268: Chapter 268 Zero-Debt Securitization! I'll Let the Entire Universe Share the Risk

On the very day the Special Assets Disposal Department was officially established, Lin Chen received its first 'super bad debt' file.

The cover was stamped with a blood-red [Top Secret] seal, and the title read: 'Statistical Report on Residual Debts from the Zeroing Storm'.

Opening the first page, Lin Chen's pupils contracted slightly.

The data was staggering:

[Number of Starfields Affected by the Zeroing Storm: 370 Million]

[Direct Economic Losses: 98 Quadrillion dimension points]

[Number of Associated Debt Defaults: 11.7 Billion]

[Estimated Final Bad Debt Scale: 30 Quintillion (3×10^16) dimension points]

[Note: This scale exceeds three times the total assets of the Universe Bank.]

Even more terrifying was the conclusion at the end of the report:

'The Zeroing Storm has not completely subsided; its residual energy continues to spread at the bottom layer of the Narrative Layer. It is estimated that the scale of new bad debts will increase by 5% every 24 hours. If not resolved within three months, the entire Narrative Layer's financial system will collapse completely.'

Lin Chen finally understood why Golden Abacus had agreed to establish this department—this wasn't an opportunity, it was a bottomless pit.

The bank had long known the debt from the Zeroing Storm was a bottomless pit, so they dumped this mess on him. If he couldn't solve it in three months, the betting agreement would fail, and he would become a permanent slave; even if he solved it, the bank would be spared from bankruptcy.

Either way, the bank wouldn't lose.

'Minister, the meeting room is ready,' a timid voice came.

Lin Chen looked up and saw Golden Glazed standing at the door.

The girl was wearing the standard uniform of a bank intern today—a white shirt, a black skirt, her hair tied in a ponytail, holding a stack of files in her arms. The clarity had returned to her eyes, but when she looked at Lin Chen, there was still a complex scrutiny in her gaze.

'Here?' Lin Chen closed the file. 'Where are the others?'

'The other seven employees are waiting for you in the meeting room.' Golden Glazed paused. 'However... they come from different factions of the board of directors. I'm afraid they're not here to help.'

Lin Chen smiled. 'To monitor me?'

'To observe, at the very least.'

The two walked into the meeting room.

Seven people sat on both sides of the long table—men and women, young and old. Each of their work badges indicated a different 'dispatch department': Board of Directors Office, Risk Compliance Department, Internal Audit Office, and even... Golden Abacus's Private Secretariat.

They were indeed all informants.

'Everyone,' Lin Chen took his seat at the head of the table, 'I am Lin Chen, Minister of the Special Assets Disposal Department. From today onwards, our department has only one task: to resolve the super bad debts related to the Zeroing Storm.'

He projected the Top Secret report.

Upon seeing the data, the seven people's expressions changed.

'Thirty quintillion in bad debts?!' a bespectacled middle-aged man cried out involuntarily. 'How is it possible to resolve this?!'

'Conventional methods are indeed impossible,' Lin Chen tapped the table. 'So we'll use unconventional ones.'

He pulled up the first bad debt case that needed handling:

[Debtor: Oblivion Graveyard Administration Bureau]

[Nature of Debt: The Zeroing Storm caused breaches in the graveyard's seals, allowing seventeen trillion forgotten stories to escape. The Bureau is liable for the repair costs.]

[Amount Owed: 800 Trillion dimension points]

[Collateral: The Administration Bureau's future 'Story Recovery Tax' revenue rights for the next hundred thousand years.]

[Current Status: The Bureau is on the verge of bankruptcy. The director has been missing for three months.]

Dead silence fell over the meeting room.

The Oblivion Graveyard—one of the most dangerous areas in the Narrative Layer, sealing away all forgotten, discontinued, and abandoned stories. Once the seals break, the resentment entities from those stories escaping would cause large-scale mental pollution.

'This case has been transferred to seventeen departments; no one dared to take it,' Golden Abacus's private secretary, a sharp woman, spoke coldly. 'Minister Lin chooses this one immediately upon taking office. Do you want to prove yourself, or do you want to lose the bet sooner?'

'I want to win,' Lin Chen stood up. 'So I need everyone's cooperation—now, we split into two teams for action.'

He quickly formed the groups:

'Team One, come with me to the Oblivion Graveyard for an on-site survey.'

'Team Two, stay here and do three things.'

He assigned tasks to Team Two:

'First, investigate all fund flows of the Bureau Director before his disappearance.'

'Second, contact the Cosmic Exchange. I want to know the black-market trading price for the 'Story Recovery Tax Revenue Rights'.'

'Third, the most important one—'

Lin Chen pulled up the Universe Bank's internal transaction code: 'Using my ministerial authority, release a new product: [Zeroing Storm Debt Risk Dispersion Bonds].'

The product description was simple:

'This bond securitizes the bad debts related to the Zeroing Storm, dividing them into tranches with different risk levels. Investors who purchase them will receive dividend rights from future 'Story Recovery Tax' revenue according to their share proportion, while also bearing the bad debt risk proportionally.'

'In simple terms,' Lin Chen summarized, 'we split the 800 trillion debt into 800 million shares, each worth one million. Let investors across the entire Narrative Layer share the risk.'

The secretary frowned. 'But who would buy such obviously loss-making bonds?'

'People will buy them,' Lin Chen looked at Golden Glazed. 'Glazed, you stay with Team Two, responsible for the bond sales plan. I'll give you an idea: bundle the bonds with 'Oblivion Graveyard Exploration Rights'—investors who purchase bonds reaching a certain threshold can obtain access to the 'safe zones' within the graveyard to go 'treasure hunting,' searching for valuable story fragments.'

Golden Glazed's eyes lit up. 'Story fragments can be resold to film and TV adaptation companies, game developers, even other Authors...'

'Right,' Lin Chen nodded. 'Make investors feel they're not buying bonds; they're buying 'treasure hunt tickets'.'

The assignments were complete.

Lin Chen, along with the four members of Team One, teleported directly to the outskirts of the Oblivion Graveyard.

The scene before them made everyone gasp.

It was a boundless gray desert, littered with countless tattered pages, broken words, and translucent remnants of story characters wandering about. The sky was dark red, with ash-like fragments constantly drifting down.

Even more terrifying were the seventeen enormous fissures deep in the desert, like torn wounds. From each fissure, twisted story entities were pouring out—some were characters with only half a face left, some were vengeful spirits repeating a single line, and others were broken worlds constantly collapsing and rebuilding.

'The degree of seal breach is more severe than reported,' an old auditor in the team said, his voice trembling. 'These escaped story entities... have already formed small pollution zones.'

Lin Chen did not venture in recklessly.

He activated the equipment he brought—a [Narrative Energy Detector] purchased with the department's startup funds.

The instrument activated, scanning the entire area.

The data feedback showed: deep within the graveyard, there was an abnormal high-energy reaction source, located precisely at the center of the seventeen fissures.

'What is that?' someone asked.

'Could be... the seal core,' Lin Chen stared at the data. 'Or it could be something else.'

He took out his communicator and contacted Golden Glazed from Team Two: 'Glazed, check if there were any records of large equipment purchases by the Bureau Director in the three months before his disappearance.'

Thirty seconds later, a reply came:

'Yes. One [Narrative Layer Deep Drilling Rig], purchase price 30 billion dimension points, purpose stated as 'graveyard reinforcement project.' But the day after the purchase, the Director went missing.'

A deep drilling rig...

Lin Chen suddenly understood.

'He didn't disappear,' Lin Chen looked at that high-energy source. 'He intentionally damaged the seals, then used the drilling rig to enter the deepest part of the graveyard—where the Narrative Layer's most ancient 'Primordial Story Fossils' are buried. He wanted to steal and excavate those fossils to sell for money to repay the debt.'

As soon as he finished speaking.

A violent tremor suddenly came from deep within the graveyard!

The seventeen fissures simultaneously widened!

What poured out from the fissures were no longer story entities, but liquid words—viscous like black crude oil, flowing wherever they went, causing the space there to twist and rot.

'The pollution is escalating!' the old auditor screamed. 'Retreat, quickly!'

But it was already too late to retreat.

The liquid words, as if alive, spread rapidly towards their location.

Even more terrifyingly, those words began to combine in the air, forming a massive sentence:

[Are... you... here... to... collect... debts...]

The moment the sentence formed, everyone's minds simultaneously throbbed with pain—it was a conceptual-level attack, directly deleting their understanding of the word 'debt'!

A team member suddenly froze, looking at the ledger in his hand: 'I... what am I holding this for?'

He had forgotten what debt was.

Then a second, a third...

Lin Chen gritted his teeth and activated the system's conceptual anchoring function, but this time it required ten times the energy consumption—one trillion per second.

He didn't have that much money in his account.

Just as the liquid words were about to engulf them—

A golden light descended from the sky!

Golden Glazed arrived with Team Two via teleportation. In her hand, she held a golden token engraved with the emblem of the Universe Bank.

'The bank's highest authority token, can temporarily resist conceptual attacks,' the girl said quickly. 'But it can only last three minutes.'

She looked at Lin Chen: 'The bond sales plan has been sent out, but we need a sample—we need to bring back a sample of 'Story Fossil' to prove there really are treasures in the graveyard. Only then will investors buy in.'

Three minutes.

Lin Chen looked at that high-energy source: 'Glazed, use the token to clear a path. We're going to the center of the fissures.'

'Are you insane?!' the secretary shouted. 'That's where the pollution is most severe!'

'If the Director could go in to dig for fossils, we can go in to get samples,' Lin Chen had already charged forward. 'If you want to win the bet, follow me!'

Golden Glazed gritted her teeth, raised the token, and followed.

The token's golden light formed a protective shield, barely pushing back the liquid words.

The two sprinted across the gray desert, with space collapsing behind them.

Two minutes later, they reached the center of the fissures.

There was a massive deep pit. At the bottom lay a half-destroyed drilling rig. In the cockpit, a desiccated corpse sat in the driver's seat—it was the missing Director.

And in his hands, he tightly clutched a glowing crystal.

Inside the crystal was sealed a complete story world: with mountains, rivers, cities, civilizations, and even tiny characters could be seen moving within.

'Primordial Story Fossil...' Golden Glazed's voice trembled. 'A fossil of this level of completeness... one piece is worth hundreds of trillions...'

But just as she reached out to take it—

The Director's desiccated corpse suddenly moved.

No, it wasn't the corpse moving.

It was the story characters inside the crystal, controlling the corpse.

The corpse opened its hollow eye sockets and said in a hoarse voice:

'...Finally... someone has come...'

'...Take me... away from here...'

'...I will tell you... the graveyard's secret...'

'...About... the Purity Alliance's... true purpose...'

Lin Chen and Golden Glazed exchanged a glance.

This ancient story sealed within the fossil knew something.

And at that moment, the token's protective shield began to flicker.

The three minutes were up.

Liquid words surged in from all sides.