Counterattack

The operation to short-sell Shen Corporation's stock lasted for three days.

In three days, Shen Group's market value evaporated by 2.8 billion.

It was just one step away from the 3 billion target set by Lin Tian.

The Jinling business community was in an uproar.

"The Shen family is being shorted!"

"Who has the guts to touch the Shen family?"

"I heard the funds exceed ten billion, coming in from overseas!"

Inside the Shen Group, things had also blown up.

The executives held emergency meetings for three consecutive days, with the atmosphere of each meeting heavier than the last.

The Chief Financial Officer was so anxious that blisters formed around his mouth.

"Young Master Shen! If we don't support the market, it might drop even further when it opens tomorrow! Institutional investors have already started panic selling!"

The Marketing Director was also anxious.

"Word outside is that the Shen family is in trouble! Several partners have already started taking a wait-and-see approach!"

The Head of Legal was sweating profusely.

"Minority shareholders have jointly sent a lawyer's letter, demanding a written explanation from the company!"

Everyone was looking at Shen Fei.

Waiting for him to make a decision.

Waiting for him to order the activation of the market stabilization funds.

Waiting for him to do something.

Shen Fei sat at the head of the conference room, a cup of tea in front of him.

He picked it up and took a sip.

Put it down.

"Meeting dismissed."

Everyone was dumbfounded.

"Young... Young Master Shen?"

The CFO thought he had heard wrong.

"I said, meeting dismissed. Get back to whatever you need to do."

Shen Fei stood up and adjusted his cuffs.

"The stock price will bounce back tomorrow."

After saying that, he walked out of the conference room.

Leaving a room full of executives looking at each other in dismay.

The CFO looked at Shen Fei's retreating back, his mouth opening and closing repeatedly, before finally squeezing out a few words.

"The Young Master has gone mad..."

...

Shen Fei, of course, had not gone mad.

He returned to the study of his villa and locked the door.

Closed the curtains.

Turned off most of the lights, leaving only a desk lamp on.

The computer screen lit up.

For three days, Shen Fei had not been sitting idly by waiting for death.

He had been using his god-level hacking skills to do something massive.

Over the three days, by reverse-tracking the flow of the short-selling funds, he had thoroughly dug through the Dragon King Palace's global financial network.

It wasn't the rough tracking from before.

But a complete restoration accurate to every transaction, every account, and every handler.

The screen displayed a massive network topology map.

Centered on the Dragon King Palace's main account in Myanmar, it radiated outwards through seventeen layers of shell companies, involving six countries and forty-three offshore accounts, with a total flow of funds exceeding twenty billion US dollars.

Every line was clearly marked.

Where the money came from.

Whose hands it passed through.

Where it finally went.

For what purpose.

Everything was visible at a glance.

But what Shen Fei was going to do tonight was not just look.

It was to take action.

He opened the email he had prepared three days ago.

Recipient: INTERPOL Southeast Asia Office.

CC: Financial regulatory and law enforcement agencies of Myanmar, Singapore, Thailand, and Cambodia.

Attachment: Complete report on the overseas fund flows of the Dragon King Palace, totaling 137 pages, containing all account information, transaction records, money laundering paths, and key evidence chains.

Shen Fei moved the mouse over the "Send" button.

But he was in no rush to click it.

He did one more thing.

He opened the backend management interface of the Dragon King Palace's main account in Myanmar.

Three days ago, he had already cracked this account's keys and two-factor authentication.

Right now, this account was like his own wallet, free for him to enter and exit.

Account balance: 8.7 billion US dollars.

Shen Fei's fingers danced rapidly across the keyboard.

He didn't transfer the money away.

That would be too low-class.

He did something far more ruthless.

He implanted a piece of code into the Dragon King Palace's main account.

This code would automatically activate within twenty-four hours after the email was sent, simultaneously pushing the transaction records of all the Dragon King Palace's offshore accounts to the early warning platforms of various countries' financial regulatory systems.

In other words, even if the law enforcement agencies of various countries were slow to react, this code would deliver the evidence right to their mouths.

They wouldn't be able to deny it even if they wanted to.

They wouldn't be able to run even if they tried.

Want to transfer funds? The code would automatically trigger a freeze application the moment any transfer operation was initiated, sending it to the compliance department of the corresponding bank.

From now on, the Dragon King Palace's overseas financial system would be a locked tomb.

The money was still inside.

But it could never be taken out.

Shen Fei checked the code once over.

No loopholes.

Perfect.

His gaze fell back onto the "Send" button.

11:43 PM.

Jinling was as quiet as a pool of stagnant water.

Shen Fei clicked the mouse.

Email sent successfully.

No sound effects.

No animations.

Only a small line of text popping up in the top left corner of the screen.

"Your email has been sent successfully."

It was that simple.

One email.

A 137-page report.

A piece of code.

The overseas empire that the Dragon King Palace had operated for ten years entered its countdown from this very second.

Shen Fei closed the email interface.

Leaned back in his chair.

Closed his eyes.

He could get a good night's sleep tonight.

...

Forty-eight hours later.

An unprecedented joint law enforcement operation erupted simultaneously in multiple locations around the world.

Yangon, Myanmar.

4:00 AM.

Twenty military trucks surrounded the Dragon King Palace's headquarters base in the suburbs of Yangon.

The Myanmar National Police Special Operations Task Force, coordinating with INTERPOL liaison officers, forced their way in with a search warrant.

The Dragon King Palace members in the base were jolted awake from their sleep.

Before they could even react, they were pinned to the ground and handcuffed.

A total of 473 people were arrested.

12 million US dollars in cash was seized.

Various weapons.

Financial District, Singapore.

9:00 AM.

Law enforcement officers from the Monetary Authority of Singapore walked into three high-end office buildings.

Presented legal documents.

Froze twelve offshore accounts associated with the Dragon King Palace on the spot.

Amount involved: 6.3 billion US dollars.

The expressions of several white-collar-looking fund managers in the office buildings drastically changed.

They were the white gloves planted by the Dragon King Palace in Singapore to handle money laundering.

All of them were taken away.

Bangkok, Thailand.

2:00 PM.

The Anti-Money Laundering Office of Thailand, jointly with the military, raided three of the Dragon King Palace's strongholds in Bangkok.

Two warehouses and an underground casino.

217 people arrested.

Seized assets equivalent to 4.1 billion US dollars.

Phnom Penh, Cambodia.

6:00 PM.

The General Commissariat of National Police of Cambodia deployed 500 officers.

Besieged the Dragon King Palace's largest stronghold in Phnom Penh.

This stronghold was disguised as a resort hotel, but was actually the Dragon King Palace's intelligence center and fund transit station in Southeast Asia.

308 people arrested.

The main account was frozen on the spot.

From initiation to the closing of the net, the entire operation took only forty-eight hours.

Six countries.

Four synchronized raids.

Total number of arrests exceeded 1,500.

Frozen assets exceeded 20 billion US dollars.

The underground empire that the Dragon King Palace had run in Southeast Asia for ten years.

Ten years.

Gone up in smoke.

...

Jinling, Dragon King Palace temporary stronghold.

When Lin Tian received the news, he was doing push-ups.

His phone rang.

White Tiger's voice exploded from the receiver.

It wasn't a report.

It was a howl.

"Your Majesty Dragon King! Something huge has happened! Something monumental!"

"The Yangon base has been wiped out! The Singapore accounts are frozen! The Bangkok strongholds are surrounded! The Phnom Penh transit station has been sealed!"

"Everything! All of it! Not a single one left!"

Lin Tian's movements stopped.

He maintained his push-up position, supporting himself on one hand while holding his phone in the other.

"Explain clearly."

"It was a synchronized operation by Interpol and law enforcement agencies from various countries! They got hold of the complete transaction records for all our overseas accounts! Every transfer, every handler, every money laundering route—everything has been exposed!"

"Over fifteen hundred people have been arrested! More than twenty billion dollars in funds have been frozen!"

"Your Majesty the Dragon King... our overseas forces... they're completely finished!"

Lin Tian slowly stood up.

He walked over to the table, picked up a towel, and wiped the sweat from his hands.

"Is the information accurate?"

"It's accurate! Our brothers in Yangon risked their lives to send out one last encrypted message before losing contact! Our informants in Singapore and Bangkok have also confirmed it!"

"How was the information leaked?"

"I don't know! We can't trace it at all! The data they have is accurate down to the exact time and amount of every single transaction! This isn't a normal intelligence leak! This is—"

White Tiger's voice caught in his throat.

He didn't dare say the word.

But Lin Tian said it for him.

"Someone hacked into our system."

There was a dead silence on the other end of the line.

Lin Tian placed the towel on the table.

His movements were very slow, very light.

But his eyes had already changed.

Those eyes, which had seen mountains of corpses and seas of blood, were now burning with a flame that would chill anyone to the bone.

It wasn't anger.

It was something far more terrifying than anger.

It was an extremely cold and calculated madness.

"Twenty billion dollars."

Lin Tian's voice was so soft it sounded like he was talking to himself.

"Ten years."

"Everything I spent ten years building in Southeast Asia."

"Gone."

He gripped the towel tightly.

The fabric was twisted into a tight knot in his hand.

Then, he let go.

The towel fell to the floor.

"White Tiger."

"Here!"

"Can the funds used to short the Shen family's stocks still be withdrawn?"

White Tiger was silent for two seconds.

"No. Those funds also went through overseas offshore fund channels, and now all related accounts have been frozen. The money is stuck in there; we can't get it out."

The fifteen billion used for shorting.

Was also gone.

Plus the frozen twenty billion.

The overseas assets of the Dragon King Palace.

Thirty-five billion.

Reduced to zero overnight.

Lin Tian closed his eyes.

When he opened them again, the killing intent in his eyes was so thick it had practically materialized.

"Shen Fei did this."

It wasn't a question.

It was a statement.

"Your Majesty the Dragon King, we have no proof—"

"I don't need proof."

Lin Tian interrupted White Tiger.

"Yuanhang Logistics' accounts were frozen by Shen Fei. The funding channel for the shorting operation went through the banking system Shen Fei controls. The leak of the overseas accounts happened right after the shorting operation began."

"All the clues point to one person."

"While I was shorting him, he traced my funding channels backward and unearthed the entire overseas system of the Dragon King Palace."

"And then he wiped it all out in one fell swoop."

Lin Tian's analysis was terrifyingly calm.

Every step of his deduction was flawlessly accurate.

It aligned perfectly with the truth.

"I used fifteen billion to short him, and he used that fifteen billion as bait to fish out my entire thirty-five billion foundation."

"I lost fifteen billion."

"He didn't lose a single cent."

"And he conveniently blew ten years of my hard work to ashes."

Lin Tian stood there, his body completely motionless.

Like a statue.

On the other end of the phone, White Tiger didn't even dare to breathe heavily.

The silence lasted for a full ten seconds.

Then, Lin Tian spoke.

His voice had returned to its usual calmness.

But that calmness was more chilling than any roar.

"White Tiger, tell Vermilion Bird to escalate the plan."

"This is no longer an economic war."

"Prepare to strike."

The call disconnected.

Lin Tian put his phone on the table.

He walked over to the wall and took a dagger out from a hidden compartment.

The dagger was pitch black all over, its edge so sharp it didn't even reflect light.

This dagger had been with him for fifteen years and was stained with the blood of over a hundred lives.

Lin Tian tucked the dagger into his waistband.

And walked out of the basement.

...

The Shen family villa.

Early morning.

Shen Fei stood on the balcony, breathing in the crisp morning air.

The system panel quietly flickered in his field of vision.

[The Dragon King Palace's overseas forces have been severely crippled by a multi-national joint law enforcement operation!]

[Six bases raided, 1500+ personnel arrested, over 20 billion USD in assets frozen!]

[Lin Tian's overseas financial system has completely collapsed!]

[Lin Tian's Luck Value has drastically decreased!]

[Lin Tian's Luck Value: -3000!]

[Current Luck Value for Lin Tian: 14600 -> 11600]

From 15000 to 11600.

It had dropped by nearly a quarter.

After reading the data, Shen Fei picked up the coffee cup resting on the balcony railing.

He took a sip.

Su Qingxue walked out, draped in a thin coat, her hair still a bit messy.

"Up so early?"

"Yeah, I couldn't sleep."

Su Qingxue walked over to him and also leaned against the railing.

The two stood side by side, looking at the distant skyline of Jinling.

"The stocks fell quite a bit yesterday, aren't you worried?"

Shen Fei put down his coffee cup.

"They'll bounce back today."

Su Qingxue glanced at him.

"How can you be so sure?"

"Because the people shorting it are out of ammunition."

Su Qingxue didn't understand finance very well, but she could hear the absolute certainty in Shen Fei's tone.

She didn't ask any more questions.

Leaning against the railing, she quietly watched the sunrise with him for a while.

The sunlight gradually crept up the buildings of Jinling.

Dyeing the entire city in a golden hue.

Shen Fei looked at the distant skyline.

Lin Tian's overseas empire had already crumbled.

The money used for shorting had also gone down the drain.

All he had left in his hands now were those two thousand elites in the country and the Four Great Heavenly Kings.

A Dragon King whose retreat had been cut off.

Would be far more dangerous than an intact Dragon King.

Because he would resort to desperate measures.

Shen Fei needed to be prepared.

He picked up his phone and sent a message to Ling Shuang.

[Lin Tian may take military action very soon. Enter maximum alert starting now.]

A reply came three seconds later.

[Understood. Ling Xue and I will work in twenty-four-hour shifts. Any abnormalities will be reported immediately.]

Shen Fei put down his phone.

He turned his head and glanced at Su Qingxue beside him.

The morning light shone on her face, soft and warm.

She was enjoying the sunlight with her eyes closed, a faint smile playing on her lips.

Shen Fei looked at her for two seconds, then withdrew his gaze.

Lin Tian, oh Lin Tian, let's see how you die.