192: Chapter 193 Shen Hai's Bottom Line Warning! Swallowing the Red Line of 800 Billion in One Bite

"Click."

The call connected. The office was deathly silent, with only the faint sound of electrical current audible.

Three full seconds passed.

Only then did Secretary Shen Hai's voice come through the receiver—unhurried, yet carrying an overwhelming sense of oppression.

"Shen Du, do you know what you are doing right now?"

No pleasantries, no probing.

Secretary Shen Hai's tone was like a Damocles' sword hanging over his head, carrying the heavy pressure of someone at the pinnacle of power.

Shen Du leaned back in his leather chair, his deep eyes still churning with butcher-like, frenzied killing intent.

But when he spoke, his tone was tightly controlled, leaking not a single flaw, even revealing a perfectly measured hint of "helplessness."

"Secretary Shen, you are wronging me here."

Shen Du looked at the shocking trading data on the big screen, but his tone was as calm as stagnant water:

"Someone is relying on their deep pockets to maliciously short the Hong Kong Stock Market, trying to buy the bottom of Jiyuan Entertainment. I can't just stand by and watch the industry I worked so hard to build be looted by others, can I? I am merely conducting legitimate commercial self-defense."

"Legitimate self-defense?"

On the other end of the line, Secretary Shen Hai let out an almost imperceptible cold snort.

In truth, Secretary Shen Hai did not make this top-secret call because he truly wanted Shen Du to spit out the fat meat he had already eaten.

The capital market is, by nature, a dark forest where the weak are prey to the strong.

If Shen Du had the ability to trap and kill Wall Street's giant crocodiles in the Hong Kong Stock Market, the higher-ups would even be happy to see it happen from a certain strategic perspective.

However, the scale of this financial meat grinder was simply too large, too bloody!

Within just a few days, hundreds of billions in massive funds were crazily hacking at each other on the trading board.

This was no longer an ordinary business war, but a nuclear explosion capable of triggering a localized financial tsunami!

The crushing defeat of Wall Street capital had already caused diplomatic protest calls from across the ocean to reach the very top levels of the country;

And those dozen or so top families domestically, who were being pushed to the brink of liquidation and bankruptcy by Shen Du, were like ants on a hot pan, exhausting all the political resources and connections accumulated over generations, crying out in despair to the high-level officials in Yanjing and applying pressure everywhere.

The violent backlash from various factions had pushed the nature of this matter to the edge of being out of control.

As a representative of official supervision, even if Secretary Shen Hai admired Shen Du's methods, he had to personally intervene at this juncture where systemic risks could be triggered at any moment.

This call was a warning, but more importantly, it represented the state's will in controlling the bottom line.

"Don't try to fob me off with 'legitimate self-defense.' Do you really think that man-eating, bone-chewing method of yours can be hidden from the eyes of the higher-ups?"

Secretary Shen Hai's voice turned completely cold, and an irresistible majesty pierced through the receiver and struck Shen Du's eardrums.

A silence of over ten seconds fell over the phone.

The pressure this ten-second silence brought to Shen Du even exceeded the frantic cross-trading of those hundreds of billions on the board.

"Shen Du, I don't care if you eat the flesh of foreign capital; I won't stop you from strangling the funds of the various domestic families either."

When Secretary Shen Hai's voice sounded again, the previous anger was gone, replaced by a cold, rational, high-level scrutiny:

"But you must understand the political and economic logic of the higher-ups. In this world, not every 'whale fall' can bring about 'the flourishing of all things.'"

A crack finally appeared in the composure on Shen Du's face.

He sat up slightly, his eyes becoming unfathomably deep.

"If you use this short squeeze to completely break the foundations of these domestic families with one blow, do you think they will just obediently fade away?"

Secretary Shen Hai's tone was extremely stern, every word piercing the heart: "They absolutely will not! Before they die, they will only swing their knives downward!"

"To fill the hole you poked for them in the Hong Kong Stock Market, they will crazily squeeze countless bottom-level employees, default on payments to suppliers, and cut off countless upstream and downstream physical industrial chains! When the time comes, thousands of people will be unemployed, triggering a major bottom-level economic upheaval—who will pick up the pieces? Will you, Shen Du, pick them up?!"

Secretary Shen Hai's rapid-fire questioning hit Shen Du's heart like a heavy hammer, forcefully pressing his original 'uprooting' city-slaughtering plan into mid-air.

But this was not the most fatal part.

"Don't think you've acted cleanly overseas."

Secretary Shen Hai suddenly changed the subject, directly exposing the trump card Shen Du thought he had hidden flawlessly.

With chillingly precise data, he completely stripped away Shen Du's disguise.

"A dozen domestic families have invested a total of 450 billion RMB. Your Shanghai Merchants, The Eight Giants, have poured in nearly 300 billion."

Secretary Shen Hai's voice carried a terrifying control that understood everything:

"And the extra 400 to 500 billion currently on the board, the bottomless pit of funds used to fill all the loopholes... they all flowed from your offshore US dollar accounts!"

Shen Du's pupils contracted, and the knuckles holding the phone turned white instantly.

The tens of billions of US dollars he was proud of, which had laid dormant for over a year before being washed into the Hong Kong Stock Market through countless gray channels, were as transparent as glass before this massive state intelligence machine, calculated down to the last cent!

"I won't pursue how much money you've made overseas in the last few years or what methods you used."

Secretary Shen Hai didn't give Shen Du any chance to catch his breath or argue, drawing an insurmountable official red line with extreme dominance:

"I will only remind you of one thing. Swallowing a fund pool of over 800 billion in one go is already the limit. It's time to stop!"

Facing this insurmountable red line drawn by Secretary Shen Hai, Shen Du took a deep breath.

He was an absolute genius, and even more so, an extreme egoist.

He knew very well that since the authorities had tacitly allowed him to swallow this massive fund pool of 800 billion without directly closing the market, it was already the state machine's greatest tolerance and concession toward him.

Taking one more step forward, he would not be facing a business game, but the crushing weight of state power.

"Understood."

Shen Du put away all the churning violence on his body, his voice returning to a calm like an ancient well.

It even revealed a perfectly measured hint of awe and obedience toward power:

"Since Secretary Shen has said so, I will no longer push them to their deaths. Rest assured, I will close the net now."

Without any superfluous words, Secretary Shen Hai hung up the phone on the other end.

The moment the "click" of the dial tone fell, the hint of "obedience" in Shen Du's eyes faded away like the tide.

Only a cruelty that chilled the bones remained.

Secretary Shen Hai told him to "stop," but he didn't tell him to spit out the meat he had already eaten.

In Shen Du's dictionary, the meaning of "closing the net" had never been to show mercy, but to directly drop the executioner's guillotine!

He immediately picked up the encrypted phone on the table, and without any hesitation, quickly edited a text message and sent it to Hong Yun.

The text message was only eight characters long, yet it exuded an aura of slaughter like a mountain of corpses and a sea of blood:

"Full funds enter, finish it immediately!"