Handong: Sha Li wants political achievements? I'll shut down the entire province.

It's 8 PM Beijing time. It's 8 AM New York time.

In the very center of Jingzhou Guangming Square, the platform where the musical fountain is usually placed is now filled with more than a dozen black metal boxes that are about half a person tall.

The surface of the box was frighteningly hot, and the ventilation holes were spewing out visible white mist.

The air was churned and stretched like ripples on water by this massive amount of high temperature.

The rumbling sound of electricity rolled across the ground, making the broken iron cover of the nearby sewer vibrate.

The same commotion was also seen in Times Square, New York.

However, the freezing rain over there hasn't stopped yet.

Ice crystals hit the scorching metal box and instantly sizzled, evaporating into a burnt, industrial silicone smell.

There wasn't a soul to be found on the streets of Jingzhou at this moment.

At this time of day, the pungent smell of fried skewers from the pedestrian street can travel for two or three miles.

The fire is now completely out.

The chubby uncle selling grilled cold noodles was shirtless, still wearing his greasy apron, and clutching half a sausage with the skin still on.

He tilted his head back so high that the flesh on the back of his neck was squeezed into a ball.

The entire population of Handong Province, numbering fifty million, was as if their power cords had been unplugged by a single entity.

They were all staring intently at the pitch-black sky above them from the streets and balconies.

There wasn't a single extraneous noise; even the stray dogs, who usually bark the most, were tucked between their legs and huddled in the corner.

"Buzz—!"

A high-frequency electronic buzzer almost tore open someone's eardrum.

A dozen metal boxes simultaneously emitted blinding, eerie blue beams of light.

The beam of light pierced straight through the low-hanging clouds.

Yan Qingfeng's face, magnified tens of thousands of times, crashed into the sky above the entire globe.

The sense of oppression is too strong; it's so big that just one glance makes your calves cramp.

The top floor of the Goldman Sachs headquarters building on Wall Street, New York.

The air conditioner was set to the lowest temperature of 16 degrees Celsius, and there was even some frost on the air vents.

But the bald white executive's forehead was constantly covered in sweat, which dripped down his eyebrows.

He roughly ripped off the silk tie around his neck.

With a slip of her fingernail, she ripped off the top button of her shirt, which bounced off the glass coffee table with a "clink".

"Medicine... bring me my blood pressure medication!"

He yelled at the blond secretary, his voice cracking.

His hands were shaking like he had Parkinson's as he reached for the small medicine bottle on the table.

The plastic bottle slipped from my grasp and fell onto the handmade carpet, a few white pills rolling into the pile.

He knelt on the ground and tried to pick at the dust with his short, stubby fingers, until his fingernails were full of grime, but he couldn't pick out a single grain of dust in a long time.

In the holographic image, Yan Qingfeng wasn't wearing any of those ridiculous custom-made formal attire at all.

He just threw on a black shirt that looked pretty casual.

His collar was open, and his sleeves were haphazardly rolled up twice, revealing his muscular forearms.

He didn't even bring a prepared speech.

He unconsciously rubbed his thumb against his index finger joint twice, and his Adam's apple bobbed.

The deep voice, carried by the slight static of the current, crashed into the ears of people all over the world through the simultaneous interpretation system.

"I heard you old money family folks were quite busy last night."

Yan Qingfeng raised his hand and scratched his brow bone, his tone as casual as if he were asking a market vendor how much meat was per pound today.

"Dumping the market? Selling off? You crippled several of my overseas shell companies, don't you feel a sense of accomplishment?"

He scoffed, exhaling a disdainful breath from his nostrils.

"I'm too lazy to play those drawn-out financial scams with you guys. They're too tedious and a waste of my sleep time."

Yan Qingfeng snapped his fingers.

A crisp "snap" sound rang out.

A complex global supply chain data chart instantly appeared behind him.

"I'll talk about two things today. First..."

He paused for a second, coldly looking down at the bigwigs in New York who were cowering behind bulletproof glass.

"From this moment forward, all direct exports of the Lingxiao-1 solid-state battery to the European and American markets will be cut off. Not a single one will be sold."

The bald executive had just put a dusty blood pressure pill into his mouth.

Hearing this, I gasped sharply.

The dry pill got stuck in his trachea, causing him to choke and cough violently, his eyes rolling back in his head, his face turning blue.

Yan Qingfeng's voice continued to descend, carrying a bloody undertone that left no room for survival.

"Want me to use my batteries to make new energy vehicles? Sure."

"I won't accept your pile of worthless US dollars."

"Exchange it for the underlying technology patents and core mineral control you hold."

He tugged at one corner of his mouth.

"Either we obediently sign the humiliating technology investment agreement and hand over control of the factory."

"Either you century-old car companies can just wait to become scrap metal dumps within three months."

In Times Square, hundreds of foreign journalists holding microphones were completely dumbfounded.

I forgot to press the flash.

All that remained was the pattering sound of raindrops hitting the umbrella.

"Mr. Yan! This is monopolistic! You cannot deprive the free market of its right to choose!"

A blonde, blue-eyed female reporter couldn't hold back any longer and screamed at the top of her lungs.

The sound was so sharp it cracked.

Yan Qingfeng didn't even look in her direction.

"The right to choose? That's a handout from the strong to the weak."

He straightened the slightly wrinkled hem of his shirt.

"Now, I am stronger than you, so I don't even want to give alms."

The screen flashed.

The data map disappeared, replaced by mutated rice paddies in Handong Province, where the rice plants were golden and taller than people.

The golden waves of wheat, even through the screen, exude a sense of satisfying carbohydrates that could make you feel stuffed.

"The second thing is, just letting you know."

Yan Qingfeng put his hands into his pockets.

"The new generation of mutant grains from Lingxiao will begin global distribution today."

His gaze was fixed on the tallest buildings on Wall Street.

"The pricing power of the four major grain traders, ABCD, can be put away in their coffins today."

"My top-grade rice sells for 1.2 yuan per jin. If you can get it down to 1.1 yuan, I'll admit defeat."

Yan Qingfeng shrugged and uttered his last words.

"You're not happy? Keep it to yourself."

These words had barely landed when...

The air was dead still for two seconds.

Immediately afterwards, the major exchanges on Wall Street were in complete chaos, as if a cesspool had been blown up.

The red numbers on the large electronic screen flashed wildly, as if having a seizure.

In less than half a minute, it plummeted straight down.

That's the line marking the sharp drop in the US stock market.

The drop was so severe that the server froze for a moment, and the entire screen turned a despairing dark red.

The crisp sound of a keyboard being smashed, the dull thud of a chair overturning, and the wail of traders tearing their hair out.

It forms a continuous area among hundreds of office buildings.

The top floor of Goldman Sachs.

The bald executive finally coughed out the pill that was stuck in his trachea.

He slumped onto the carpet, his hands groping haphazardly for his phone on his suit trousers.

"Boss! The Nasdaq market has triggered a circuit breaker! Trading has been forcibly halted!"

The blonde secretary ran over in her high heels, but her ankles buckled, and she fell to her knees onto the broken glass.

Ignoring the bleeding from her knees, she shoved the tablet in her hand in front of the executive's face.

"Three trillion US dollars in market capitalization in the automotive and agricultural sectors... evaporated in ten minutes!"

The bald executive shoved the tablet away, his eyes bloodshot, looking like an old dog with rabies.

He gripped his phone, his fingers trembling as he dialed a highly encrypted number with extremely high access privileges.

"Feeding? It's me!"

He roared, spitting onto the phone screen, his entire body trembling with fat.

"Go tell that old monster in the Rockefeller family who's still on oxygen! That madman Yan Qingfeng is destroying the livelihoods of the entire Western world!"

He swallowed hard, his teeth clenched.

"Ask that old bastard... when the hell is our Pentagon's carrier strike group going to deploy?!"