287: Chapter 287 First Round of Confrontation

Outside the Tongyuan Pharmaceutical workshop in Jiangcheng. The night wind blew across the white medicinal powder covering the ground.

Chen Fan took off his gray cloth work uniform. Dust shook off onto the concrete floor with his movements. Chen Haoyu walked up from behind. He held a military encrypted tablet in one hand.

"Chairman," Chen Haoyu said in a low voice, "The physical sweep of the twelve related pharmaceutical companies and three storage centers in Jiangcheng has been completed. All unauthorized fiber optics and hardware backdoors have been severed by the Shadow Guard."

Chen Fan balled up the work uniform in his hands and tossed it into the nearby tin trash can. A dull clanking sound echoed.

"Leave a team stationed in Jiangcheng," Chen Fan said in a steady voice, "Keep a close eye on those factories. If there is any unidentified external equipment, destroy it physically."

"Understood." Chen Haoyu nodded and noted it down.

Chen Fan turned and walked to the bulletproof SUV, pulled open the door, and stepped into the back seat.

"Go to the airport," Chen Fan said after settling in, "Back to the Imperial Capital control room. The cables have been pulled; it is time to close the net."

The motorcade started. The roar of the engines drowned out the wind as they drove out of the pharmaceutical factory gate.

Three hours later. The Imperial Capital.

The trading hall on the top floor of the Huihuang Building. The double glass doors slid open to both sides. Chen Fan strode into the hall.

The air pressure in the hall was extremely low. Three hundred senior traders sat at their respective workstations. No one spoke. The sound of intensive keyboard tapping filled the space. The central air conditioning blasted strong cold wind, yet the shirts on the backs of several risk control supervisors were already soaked with sweat.

Chen Muyang stood before the main control console. He pressed his hands firmly against the surface, veins bulging on the backs of his hands. His eyes were bloodshot.

In the center of the large screen, the candlestick chart of Interstellar Heavy Industry showed a cliff-like drop. A glaring green bearish line plummeted all the way to the bottom.

"Dad, you are back." Chen Muyang turned his head, his voice dry, "After Lu Feng's attempt to physically annex the physical assets offline failed, he launched an extreme short-selling mode online. A massive volume of short orders is smashing the market regardless of the cost."

On the left side of the large screen, the red sell order numbers flickered and refreshed at millisecond speeds.

Chen Muyang raised his hand to pull up the backend capital flow view.

Countless points of light converged on the data map. Thousands of retail accounts and small-to-medium speculative institutions entered the market, following closely behind Lu Feng's predicted large orders.

The herd effect had fully formed.

On the auxiliary screens on the side of the hall, real-time screenshots from major financial forums scrolled by. Countless investors were frantically talking down the Huihuang Group; the greedy incoming capital drowned out all rational judgment.

The three hundred billion Star Coin scale of bandwagon capital grew larger and larger, pressing directly onto the market. The index was under extreme pressure.

A piercing system alarm sounded. A horizontal red line flashed in the center of the main screen. Interstellar Heavy Industry's stock price plummeted, breaking through the first line of defense.

Several core architects stared at the liquidity data at the bottom of the display. Sweat from their foreheads slid past the corners of their eyes.

"Mr. Chen!" the chief architect stood up straight and said loudly, "The first line of defense is broken! Should we use the backup market-stabilization fund to take over? If it drops any further, it will trigger a total panic sell-off!"

Chen Fan ignored the chief architect's request. He crossed through the crowd and walked straight to the center of the main console.

His eyes leveled at the curve that continued to plummet on the large screen.

"Take the last batch of prepared fake mining area intent orders," Chen Fan said clearly, "Post them all at once."

Chen Muyang gritted his teeth, not asking for the reason. He placed his fingers back on the keyboard and typed rapidly.

The Enter key was pressed heavily.

Intent orders worth hundreds of billions of Star Coins entered the trading pool. Less than two seconds later, Lu Feng's prediction tool precisely intercepted this massive bait.

Lu Feng's account activated fully automatic consumption mode, devouring all the sell intent orders.

The backend data before Chen Muyang's eyes jumped violently.

"The opponent has added leverage," Chen Muyang said, staring at the data stream, "He has eaten up all the intent orders and raised the short-selling leverage to the maximum multiple allowed by the platform. He is gambling on our capital chain breaking completely."

The market plunged again under the pressure of the massive volume of short orders.

Interstellar Heavy Industry's stock price touched the lowest point in history.

A wave of rapid breathing came from within the trading hall. The chief architect gripped the back of the chair in front of him, his knuckles turning white from the excessive force.

In just forty-five minutes, the market value of the Huihuang Group's flagship sector had evaporated by a full two-thirds. The market faced a fatal crisis of substantial suspension and delisting.

Everyone in the main control team stared fixedly at the market. No one spoke. They could not understand Chen Fan's tactics at all. This operation of actively handing over huge chips to the opponent completely violated conventional financial defense logic. The hall was deathly silent and oppressive.

At the very top of the main screen, the red countdown clock ticked rapidly.

There were ten minutes left until the first option delivery audit.

The backend monitoring module emitted a sharp alert sound. There was an anomaly in Lu Feng's capital pool; the opponent had already posted the preparation code for the order to close positions and take profits, preparing to cash out and leave.

Chen Fan pulled over a leather chair and sat down steadily.

He turned his head to look at Chen Haoyu on his right.

"Disconnect the final verification channel between the virtual trading code and the physical database of the Northwest mining area," Chen Fan issued the command.

Chen Haoyu did not hesitate. He raised the military encrypted tablet in his right hand and pressed his thumb down on the red physical button with a cover on the edge of the main console.

Click.

The large screen market system directly popped up a long row of glaring yellow warning boxes.

All institutional terminals worldwide that had followed the trend and bought short options simultaneously received a system return instruction sent back by the Earth Federation Clearing Center.

A line of bold text flashed on the Clearing Center's large screen.

Underlying physical asset verification failed.

Without physical assets as a delivery anchor, all sell contracts were forcibly judged by the clearing system as invalid waste paper.

Those massive herds of bandwagon funds fell into extreme chaos. Countless institutions discovered that their options could not be fulfilled at all. The audit mechanism of the platform's trading channel had locked their exchange paths.

Lu Feng's capital backend crashed.

That high-dimensional prediction tool, which relied heavily on network data scraping, could not cross the barrier of physical network disconnection to perform entity data verification. Without physical support, the computing nodes fell into a dead-loop logic, throwing errors crazily.

Chen Fan's gaze rested on the candlestick chart.

"Reverse harvest," Chen Fan said.

The physical isolation state was lifted. The Pangu Computing Center reconnected to the network.

Chen Muyang slammed his hands on the console, starting the preset harvesting program. The Pangu Computing Power broke out of its cage, utilizing the millisecond-level high-frequency trading speed of the Federation mainframe to crazily spread millions of long spot buy orders in the current extremely low price range.

The market trend reversed.

The short contracts turned into waste paper and could not be delivered or cashed out at all. Those speculative funds and retail investors who had followed the trend to buy short orders engaged in scrambling to close positions to protect themselves.

A large-scale stampede effect erupted completely.

A massive amount of buy orders surged into the trading pool to close out short positions. The number of buy orders increased geometrically.

Interstellar Heavy Industry's stock price pulled into an almost vertical line. A red bullish line shot up into the sky, crushing all resistance levels along the way, reaching the daily limit at the top of the screen.

In the extremely violent price fluctuations, Lu Feng's advance funds, loaded with high leverage, could not withstand the margin call pressure.

The system forced liquidation.

On the large screen, the numbers representing Lu Feng's capital pool plummeted at a rate of tens of billions per second. In just two seconds, the leverage broke, and Lu Feng's account was liquidated and wiped clean.

Everyone in the hall opened their eyes wide, staring intently at the massive long seal orders hanging on the daily limit on the large screen.

After a brief pause, a deafening cheer erupted in the main control room.

Several architects, usually rigorous, hugged each other excitedly.

Chen Muyang typed rapidly on the keyboard, pulling up the final settlement list. This thrilling desperate counterattack not only filled all the book losses caused by the morning trading but also took advantage of the situation to devour all of Lu Feng's exposed massive capital pool.

Chen Haoyu pulled out the military encrypted tablet in his hand and connected it to the main console interface. He intercepted the underlying clearing logs of Lu Feng's liquidated account.

The tracking program followed the broken capital chain and began to reverse-trace the original funding sources.

Three deeply hidden data nodes popped up in the lower right corner of the main console.

The code decryption was completed. Three strings of anonymous sovereign fund codes located in Europe and North America respectively were fully exposed on the screen.

The true figures of international top-tier speculative capital surfaced. Lu Feng was merely a white glove they had pushed to the front stage.

Chen Fan watched the lines of institutional codes scrolling on the large screen. He extended his right index finger and slammed it down on the closing button in the middle of the main console.