Short Selling Henglong (5)

The moment the email was sent, Zhao Chen leaned back into his chair, his gaze passing through the floor-to-ceiling window toward the city skyline that had become clear as the mist dispersed.

At this very moment, my dear father!

Were you sitting in that office of yours overlooking the river view, secretly alarmed by the relentless sell orders?

Or were you staring intently at Henglong Holdings' stagnant, barely rippling movement on the Hong Kong stocks screen, wondering what that "Mysterious Short Seller," who had struck repeatedly before suddenly hibernating, was waiting for?

You probably never would have guessed that this unfathomable opponent was actually your own son.

And you had no way of knowing that I intended to drain your working capital and leave you with nothing in the end.

Zhao Chen reined in his wandering thoughts, straightened up, and opened a blank document.

In the title field, he pressed: <Preliminary Review of Henglong Group's Off-Balance Sheet Liabilities Structure and Potential Risk Exposure>.

This was not a weapon meant for immediate use—the time was not yet ripe.

This was a systematic review and reconstruction of his memories.

He put into words and preserved, piece by piece, the data, clauses, and relationship chains he had repeatedly mulled over behind iron bars in his previous life, painstakingly unraveling them through countless sleepless long nights.

3 Billion.

Based on the memories of his previous life, this was his conservative lower-bound estimate of Henglong's hidden debts.

Through dazzling arrangements such as equity-like debt, cooperative development consolidation and deconsolidation, sale-and-leaseback guarantees, and supply chain finance nesting, these debts had been cleverly concealed beyond the polished surface of the financial report.

Like tangled poisonous vines, they wound around banks, trusts, private equity firms, upstream and downstream partners, and even certain Shadowy Figures.

His father had once believed these arrangements were ingenious enough to deceive the heavens and cross the sea.

But in the eyes of a reborn man who knew the ending, every carefully hidden link could become an explosion point waiting to be ignited at some future moment.

Zhao Chen's fingers struck the keyboard with steady strength, the crisp tapping echoing through the quiet room.

Lines of text steadily filled the document. Cold numbers, complex clauses, and concealed connections were dismantled, labeled, and linked one by one. This felt less like writing and more like meticulously drawing an Attack Path Map—or weaving an invisible Great Net awaiting the right moment.

Outside the window, the sunlight grew brighter, dispersing the last traces of moisture and casting distinct patches of light and shadow across the wooden floor.

Without his noticing, the document had quietly grown by more than ten pages.

Meanwhile, on the silent phone screen, the WeChat group icon for "Future Rich Wife Health Tea Party" still glimmered faintly.

Within it were sealed the girls' freshest, purest surprise, hopes, and little worries from that morning. It also connected to one of the few warm corners in Zhao Chen's cold campaign in this life that was worth pausing to protect.

Sunlight spread across the entire room, stretching the figure bent over his desk into a long shadow.

The cold glow of the screen and the warm sunlight in the room intertwined over him, just like the world he now inhabited—

One half was the destined cold brutality of capital warfare and the family vendetta of his previous life; the other was the quiet arrival of tangible everyday warmth and youthful friendship.

November 25th, Friday.

That week, the traders had followed Zhao Chen's strategy exactly, selling Five Million Shares every day.

By now, Zhao Chen's Short Position had reached 36 million shares.

Some of those shares did not need to be sold directly, invisibly helping Zhao Jianguo lighten his burden.

But Zhao Chen's large-scale short selling still alerted outside capital.

Recently, quite a few had begun following suit and short selling.

Henglong Group headquarters, twenty-eighth floor, Chairman's Office.

The heavy mahogany doors were tightly shut, while soundproof glass reduced all the noise from the outer secretary area to a vague background murmur.

Only a few localized lamps were on in the room. The lighting was dim, and the stagnant air felt suffocating.

Zhao Jianguo sat behind his broad desk, six monitors glowing before him, their cold white light reflecting off his livid face.

The three monitors on the left displayed Henglong Holdings' real-time market data, time-sharing chart, and daily K-line.

The middle monitor showed the internal surveillance system, scrolling through today's abnormal trading statistics.

Of the two monitors on the right, one displayed the group's fund allocation schedule, while the other showed records of urgent communications with the banks' Credit Department.

His gaze was locked tightly on the middle screen on the left—

Henglong Holdings: HK$10.28, down 1.25%.

Trading volume: HK$68 million.

And in the statistics for selling seats, names such as "Morgan Stanley Asia Derivatives Department," "Credit Suisse Hong Kong Structured Products Department," and "Goldman Sachs Asia Private Equity Department" stood out like nails driven into his eyes.

Them again.

Every day, on time, in fixed quantities.

Five Million Shares.

Not one more, not one less—like a programmed machine: cold, precise, tireless.

Zhao Jianguo reached for the cigarette pack on his desk. Only when his fingers touched its cold metal casing did he realize it was already empty.

Irritably, he crushed the empty pack and tossed it into the trash can, where the metal struck the side with a piercing clang.

"Liu Mingyu!" He pressed the intercom button, his voice hoarse.