283: Chapter 283 Chen Muyang's Predicament

Jiangcheng Old Street. Outside the doors of Yunhetang.

Chen Haoyu gestured. Four security personnel stepped forward. They picked up brooms from the corner and cleared the wood fragments from the stone steps. Two of them worked together to lift the broken black-lacquered plaque with gold lettering and placed it inside the doorpost. The wood shavings were swept into a dustpan and dumped into a trash can by the side of the road.

Chen Haoyu stepped over the threshold and helped the old shopkeeper into the back room of Yunhetang to settle him down. The merchants on the street retreated back into their shops.

Chen Fan stopped by the stone steps. Su Wanqing pulled out a wet wipe. She took Chen Fan's right hand and lowered her head to wipe it. The wipe pressed against the back of his hand, cleaning the dust from between his fingers. Her movements were slow, and she wiped it very clean. She folded the used wipe and held it in her hand.

The secure phone in Chen Fan's pocket vibrated continuously. The frequency was high, with short intervals.

Chen Fan took out his phone and pressed the answer button. The rapid breathing of his eldest son, Chen Muyang, came through the receiver. Since taking hold of the highest authority of the Earth Federation, Chen Muyang had never displayed such a rhythm.

"Dad." Chen Muyang spoke at an extremely fast pace, with the background noise of fingertips hitting mechanical keyboards. "The Interstellar Heavy Industry sector is in trouble."

"Speak." Chen Fan's voice was steady.

"Ten minutes before the global trading market opened, thousands of offshore accounts scattered across trading centers on various continents launched a joint short sale." Chen Muyang reported the backend monitoring data. "Three sub-sectors—heavy industrial materials, interstellar transport, and mecha assembly—were targeted simultaneously. Massive sell orders poured in continuously. There was no warning at all. The opponent's operation was extremely fierce. Within five minutes of the opening, the decline exceeded ten percent. The conventional firewalls we deployed at major trading nodes have all been breached."

Chen Haoyu walked out of the back room and stood half a step away. His hearing was sharp, and he heard the leaked words. A look of astonishment appeared on his face. After the completion of the Heaven-Mending Project, the Huihuang Group had established the absolute rules of Earth. To think there was still a consortium daring to openly oppose the central will. He quickly went through the list of consortiums with recent unusual activities in his mind; none of them possessed the scale to shake Interstellar Heavy Industry.

On the other end of the phone. The trading hall on the top floor of the Huihuang Building in the Imperial Capital.

Three hundred senior traders sat at their workstations. The sound of keyboards clicking merged into one. Holographic screens surrounded the hall. Red and green data streams scrolled rapidly.

"I have bypassed the conventional trading network and directly taken over the underlying permissions of the Pangu Computing Power." Chen Muyang reported his tactics over the phone. He walked to the main console and aligned his eyes with the iris scanner. A green light scanned across. The highest-level authorization was verified.

"Five hundred billion star coins in market protection funds have all been mobilized and are in place. Fully automated high-frequency defense interception has been activated." Chen Muyang braced his hands on the console. "I am going to use sheer capital volume to forcibly suppress the short sellers."

"Execute." Chen Fan responded.

Chen Fan held the phone, standing on the bluestone slabs of the old street, monitoring the overall situation.

On the top floor of the Huihuang Building in the Imperial Capital. On the large main console screen, the green curve representing Interstellar Heavy Industry's stock price plummeted in a straight line. The numbers were changing frantically.

"Capital buy-in." Chen Muyang issued the command.

He raised his right hand and pressed the enter key heavily. Five hundred billion in capital turned into massive buy orders. The capital flow connected to global trading nodes via undersea optical cables. The Pangu Computing Power split this huge amount of capital into millions of small buy orders, scattering them into the trading market within 0.1 seconds. The massive capital matrix directly collided with the sell-off chips.

On the giant trading screen, the downward green plunge curve encountered strong resistance. The curve paused, then was forcibly broken. The trend turned red, pulling upward. The decline shrank from ten percent to eight percent, then jumped to five percent.

"It's suppressed!" a senior trader shouted, taking their hands off the keyboard.

North America trading center. Europe trading center. Tokyo trading center.

External traders scattered across trading centers on various continents stared intently at the changes on the screens. Their previously tense shoulders relaxed. Some nodded to each other, others spoke in low voices. They concluded that the provocation from the mysterious capital had ended here. In the face of absolute financial crushing, any technical operation was useless. The Huihuang Group's market protection funds were enough to fill every hole. The Earth Federation's heavy industry foundation was unshakable.

The reversal of the situation happened in the next second.

The red upward curve had just raised its head. The mysterious capital did not retreat. One millisecond before the Pangu Computing Power's second position-building, a massive amount of hidden base positions were dumped.

The opponent had completely seen through the calculation logic of Pangu Computing Power's high-frequency trading. The short-selling capital precisely locked onto every time node of the capital buy-in. Sell orders were placed into the trading queue one millisecond in advance. All of the Pangu Computing Power's buy orders became the bag holders for the opponent's high-position cash-outs. The entry of this batch of hidden capital directly exhausted the liquidity of the first batch of market protection funds.

The main console emitted a harsh alarm. Pangu Computing Power's defense model experienced a logic error. The system determined the risk of buying to be too high and automatically paused subsequent capital injection.

Interstellar Heavy Industry sector's stock price lost support. Massive sell orders pressed down. The stock price was forcibly smashed onto the limit-down board. The holographic screens were covered in a heavy green. The blinding red lights of the limit-down flashed at the top of the hall.

In the Imperial Capital trading room. Chen Muyang's eyes were wide open. Sweat slid down his cheeks, dripping onto the console's keyboard. Since the birth of the Pangu Computing Power, it had been breached head-on in a financial war for the first time. The opponent was not fighting against capital, but was cracking the computing power with dimensionality reduction.

This exceeded the computational limits of Earth's existing technology.

At the same second. Chen Fan, who was on the old street of Jiangcheng, had his vision blur for a moment.

At the position of the system interface that had long since disintegrated and dissipated, a string of faint, ghostly blue garbled characters abruptly jumped out. The garbled characters flickered on his retina for half a second. The data stream broke, unable to form complete characters. Then it quickly vanished into nothingness.

Chen Fan stood still. His eyeballs did not move. The field of vision on his retina returned to normal. The blue bricks and green tiles of the old street remained as they were. Sunlight shone on the bluestone slabs.

The system's residual energy was activated by external interference.

This was not a conventional financial war. The opponent possessed a predictive ability that transcended the existing dimension. This ability surpassed the Pangu Computing Power's tens of billions of deductions per second. The opponent could see future trading nodes.

Lu Feng. Imitating old tactics. The bridge capital of Yuanfeng Capital. Seeing through future short-selling operations.

All clues completed a closed loop in Chen Fan's mind. The person who taught Lu Feng the rules, or Lu Feng himself, had mastered a tool that did not belong to this dimension.

The alarm for Interstellar Heavy Industry's limit-down was broadcast across the entire network. Global capital markets were in a state of total panic. Dragged down by the heavy industry sector, major related sectors began to decline. The index plummeted like a cliff.

Chen Fan held the phone.

"Dad, the Pangu Computing Power has been breached." Chen Muyang's voice was dry. "The opponent is trading by locking onto a one-millisecond time difference. Our defense model cannot block this kind of prediction. The scale of the base position sell-off exceeds the total number of normal circulating shares."

"Cut off the external trading ports and forcibly suspend trading." Chen Fan's tone was steady as he issued the command.

Chen Muyang acknowledged on the other end of the phone. He operated on the main console with both hands. He pressed that row of red physical buttons. Interstellar Heavy Industry stopped trading on all global exchanges. It halted further collapse.

The trading hall was deathly silent. The traders looked at the screen full of green light, and no one made a sound.

Chen Fan put the phone back into his pocket. He turned his head to look at Su Wanqing.

"The matter of the medicinal materials will be postponed." Chen Fan said, "We are returning to the Imperial Capital."

Su Wanqing nodded. She threw the used wipe into the trash can and turned to walk toward the car at the end of the street.

Chen Fan looked at Chen Haoyu, who was standing to the side.

"Prepare the aircraft." Chen Fan issued the final command. "Return to the Imperial Capital. I will personally take over the battle."