Chapter 3: Market Raid, First Blood
1935 Words
Zhang Tianyou's voice was soft, but it cut through Wang Wanru's composure like a blade fresh from the forge.
Get used to the way I communicate.
That almost-intimate, utterly venomous remark hit her like an electric shock. Her whole body flinched.
He knew.
He knew she could hear him.
This realization—this single, crystalline fact—terrified her more than every prophecy he'd made combined.
Before, she'd been an accidental trespasser, a mortal who'd stumbled upon the secrets of a god.
Now that god had turned around, looked directly at her, and smiled. You saw everything, didn't you?
In that instant, their positions inverted. She was no longer the observer. She was the observed. The judged. The prisoner in the dock.
She stared at his familiar face—now wearing an expression she'd never seen before, equal parts amusement and cruelty—and felt utterly naked. All her thoughts, all her secrets, stripped bare and paraded before him.
Zhang Tianyou was satisfied with her reaction.
He released the crumpled sleeve of his shirt from her grip, smoothed it down with deliberate slowness, as if brushing away dust that didn't exist. Then he sank back onto the sofa, settled into the cushions with the exhausted bonelessness of a man who'd just run a marathon.
"I'm tired," he said, and genuine fatigue bled through his voice. "You must be under a lot of pressure lately, President Wang. Hallucinations are no joke."
His words denied everything that had just happened.
His thoughts ignited a new storm.
[Good. Situation stabilized—for now. But the timeline moves up.]
[Divorce agreement's dead. That hundred million compensation's gone with it. I need seed capital. Money that's completely, utterly mine.]
He pulled out his phone, unlocked it with practiced ease, and opened his banking app.
The balance on display was both pathetic and absurd.
¥103,452.78
Three years of scrounging. Three years of freelance financial consulting, pieced together between the Wang family's allowances. Everything he had in this world.
Pathetic. Pitiable.
Wang Wanru stood frozen, her body rigid. Zhang Tianyou's movements played out before her eyes as his voice—that impossible, crystalline voice—resumed its demonic whisper in her skull, dragging her deeper into the whirlpool.
[A hundred thousand. What can you do with a hundred thousand in this city? This market eats money for breakfast. A sum like this won't even make a ripple.]
[But for me?]
[It's enough.]
His gaze pierced through the phone screen, through the present moment, into some other dimension—a parallel reality where the blood vessels of capital pulsed visible beneath the skin of the world.
[Let me think... Tomorrow. Yes, tomorrow. A perfect opportunity.]
[Jinke Corporation. A third-rate tech company, market cap barely three billion. Tomorrow, its stock price is going to ride the roller coaster from hell.]
Wang Wanru's heart lurched.
Jinke Corporation. She remembered the name. Wang Group's investment division had flagged it once as a potential watchlist candidate, then dismissed it. Unremarkable business. Nothing special.
[Tomorrow at 9:55 AM—five minutes before market open—Jinke will release major positive news through several mainstream financial media outlets. They'll announce a revolutionary breakthrough in graphene superconductors.]
[Retail investors will swarm like sharks scenting blood. Market opens at 10:00. The stock will spike instantly, vertical takeoff. Momentum will carry it to a 10% gain within ten minutes.]
[A retail investor's dream, right?]
His silent voice carried an undertone of ice-cold mockery.
[What they won't know is that this is a pump-and-dump, choreographed by the major shareholders and company executives. A slaughterhouse dressed up as a party.]
[The real show starts at 2:00 PM sharp.]
[A financial blogger called Vulture will post an investigation on his personal channel. Irrefutable evidence. Three years of cooked books. Fabricated R&D contracts. The whole rotten house of cards.]
[When that drops, market confidence vaporizes. Panic selling drowns everything. One minute, the stock's at the ceiling. The next minute—straight through the floor.]
Zhang Tianyou walked through the scenario in his head, every detail crisp and vivid, as if he himself had scripted this capital-market tragedy.
And Wang Wanru, his sole audience, felt a column of arctic cold drive up from her soles through the crown of her skull.
She was no novice. She'd bled for her place in this cutthroat commercial world. She understood exactly what this meant.
If this was real—if any of this was real—then Zhang Tianyou didn't possess business acumen.
He possessed foreknowledge.
A power that defied every law she understood.
[This is my opening.]
His silent lecture continued, a masterclass in financial warfare delivered to an audience of one.
[My hundred thousand. Domestic margin trading has too many restrictions. But through an offshore brokerage, I can leverage up to twenty times.]
[Hundred thousand, controlling two million.]
[Tomorrow morning, when the price peaks, I go all-in short. Then I wait. Two o'clock. The bomb detonates on schedule.]
[Limit up to limit down. Nearly 20% profit spread. On a two million position, after fees and interest—net profit around two million.]
[Hundred thousand to two million. Twenty times, in a single day.]
[With two million, I can incorporate. Hire people. Build something real. More importantly—]
[—I'll finally have the means to go to Haicheng University. Find Xin'er. Give her the life she deserves...]
Xin'er.
That name again.
Wang Wanru's nails dug crescents into her palms.
All of this—the scheming, the killing, the fortune built from nothing in a single day—all of it was for some woman named Xin'er.
Rage. Jealousy. Terror. Disbelief. The emotions tangled in her chest like barbed wire, tearing her apart from inside.
She didn't believe it.
She refused to believe a single word.
This was delusion. Zhang Tianyou, unhinged, spinning fantasies.
But the warning about the Star project's cash flow. The viciously accurate jab about her eyebrows. Those still echoed in her skull.
She had to verify.
She had to know: was the man sitting across from her a madman, or something far worse?
"I... I'm not feeling well. I'm going upstairs."
She fled. Almost literally. She couldn't look at him another second—feared she'd completely unravel if she did.
Zhang Tianyou watched her retreating back and allowed himself the smallest, most satisfied smile.
Hook, line, and sinker.
---
That night was the longest of Wang Wanru's life.
She locked herself in her room, lights off, only the glow of her laptop screen illuminating her face—a shifting mask of shadows and doubt.
She pulled up everything on Jinke Corporation. Unremarkable company, yes. But there had been recent rumors about technology partnerships.
She searched for the blogger called Vulture. A notorious figure in financial circles. Razor-tongued. Specialized in exposing listed company fraud. Respected and feared in equal measure.
All the pieces existed.
But to assemble them into such a precise timeline—to predict with this level of accuracy—
Was that even possible?
---
Wang Wanru didn't sleep.
The next morning, when she descended the stairs with dark circles carved beneath her eyes, an unexpected scent stopped her cold.
Cooking.
Zhang Tianyou—the man who hadn't touched a kitchen in three years of marriage—was standing at the open counter, wearing an apron, frying eggs.
He was even humming.
Humming.
"Morning, wife." He spotted her and smiled, sunny and casual, as if yesterday's confrontation had never occurred. "Sleep well?"
Wang Wanru stared at that radiant smile and felt her skin crawl.
She ignored him. Walked directly to the dining table, sat down, and opened her laptop.
Booted the trading terminal.
The seconds crawled past.
9:50 AM.
9:54 AM.
Her heartbeat accelerated. She could hear her own blood rushing in her ears.
9:55 AM.
Ding!
Her phone and laptop—both configured with keyword alerts—detonated simultaneously.
BREAKING: Jinke Corporation Achieves Breakthrough in Graphene Superconductor Technology, Poised to Lead New Energy Revolution!
Pre-Market Analysis: Jinke Returns with Disruptive Technology, Share Price Expected to Soar!
Wang Wanru's pupils contracted to pinpricks.
Real.
Exactly as he said.
Her head snapped up. The man approaching the table, plate in hand, was still wearing that pleasant smile.
To Wang Wanru, it looked more demonic than anything she'd ever seen.
---
10:00 AM. The A-share market opened.
Wang Wanru's gaze locked onto Jinke Corporation's intraday chart.
The moment trading began, a crimson buy-order line shot upward at a nearly ninety-degree angle.
The stock price—yesterday's closing price—began to levitate.
Three minutes: +5%.
Seven minutes: +8%.
Nine minutes, thirty seconds: the numbers on her screen froze at +10.00%.
Limit up.
The market erupted. Retail investors flooded forums in ecstasy, mourning their failure to front-run this rocket.
Wang Wanru's assistant called, voice trembling with excitement, recommending immediate purchase.
"Do not touch it. "
Wang Wanru forced the words out through a throat closing with terror. "All Wang Group funds and personal accounts. No Jinke Corporation purchases today. None. Violators will be terminated immediately."
Silence on the line. Her assistant, stunned speechless by this inexplicable directive.
Wang Wanru hung up and felt the strength drain from her body.
She stared at the screen. That incandescent red. It wasn't a stock price anymore. It was magma, boiling, hungry, ready to incinerate anyone who came near.
And Zhang Tianyou—the prophet—had long since finished his breakfast and vanished.
---
The next hours stretched into geological time.
Wang Wanru sat frozen before her screen, watching the minutes crawl toward 2:00 PM.
1:59 PM.
1:59:50.
Her heart hammered against her ribs, trying to escape her chest.
2:00 PM.
The exact moment the second hand completed its circuit—
Vulture's personal page refreshed.
A new article. Pinned.
The headline, rendered in bold, blood-red type:
JINKE'S GRAPHENE EMPEROR HAS NO CLOTHES: A THREE-YEAR FINANCIAL FRAUD EXPOSED
Wang Wanru's hand jerked. She nearly threw her mouse across the room.
She clicked.
The article was an indictment. Forged bank statements. Fictitious customer contracts. An audio recording of the R&D director admitting—in his own voice—that the project had failed years ago and was being kept alive on lies.
And then—
Her peripheral vision caught the chart.
A sell order. Tens of thousands of lots. A nuclear warhead, dropped from a clear blue sky.
Then another.
Then a hundred more.
The crimson line that had touched heaven shattered.
It became a green waterfall. Plunging. Relentless. Merciless.
Limit up to flat: ten seconds.
Thirty seconds: -5%.
Fifty-five seconds: the numbers froze again.
-10.00%.
Limit down.
Heaven to hell. In less than a minute.
Wang Wanru stared at the screen. At that perfect, terrible curve—limit up to limit down, a rainbow arcing from ecstasy to annihilation. Her mind was white static.
She saw, in that moment, the screams of a thousand**. The blood and viscera of the capital markets. And Zhang Tianyou's face. Smiling. Watching. Detached as a god.
Vzzzt.
Her phone vibrated against the table.
A text message. Unknown number.
One image.
Wang Wanru's hands trembled as she opened it.
A mobile banking screenshot. Account balance.
The numbers were crisp, cold, possessed of a terrible, irrefutable magic.
¥2,015,430.50
This image was the last straw.
Her body gave out. She collapsed into her chair. Her expensive phone slipped from her fingers and shattered against the floor.
She didn't care.
Her vision had narrowed to two things: that impossible number, and his face.
He wasn't a madman.
He wasn't a demon.
He was something she couldn't comprehend, couldn't fight, couldn't escape.
He was her fate.
- Writer
