19: Chapter 19 Locks in the Trillion-Dollar Demon King "Zheng Mian"

This facade he had donned to complete his primitive accumulation had, after today's empty-fort strategy, been firmly welded onto him.

From this moment on, in this territory of Shanghai, anyone who wanted to move against him would first have to weigh the depth of the "overseas capital" behind him.

Meanwhile, at the other end of the tree-lined path, silence continued to spread.

"Hoo..." Gao Yang took a sharp, deep breath. His entire body collapsed, his tense shoulders sagging as if he were completely drained.

As the cold early winter wind blew, he realized that his back, pressed against his hoodie, was already soaked with cold sweat. He turned his head in uncertainty and looked at Young Master Han behind him.

His voice trembled with a fear he hadn't even noticed himself: "Young Master Han, what exactly is this guy's background?"

"Just a moment ago, I... damn it, I didn't even have the guts to make a move..."

"Clack." A crisp sound interrupted Gao Yang. One of the century-old lion-head walnuts that Young Master Han never let go of—polished to a high, glossy sheen—slipped from his stiff fingers and hit the bluestone path, rolling into a pile of damp fallen leaves.

But Young Master Han didn't immediately bend down to pick it up. He stood as if nailed to the spot.

Behind his gold-rimmed glasses, that veneer of refinement had vanished. He stared fixedly in the direction where Shen Du had disappeared.

There was little anger at having lost face in his eyes; instead, they were intertwined with fear and a touch of excitement.

Shen Du thought he was leveraging the power of "overseas capital." But to Young Master Han, all of this became the arrogance and confidence that only a top-tier local political family would dare to possess. In his mind, Young Master Han quickly completed a logically consistent deduction.

He slowly crouched down, picked up the walnut stained with mud from the dead leaves, and wiped away the dirt with slightly trembling fingertips. His tone carried an irrepressible tremor: "Gao Yang, put away that temper you have back in the capital."

"If you had dared to make a move just now, even if you'd only brushed against the hem of his clothes, I guarantee that neither of us would have walked out of this university gate today."

Young Master Han stood up straight again. He gripped the two walnuts tightly in his palm, forcibly suppressing the trembling of his fingertips. He pushed up his gold-rimmed glasses and twitched the corner of his mouth: "I thought I was just wading into a small puddle in the business circle, but I didn't expect to run into a local true dragon lurking in deep water."

"Let's go, back to re-evaluate the situation in Shanghai."

"This muddy water... is getting more and more interesting."

"Click." With a soft sound, Shen Du pushed open the dormitory door. The room was empty; his roommates hadn't returned. He locked the door behind him.

The invisible force he had been forcing himself to maintain on his shoulders and back dissipated. He took off the high-end custom coat he had used to keep up appearances, tossed it onto the back of a chair, and collapsed onto his bed.

Only then did the exhaustion he had been forcibly suppressing outside seep up from his very bones. Shen Du tilted his head back and exhaled a long breath.

Performing an empty-fort strategy was far more mentally draining than fighting with real money on an actual trading floor.

He fished his phone out of his pocket and opened his text messages. The light from the screen shone on his face, reflecting a string of numbers in his pupils: "Balance: 231,235.00 Yuan."

Shen Du stared at these numbers. Ten minutes ago, on the tree-lined path, he was the "capital young master" who didn't need to look at people directly and had frightened off the people from the Han family of the capital.

But now, stripping away this "facade" stitched together with information asymmetry, his true colors were just those of a grassroots nobody whose funds were always stretched thin.

This contrast made Shen Du pull the corner of his mouth in self-mockery. Two hundred thirty thousand. In the eyes of an ordinary student, it was a huge sum. But in this vanity fair of Shanghai, it wasn't even enough to qualify as an admission ticket for the elite.

Shen Du locked the screen. Deep within his retinas, the system panel appeared.

[Main Rise Quest Two: Iron-Blooded CEO.]

[Assist Meituan to emerge from the carnage of the Thousand-Group War and become the industry hegemon!]

[Phase Goal: Use this achievement to completely suppress the peer second-generation heirs within Huahai University of Finance and Economics and become an unshakable 'Shanghai Tycoon'!]

[Failure Penalty: Debt of 30 million USD.]

Shen Du stared at that last line of penalty text, his eye twitching imperceptibly. Thirty million, USD. Shen Du knew all too well what this number meant in 2010.

In his past life, he had managed trading for capital giants, handling funds in the hundreds of billions. But he himself definitely couldn't fill a hole this big. Even with a debt of one million RMB, he could still turn things around in the stock market. But to be saddled with a dead debt of 30 million USD out of thin air was enough to doom him in this timeline.

The key to breaking the deadlock lay in the four words "Shanghai Tycoon." A so-called tycoon must not only have the prestige to command a scene but also possess a massive cash flow capable of prying open class barriers at any time.

He was indeed the largest shareholder of Meituan now. But this money-guzzling beast was still a long way from the end of the Thousand-Group War and the arrival of the profit-sharing period. Distant water cannot quench a near thirst.

As for Red Phoenix, subduing a big sister of the gray industry was shocking enough in the eyes of ordinary people. But in the deep sea of Shanghai, where old-money families gathered, it wouldn't even stir up a big wave. To truly gain a foothold in Shanghai, without enough money to squander, everything was just empty talk.

Shen Du raised his hand and rubbed his temples. Today on the tree-lined path, relying on the system's background, he had indeed bluffed the people from the capital without drawing a sword.

But it was like scattering blood-scented bait into the deep waters of Shanghai. Young Master Han and his group were, at best, cannon fodder led out by others to clear the way.

As the name "Young Master Shen" fermented, more and more people would watch him, and sooner or later, it would alarm the behemoths native to Shanghai.

Until now, Shen Du hadn't even touched the top-tier circles of Shanghai. He knew better than anyone that probes within the circles of the powerful came in wave after wave.

If he didn't have the hard cash to maintain this facade, relying solely on a cold face and the empty-fort strategy wouldn't last long. Once it was discovered that he was a grassroots nobody with an empty exterior, what awaited him would be to be swallowed alive.

To gain a firm foothold in Shanghai, Shen Du needed enough hard currency in his hands—enough to pry open the capital plates of the upper class at any time.

Relying on the current two hundred thirty thousand to tinker with real industry or just waiting for Meituan to grow was completely too slow in terms of time.

Shen Du gripped his phone tightly, his knuckles turning pale. He had originally thought he could play it steady, but the current situation clearly wouldn't allow him to develop slowly.

Since real industry was too slow, he could only walk the old path again. Returning to the meat grinder he was most familiar with in his past life: the financial capital market.

The exhaustion gradually faded from Shen Du's eyes. He didn't need to polish a century-old enterprise now; what he most urgently needed was "fast money."

It was the massive cash flow that could roll out a sky-high scale in the shortest possible time, used to smash all doubts.

As long as he had enough money to survive the early stages and play out this empty-fort strategy to the end, once the Thousand-Group War concluded and Meituan expanded into an unassailable commercial empire, whether he, Shen Du, was truly a "young master" with a real background would no longer matter at all.

As long as he eventually stood at the peak, there would naturally be people jumping out, scrambling to fabricate lies about his past background for him.

Shen Du closed his eyes and leaned his body against the wall. In this quiet dormitory, the floodgates of memory deep in his brain opened.

The K-line charts and data reports of the 2010 global financial market from his past life flooded back into his mind like a storm.

"2010... stocks... futures..." Shen Du muttered to himself.

Ordinary stock price fluctuation limits were too rigid, and the cycles too long; they couldn't satisfy his appetite now. What he needed was high leverage, large fluctuations, a meat grinder that could create myths overnight.

Suddenly, Shen Du opened his eyes in the darkness. The threads of the era intersected deep in his memory: "The key node of the Federal Reserve brewing QE2..."

And, in the history of domestic futures, the absolute demon king that created countless rooftop jumps and rags-to-riches myths: "zhengzhou cotton futures."

Shen Du lowered his head, his gaze falling back onto his phone screen. He looked at the meager two hundred thirty thousand balance in his online banking.

Two hundred thirty thousand—in the eyes of Shanghai's elite, it couldn't even make a splash. But for Shen Du, this money was already enough to become the first lever to pry apart the elite circles of Shanghai.