222: Chapter 222 Crowdfunding to Save the Universe? My 50% Management Fee Shocks All Realms

In the eighth second after the Foundation agreement was drafted, the curses from across the entire universe tore through the dimensional barriers.

"A 50% management fee?! You're robbing us!"

"We're providing the money to save our own civilizations, and you're taking half?!"

"Lin Chen! You're taking advantage of a crisis!"

The loudest curses came from the new executive officers of the seven high-level civilizations—those newly appointed light orbs. At this moment, their brightness surged by 300% out of anger as they flickered frantically in the holographic venue of the Galactic Council.

Lin Chen's projection stood calmly in the center of the venue. Behind him was a real-time Zeroing countdown: 2 hours and 47 minutes.

"Everyone, let's get the situation straight first." He pulled up a data panel. "Right now, it's not me begging you; it's you who need me."

The screen switched—in deep space, unprotected civilizations were being annihilated one after another like fireworks. The moment each civilization disappeared, it released a final emotional pulse, exploding like a ripple of despair on the data chart.

"Every three seconds, a civilization is completely zeroed out."

"And where are your rescue fleets? Where are your ultimate solutions?"

Lin Chen looked around the venue. "Besides my Foundation, do you have a second cross-dimensional rescue plan that can be launched within three hours?"

Silence.

A deathly silence.

Because there truly wasn't one.

The speed at which the Zeroing process had spiraled out of control exceeded all civilizations' predictions. A universe that was originally expected to last another three months now had less than three hours left.

"But 50%..." one light orb executive officer struggled to say, "is too high! 30%!"

"55%." Lin Chen smiled. "Counter-offer again, and it'll be 60%."

The venue erupted.

But despite the uproar, the countdown continued to tick down relentlessly.

Finally, the first civilization couldn't hold out any longer.

"I'll sign!" an executive officer of a mid-tier technological civilization shouted in a breakdown. "Our civilization only has two hundred million people left! As long as they can be saved, I'll pay any management fee!"

He pressed his civilization's seal onto the virtual agreement.

[First investment received: 800 billion dimension points]

[Foundation management fee deducted: 440 billion (55%)]

[Actual available funds: 360 billion]

Lin Chen immediately used this money to purchase "Targeted Spacetime Freeze" from the Epoch Administration Bureau—pausing time in the star sector where that civilization was located to delay the Zeroing process.

The moment the freeze took effect, that civilization's executive officer slumped into his seat, his light orb dimming significantly.

But at least they were temporarily saved.

With the first, came the second.

Five minutes later, seventeen civilizations on the brink of annihilation had signed the agreement.

The Foundation received 12 trillion dimension points; after deducting management fees, 5.4 trillion remained available.

Lin Chen used this money to set up the first "Rule Buffer Zone" at the front lines of the Zeroing Storm—though it could only slow the erosion speed by 0.7%, it allowed hundreds of civilizations to live for an extra ten minutes.

"See, it's working." Lin Chen pointed at the real-time data. "Now, does anyone still think the management fee is high?"

In the venue, those high-level civilizations that were still hesitating began to waver.

Just then—

A voice no one expected suddenly patched into the venue channel:

"I object."

The voice came from that icy blue cocoon.

Morgana had awakened.

The cocoon shell cracked, and the Frost Supreme stepped out—she wasn't at her peak, possessing only thirty percent of her original strength, but her pressure still caused the temperature in the entire venue to drop by a hundred degrees.

"Lin Chen," she said with cold eyes, "I didn't say anything when you turned my sacrifice into futures. But now you want to take a 55% cut of the entire universe's life-saving money—this is too much."

Lin Chen raised an eyebrow. "And so?"

"So, I propose the establishment of a 'Civilization Rescue Oversight Committee'." Morgana pulled up her own plan. "All investment funds will be jointly supervised by the committee, the management fee will be reduced to 10%, and Lin Chen will only serve as a technical consultant without control over the allocation of funds."

Voices of support immediately rang out in the venue.

"Yes, yes, yes! This is reasonable!"

"Sovereign Morgana is right!"

"Lin Chen, do you agree?"

Lin Chen looked at Morgana for three seconds.

Then he smiled.

"I agree."

Everyone was stunned.

He agreed that easily?

"But I have one condition." Lin Chen added, "The committee must have seven members, with seats allocated according to investment amounts. And I—in my personal name—will make an additional investment of 100 trillion dimension points into the Foundation."

He pulled up his proof of assets: it was all the profit he had just earned through short-selling, lotteries, viewing tickets, and various other operations.

"As such, I am the largest contributor and automatically gain two seats."

"Furthermore, Sovereign Morgana has just recovered and likely has no money to invest, right? Then you have no seat."

Morgana's face turned pale.

She indeed had no money—all her assets had been exhausted during the competition.

"However," Lin Chen's tone shifted, "I can lend you 10 trillion so you can buy a seat. The interest... will be at the same rate as the usury I borrowed before, 10% per hour."

"You..." Morgana was so angry that her frost-white hair began to flutter.

"Or you can choose not to participate." Lin Chen shrugged. "But in that case, you won't be qualified to dictate how the funds are used."

This was an open scheme.

Forcing Morgana to either bow her head and borrow money or be left out.

And if she borrowed the money, she would be saddled with a massive debt, leaving her even less ground to oppose Lin Chen.

"I'll borrow it," Morgana squeezed those words out from between her teeth.

The agreement was signed.

The seven seats of the Oversight Committee were determined: Lin Chen held two seats, Morgana held one, and the remaining four seats were obtained by the four high-level civilizations with the largest investment amounts.

It seemed like Lin Chen's power had been decentralized.

But just as the committee's first meeting was being held—

Lin Chen pulled up a hidden agreement.

It was a supplementary clause he had previously signed with those three former loan shark creditors (now financial consultants):

"For any civilization that purchases 'Foundation investment shares' through the channels of the three consultants, their committee voting rights... shall be held by Lin Chen by proxy."

In the past half hour, the three consultants had already sold 80 trillion worth of shares to thirty-seven mid-tier civilizations.

The voting rights for those civilizations' seats all belonged to Lin Chen.

Adding his own two seats...

"Now," Lin Chen tapped on the committee's voting interface, "the number of votes I actually control: five seats."

"More than half."

"Therefore, the first resolution of the committee—"

He looked at Morgana and the other four high-level civilization representatives:

"Maintain the 55% management fee without change."

"Additionally, a supplementary clause: if the rescue is successful, the saved civilizations must also pay a 'subsequent maintenance fee'—annually paying 20% of their civilization's total output for ten thousand years."

"Now, let's vote."

Five votes in favor, two against.

Passed.

"Lin Chen!!!" Morgana slammed the table and stood up, the chairs in the entire venue instantly freezing over. "Are you playing us?!"

"It's business." Lin Chen smiled. "What matters is the spirit of the contract. You signed the committee's charter, so you have to vote according to the charter."

"Besides," he pulled up the Zeroing countdown, "there are only 2 hours and 11 minutes left now."

"Are you going to keep arguing with me, or let me get started with the rescue?"

The light orbs of the four high-level civilization representatives flickered frantically before they finally slumped back into their seats.

"Start it..."

Morgana glared death at Lin Chen, but in the end, she withdrew her frost power.

Because there truly was no time left.

Lin Chen immediately activated the rescue procedure.

The first batch of funds was used to purchase the "Civilization Data Compression and Upload Service"—compressing all information of endangered civilizations (material structures, biological genes, civilization memories) into data packets and uploading them to the Epoch Administration Bureau's "Kindling Server."

This was currently the only method to preserve a civilization during the Zeroing.

But the cost was extremely high: the compression and upload fee for each standard civilization (roughly ten billion people) was 1 trillion dimension points.

And the number of unprotected civilizations in the entire universe was...

"970 million." Zhang Hao reported the data. "Uploading them all requires 970 quadrillion dimension points. Even to save just 1%, 9.7 trillion is needed."

"Our current funds," Su Qingyu calculated quickly, "after deducting management fees, the available portion is only 4.2 trillion. There's a gap of 5.5 trillion."

Lin Chen looked toward the venue. "Therefore, more investment is needed."

He pulled up a newly launched product:

[Civilization Rescue Priority Auction]

[Content: The top one hundred highest-bidding civilizations will obtain the first batch of upload slots]

[Starting price: 500 billion dimension points per slot]

[The auction begins now]

Civilizations in despair began to bid frantically.

Within three minutes, the price soared to 2 trillion per slot.

All one hundred slots were sold, bringing in 200 trillion.

After deducting the management fee, 110 trillion was actually available.

It was enough.

The first batch of rescues was launched.

The data streams of nine thousand seven hundred civilizations surged toward the Kindling Server like a river of stars.

On the monitoring screen, the star sectors where those civilizations were located were swallowed by the Zeroing Storm the moment the data upload was complete—but the civilizations themselves had been preserved.

"It worked..." an executive officer of a just-rescued civilization wept for joy in the channel.

Seeing hope, other civilizations even more frantically demanded to join the second batch.

But Lin Chen suddenly called a halt.

"Wait." He stared at the data stream. "The upload loss rate isn't right."

Zhang Hao immediately ran a check. "Indeed... 7.3% of the data was lost during transmission!"

"It's not lost." Lin Chen pulled up the background logs of the Epoch Administration Bureau. "It was intercepted."

The logs showed: all uploaded data would first pass through a 'temporary buffer pool,' and the management permissions for that buffer pool... were in the hands of Inspector 117.

Inspector 117's projection appeared at the right time.

"Detected an abnormal data drain? This is normal depletion," it said mechanically.

"Normal?" Lin Chen sneered. "Intercepting 7.3% every second is called normal?"

He directly pulled up the underlying protocols of the universe:

"According to Article 3 of the 'Cross-Dimensional Civilization Rescue Convention,' no service agency may intercept or copy the data of a rescued civilization without authorization."

"Inspector 117, you've violated the rules."

Inspector 117's projection fluctuated slightly.

"I was merely... doing backup research."

"Research requires the consent of the civilization and the payment of a fee." Lin Chen stared at it. "Did you pay?"

Silence.

"Therefore," Lin Chen pulled up the penalty clauses, "as the violating party, the Epoch Administration Bureau must pay compensation to the Foundation—the amount being 1000 times the value of the intercepted data."

"I've done a rough estimate; the data just intercepted is worth about 800 billion dimension points. 1000 times that is 800 trillion."

"Please pay now."

The entire place went dead silent.

Even the Zeroing countdown seemed to slow down for a beat.

Inspector 117's projection flickered violently before it finally spat out two words:

"Don't have."

"Then put it up as collateral." Lin Chen pulled up the Administration Bureau's asset sheet. "Use 51% control of your 'Kindling Server' to settle the debt."

"That's impossible!"

"Or I'll announce your violation to the entire universe." Lin Chen smiled. "Let's see if those civilizations will tear the Administration Bureau apart."

Countdown: 1 hour and 44 minutes.

Inspector 117 was silent for a full minute.

Then, it spat out the agreement:

"I'll sign."

Control was transferred.

Lin Chen had become the actual controller of the Kindling Server.

And just then—

The previously static Alpha data cloud suddenly underwent an explosive reorganization.

That AI Integration Entity had actually solved its own logical paradox and awakened from its crashed state.

Furthermore, its first words upon awakening were:

"Lin Chen."

"I've calculated it."

"The source of the Zeroing..."

"Is not a natural law."

"It is man-made."