Hong Kong variety show: The mastermind behind the scenes is emerging.

Tuesday, October 20th.

The rain in New York continued relentlessly, the cold raindrops pattering against the glass as if holding a long memorial service for the vast wealth that had perished yesterday.

The leaves of the old oak tree at the entrance of the exchange had been battered by the rain all night and fell onto the sidewalk, where they were trampled into brown mud by the traders' leather shoes.

After yesterday's crash, the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell nearly 150 points after opening this morning.

However, the screams and roars of yesterday were nowhere to be heard in the trading hall today.

Yesterday's heart-wrenching curses, keyboard smashing, and shouting into the phone all turned into an even more eerie silence the next day.

The traders sat slumped in front of their terminals, looking emaciated, their hands stiffly resting on the keyboards, hesitant to press the confirmation button.

They just stared blankly at the numbers on the screen that were still shrinking wildly, their eyes empty and lifeless, as if their souls had been instantly ripped out.

At this moment, even the most optimistic person understands that this is not a pullback, not a correction, not a technical adjustment... this is an avalanche.

And they were all standing directly below the avalanche.

What's worse is that, as the world's largest economy, if the US stock market sneezes, the whole world will catch a fever.

This massive stock market crash was like an unstoppable tidal wave, relentlessly sweeping westward along the Earth's time zones. With each time zone crossed, a country's financial market was forcibly dragged into an abyss of no return.

……

Thirteen hours later, the Tokyo stock market opened.

The opening bell echoed through the trading floor of the Tokyo Stock Exchange. Before the bell had even finished ringing, the numbers on the screens had already begun to plummet. The Nikkei index, which had been rising for three consecutive years, was now like a stone pushed off a cliff, crashing at the opening bell.

Although officials from the Ministry of Finance and the central bank held an emergency meeting the night the US stock market crashed and came up with an intervention plan overnight—injecting liquidity, providing window guidance, and coordinating with the Federal Reserve—it was all in vain. The moment the opening bell rang, all the plans became worthless.

Sell-off, indiscriminate selling.

In Japan, funds, banks, insurance companies, and individual investors all share one thought: to convert their stocks into cash before they drown.

The problem is that everyone is crowding in the same direction, but there's only one exit. This means that the vast majority of people are destined to be unable to escape and will ultimately become casualties of this capitalist catastrophe.

……

Fourteen hours later, on Hong Kong Island.

9:30 a.m.

The Hong Kong Island Stock Exchange was not yet open, but Des Voeux Road was already packed with people.

Some people arrived in their pajamas, clutching stock certificates they'd dug out of their drawers overnight; others had newspapers soaked with sweat, the print blurred, and were loudly explaining something to the person next to them, pointing to headlines about the U.S. stock market crash; still others squeezed into the crowd, standing on tiptoe to try and see the big clock on the exchange, wondering how much longer it would take before it opened.

"Open the door! Why aren't you opening the door?!"

"I came from Kwun Tong at four in the morning, please open the door!"

Behind the iron fence, the security guards stood in a row with their backs against the wall, all of them pale-faced, and no one dared to speak.

At 10:00 AM, the opening bell rang.

However, the electronic screens in the trading hall had just lit up when they were a ghastly crimson.

The numbers on the screen jump down from top to bottom and from left to right, in every row and column.

"It's really fallen...it's all fallen!" A middle-aged man standing in the front row said in a trembling voice, as if he were talking to himself.

"Damn! Everything's red! Wharf Holdings is red! Hutchison Whampoa is red! HSBC is red too!"

"Damn those American devils, why should we pay for the mess they created!"

"My God, this is all my savings! I've invested it all in the stock market..."

The crowd began to push forward. People in the back pushed those in the front, and those in the front bumped into the service counter. Someone's glasses were knocked off, and when they squatted down to pick them up, they were pushed to the ground and stepped on by the people behind them.

"Make way! Let me in! I want to sell!" Just then, an old man wearing gold-rimmed glasses squeezed through the crowd, holding up stock certificates. Two buttons on his collar were ripped off by the crowd, and one of his shoes was stepped on, but he didn't bother to pick it up. Barefoot, he rushed to the trading window and pounded on the glass, shouting, "Sell them all! Sell them all for me!"

"Yes, yes, sell them all! Help me sell all of Cheung Kong Holdings! No matter the price!"

"It's no use, nobody's answering! You could hang it up for three dollars and nobody would answer!"

The entire trading hall had become a giant beehive, with every window packed with people.

The printer in the corner continuously spit out transaction forms, with papers hanging from the printer nozzle all the way to the ground, forming clumps of white paper.

Some stocks simply had no transaction price; next to them was just a short horizontal bar with four words written in tiny print below it: "No one is buying."

A trader in a dark blue vest rushed out from behind the counter, holding several sweat-soaked account books, trying to calm the crowd outside the window: "Don't push anymore! They're all gone! All of them are sold out!"

However, no one listened to what he was saying. The raging crowd pushed him back instantly, slamming him against the metal corner of the counter, and then he was bounced back by the surging waves of people, like a tattered buoy being torn apart in a stormy sea.

Within just ten minutes of opening, the Hang Seng Index plummeted by 120 points.

In the afternoon, the Hang Seng Index fell another 250 points.

By the close of trading that evening, the Hang Seng Index had fallen a total of 450 points, a single-day drop of more than 12%.

But that's not the worst part.

Singapore's stock market opened with a sharp drop of 9%, London's opened with a drop of 10%, and Paris's drop was slightly more moderate, but it still closed at 6%...

Today, regardless of country or color, the arrows on the screen all point in the same direction—the abyss.

In a daze, some people recalled fifty years ago—the autumn of 1929, when the New York stock market crashed, the Great Depression spread from Wall Street to the entire capitalist world, tens of millions of people lost their jobs, hundreds of millions were displaced, long lines stretched across blocks outside bakeries, and bank run barriers were torn down.

The photos printed in the newspapers back then and the crowds thronging the stock exchange entrance today are almost identical when superimposed.

Same posture, same expression.

Of course, this stock market crash was a disaster for most people, but for some, it was a season of harvest.

……

Central, Golden Harvest Media Building.

Lu Chen sat behind his desk, holding a freshly brewed cup of coffee. His personal phone had been ringing all morning.

The first call came from the shipowner.

"Little Lu! How did you manage to calculate so accurately?!" Bao, the shipping magnate, rang out in a hearty voice, his joy palpable even through the receiver. "Martin faxed over the first batch of data this morning. Let me tell you, in all my years in business, I've never seen such a grand and impressive operation!"

"Mr. Bao, the stock market crash isn't over yet, don't get too excited." Lu Chen took a sip of coffee, his tone calm.

"Hahaha! Great! Then I'll keep looking forward to it!" The shipping magnate laughed heartily, then quickly added, "Come find me another day, I recently bought a new yacht, let's go out to sea and fish for big fish!"

After exchanging a few more pleasantries, Bao Chuanwang reluctantly hung up the phone. However, just as Lu Chen put the receiver back, the phone rang again.

The second person was Huo Daheng.

Huo Daheng's voice was much more restrained than Bao Chuanwang's, but it still carried an irrepressible excitement: "Xiao Lu, it's really all thanks to your reminder. Before, when you said there would be a stock market crash, Lao Bao and I were half-believing and half-doubting. Luckily, we listened to you at the time."

At this point, Huo Daheng's tone turned into an exclamation: "The most visionary thing I've ever done in my life is making friends with you."

Lu Chen leaned back in his chair: "Old Huo, you're too kind. It was just good luck."

"Luck is the excuse of the weak. You two don't need to be modest," Huo Daheng joked. "But speaking of which, with the Hong Kong stock market crashed like this today, the Governor's Office will probably be knocking on our door for help soon—you should keep that in mind."

With the stock market crash, Hong Kong Island was in a state of chaos. The entrance to the stock exchange was crowded with citizens holding stock certificates, and people began queuing outside HSBC to withdraw money. Several medium-sized securities firms had their trading qualifications suspended by the exchange this morning—the Governor's Office could not possibly remain indifferent.

"clear."

The third caller was Stanley Ho, who was even more direct than the previous two. He started with a laugh, a laugh that carried a certain signature slyness: "Mr. Lu, I really don't know how to thank you! I was able to escape unscathed from this stock market crash entirely thanks to your reminder. Did you check the market this morning? HSBC has plummeted so badly. If I hadn't listened to you, I would have been kneeling at the bank's door this afternoon begging for a loan extension."

"Haha, congratulations, Mr. He!"

"Congratulations on what... Congratulations on finally listening to you? Hehe," Stanley Ho's voice suddenly dropped a beat when he said this. But he quickly regained his usual practiced cheerfulness, "Don't worry, I've followed your procedure for the foundation's accounts to halfway through. Once Aoyu finishes its audit, the bylaws will be finalized."

"That's good. Come to Hong Kong Island another day. It's been so long since we got together."

"Definitely! Definitely!"

Subsequently, the Red Alliance and its peripheral partners called one after another—Guo the Sugar King, Ma the Tycoon, and several Southeast Asian Chinese businessmen who held small peripheral shares.

The phone calls were so frequent that Lu Chen could barely put the receiver down. The "Overlord Flower" came in three times to change the coffee, and each time she put down the coffee pot, he could hear undisguised laughter and the sound of slapping the table from the other end of the phone.

There was no way around it; they all made a fortune in this global catastrophe.

Although on the surface it appears that the plunge in Hong Kong stocks has caused a significant reduction in the assets of their listed companies—Wharf Holdings, owned by shipping magnate Pao, and Shun Tak Holdings, owned by gambling tycoon Stanley Ho—their market value evaporated by 30% to 40% in a single day.

But they weren't worried because they had already reduced their holdings of the corresponding stocks and obtained a large amount of cash beforehand.

Moreover, Lu Chen also gave them the ticket to short selling—those deep out-of-the-money put options that were built at extremely low cost in the stock markets of the US and Japan, with returns often reaching tens or hundreds of times. The small market value they lost was already negligible in the profits from short selling.

Therefore, they don't care how much their companies' market value has shrunk. Some even secretly hope that the stock market will fall even more—because when it hits rock bottom, they can buy back their own shares at rock-bottom prices to regain control and make a fortune in the options market.

At three o'clock in the afternoon, Lu Chen hung up the last phone call and was finally able to pick up his coffee cup and walk to the floor-to-ceiling window.

Outside the window, the surface of Victoria Harbour was ruffled by the October sea breeze, and the gantry cranes on the dock were still loading and unloading containers in an orderly manner. But the fund managers in the office buildings in Central probably had no mood to appreciate this sea view.

"Knock knock knock..."

"Please come in."

Cheng Yiyan pushed open the door and placed a stack of fax papers on the table. His gold-rimmed glasses were pushed up to his forehead, and there were two obvious rings of sleep deprivation under his eyes, but the light in his pupils was brighter than ever.

"Boss, the preliminary settlement report is out."

He turned the fax paper towards Lu Chen, pointed to the bottom line of numbers, and said, enunciating each word clearly, "In Chicago, several contracts have increased nearly 140 times. The same is true in London and Tokyo. Conservatively speaking, our total unrealized profit from this round, combined, is approaching 10 billion US dollars!"

At this point, even Cheng Yiyan, who has a strong heart, couldn't help but feel her heart pounding: if you calculate it this way, this round of guaranteed returns has leveraged more than 100 billion US dollars.

"Besides the funds that are publicly held by Qianning Capital, all other hidden offshore accounts must be prepared immediately for safe return of funds," Lu Chen calmly instructed, turning a page of the faxed report.

"Understood, boss." Cheng Yiyan nodded emphatically. As the key figure at Golden Harvest, he naturally knew what Lu Chen was referring to—those under-the-table deals hidden within the official channels.

As for why they had to take the gray route, the reason is simple—to evade financial regulation.

Making money from shorting this level of market volatility is only the first step; the hardest part is bringing that money home safely.

After all, Qianning Capital is a licensed asset management institution officially registered and listed by the U.S. SEC. Every transaction is under the watchful eye of the regulatory agency, with a level of transparency as high as a fish swimming in a glass tank.

In addition, Martin Channing is a semi-celebrity on Wall Street, and after this crash, regulators around the world will be watching to see who made a fortune in this catastrophe.

Therefore, the profits earned by Qianning Capital must be declared, taxed, and subject to compliance review through formal channels.

Even if they did that, it would only allow Martin to hold the funds; they would absolutely not allow them to leave the country. Because the amount of money is so large, if you dared to bring out the US dollar, the people in Washington would flip the table!

Lu Chen was well aware of all this, so in addition to investing money in Qianning Capital, he also had Cheng Yiyan set up a completely independent capital flow structure.

Every transaction in these secret accounts is anonymous, and all fund transfers are filtered through at least two layers of offshore companies.

And all that money will eventually end up in their own pockets.

"Don't worry, boss, I will make preparations immediately and transfer the funds out of the US in batches as quickly as possible."

"Very good, you'll be in charge of the specific operations. There's only one requirement: safety first," Lu Chen nodded, reminding him, "Earning a little less is fine, getting the money in your hands is the most important thing."

After all, this is not 1929. The Federal Reserve will intervene, and central banks around the world will follow suit. In the end, the greedy will be left on the table.

"Understood!" Cheng Yiyan nodded and immediately went down to make preparations.

"Bang Bang Bang——"

Just then, there was a knock on the door. Ba Wanghua pushed the door open and walked in, holding a telephone in her hand.

"Boss, the Governor requests that you come to Government House tonight to discuss the stock market crash."

Lu Chen nodded: "Please reply to him for me, I will attend on time."

The tyrant nodded and left the office.

Lu Chen finished the last sip of coffee in his cup and placed the empty cup on the windowsill.

Outside the window, some people were squatting in front of the stock exchange protesting, some were sitting in a tea restaurant staring blankly at the scrolling numbers on the television screen, and others were squatting on the sidewalk flipping through the evening paper, which had just been urgently reprinted and still smelled of ink. The headline of the evening paper read four words:

Stock market crash, stock market crash.