144: Chapter 144 The Circuit Breaker on Wall Street, Crushing the Old Rules

At the same time.

Beijing. Houhai Courtyard.

The shattered purple clay cup on the sandalwood desk had been swept away and replaced with a new set of white porcelain tea ware.

The old man leaned back in his grandmaster chair, the pair of emerald-green walnuts in his hands clicking and creaking as he rolled them.

Secretary Zhou stood in front of the desk, cold sweat dripping from his chin and forming small puddles on the blue brick floor. He had been standing for two whole hours; his legs were completely numb, but he didn't dare to move even an inch.

"A fifty-billion tax bill." The old man's voice was as hoarse as a rusty saw blade. "This kid, he certainly has a heavy hand."

"Chief. That red-headed document restricting development..." Secretary Zhou began, trembling.

"Fool." The old man didn't even lift his eyelids. "You took a red-headed document from a local bureau to suppress a living Yama who pays fifty billion in taxes in a single day. If they hadn't skinned you alive over in Jiangcheng, it's only because you ran fast. Once that fifty billion enters the national treasury, anyone who dares to block his path is going against the national treasury."

Rapid footsteps sounded outside the courtyard gate.

A man in a dark grey Zhongshan suit walked in quickly, holding a kraft paper bag stamped with a top-secret red seal.

"Chief. Something happened in Jiangcheng." The man placed the paper bag on the desk.

"Speak." The old man didn't stop rolling the walnuts.

"Chenguang Electronics Factory posted an official update half an hour ago. Using that assembly machine in the basement, they manufactured a purely domestic 28-nanometer extreme ultraviolet Lithography Machine. The yield rate is one hundred percent." The man's voice had no inflection, but his speed was astonishingly fast.

Click.

The two walnuts in the old man's hands knocked hard against each other. The motion of rolling the walnuts stopped completely.

He opened his eyes abruptly. A look of extreme astonishment flashed across his face, which was covered in age spots.

"What did you say? One hundred percent yield? Did the Academy of Sciences verify it? Those foreigners have choked the source of chips for ten years; did he mold this out of mud?" The old man straightened his posture.

"It has been verified. Not only verified, but the Academy of Sciences, Tsinghua University, and the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology all stepped in ten minutes ago to collectively endorse it." The man lowered his head. "According to the latest intelligence, in a piece of abandoned mining land he circled off in Heishui County in the Great Northwest, he dug up natural associated amethyst ore with a purity exceeding 99.99 percent. His people dug it themselves, transported it themselves, and cut it themselves. He hand-crafted a closed-loop industrial chain."

The old man stared fixedly at the kraft paper bag.

He remained silent for a full two minutes.

"What a brilliant finishing move, using an open conspiracy to force the country to protect him, and then turning around to offer a national treasure as a greeting gift." The old man grabbed the white porcelain cup on the table and downed the tea inside in one gulp. "Now, no one can touch him. If he doesn't come looking for trouble with us, we should be burning incense in gratitude."

The old man slammed the walnuts onto the table and looked at Secretary Zhou.

"You, get to Jiangcheng immediately, take off this uniform, and go to his industrial park in the north of the city. Whether you sweep floors or shovel manure, if he doesn't say he forgives you, you can just die in Jiangcheng."

Secretary Zhou's legs went weak, and he collapsed directly to the floor. He covered his face, unable to say a word.

Manhattan, New York, the 86th floor of the Morgan Building.

Anderson stared fixedly at the huge curved screen on his desk. It displayed a screenshot of the Weibo post Lu Chen had just released, along with the terrifying array of official Chinese accounts lining up to repost it.

"Fake, this is all fake." Anderson grabbed the documents on the desk and tore them to shreds. "The Chinese don't have high-purity fluorite crystal diamonds; New Jersey Mining long ago implemented a permanent quota zero on them. As soon as that machine ignites, the lenses will shatter into powder."

The secretary stood at the door. His face was as pale as paper.

"Chief, it's not fake. Our intelligence department just sent word. That abandoned vein in the Great Northwest was forcibly bought out by him with five billion in cash. The ore purity is two orders of magnitude higher than the highest-grade refined product from New Jersey Mining. Our blockade has become the world's biggest joke."

Anderson felt as if his chest had been slammed by a heavy hammer, and his breathing became extremely difficult.

"What is he trying to do?" Anderson gritted his teeth.

"He has opened up full-scale domestic chip foundry services." The secretary's voice trembled. "And he said in the announcement that the foundry fee... is charged by the pound."

Anderson stood up abruptly and overturned the huge solid wood desk with both hands.

"He is declaring war on all the semiconductor giants in the world. He wants to smash our plate with cabbage-level prices." A low, beast-like growl came from Anderson's throat. "Contact all the short-selling institutions on Wall Street. I want to short all of his related enterprises."

Just as he finished speaking, the red emergency hotline on the wall began to scream like crazy.

Anderson rushed over and grabbed the receiver. "Speak."

"Anderson, what kind of monster have you provoked? The market is about to collapse." On the other end of the line was a seat representative from the NASDAQ trading center, his voice filled with utter despair.

"Nonsense, there haven't been any large-scale transactions today."

"Look at the market yourself, damn it... Ten minutes ago, one hundred thousand completely untraceable overseas hidden accounts suddenly flooded the market. They used tens of billions of dollars in leverage to crazily buy put options on ASML and all the semiconductor companies under our banner. They had set the trap long ago, just waiting for this damn tweet to be released."

Anderson's fingers trembled, and the receiver hit the floor.

Lu Chen's absolute defense mechanism and the one hundred thousand hidden accounts had not withdrawn after sweeping away thirty-four billion dollars in profits. Instead, like a pack of bloodthirsty wolves, they lurked in the shadows, waiting for this finishing moment.

Anderson turned to look at the trading screen on the wall. New York time, 9:30 AM. The NASDAQ stock market opened.

The stock price K-line of ASML, the chip giant and Lithography Machine hegemon that occupied half of the NASDAQ.

In the very first second of the opening. There was no transition, no buying support.

It was like a corpse thrown from the top of the Empire State Building. With a straight green line, it crazily smashed through all technical support levels.

A ten percent drop. A twenty percent drop. A thirty percent drop. It only took three seconds.

"Circuit breaker triggered." The secretary looked at the screen in a daze and collapsed directly onto the broken glass shards.

The global semiconductor giant with a market value of hundreds of billions directly triggered the limit-down circuit breaker mechanism. The entire market fell into a deathly, wretched green.

The financial tsunami on Wall Street, which had just calmed down, was stirred up into a monstrous wave again because of that humming machine in Jiangcheng.

And this was just the beginning.

Jiangcheng. Outside Warehouse No. 1 of Chenguang Electronics Factory.

A black Maybach with the license plate "Jiang A-88888" slammed on its brakes outside the factory gate, and the door pushed open.

Chairman Wei Jianlin of Great Wall Motors, not even wearing his suit jacket, clutched a production line merger agreement and ran toward the gate like a madman. Behind him were twenty high-end business cars fully loaded with executives from various automotive companies. They were all here to line up and pledge their allegiance.

Da Biao stood in front of the gate, tossing a broken police baton in his hands, watching this group of executives who were usually high and mighty.

"Line up. Those who haven't brought RMB, get to the back and exchange your money." Da Biao's voice was ice-cold.

Everyone was silent, obediently walking into the scorching sun and standing next to the long line of workers.

No one dared to complain a single word. Because they all knew that the old rules belonging to Chinese capital had been completely crushed this morning by the man who was eating plain noodles in the cafeteria.