Living in a county town, starting as a stock market maker...

Su Qingying composed herself, swiped her finger across the screen, and pressed the speakerphone button.

"Qingying! My beautiful lady! Have you figured it out yet?"

"Stop following that scoundrel Gu Ming; he's a dead man. I'll offer you a price: CEO of Apocalypse Entertainment, plus 5% equity. Right now, immediately, withdraw all personal guarantees and financial support for that good-for-nothing Gu Ming!"

CEO.

Five percent of the shares are dry stock.

Given Tianqi Entertainment's current size, no one can refuse these terms.

The technicians looked at each other.

In their view, there was simply no choice.

Su Qingying didn't speak, but just looked at Gu Ming.

Gu Ming was leaning back in a swivel chair, toying with a motion capture sensor that Wang Qiao had just dropped. The metallic texture spun between his fingertips, reflecting the cold light of the server.

He didn't look at Su Qingying, but simply raised his chin at her, indicating that she should play along with the other person.

Immediately, Gu Ming stood up and wrote down several unfamiliar company names.

Wang Tianqi, on the other end of the phone, was losing patience as he waited for no response.

"Su Qingying, don't be ungrateful. Do you think you have a choice?"

"To tell you the truth, I have joined forces with several directors at your investment bank's headquarters, and they have just launched an internal investigation into you on the grounds that there are significant risks of irregularities in the project."

"You either have to obey me now, or you can wait to be blacklisted by the industry and never touch finance again."

Industry ban.

For someone of Su Qingying's caliber, this is tantamount to ending her career.

Wang Tianqi seemed quite pleased with his threat, and a smug laugh came from the other end of the phone.

"Hahaha, scared? What can Gu Ming give you? A bunch of garbage code abandoned by the times? Let me tell you, my Yao has captured 90% of the entire online pre-sale market in just three hours. Gu Ming's stuff is not worth mentioning at all."

"Go against me? What makes him think he can fight me?"

Su Qingying's chest rose and fell slightly, but her eyes remained calm.

Her fingers swiped rapidly across the tablet, where data streams and company architecture diagrams flashed by.

The shell companies that Gu Minggang wrote down were precisely located one by one in the vast financial network.

Immediately afterwards, a series of hidden financial chains came to light, extending from these shell companies and ultimately all pointing to the assets of Apocalypse Entertainment.

These were all leveraged pledges that Wang Tianqi illegally made in order to expand his business.

A single stroke of the pen could ruin him.

"Mr. Wang."

Su Qingying finally spoke, her voice devoid of emotion, yet it chilled the air in the studio.

"Are you done talking?"

Wang Tianqi's laughter stopped: "What do you mean?"

Su Qingying did not answer him, but instead read out a string of numbers.

"Let's start with Vannadu's offshore trust, account number 7749-K-8832, which received 37 million last Wednesday."

"Then there's CIBC Bank in the Cayman Islands, account number ending in 0921, which transferred in 120 million in bridging funds early yesterday morning."

"And that anonymous account with UBS Private Bank, do you need me to help you recall whose name you opened it under?"

On the other end of the phone, Wang Tianqi's breathing immediately became heavier.

With each account number Su Qingying recited, his breathing became more rapid.

When the third account was read out, there was a loud crash on the phone, like something had fallen to the ground, followed by a flurry of noise.

Wang Tianqi's laughter ceased, leaving only his suppressed roar: "How...how did you know?!"

And at that very moment.

Gu Ming pressed the Enter key on the control panel.

On the studio's main screen, Zero, the virtual idol who had just gained a soul, grinned and let out a short, piercing electronic laugh.

"laugh--"

The laughter, transmitted clearly through the still-connected phone, reached Wang Tianqi's ears.

Su Qingying held the tablet and continued speaking.

"Mr. Wang, I forgot to introduce myself. Before serving as your investment advisor, my primary role was the Chief Compliance Officer for the Asia-Pacific region of an investment bank."

"According to Article 11B of the risk control agreement, when a project party has significant undisclosed related-party transactions and asset risks, the compliance officer has the right to initiate the debt early liquidation process. I have already submitted the application to the risk control committee at headquarters."

"Oh, right," Su Qingying paused, then added, "those directors you used to threaten me happen to be on the risk control committee's list. Guess, are they protecting you, or protecting their own jobs?"

Immediately afterwards, Su Qingying did something that left everyone, including the three sisters, stunned.

In front of Gu Ming, she packaged the evidence she had just compiled regarding all of Wang Tianqi's hidden debts and irregularities into an encrypted file.

The recipient was the internal whistleblowing email address of the headquarters.

Then, click "Send".

"You're a madman!"

Wang Tianqi's roar came from the phone, his voice distorted.

In the background of the roar, a series of urgent and piercing alarm sounds could be faintly heard, like a forced liquidation warning from the financial software.

The studio was quiet.

The three sisters, Wang Min, Wang Qiao, and Wang Ling, looked at Su Qingying with changed expressions.

This woman destroyed a business empire with the flick of her finger.

Gu Ming stood up from his swivel chair, walked to Su Qingying's side, and naturally took the still-ringing cell phone from her hand.

He put the phone to his mouth and said only one sentence to Wang Tianqi.

"Those traffic channels you bought out will soon become the reason that drags you down."

After saying that, he hung up the phone.

The surroundings immediately fell silent.

Less than thirty seconds.

Su Qingying's personal cell phone started ringing incessantly.

In a private group chat comprised of top executives in the financial industry, messages kept popping up.

[Urgent! The credit ratings of several subsidiaries of Tianqi Entertainment have just been downgraded to C-!]

Reports indicate that several brokerages have begun forcibly liquidating Tianqi's positions.

Has Wang Tianqi gone mad? Using core assets to create triple leverage?

[It's over, Apocalypse's stock will definitely open at the daily limit down tomorrow.]

Su Qingying looked at the scrolling messages on the screen and let out a long sigh of relief. She looked up at Gu Ming, and their eyes met in mid-air.

Their hands touched the console.

Neither of them spoke, but they both understood what the other meant.

Just then.

"drop--"

An encrypted communication request popped up in the lower right corner of Chen Mo's computer screen.

The initiator's code name is a burning rose.

Chen Mo answered the call immediately.

A woman's languid voice flowed slowly through the studio's surround sound system.

"Sister Qingying, you've done a great job locking up the debt."

"Now that his funding chain has been cut off, what's next...?"

"Let's give all the traffic that Wang Tianqi bought to Ling as a debut gift."