Offshore Company

Hearing his father's next words, that his grandmother had already been transferred to Huaxi Hospital, the heavy weight on Huang Xiuyuan's heart finally lifted.

After chatting with his father for a few more minutes, he hung up the phone.

He locked the door to the third-floor laboratory and walked down to the first floor. In Lingnan, the February night was chilly, and a cold breeze swept in, carrying a faint scent of rust—the smell produced by oxidizing scrap metal.

Huang Xiuyuan, who had a bit of a germaphobe streak, didn't particularly like the environment of the recycling plant. In the sorting area not far away, several employees were busy at work.

They were likely rushing to finish processing some scrap before the upcoming holiday, so they were working overtime. Huang Sixiao was driving a forklift, stacking bundles of cardboard onto the open-air ground nearby.

Another employee was pulling a large canvas sheet over the cardboard and compressed iron blocks to prevent the rain from soaking the paper or causing the iron to rust.

Huang Xiuyuan greeted them, then left the recycling plant through the back door. He went home, took a hot shower, and went to bed to adjust his sleep schedule.

The morning sun shone softly onto his face through the beige curtains.

Rubbing his sleepy eyes, he woke up to find it was already past nine o'clock. He quickly brushed his teeth and washed his face; he had other things to do today.

He called for Uncle Xiao's son, a big guy standing one meter eighty-seven, with a sturdy, broad-shouldered build. His bronze skin and squinty eyes made him look like a professional bodyguard if he were to put on a black suit.

"Brother Dachang, have you eaten breakfast?" Huang Xiuyuan asked while tossing a set of car keys over.

Huang Weichang, quick-witted and agile, caught the keys with one large hand: "I've eaten. Where are we going?"

"Downtown, first to the Gaowen Fish Soup place across from Wansheng."

"Alright."

Under a tin shed beside the house sat an old Nissan pickup truck. Huang Weichang, who had learned to drive in the military, often drove this vehicle.

The pickup passed a hillside called Hebaoling before entering the urban area of Shanmei. They had breakfast at the Gaowen Fish Soup shop on Tengfei Road.

Afterward, he and Huang Weichang drove toward Shanmei Avenue.

Passing three traffic lights, they stopped in front of an office building. He took out his phone and made a call; this was the person Huang Sixiao had helped him find, the building's management manager.

"Hello, who is this?"

Huang Xiuyuan got straight to the point: "Manager Cai, hello! I'm Huang Sixiao's nephew. We spoke a few days ago about coming to look at the office space."

"Oh, Boss Huang, hello! Where are you? I'll come over."

"Right below the office building, on the side facing Shanmei Avenue."

"Please wait a moment, I'll be right there."

The reason the other party was so enthusiastic had to do with the business environment in Shanmei. Before 2012, the business climate here was not good.

The reasons were naturally multifaceted, with black, white, and gray forces intertwined. Outside investors faced a high risk of losing everything unless they were powerful enough to suppress the local gangs—otherwise, it was better to wait for the new leadership to take over.

This resulted in most of the office buildings in Shanmei remaining vacant.

The nature of these buildings was already set; the first and second floors might be rented out as malls or shops, but above the third floor, they were used for little more than company offices or warehouses.

The current state of this office building was essentially stagnant.

A moment later, a slightly breathless middle-aged man walked around the corner. He had fair skin and a noticeable beer belly, looking every bit the seasoned office veteran.

"Manager Cai?"

Manager Cai quickly reached out his hand: "Ha, hello, Boss Huang."

The two shook hands briefly. Huang Xiuyuan didn't have time for small talk and asked directly: "Manager Cai, which floors in your Huashang Building are currently unrented?"

Huang Xiuyuan's unconventional approach caught Manager Cai off guard, but he didn't dwell on it and quickly began to introduce the options: "Our building currently has the fourth floor, the fifth floor..."

After hearing the introduction, Huang Xiuyuan did some quick mental math and asked the man to lead the way for an on-site inspection.

Of the entire office building, only the first and second floors were rented, and the third and fourth floors were occupied by four small companies; the other 12 floors were completely vacant.

Arriving at the seventh floor, unlike the empty spaces before, there were still many office facilities here, though no people.

Huang Xiuyuan turned his head: "What's the situation with this floor?"

The slightly breathless Manager Cai introduced it like he knew every detail: "Boss Huang, this was previously rented by an electronics sales company. Four months ago, the boss of that company went to jail. Their deposit wasn't enough to cover the arrears, so they had to use these office facilities to offset part of the debt."

"Has the contract been terminated?" Huang Xiuyuan asked, signaling for Huang Weichang to go and take a look.

"It has, it's available for rent now. It's just that these office facilities require an additional fee."

After more than half an hour of inspection, he found that the office facilities on this floor were very complete and even included fiber-optic network lines. He would only need to change the signage and purchase a batch of office supplies to begin normal operations.

After some haggling, he rented the floor at 6 yuan per square meter per month. The total area was 3,200 square meters, making the monthly rent 19,200 yuan. Additionally, he paid a one-time fee of 50,000 yuan for the transfer of the office facilities.

The contract was signed for a three-year term with a three-month deposit.

After renting the office, Huang Xiuyuan began to think about other matters. He now needed a professional manager to help him handle these miscellaneous tasks.

A professional manager was very important to Huang Xiuyuan, as it would allow him to free himself up and focus only on the big picture.

Otherwise, the series of procedures involved in running a company and a factory would be enough to keep him busy, leaving him no time for scientific research.

He had a quick lunch at noon, then sent Huang Weichang to buy a batch of computers, printers, fax machines, and the like. He then had the management of Huashang Building help him contact the telecom company to set up broadband, along with other miscellaneous tasks.

It was evening by the time they returned to Pubian Town.

At the desk in his room, he operated two laptops. One was dedicated to managing those botnets and the puppet accounts he had established all over the world.

These puppet accounts were created by exploiting management loopholes in underdeveloped regions and chaotic, complex societies, using the identities of missing or deceased individuals to build fake personas.

Then, using these puppet identities, he established complex companies and foundations across various offshore regions.

Through layers of cross-shareholding, everything was eventually consolidated in Xiangjiang, where the companies he had previously commissioned agencies to set up had already been approved.

Currently, on the surface, there are three offshore companies in Xiangjiang under the name of Huang Xiuyuan: Huang's International Investment Fund Company, New World Financial Investment Company, and Carmen International Financial Investment Company.

Among them, Huang's Fund is the company specifically used for remitting funds domestically and also serves as the parent company for the other two.

As for New World and Carmen, New World directly enters the financial market to invest in stocks, futures, and foreign exchange, while Carmen secretly invests in the financial market through puppet offshore companies.

The reason for adopting this strategy of one public and one private entity is mainly to avoid becoming a target and being spotted by Wall Street and international financial giants.

He is already operating secretly now, having taken 20 million USD and injected it into Carmen, where he is covertly shorting various stocks and indices in the financial markets of Western countries.

Due to the impact of the subprime mortgage crisis this year, combined with many important events from his memories, he must seize this unmissable opportunity to make a haul in the financial market before the storm of the butterfly effect fully erupts, thereby making his initial accumulation even more substantial.