74: Chapter 74 Overstepping Boundaries in Capital Alliances

Shen Du gazed through the floor-to-ceiling windows of his office, overlooking the dazzling nightscape of Shanghai.

He saw the tens of millions of ordinary people swept up in this torrent.

He did not blame these grassroots participants at all, for this was simply human nature.

For the users, who would care if they would be harvested by monopolies in five or ten years?

As long as they could get free meals on food delivery today, or get dirt-cheap prices by "slashing" prices on purchases.

They would uninstall their old apps without hesitation and throw themselves into the arms of the new platform.

For merchants and streamers:

Loyalty was worthless in the face of hard cash.

Whichever side offered more traffic or paid out more cash, they would immediately defect, taking their teams and switching sides overnight.

Capital saw through this shortsightedness and greed, so they didn't need to bother with any complex strategies or tactics.

They only needed to crudely smash a mountain of gold in front of everyone, which was enough to dismantle any moat Shen Du had painstakingly built.

Everyone could only watch helplessly as they became chips, priced and traded by capital in this high-stakes gamble of hundreds of billions.

After a moment of contemplation, Shen Du shifted his gaze away from the suffocating paper projection charts.

He closed his eyes.

In his mind, he reactivated the system's "Geomantic Map" that he had hastily closed and missed out on earlier.

As the pale blue light screen slowly unfolded across his retinas,

The tides of fortune and the flow of capital across the entire Shanghai were presented before his eyes in a god's-eye view.

Sure enough, everything was just as he had expected!

In the north of the Geomantic Map, that massive and murky black fortune representing the top families of the Beijing Circle,

Did not head south directly to engage in a head-on attrition war with Shanghai as they had in the past.

Instead, this thick, black dragon of capital plunged directly east, deep into the depths of the Pacific Ocean!

Shen Du watched the black line coldly as it churned and merged wildly within the financial pools of overseas offshore islands and Wall Street.

After a series of dazzling cross-border operations,

It completely washed away its original traces and donned a dazzling, legitimate cloak of "Overseas Capital."

Following that, this terrifying fortune that had completed its "skin change,"

Under the banner of tax-exempt investment promotion, like countless greedy tentacles,

It crossed the ocean once more and drove itself fiercely into the fundamental internet landscape of Shanghai and the entire nation!

This "skin-changing market crash" strategy—a classic case of crossing the sea in secret and using someone else's hen to lay eggs—was undeniably vicious.

Shen Du slowly shifted his gaze to the core faction panel at the very top of the Geomantic Map.

The changes in the numbers there were the most intuitive and destructive damage brought about by this capital nuclear bomb.

In less than a month!

The "Conservative" faction, which had originally been as stable as Mount Tai and firmly held the dominant position in the domestic economy with a 51% advantage,

Under the carpet bombing of this massive influx of hundreds of billions in overseas capital, it had suffered a shocking, cliff-like collapse.

On the panel, the glaring scarlet numbers flickered constantly before finally locking firmly at 45%!

A full six percentage points of fortune lost!

This meant that the capital families of the Beijing Circle, driven to desperation,

Were willing to "invite the wolf into the house," using a hundred billion dollars to forcefully smash through the nation's inherent commercial fundamentals,

Even shaking the entire market and the once-impenetrable foundation of their power.

Looking at the glaring number locked at 45%, a crisp electronic prompt suddenly sounded in Shen Du's mind without warning:

"Ding! Drastic changes detected in the current Geomantic Map faction ratios."

"Special hidden condition triggered: Host indirectly caused [Faction Tendency Shift] to reach 5%..."

"Calculating rewards..."

Shen Du was slightly stunned.

This hundred billion in overseas capital was clearly something those old fogies in the Beijing Circle had cooked up to crash the market.

He was clearly the victim, so why had he triggered the system's hidden reward instead?

But after a brief moment of shock, a flash of realization ignited in Shen Du's deep eyes!

At that moment, he finally saw through the rogue logic at the very bottom of this system!

So, from the very beginning, this system had never intended for him to be some "savior,"

Nor did it force him to desperately protect any specific faction!

It didn't care if the Conservatives died, nor did it care if the Beijing Circle lived.

It didn't even care which ocean current those hundred billion dollars had crawled out of.

The only core mechanism the system cared about was two words: "Change"!

As long as Shen Du, this reborn butterfly, flapped its wings,

As long as his existence could leverage this stagnant Geomantic Map and cause the power ratios on it to tilt,

Then, regardless of whether this tilt was an expansion in times of prosperity or a forced defense in desperate times,

As long as the market moved because of him, he could extract precious ratio points from it!

"So that's how it is... As long as I can stir up the trends of this world, I am the only dealer who wins it all."

Shen Du laughed softly, his laughter tinged with the arrogance and relief of someone who had seen through the secrets of heaven.

But after the laughter subsided,

When Shen Du stared back at the heavy analysis report of the hundred billion in foreign capital on his desk, his gaze became icy cold once again.

No matter how heaven-defying the system's mechanics were, they couldn't conjure up cash in the short term to bridge the desperate wealth gap in reality.

Faced with the bottomless, terrifying foundation of the northern families who could mobilize hundreds of billions of dollars at a whim,

The five hundred million in cash flow he held in his hands now was as insignificant as a lone boat in a raging storm.

If he were to engage in a bayonet charge or a burning-money contest with these bloodshot capital sharks at this moment, the outcome would definitely be his utter destruction.

"When it comes to foundation, I really can't compete with you old monsters right now.

But in a card game, it's not necessarily the one with the most chips who wins."

Shen Du stood up slowly and walked to the huge floor-to-ceiling window.

The brilliant midsummer neon lights of Shanghai reflected off his young face, which held endless depths of cunning.

In his hand, he actually still held the most unpredictable and destructive ultimate trump card!

That was his disguised identity as the "Young Master of the Shen Family"!

Up until this very moment, all the capital in the world, whether it was the sharks of the Beijing Circle who had been driven to desperation and invited the wolf in,

Or Mr. Ma, Alibaba, or even The Three Young Masters of Shanghai, everyone was deeply convinced:

That he, Shen Du, was the genuine, sole heir to the top Shanghai tycoon family, the Shen Family!

The legitimate Crown Prince of the entire Shanghai capital circle!

In top-tier business games, this irreplaceable credit endorsement and aura of status were often more effective than hard cash.

Since you in the Beijing Circle can collude with overseas capital to launch a "hundred-billion market crash,"

Then why shouldn't I, Shen Du, raise the sky-high banner of the Shen Family?

Use this tiger skin to take all the local forces facing the risk of being harvested, all the big shots struggling to survive in the cracks,

And forcibly bind them all to my, Shen Du's, war chariot?

You have a hundred billion dollars? Then I'll give you an "alliances and strategies" campaign that sweeps across the nation!

Shen Du stared at his cold reflection in the glass window, the corners of his mouth curling into an extremely dangerous and crazy arc.

"So it's the butterfly effect, is it? So the all-star lineup is making an early appearance, is it?"

He ripped off his tie and threw it onto the large leather sofa, his eyes burning with an unprecedented fighting spirit.

"Fine!

Since you've even bet your life savings and want to play for big stakes, then today I'll play along with you... and completely flip the table of this era!"