234: Chapter 235 The Thunderous Purge After the Move to the Top of the Table! Su Chi's Despair: He Donned the National Fortune Bulletproof Vest

In Shanghai, inside a soundproof study deep within the Shen Family's ancestral mansion, only the rhythmic metallic ticking of a rosewood grandfather clock remained.

Before an aged torreya wood chessboard, etched with nineteen vertical and horizontal lines.

Elder Shen's withered index and middle fingers held a cold black stone, hovering steadily in mid-air.

His eyelids, slightly drooping with age, were half-closed, his gaze as deep as an ancient well that had not seen the sun for years.

This sudden, unprovoked act of overturning the table was not because of the tearful pleas of his own family members.

Nor was it because of the noisy public opinion outside on the internet, which was as dispensable as grass, ready to be deleted or altered at any moment.

It was because the absolute red line of power had been trampled upon without any scruples.

Back then, to avoid the secret and heavy suspicion from the central leadership.

Elder Shen, despite intense backlash from within the family, had forcibly pulled his eldest son, Shen Che, who held great power, out of the Shanghai Military Region.

And thrown him straight into Beijing to take over the central bank.

Voluntarily handing over the most powerful leverage to show humility—this was the concession the Shen Family had made to the top leadership back then.

The Shen Family had conceded this much, lying so low that their very breathing could barely be heard.

Yet this group of old political enemies, who thought themselves deeply entrenched locally, had mistaken this strategic forbearance for a weakness that could be bullied.

They dared to stab them in the back right under the Shen Family's nose at a critical moment when international sanctions were looming.

The withered fingers hovering in mid-air finally moved.

"Snap."

With a sudden force from his fingertips, that black stone, like a cold bullet, slammed heavily onto the "Tianyuan" position on the chessboard.

The impact caused the surrounding white stones to emit a faint friction sound.

The rules were simple and cold.

If he couldn't completely crush these insects that dared to secretly extend their claws into meat paste right in front of his own door today.

Then when the sun rose tomorrow.

All the powerful figures across China watching this game would truly believe that the Shen Family, that tiger which once guarded a territory, had completely lost all its teeth.

In the quiet study.

"Bzzzz—"

At the innermost corner of the mahogany desk, the dedicated line—which had no dial and was encased in a thickened, anti-eavesdropping metal shell—suddenly emitted a dull, buzzing vibration.

Elder Shen did not reach out to answer it immediately.

He picked up the cup of tea by his side that had long since gone cold, and took a slow, unhurried sip.

Using the act of swallowing to suppress a bit of turbid energy in his throat, he then leisurely picked up the heavy metal receiver.

The voice on the other end of the line, routed through multiple encrypted channels, carried a slight sense of electrical distortion.

The caller's tone was extremely fast, carrying an unquestionable seriousness and urgency.

Without any hypocritical pleasantries, they cut straight to the core request:

Hoping that the Shen Family could, to the greatest extent possible, suppress the scope of the impending purge.

The reasoning behind this was cold and realistic.

Right now, the super cooperation agreement for China-Europe semiconductors had just broken the ice.

It was the most critical window of opportunity to completely break through the United States' technological barriers and undertake a hundred-billion-level industrial chain.

If at this critical juncture, the political and business circles in Shanghai experienced a large-scale shock and reshuffle, leading to a vacuum or even a standstill in the operations of multiple core departments, then this massive project, which concerned the national destiny, would face the fatal risk of having no one to lead it, or even being forced to be delayed.

Quietly listening to the "big picture" card the other party had revealed to him, Elder Shen's drooping eyelids didn't even lift by a single millimeter.

"I can give you this face and suppress the impact." Elder Shen spoke into the receiver, his voice hoarse, yet carrying a toughness that left absolutely no room for negotiation:

"But this time, as long as anyone at the department-bureau level or above has reached out and touched this matter, none of them will get away. As for the underlings who just take orders, as long as they don't stir up trouble in the future, I can pretend they don't exist."

This was already his bottom line for concession.

The other end of the metal receiver fell into a suffocating three seconds of silence.

In that brief silence, both sides, through invisible radio waves, quickly weighed the interests and risks.

"Fine." The voice on the other end did not waste another word: "I will go find personnel now to prepare for the replacement and handover."

With a soft "click," the communication was cleanly cut off, leaving only a cold busy signal in the receiver.

As the call ended, the clock hand quietly slid past midnight.

Shanghai under the cover of night.

The brilliant neon lights of the bustling commercial district were still flickering tirelessly.

But in those unknown, dark corners of the city, the air had already been completely frozen by an oppressive, murderous aura.

"Boom—Boom—"

Dozens to hundreds of heavy anti-riot police vehicles, all painted pitch black and without any markings, emerged like a pack of silent beasts released from their chains, filing out simultaneously from several extremely secret garrison gates in the suburbs.

These steel behemoths all extinguished their glaring sirens, keeping only their cold low-beam headlights on.

In a heart-stopping, orderly tactical formation, they silently cut into the bloodstream of this super city.

The massive convoy quickly diverted on the main roads.

In less than twenty minutes, the glaring beams of the headlights precisely intertwined, completing the blockade of several key highway exits, core sections of the Old City District, and even the VIP special channels of the international airport, all at the same time.

There were no ear-piercing warnings, nor any time-consuming communication or maneuvering.

Outside a detached villa with strict security in a top-tier wealthy district of Shanghai.

"Bang!!!"

A tactical battering ram weighing dozens of kilograms, carrying huge kinetic energy, instantly smashed that solid carved wooden door, worth hundreds of thousands, along with its frame, into pieces.

Several fully armed tactical police officers burst into the room like black lightning.

On the expensive imported velvet mattress in the master bedroom.

That old political enemy, who usually wielded great influence in the open and thought he could stab the Shen Family in the back and still retreat unscathed, had just been awakened from his sleep by the huge explosion, his pupils contracting violently.

He didn't even have time to see the pitch-black gun barrels in front of the bed.

Cold, bone-chilling steel handcuffs had already been roughly used to pin his arms behind his back.

With a "click," they locked tightly into his flesh, dragging him forcibly out of his warm bed.

The entire core circle of Shanghai, on this night, encountered a silent thunder that left them unable to even make a distress call.

The next morning.

Inside the Second Ring Road of Beijing, in an old courtyard house with heavy, deep-hidden gates.

The morning mist had not yet completely dispersed, and the air held the dry cold peculiar to the north.

Young Master Su Chi, wearing a dark silk bathrobe, sat at the mahogany dining table in the main room.

He picked up the blue and white porcelain bowl in front of him.

He slurped a mouthful of the piping hot, thick mung bean milk along the edge of the bowl, his Adam's apple bobbing up and down with the swallowing motion.

Two meters away from the dining table.

On a Sony television screen with an aging cathode-ray tube, the morning news was broadcasting on time.

"Last night, Shanghai launched a thunderous operation, taking away more than ten relevant high-level personnel in accordance with the law overnight. According to preliminary disclosures from relevant departments, the amount involved is as high as tens of billions..."

On the screen, the news anchor's clear and articulate voice echoed in the spacious main room.

These few light words, coupled with the fleeting image of the escort convoy—which hadn't even turned on its police lights—were like a bombshell, declaring to the entire high-level circle a bloody reshuffle of the political situation in Shanghai.

Young Master Su Chi put down the half-eaten fried dough ring in his hand and pulled out a tissue to wipe the corners of his mouth casually.

Looking at the list of names scrolling on the TV screen, he gave a cold laugh, unsurprised, and shook his head.

"Shen Du dared to enter the game himself this time to tear through the United States' blockade line; even I wouldn't dare to touch his bad luck at this critical moment."

Young Master Su Chi crumpled the tissue into a ball and threw it casually on the table:

"You bunch of local offshoots who can't even get onto the core stage, daring to take advantage of the chaos to touch that tiger's backside—you really deserve it."

This was not about bullying based on power, but the survival rules of the top tier.

In this circle, whether it was Beijing or Shanghai.

Any clever person with a bit of status knew clearly the bottom line of that Elder Shen of the Shen Family.

As long as you followed the rules, even if you used every capital means in the business world to bankrupt the Shen Family and force them to jump off a building.

Elder Shen wouldn't even lift an eyelid.

He would only consider his own descendants incompetent and deserving of being chewed up and swallowed by others.

But if you dared to break the rules and use dirty, low-level means within the system to carry out personal persecution.

Then this morning news on the TV screen, which involved a capital network of tens of billions and directly uprooted more than a dozen families at the department-bureau level or above, was the bloodiest demonstration of the consequences.

Young Master Su Chi reached out and picked up the TV remote from the corner of the table.

With a crisp "snap," the old cathode-ray tube screen instantly turned pitch black, and the news anchor's voice in the main room was abruptly cut off.

The entire space fell back into an oppressive, deathly silence.

Outside the window, a thick layer of grey clouds was accumulating over Beijing.

The northern cold wind swirled with a few withered leaves under the bare, century-old locust tree in the courtyard, pressing the originally bright morning light into a gloomy dimness.

Young Master Su Chi did not look away.

He stared quietly at the grey sky in the courtyard.

Deep in his eyes, that long-held sense of condescending control was, for the first time, eroded by a trace of extremely realistic powerlessness.

He knew too well to what height this move by Shen Du had reached.

Using his own freedom to stand up against the United States' transnational interrogation was by no means a hot-headed dispute of pride.

Shen Du had used this high-stakes gamble to forcibly smash through the West's technological blockade.

From the very second that China-Europe cooperation agreement was made public in Munich, Jiyuan Technology was no longer just a private enterprise at the mercy of capital.

That hundred-billion-level semiconductor industrial chain was a genuine technological nuclear weapon concerning the nation's future for decades to come.

Shen Du hadn't just won; he had personally donned a bulletproof vest of national destiny that no powerful figure could penetrate.

Young Master Su Chi leaned back slowly, resting his heavy body against the back of the yellow rosewood master's chair.

His right thumb instinctively curled, unconsciously rubbing the cold, bone-chilling old-pit jade ring on his left thumb.

His rough fingertips rubbed back and forth on the smooth surface, emitting a faint sound.

"This semiconductor path..." Young Master Su Chi half-closed his eyelids, looking at the gloomy sky above, and squeezed out a dry, airy sound from deep in his throat:

"Now, even if I were to stake the entire Su Family, I wouldn't be able to move a single hair of his."