The clock tower at the corner of Lotus-Prince Street struck twelve with a heavy bronze chime.
Inside the darkened passenger cabin of a black armored command van speeding down North Ring Road, six screens flickered with violent green charts. The engine rumbled with a dull, low vibration as the heavy tires rolled over cold asphalt.
Patriarch Murong Ba gripped a leather armrest with one hand and held an encrypted satellite phone to his ear with the other. Sweat dripped from his chin onto his silk tie. Beside him, Patriarchs Huangfu and Ye leaned forward, their bloodshot eyes glued to the numbers flashing across the monitors.
“Trading desk Zurich, this is Murong Ba,” the patriarch growled into the receiver. “Is the capital in place?”
“All five hundred billion RMB has cleared through the Cayman dark pools, sir,” a frantic voice answered from Switzerland. “The global overnight futures desk is officially open. We have borrowed thirty million shares of Taichu Medicine and fifty million shares of Taichu Infrastructure on ten-times leverage.”
Murong Ba’s lips curled into a vicious sneer. His eyes shone with venomous greed.
“Dump it all,” Murong Ba ordered, his knuckles white around the phone. “Flood the market. Sell every single share at market price. Trigger the automated stop-loss algorithms across every European fund. I want Taichu’s share price down sixty percent in ten minutes. Let the entire country watch their precious charity empire collapse before breakfast!”
