501: Chapter 501 Asia's First Digital Currency Clearing

The settlement interface was the Asian Digital Currency Clearing System provided by Shuguang Cloud.

The buyer was Sinopec, and the seller was Saudi Aramco; the settlement currency jointly designated by both parties was the Asian Digital Currency.

The transaction completed Liquidation at 2:11 AM.

The blockchain nodes were distributed on quantum-encrypted servers in the four countries of Myanmar, China, Thailand, and Cambodia, with each transaction split into thousands of encrypted fragments and verified simultaneously by different nodes.

From initiating the Liquidation to both parties confirming receipt, it took 0.3 seconds.

Reuters financial reporters issued a flash report at 2:17 AM: "The world's first fully digitally settled crude oil trade has been completed. The Asian Digital Currency Clearing System is operating successfully."

The flash report attached an image—a screenshot of the AIS track of the "Desert Dawn" passing through the Strait of Malacca, with the blockchain hash value of the completed transaction Liquidation superimposed on the side.

Detention Center of The Hague International Court.

The walls of the cell were grayish-white, without windows.

The edges of Barrett's prison uniform collar were frayed, revealing a layer of gray cotton batting inside.

The lawyer did not come today—the lawyer's fees had been cut off, and the trust fund had been frozen by the Federal Prosecutor's Office of Switzerland after the extradition hearing.

He gripped a four-day-old copy of the Financial Times in his hand.

The newspaper was repeatedly folded and unfolded by him, smudging his hands with ink.

Front page headline: "Asia Pivots Away: Four-Nation Bloc Launches Digital Trade Currency, Dollar Slide Deepens."

Below the front page was a table.

The monthly changes in the proportion of the US dollar in Asian trade settlement over the past half year: seventy-two percent six months ago; dropping to sixty-one percent in the week before Barrett's extradition hearing in The Hague; the latest data on today's newspaper was forty-three percent.

He turned the newspaper to the second page.

The feature analysis headline was "The Scars of Operation Firestorm: How Barrett's Signature Burned the Dollar's Asian Foundations".

He stroked his own name in the headline with his thumb.

The ink left a blurred letter B on his thumb.

He stared at that letter for a long time, then crumpled the newspaper into a ball and smashed it against the wall.

The newsprint bounced off the wall and rolled toward the stainless steel toilet in the corner.

Meanwhile. Yucatan Peninsula.

The Caribbean wind blew through the coconut grove of a private estate outside the city of Mérida.

The main estate building was a Spanish colonial-style white structure, and the bougainvillea on the balcony was in full bloom.

Three people sat on the balcony, with a pot of cold coffee and half a bottle of unfinished rum placed on the coffee table in front of them.

"Barrett is done." The one on the left took off his sunglasses and pointed the frame leg at the tablet screen.

The screen displayed the real-time stock quotes of the Financial Times—the stock prices of JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, and Goldman Sachs had fallen by 6.8%, 5.3%, and 7.1% respectively over the past two weeks.

"The first test of crude oil trade settled in Asian Digital Currency has been completed. Saudi Aramco has connected. Next, Kuwait, United Arab Emirates, and Qatar will all follow suit. The petrodollar system—"

"It's still too early to say the petrodollar is finished." The one on the right poured rum into the coffee, stirred it, and didn't drink it. "Our funds are still flowing within the global financial system, we just need to find a new fulcrum."

The person in the middle didn't speak.

Silver-gray short hair, white linen shirt, no cup in front of him.

He just sat there, watching the setting sun sink into the tropical rainforest west of Mérida.

The setting sun burned the white estate wall into an orange-red, and the shadow of the bougainvillea cast on the balcony floor tiles was twisted like dead branches.

The setting sun sank into the jungle, and the last bit of orange went out.

He didn't say a single word.

But the two people on his left and right read the meaning from his silence: they were waiting.

In the lower right corner of Zhang Cheng's tactical display screen, a monitoring capture automatically marked by Vega popped up.

Visible light images taken by commercial satellites above the Mérida estate—the white main building, the coconut grove, the swimming pool, and three blurry figures on the balcony.

Timestamp: This evening at 18:47.

Marker note: Remnant nodes of Council of Elders. Coordinate record. No real-time threat rating.

Zhang Cheng glanced at the satellite map.

Three figures on the balcony—remnants of Council of Elders, system real-time threat rating: none.

He minimized the screen to the taskbar.

Mérida could wait.

The countdown for the shipment of cobalt concentrate was already ticking.

He changed the production schedule sent by João from "forty-five days" to "thirty days", and added a line of comments in the blank space: "I'll give you thirty days. On the forty-sixth day, I want to see the first batch of cobalt concentrate loaded from the Port of Nacala."

When João's voice came through the encrypted channel, the gantry crane at the Port of Nacala was hoisting the cast steel casing of the third jaw crusher.

"Progress is lagging by twelve days."

His left arm was hung in a bandage, and the fingernails of three fingers were blackened—smashed when the mining area guard room was blown down by a rocket-propelled grenade yesterday.

The tin walls of the container office hummed in the sea breeze, and a smoke-yellowed engineering progress map of the mining area was spread out on the table.

Red markers outnumbered green ones, and three of the seven mining points were marked with "Suspended—Security Threat", with the progress bar stalling at seventy-three percent.

"At 4:00 AM yesterday, a mortar shell landed on the roof of the night shift shed."

"Two were killed on the spot, and one breathed his last when carried to the aid station."

João pulled a mortar shell tail fin fragment out from under the table with his uninjured hand, his knuckles knocking a dull thud against the tin table.

The tail fin was painted with green paint, and the scraped-off paint revealed the white-stubbled aluminum underneath.

The manufacturing batch number on the shell body had been filed with a rasp—but not deep enough.

"Made in Argentina, FMK-2 type 60mm mortar shell."

"The manufacturing batch number corresponds to scrapped goods that flowed out of the Argentine Army warehouse two years ago."

He flipped the tail fin over. "The fuse has been newly replaced."

"The craftsmanship of replacing the fuse is not something local armed forces can do—they can't even tell the difference between a shell fuse and a detonator."

The projection screen popped up Vega's signal tracking record.

Within a radius of thirty kilometers around the mining area, three radio signal sources operated simultaneously.

One was a walkie-talkie frequency, a civilian channel of the local armed forces in the northern province of Mozambique.

One was an encrypted satellite phone signal—the encryption algorithm was homologous to the CIA encrypted radio captured in the karst cave of Mount Kinabalu.

The third was hidden in the water delivery truck that wandered around the mining area every day.

"Entering the mine at 6:00 AM every day and leaving the mine at 3:00 PM."

"The driver is a local, but the battery life of the Motorola walkie-talkie in his car is four times that of a civilian model."

João tapped the screen with his finger. "He can't earn enough to buy this battery by selling a barrel of water."

The iron door was pushed open.

The security captain came in, a piece of paint scraped off the Myanmar baobab leaf badge on his shoulder strap.

He put the captured walkie-talkie on the table—the body was splattered with mud and blood, stained during the ambush on the water delivery truck this morning.

The driver ran away, and the Portuguese person in the passenger seat was pinned to the mud in the rubber plantation, handcuffed face down.