89: Chapter 90: Thirty Million US Dollars Evaporate in a Sky! A Double Crush by Official Strikes and Traffic Flow Leaves the Invader with Nothing.

In late June, the air in Shanghai was already thick with the stifling, oppressive humidity of the plum rain season.

But for the Northern Capital entrenched in this city, this humidity had turned into a bone-chilling winter.

Less than ten days had passed!

Less than ten days since Shen Du signed the secret order for a "Public Opinion Blitzkrieg" on that sheet of A4 paper in the Jiyuan Technology CEO's office.

Less than ten days.

The entire climate of Shanghai had been completely overturned by an invisible, terrifying force.

If the overwhelming exposure on the Xinghuo Short Video platform only lit the fuse of public anger, then it was the thunderous intervention of the authorities that truly completed this "strike"!

The major law enforcement agencies in Shanghai had secretly sensed a strong signal of an approaching storm.

Overnight, they launched an unprecedented joint law enforcement operation with swift and decisive action.

"Precision demolition, carpet-style strict inspections!"

Targeting the three core sectors of construction safety, food hygiene, and the legality of labor contracts, the official joint raid teams descended like mercury, striking every corner of the physical industrial strongholds that the Northern Capital had painstakingly built up in the Yangtze River Delta.

Under the precise exposure from Xinghuo's massive traffic pool and the pressure of public opinion, the official actions and internet discourse formed a perfect "lethal combo squeeze."

Within just ten days.

The entire Northern Capital camp was in total despair, with no room to even resist:

Over thousands of chain restaurants controlled or funded by the Northern Capital were caught red-handed due to issues like hidden sanitary hazards in kitchens and safety concerns.

They were immediately sealed off and ordered to suspend business indefinitely for rectification!

Hundreds of enterprises and companies disguised as foreign investors were traced and severely penalized with maximum fines for issues like non-compliant labor contracts and illegal wage deductions!

The most tragic was the capital-intensive real estate sector.

Dozens of large-scale construction sites in core areas were directly slapped with glaring seal notices and ordered to stop work for rectification after concrete evidence of "cutting corners" on balcony edges and other areas was exposed!

Since this bloodless war of public opinion officially began.

The entire Shen Family and the Shanghai Business Alliance following Shen Du seemed as if they had been injected with adrenaline, completely bloodthirsty.

In this life-or-death capital purge, they displayed a near-bestial, ruthless hand.

There was no room for any negotiation; they would rather kill an innocent person than let a single fish slip through the net!

Any industry associated with the Beijing Circle, even with the slightest suspicion of financial dealings, was ruthlessly dragged into this terrifying ten-day storm and suffered devastating blows.

However.

If it were just suspension for rectification, the wealthy Northern Capital might have been able to grit their teeth and endure it.

But in the battle of the business world, the most fatal thing is often not the sharp slash from the front.

It is the "soft knife cutting meat"—a seemingly painless method that drains a person of their last drop of blood before they even realize it!

Being sealed off and forced to stop work did not mean costs stopped.

On the contrary, this was precisely the beginning of a terrifying bloodletting for the entire capital camp.

Whether it was the servers in the chain restaurants sent back to their dorms, or the construction crews trapped in the tin sheds at the building sites.

As long as they remained on the company payroll, even if they didn't do a single day's work.

The massive labor costs acted like a giant black hole, crazily devouring the cash flow on the books every day!

This is the most cruel fatal weakness of physical industries: if you don't operate, you have no income.

But if you don't pay wages, the people leave immediately!

At this critical juncture where all sides are fighting for their base.

Once the bottom-level workers and technical backbone leave en masse because of unpaid wages, these shell companies disguised as foreign investors would truly become worthless husks.

By then, no matter how much capital is forcibly injected later, without people, the entire industrial ecosystem simply cannot function.

To stabilize morale.

To retain this bottom-level workforce that could defect at any moment, the operators of the Northern Capital had no choice.

They had to bite the bullet, facing net losses of tens of thousands every day, and distribute real money as if it were tap water.

Even without a single cent of income, they had to struggle to pay wages and severance packages into everyone's accounts on time!

This desperate consumption, with only outflows and no inflows, was enough to drive any rational financial officer insane.

And the result was tragic.

Just these ten days, which felt like a nightmare!

The thirty million US dollars of the vanguard force that the Beijing Circle had ambitiously poured in through overseas channels to test the depth of Shanghai... hadn't even had time to make a decent splash on the Huangpu River before it was completely evaporated by the daily consumption, massive fines, and the flowing wage payments of these thousands of paralyzed enterprises through this "soft knife cutting meat" attrition!

They lost everything, not even leaving a scrap behind!

When this bloody battle report traveled thousands of miles back to the Beijing Circle's headquarters in the north.

Young Master Su Chi of the Beijing Circle was staring fixedly at the loss report on his desk that had completely gone off the charts.

He was so enraged that he froze like a statue in his large executive chair, the veins on the back of his hands bulging one by one.

A total defeat!

This was simply an incomprehensible, total defeat!

According to the Beijing Circle think tank's original perfect script.

After this thirty-million-dollar vanguard force was thrown in, the capital chains of Meituan and Jiyuan Technology should have long since snapped.

Once they collapsed, the Tencent faction and Douyin could logically move south to occupy the entire internet market share of the Yangtze River Delta.

Finally, by leveraging the public opinion hegemony of Short Video, they would slowly disintegrate the last remaining physical industries of the Shanghai Merchants.

This was a tightly locked, lethal trap.

But the reality now was: not only had Meituan, JD.com, and Xinghuo not fallen.

They had stood as firm as a copper wall and iron bastion during the first wave of impact.

They had even countered with a violent public opinion war, wiping out the Beijing Circle's physical industries in Shanghai without leaving a single piece of armor behind!

And what made Su Chi's back chill even more was another top-secret hedging data report just handed over by the intelligence department.

"One hundred and fifty million... US dollars?"

Su Chi's gaze locked onto those cold numbers, and the corners of his eyes twitched violently and uncontrollably.

Intelligence showed that in the face of the Beijing Circle's thirty-million-dollar attack, the Shanghai Merchants camp led by Shen Du didn't choose to defend or test the waters in batches at all.

Instead, with a crazy posture bordering on mutual destruction, they had dumped a full 150 million US dollars into the market in one go!

What kind of concept was this?

This was five times the volume of the Beijing Circle's vanguard force!

It directly formed an absolute coverage of capital firepower!

You have to realize, this is 2011!

With the aftershocks of the global financial crisis not yet fully dissipated, and capital all over the world tightening their belts to survive in dire straits, they brought out a pure cash flow equivalent to over a billion RMB just to hear a bang in this newly started war of attrition?!

Su Chi's mind was buzzing.

He suddenly raised his head, the usual demeanor of a Young Master who held everything in his grasp completely gone.

The first sentence that blurted out was filled with an unbelievable absurdity and shock:

"Dumping 1.5 billion in cash flow in one go? Are these miserly Shanghai Merchants... are they f***ing crazy?!"

After a long, dead silence, the shock on Su Chi's face finally twisted into exasperated rage.

He stood up abruptly from his executive chair, pacing back and forth in the office like a trapped beast driven into a desperate corner.

Years of elite top-tier education made him try to force down the panic in his heart.

He turned his head abruptly, staring intensely at the Old Butler who had been standing in front of the desk with his head bowed.

"Are the people in the legal department just eating rice for nothing?! Are the people above just watching them mess around like this?!"

Su Chi slammed both hands heavily on the desk, roaring hysterically as if grabbing onto the last straw.

"These Shanghai Merchants are hiring internet trolls, inciting emotions online, and spreading massive rumors to smear our Northern enterprises—this is illegal! They should be held criminally responsible! Immediately have the legal department send lawyer letters across the entire Yangtze River Delta to sue them! Go seal those accounts that are steering the narrative, and get Shen Du and General Manager Chen Shengqiang thrown in jail for me!"

Facing this almost irrational roar from the Young Master.

The Old Butler, who had been immersed in the business world for decades, only closed his eyes in pain.

He hesitated for a long time, wanting to say something but stopping.

In the end, he could only let out a sigh filled with powerlessness, personally shattering the last shred of fantasy in Su Chi's heart:

"Young Master... it's useless. The legal department has already consulted with relevant departments and top lawyers. There's simply no case to be filed."