The black-gold short-selling altar roared like a starving monster at the center of the terrace.
Second Director Hei-Zhang, Third Director Xue-Zhai, Fourth Director Jin-Tun, and Fifth Director Gu-Suan stood in a circle. Their clawed fingers dug into their own chests, gouging out steaming ropes of black origin-blood.
The blood splattered across the altar runes, igniting a pitch-black pillar of synthetic debt.
“Absorb this if you can, Lin Mo!” Director Xue-Zhai howled, spitting black bile. “Five thousand epochs of uncollectible debts! Trillions of defaulted derivative contracts! We packaged them all into a single toxic asset tranche! Ten quintillion Chaos Origin Units of instant margin call!”
Director Gu-Suan slammed his abacus against the stone floor.
“Our automated clearing protocol has already locked onto the Taichu Group treasury!” Gu-Suan shrieked with manic glee. “By the laws of cosmic clearinghouses, when a toxic margin call arrives, the target must match the cash balance within three breaths! If your liquid cash fails by even one copper coin, your assets will suffer immediate systemic foreclosure!”
Fourth Director Jin-Tun puffed up his bloated belly, laughing until his double chins shook.
“You bought out real estate! You paid for medicine!” Jin-Tun sneered. “You threw away trillions of coins playing the philanthropist! You cannot have ten quintillion units of cold, hard cash sitting in a checking account! Nobody keeps that much liquid currency! It goes against every rule of cosmic banking!”
