Homo Sapiens

Modu.

Inside a high-end club in Hongqiao.

After getting an earful from his father over the phone, Wang Zhiyuan’s expression was grim. He took a large gulp of red wine before smashing the bottle of Kangdi, worth over a hundred thousand yuan, against the door.

HFF... HFF... ”Fei Zai, know any fun places to go lately?”

Cui Fei, who was tasting wine beside him, waved his hand.

Instantly, the few women in the room slipped out without a sound.

”Things are a bit tense at home, so it’s not a good time to be seen out and about. How about we go to Sydney?”

Wang Zhiyuan’s brow unfurrowed slightly. ”What’s there to do in Sydney?”

”Hunting, or maybe diving in the Coral Sea. Then we can find a few ’clean’ amateurs. How does that sound?” Cui Fei suggested with a chuckle.

But Wang Zhiyuan was unimpressed. ”I’m bored of all that.”

”There aren’t really any good places lately. That Epstein fellow is done for, otherwise we could have gone to his place for a while,” Cui Fei said, shrugging helplessly.

”...” Suddenly, Wang Zhiyuan remembered something. ”Didn’t that Du Jianxin kid invite us out a while back? His family really screwed me over this time. Tell him to arrange a few things for us. If we’re not satisfied, his family can forget about staying in business.”

”Du Jianxin? You mean about that Li Qingye business?”

A vicious glint flashed in Wang Zhiyuan’s eyes. ”That damned bastard. He’d better hide in Hongsawaddy for the rest of his life. How dare he use the new medicine to threaten us? Does he really think he can be our equal?”

”Alright, alright. Once the new medicine becomes less important, we’ll have plenty of ways to deal with him. He’s just a grasshopper in late autumn—his days are numbered,” Cui Fei said dismissively.

Wang Zhiyuan picked up his phone and called Du Jianxin directly. He showed him no respect whatsoever, treating him like a dog to be ordered around.

On the other end of the line, Du Jianxin was filled with utter despair.

Because the ”person” who had promised to arrange entertainment for Wang Zhiyuan and the others wasn’t him, Du Jianxin, but an impostor AI program inside his body.

During the call, the real Du Jianxin had tried to interfere with the impostor program, hoping to make Wang Zhiyuan notice that something was wrong.

But his hopes were naive. The biochip and its AI program had undergone continuous upgrades, and their control was something no natural human could resist. Even interfering with its operation was impossible.

Considering that the transfer of assets from the Du Family and other families would still take several months,

the impostor program, speaking through Du Jianxin, arranged a special trip for Wang Zhiyuan in October, to be held in Java.

After hanging up, the AI-controlled Du Jianxin stood by the floor-to-ceiling window, looking down at the somewhat decaying streetscape of Xiangjiang as the corners of his mouth curved into a slight smile.

Over the past few days, using a combination of coercion and persuasion, he had made the 15 smaller families who had previously participated in carving up the Xinxin Group contribute a considerable amount of capital to the Purple Heaven Investment Fund.

Currently, the Purple Heaven Investment Fund had raised a total of 24.3 billion yuan. Combined with the assets transferred from his own Du Family, the total reached nearly 50 billion yuan.

The Internal Affairs Division, remotely controlling Du Jianxin, analyzed the situation and concluded that this amount was the limit. Extracting more funds or persuading others to invest would become significantly more difficult.

Therefore, the Internal Affairs Division decided it was time to close the net.

Du Jianxin called the company’s senior executives for a meeting.

”President Du, isn’t this gold mine investment project in the Transvaal a bit too risky?” reminded Du Lin, the head of the investment department.

But Du Jianxin wore an inscrutable expression. ”Don’t worry. It doesn’t matter if this project makes money or not. The important thing is that the money gets where it needs to go.”

”...” Du Lin’s eyes darted. His mind immediately started racing.

As a member of the Du Family, Du Lin obviously knew some inside information. There were dark undercurrents swirling within the Xinxin Group, and Li Qingye was watching menacingly from Hongsawaddy.

In Du Lin’s view, this was the family preparing a contingency plan: transferring a portion of their domestic funds and assets offshore to be laundered clean.

And Du Jianxin’s dozen or so mineral investment projects all looked like shell companies; there were no real mines to speak of.

Du Lin and the other executives all assumed the Du Family was pulling the strings behind these shell companies, so they didn’t suspect anything, each expressing that the president was brilliant.

”Everyone, I don’t want any trouble, and I assume you don’t either. What happened today, you keep it to yourselves. Especially no phone calls or emails home talking nonsense.”

Hearing this, Du Lin nodded. ”Rest assured, President Du. Today, we were just discussing overseas investments and the company’s future development strategy.”

”Good. You’ll all be well rewarded in the future. Now, I want everyone focused. Give your full cooperation to the investment work.” A satisfied smile appeared on Du Jianxin’s face.

”Understood.”

”I won’t be returning to Peng City anytime soon.”

”Don’t worry, President Du! The finance department will give it our all.”

With the company president as a mole, many things were indeed handled without obstruction. No wonder America was so fond of G Map.

Meanwhile, the real Du Jianxin’s heart was bleeding. Decades of his family’s hard work had been slashed away by Li Qingye in one fell swoop.

If he had a choice, Du Jianxin would rather just explode on the spot than continue living like this.

However, the investments of the Purple Heaven Investment Fund definitely couldn’t be hidden for long.

Therefore, the Internal Affairs Division had to speed up the process of laundering this capital to avoid being targeted by other powers.

And the best way to launder money was, in fact, the stock market.

「Starting from July 15th.」

Across the world’s major stock markets—including Hong Kong, America, Europe, and East Japan—numerous low-priced ”demon stocks” began to appear.

These demon stocks had previously been junk stocks, a considerable number of which had been secretly acquired by the financial office of the Homo Sapiens Company’s Internal Affairs Division.

Now, by hyping up new concepts like graphene underwear, hydrogen-rich water, virtual games, space mining, and new medicines, they were made to look like the rising stars of the future.

Meanwhile, the dozens of related corporate entities or individuals behind the Purple Heaven Investment Fund’s dozen or so mining projects began buying up large quantities of these demon stocks, artificially driving up their prices.

After all, with tens of billions of yuan in capital, it was quite simple to pump up a dozen or so junk stocks.

The financial office, meanwhile, was selling off its holdings at high prices on one hand, while secretly going long on the other.

This harvest wasn’t just about cashing out; it was about making even more money.

At the same time, the Purple Heaven Investment Fund also bundled up the 23 subsidiaries under its control and mortgaged them to Siam’s Chiang Mai Commercial Bank, Xiangjiang’s Far East Investment Bank, and Luzon’s Manila United Bank.

Mortgaging these companies yielded another large sum of capital, which was then funneled back into the shell mining projects.

Yang Tiancheng’s New Nanyang Company was running a similar operation.

If there weren’t moles involved, the plan would be for both companies to simply declare their investments a failure when the time came, after which they would enter bankruptcy liquidation.

Du Jianxin and Yang Tiancheng would get the laundered funds, the banks would receive some of the mortgaged assets, and the other investors in the company would be left with nothing.

This was also why the Du Family, the Yang Family, and the dozen or so smaller families failed to notice anything unusual.

Because all of these operations fit within their conventional way of thinking.

They were just unaware of the final, critical piece of the puzzle: they never imagined their own company’s president was a mole.

Even Du Shuping and Yang Haibo didn’t detect any problems. After all, they were busy separating their overseas branches and naturally couldn’t manage things personally, so they had to entrust it to their sons.

Since the family fortune would be passed down to their sons sooner or later, it never occurred to them that their own sons would be working against them.