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

In Bangkok, the capital of Country T, the outdoor temperature soared to 42 degrees Celsius.

The intense tropical sun baked the asphalt on the road until it sizzled and oozed oil.

But the environment inside the presidential palace's conference room is now even worse than outside.

The central air conditioning system completely shut down ten minutes ago.

Even the exhaust fan isn't turning.

President Basong's handmade, custom-made silk shirt, worth 70,000 yuan, was already soaked through with sticky sweat.

She pressed herself tightly against his fat belly.

As he breathed heavily, like a broken bellows, a fermented, sour smell of sweat wafted through the sweltering room.

His stubby fingers frantically pressed the red, classified telephone line on the table.

The earpiece was pressed firmly against my ear.

There wasn't a single waiting tone inside; it was all just that kind of static white noise that made your eardrums tingle.

"Is the line connected?! Why is the Wall Street hotline down?"

Basong roared in a split voice, spitting saliva onto the solid wood table.

Enraged, he slammed the receiver hard against the base, the plastic casing making a crisp sound.

The conference room door was suddenly kicked open from the outside.

The secretary, her face ashen as if covered with a layer of paper used for the dead, tumbled in.

He ran so fast that he lost one of his expensive leather shoes.

"Your Excellency! At the port... those three black ships outside the port have made their move!"

The secretary's throat was so dry it was practically burning, and her voice was completely hoarse.

Basong grabbed his secretary by the collar, his fat squeezing his eyes into slits.

"They opened fire? Where are our anti-aircraft missiles?! Why aren't we shooting them down?!"

"No shots were fired!"

The secretary was so frightened that her eyes rolled back, and she was being strangled so badly that she couldn't breathe.

"They didn't fire a single bullet; they just dumped thousands of metal cans into international waters!"

That was no ordinary tin can at all.

It is the core miniature electromagnetic pulse buoy of the Lingxiao Consortium.

A high-frequency "humming" sound swept across the entire capital city without warning.

There was no fire, no blast of air.

But in those fractions of a second, the entire country's underlying power grid was penetrated by an invisible pulse.

"Bang—Sizzle!"

On the streets outside the presidential palace, all the cars that were driving suddenly stopped and died.

Hundreds of traffic lights burst into a blinding blue-purple arc of electricity one after another, before going completely dark.

A strong smell of burning plastic insulation wafted in from outside the louvered windows of the conference room.

Mixed with the pungent, burnt smell of a motherboard melting in the server room.

The choking caused Basong's throat to go dry, and he coughed violently.

The undigested tom yum soup in my stomach kept flowing back down my esophagus.

It burned his chest with a fiery pain.

He gripped the edge of the table tightly with both hands, his legs cramping uncontrollably.

"What about the banks?! Send the military over there and have them hold the central treasury at all costs!"

Basong was so anxious that the veins on his forehead bulged.

The secretary was sprawled on the wool carpet, his crotch soaked and reeking of urine.

"It's all gone! The central bank's database was burned through by the pulse attack, and even the backup data was hacked by their drones!"

He swallowed hard, his teeth chattering.

"The accounts of all the people in the country are now completely empty."

The secretary cried out in despair.

"Even the entire battalion of soldiers surrounding the Lingxiao Battery Factory have had their paychecks wiped from their phones!"

Basong's mind went blank, as if he had been hit on the head with a blunt object.

"The soldiers have mutinied!" the secretary exclaimed, slapping the carpet. "Now they're smashing up supermarkets and looting canned goods with rifles in hand!"

This is not a war at all.

This is a bloodless, irrational, one-sided capitalist massacre.

Basong scrambled and crawled toward the military supply cabinet in the corner.

From under a pile of dusty documents, they pulled out an old-fashioned analog radio that wasn't plugged in.

He was like a gambler who had lost everything, his fingers trembling as he tuned the radio.

"Telegram to Wall Street! Call the Morgan financial group! They promised to bail us out!"

A few minutes later, hoarse English with loud static came through the radio.

"Basong, the deal is off. You'll have to sort this out yourselves."

The voice on the other end was as cold as ice, carrying an air of condescending disdain.

Basong's eyes were bloodshot as he gripped the microphone and screamed.

"This is a betrayal! You were the ones who ordered me to freeze Yan Qingfeng's account! You need to send a fleet to escort him!"

"Wall Street's market has been paralyzed by Ling Xiao's Quantum Fund, and we're too busy taking care of ourselves right now."

There was not a trace of pity in the American's voice.

"We don't have time to worry about whether you, this tropical monkey, live or die. Good luck."

"Click".

The signal was unilaterally cut off, leaving only a deathly silence on the radio.

Basong looked as if his spinal cord had been removed.

I slumped onto the carpet, my eyelids stinging from the sweat.

Right here in this stuffy, suffocating room.

The giant LCD TV, which had been blacked out long ago, suddenly emitted a "sizzling" sound.

The screen was forcibly lit up by a powerful data stream.

The pale blue beams of light intertwined in mid-air.

The indoor temperature seemed to drop to freezing point instantly due to this cold light.

Yan Qingfeng's holographic image crossed thousands of kilometers and cut in.

Yan Qingfeng was wearing a high-quality black shirt, with the collar casually open.

He leaned back in the large leather sofa.

Long, slender fingers held a crystal goblet.

The red wine swirls gently in the glass, its color a deep, blood-red hue.

He took a sip of wine, his tongue pressed against his chin, savoring the rich, astringent tannins.

He looked as relaxed as if he were watching a boring monkey show.

"President Basong, isn't the tropical scenery beautiful?"

Yan Qingfeng didn't lift his eyelids, his voice so calm it didn't even have a ripple.

"Judging by the amount of sweat you're producing, you have a serious kidney deficiency."

Basong's Adam's apple bobbed violently.

His chapped lips trembled for a long time before he managed to squeeze out a few words.

"Mr. Yan...this is a misunderstanding. It's all...it was all orchestrated by Wall Street!"

Yan Qingfeng casually placed the wine glass on the wooden table next to him.

The glass clattered with a crisp "ding," which reached Basong's ears.

"I'm a picky listener and don't like to hear nonsense."

Yan Qingfeng dusted off non-existent dust from his trousers.

"You took my solid-state batteries. You froze the remaining billion yuan payment. You even sent armed monkeys to surround my employees."

He lifted his eyelids, his gaze as if he were looking at a dead cockroach in a sewer.

"No, no, no! I'll defrost it right now!"

Basong's knees buckled.

A muffled thud.

His obese body, weighing over 200 pounds, knelt firmly on the hardwood floor.

His kneecaps were throbbing painfully, but he seemed oblivious, gripping the base of the screen tightly with both hands.

"One billion US dollars! I'll settle it immediately using the country's gold reserves!"

Basong cried, tears streaming down his face, "The principal, with interest, must be transferred to Ling Xiao's account immediately!"

Yan Qingfeng looked at the president of Country T, who was crawling on the ground like a dog.

His lips were twitched, not even bothering to offer a cold laugh.

"One billion, that was yesterday's price."

He interlaced his fingers and rested them on his knees.

"The current interest rate is equivalent to that of the largest lithium mine in the southern part of your country."

Yan Qingfeng said calmly, "Absolute control for fifty years. No taxes, no acceptance of your lousy government's oversight."

Basong froze, his fat face twitching desperately.

"That...that's our economic lifeline...if we hand it over, the government's finances will be depleted..."

Do you still have any money?

Yan Qingfeng interrupted him coldly, each word piercing his heart.

"You can't even control yourself when it comes to canned food from the supermarket."

He glanced at the custom Patek Philippe on his wrist.

"I don't like haggling. I'll give you one minute to think about it."

Yan Qingfeng leaned back in his chair. "When the time comes, the electronic files and property records of all citizens of your country will be permanently wiped clean."

He seemed to be talking about tonight's late-night snack.

"I'll send you bunch of monkeys back to your primitive tribe to smash rocks."

"I'll sign! I'll sign!"

Basong completely broke down; his psychological defenses crumbled into a pile of mud.

He grabbed the pen on the table and shakily signed his name on an electronic agreement that had been faxed over long ago.

Because my hand was shaking so badly, the pen tip left a deep white mark on the tablet screen.

Yan Qingfeng looked at the encrypted data transmitted back by the system.

His eyes were devoid of warmth.

He didn't even leave a polite word before raising his hand and cutting off the communication.

With a "whoosh," the holographic screen turned back into a deathly black screen.

The top floor of the Lingxiao Building.

Yan Qingfeng turned around in the boss's chair and looked at the night view of Jingzhou outside the floor-to-ceiling window.

Su Jianxin pushed up his gold-rimmed glasses.

He exhaled a breath of stale air, tinged with the smell of cigars, his eyes brimming with excitement.

"Master Yan, those monkeys in Thailand have been brought down. Wall Street's scheme behind the scenes has failed, and they've even lost a lithium mine."

He grinned. "Shouldn't the Americans shut up for a while now?"

Yan Qingfeng picked up the remaining glass of red wine and drank it all in one gulp.

The spicy liquor rushed down my throat and into my stomach.

He slammed the empty glass upside down on the table with a loud "bang".

"Calm down?"

Yan Qingfeng glanced coldly at Su Jianxin, a bloodthirsty glint in his eyes.

"These scraps aren't even good enough to warm me up. The sharks in the pool are too fragile."

He grabbed the black trench coat draped over the back of the chair and strode out.

"Notify Lu Yuan to turn the fleet around."

Yan Qingfeng pushed open the door, and the cold wind made his clothes flutter.

"Next stop, let's knock on the door of the old European money family's stronghold and see if those Onsa vampires' bones are really tougher than these monkeys'."