarchs who had also realized the situation and whose expressions had become grave again. Shen Du smiled. Under the glaring lights of the private room, the corners of his mouth turned up slightly, pulling out a cold, unfathomable, and even slightly crazed curve. "The difficulty, of course, is..."