226: Chapter 226 Everything is a Stock Price! I'll Even Short-Sell Your Doomsday

In the 19th minute after the collapse of the Golden Kingdom, the distress calls from the Auric Devourer shareholder blasted straight through the Chairman's shielding protocols.

On the surveillance feed, the colossal golden beast formed from pure Greed Law was now curled up in the ruins of its kingdom—the world's golden mountain ranges had turned to quicksand, its monetary system had crumbled, and its believers were frantically selling off gold to exchange for dimension points.

"Lin Chen! Stop!" The Auric Devourer's voice grated like metal on metal. "I surrender! I'm willing to sell 50% of my Golden Kingdom equity! Please stop the shorting!"

Lin Chen sat in the Hall of Authority. Before him hovered seventeen trading interfaces, each furiously shorting the vital assets of a different shareholder.

"50%?" He picked up his coffee. "Your Golden Kingdom's total valuation is now only 3% of its peak. 50% equity... how much is that even worth?"

"Then what do you want?!"

"I want the source code of your 'Greed Law'." Lin Chen set down his cup. "In exchange, I'll have The Group step in to stabilize gold prices, restoring your kingdom to at least 30% of its valuation."

"Source code?!" the Auric Devourer roared. "That's the foundation of my very existence! If I give it to you, I'll..."

"You'll what?" Lin Chen interrupted. "Become an ordinary golden beast? That's still better than being a bankrupt golden beast."

He pulled up the real-time gold price curve—it was still in freefall.

"You have three seconds to decide."

"Three."

The edges of the Golden Kingdom began to crumble. Believers turned into golden stone sculptures amidst their wails.

"Two."

The Auric Devourer's core laws began to tremble.

"One—"

"I'll give it!" The golden beast shattered, digging out a golden cube from its chest. Within it flowed the primal code constituting the concept of "Greed."

The transaction was complete.

Lin Chen uploaded the Greed Law code to The Group's database, simultaneously activating the gold market rescue program—using the profits from his earlier shorting to buy back all the gold being sold off in the market.

Gold prices began to rebound.

The Auric Devourer lay collapsed in the ruins. Though it had preserved part of its kingdom, it had lost its most core law power and could no longer draw energy through the concept of "Greed."

"Number twelve." Lin Chen crossed the Auric Devourer's name off the shareholder list. "Five more to go."

Zhang Hao reported quickly, "Boss, at this rate, we can clear out all the old shareholders who participated in the Resource War before today's market close."

"It's not that simple." Lin Xiao stared at the surveillance feed. "Look over there—"

In the depths of cosmic space, three shareholders Lin Chen had recently 'visited'—Black Star, the Aged One, and Blue Flame—were secretly meeting in some abandoned dimension. Their images were encrypted multiple times over but had been captured by the monitoring program Lin Chen had planted in advance.

"What are they plotting?" Su Qingyu frowned.

"A cornered dog will leap over a wall." Lin Chen pulled up the audio decryption. "Listen."

Intermittent dialogue came through the encrypted channel:

Black Star: "...We have no choice but to activate the 'Final Settlement Protocol'..."

Aged One: "But that requires the joint initiation of at least ten shareholders! We only have..."

Blue Flame: "The Auric Devourer just lost its source code. It'll definitely join! And those three—'Bone Corroder,' 'Nightmare,' 'Void Whale'—Lin Chen is about to target them too!"

Black Star: "Then contact them! Tell them if we don't fight back now, we'll all become Lin Chen's wage slaves!"

Aged One: "But the cost of the 'Final Settlement Protocol'... is that all our equity will be temporarily frozen, and the universe's rules will enter an indiscriminate trial mode..."

Blue Flame: "That's still better than this! At least the rule's judgment is fair! In Lin Chen's hands, we'll just be played to death!"

The communication cut off.

"'Final Settlement Protocol'?" Zhang Hao searched the database nervously. "Found it... It's the shareholder group's ultimate self-defense clause. When initiated jointly by holders of over 10% of the equity, it forcibly activates an 'Absolute Fair Trial' at the level of cosmic rules. All asset valuations are reset to zero, and everything is repriced!"

"Repriced?" Lin Xiao asked. "How?"

"By 'the value of existence itself.'" Lin Chen read the clause. "Stripped of all financial manipulation, monopoly status, and faith buffs—pure value. Simply put—if you're trash, you'll be truly worthless after the trial; if you actually have skill, you might turn things around after the trial."

Su Qingyu's face changed. "But your assets... a lot were obtained through financial manipulation and rule exploits. After the trial, wouldn't they..."

"Shrink significantly." Lin Chen said calmly. "But that's not the key point. The key is that during the trial, all transactions are frozen, and The Group's operations halt—and we still have dozens of universe sectors on the verge of zeroing out that need saving. A single day's halt would cost trillions of lives."

"They're trying to drag the entire universe down with them!" Zhang Hao said angrily.

"A cornered dog will leap over a wall." Lin Chen pulled up the shareholder list. "Black Star, Aged One, Blue Flame, Auric Devourer, plus Bone Corroder, Nightmare, Void Whale... that's seven already. They just need to rope in three more shareholders holding over 0.001% to activate the protocol."

He looked at the remaining names on the list—mostly neutral factions, but also a few fence-sitters who had been secretly watching.

"Can we stop it in time?" Su Qingyu asked.

"Better to use it than stop it." Lin Chen suddenly smiled. "They want to activate an Absolute Fair Trial? Fine, I'll help them."

Everyone was stunned.

"Boss, are you crazy?!"

"Not crazy." Lin Chen rapidly created a new financial product. "They want a repricing? Then I'll make 'trial results' into futures products and take them public for trading ahead of time."

A product interface popped up:

[Product: Cosmic Rule Trial Results Futures Contract]

[Underlying Asset: Post-Trial Asset Valuation Change Rate for Major shareholders]

[Example: If predicting Black Star's assets will shrink by 90% post-trial, short the contract for profit; if predicting asset growth, go long for profit.]

[Leverage: Up to 1000x]

[Special Note: Extremely high risk, total loss possible.]

The product went live instantly.

Speculators across the trans-dimensional financial markets went wild—this was the first financial product in history with "cosmic rule trials" as the underlying asset!

Trading volume broke through a hundred trillion dimension points within ten seconds.

And Lin Chen, as the product issuer, collected a 3% fee on every transaction.

In three minutes, fee revenue exceeded 3 trillion.

But the real masterstroke was yet to come.

Using this fee revenue, Lin Chen went short on all shareholders likely to join the petition in the futures market—including Black Star and the others, as well as those fence-sitters.

In other words: if the trial activated, these shareholders' assets would likely shrink, and Lin Chen's short positions would make a killing.

If the trial didn't activate, these shareholders would be grateful to Lin Chen for "preventing" it, and Lin Chen would have already made enough from fees.

He couldn't lose either way.

"Now," Lin Chen watched the wildly jumping trading data, "the pressure is on them."

Sure enough.

Black Star's encrypted communication came through again, this time frantic with rage:

"Lin Chen! You're issuing trial futures?! Do you realize this will make more shareholders afraid to join the petition?! They're scared their assets will become gambling chips!"

"Oh? Really?" Lin Chen feigned surprise. "I just thought that since the trial is so important, the whole universe should have a chance to participate. Democracy, you know?"

"You—"

"By the way, let me tell you," Lin Chen pulled up the data. "Guess what the market is predicting your post-trial asset shrinkage rate will be?"

Black Star was silent.

"97.3%." Lin Chen smiled. "Meaning the market thinks that without the 'Horror Instance Consultant' job I gave you, Black Star, you're just trash. You have to respect public opinion, you know."

The sound of a divine kingdom collapsing came from the other end of the call.

Black Star cut the communication.

But three minutes later.

The projection of Inspector 117 appeared urgently:

"Chairman, anomaly detected!"

"Black Star, Aged One, Blue Flame, Auric Devourer, Bone Corroder, Nightmare, Void Whale, and six other shareholders have jointly submitted an application for the 'Final Settlement Protocol' to the Cosmic Rule Core!"

"They bypassed the equity threshold—using the 'Emergency Evasion Clause'! Their The reason is is 'the current Chairman is abusing his authority, endangering cosmic financial security'!"

"The Rule Core has accepted it! The trial will commence in... 1 hour!"

The Hall of Authority fell deathly silent.

Everyone looked at Lin Chen.

But Lin Chen looked at the smug expressions of the seven shareholders on the surveillance feed and said softly:

"We've finally reached this point."

He activated a hidden program—a backdoor he had planted in the Rule Core on his very first day as Chairman.

"Initiate 'Trial Acceleration Contingency Plan.'"

The program activated.

A mechanical prompt suddenly came from the Cosmic Rule Core:

[Detected suspicion of 'malicious collusion' among trial applicants.]

[According to Article 7 of the 'Rules of Fair Enforcement Regulations,' the 'Applicant Asset Pre-Trial' procedure will be initiated ahead of schedule.]

[Pre-Trial Content: Examine whether applicants intentionally damaged their own asset value to initiate the trial.]

[Pre-Trial Method: Retrospective Review (past 24 hours).]

The surveillance feeds of the seven shareholders were instantly locked.

The retrospective playback began:

Before contacting other shareholders, Black Star had deliberately disbanded three main legions of his divine kingdom—to make himself appear more "vulnerable."

The Aged One had accelerated the consumption of his time source—to lower his asset valuation.

Blue Flame had actively extinguished the cores of seven of his flame avatars—also to play the victim.

...

One by one, every act was recorded by the Rule Core.

[Pre-Trial Conclusion: Applicants engaged in clear acts of malicious asset damage and trial initiation manipulation.]

[Per regulations, the 'Final Settlement Protocol' application is rejected.]

[Additional Penalty: The seven shareholders are penalized with 'Asset Freeze' for a period of: one hundred thousand years.]

The prompt echoed throughout the universe.

The expressions of the seven shareholders shifted from smugness to shock, then to despair.

"No—!" Black Star howled on the feed. "Rule Core! This is a conspiracy! Lin Chen tampered with it!"

But the Rule Core's judgment had been issued and was unchangeable.

Seven golden chains traversed dimensions, freezing all the core assets of the seven shareholders.

For the next one hundred thousand years, they could only use the interest from their assets—equivalent to house arrest.

Lin Chen closed the surveillance feed.

"Alright, the troublemakers are dealt with."

He looked at the remaining names on the shareholder list.

"Next—"

Before he could finish.

The entire Hall of Authority suddenly shook violently!

Not a physical tremor, but a collapse at the rule level!

The surveillance feeds of universe sectors floating in the air went black one after another—not a signal loss, but the sectors themselves were being erased from the universe.

Not even a zeroing process, just gone.

"What's happening?!" Zhang Hao screamed.

Inspector 117's projection flickered wildly. "Detecting... unknown attack!"

"Attack origin... from outside the universe!"

"Attack method: Direct deletion of the universe's underlying code!"

The picture switched.

At the universe's boundary, a pure white crack was spreading. Wherever it passed, the fundamental code of space, time, matter, energy... all existence was being deleted line by line, turning into absolute nothingness.

That wasn't zeroing.

That was... formatting.

"This is..." Lin Xiao's voice trembled. "Something worse than zeroing..."

Su Qingyu suddenly clutched her forehead, face pale. "My... my memories... are disappearing..."

"The data deletion attack affects all data-based life indiscriminately!" Zhang Hao's own semi-data body began to flicker. "Boss! We must—"

He didn't finish.

All the lights in the Hall of Authority went out.

Not a power outage.

It was the concept of "light" itself being deleted.

In absolute darkness, only the Chairman's authority panel before Lin Chen still emitted a faint blue glow.

A message from an unknown source popped up on the panel:

[Test Phase Two, Commencing]

[Content: Resist 'Author-level' Attack]

[Objective: Find the attacker and negotiate before the universe is completely formatted.]

[Hint: The attacker is located on the Narrative Layer. Your commercial methods are invalid against them.]

[Good Luck]

The message disappeared.

In the darkness, Lin Chen's calm voice came:

"Narrative Layer?"

"Author-level attack?"

He paused.

Then laughed.

"So that means..."

"Now I have to negotiate with 'the ones writing the story'..."

"...about copyright fees?"