Chapter 32: The Aftermath of the Tower’s Collapse

Chapter 32: The Aftermath of the Tower’s Collapse

While sorting through the financial data, I discovered an even more terrifying fact: the Zhuo Group had a massive funding shortfall in its borrowings from numerous investment banks.

The Zhuo Group clearly had two sets of financial systems. According to its real financial reports, the group’s total financial assets had long been unable to repay the huge loans owed to major banks—and that didn’t even include funds circulating with business partners. In other words, the group was actually in a state of false operations while insolvent.

All of this clearly depended on the company’s other set of false financial data, as well as collusion between inside and outside parties at the relevant banks—collusion very hard to explain cleanly.

I recorded the information indexes one by one.

Over the next ten days or so, I separately infiltrated the legal centers of the major banks and leaked to them the Zhuo Group’s true financial asset statements and the massive bank loans.

At the same time, I also separately infiltrated the partner companies, affiliated merchants, investment enterprises, and securities platforms connected to the Zhuo Group and leaked the relevant financial information to them as well.

I didn’t hand the information directly to the official discipline-inspection authorities. Doing that might have caused the Zhuo Group’s assets to be frozen overnight, and the ones who truly suffered losses would likely have been the business partners.

Based on Xuanhong’s work experience in corporate groups, when a giant group like this went bankrupt, it often pulled in many sides’ interests. If the authorities intervened too early, they would inevitably first consider asset restructuring, loan-to-equity swaps, debt-to-equity swaps, and other methods while taking care of every party’s interests.

That wasn’t what I wanted.

So my method was simple and direct: don’t notify the authorities. Light the land mine directly, mobilize the stakeholders, and see who could run faster.

When a tower was about to fall, only those who ran fastest had a chance to survive. That was the simplest principle every economic actor understood in the business world.

Sure enough, it was just as I expected.

Investment banks, partner companies, and affiliated merchants swarmed like ants toward the Zhuo Group’s headquarters and subsidiaries, causing a severe run. Some partners were willing to take losses just to recover part of their principal. The Zhuo Group’s share price plummeted overnight.

The group’s abnormal financial run attracted the attention of the national discipline-inspection, taxation, and procuratorial authorities, which all intervened to investigate.

Major news media and online platforms across the country rushed to report on this enormous economic fraud case.

I didn’t notify the Du Group in advance to collect its debts. There wasn’t much business between them—only some financial lending and borrowing.

If I’d notified the Du Group too early, it might very well have alerted the Zhuo Group and caused them to trace things back, bringing unnecessary trouble to the Du Group.

In the days that followed, I simply sat and watched as the Zhuo Group walked step by step into the abyss.

The fall of a giant tower began with a pointless dispute and was brought down by the facts of its own crimes.

From then on, the Zhuo Group collapsed completely.

As a monk and Dharma master, I shouldn’t have involved myself in such worldly affairs.

But I was Xuanchen, a mortal with flesh eyes. I truly couldn’t free myself from hatred for wicked people, or from concern for kind, innocent ones.

Three months later, just when I thought my romantic rival Zhuo Weidong would disappear, a woman came to Tansong Temple to offer incense, forcing me to reexamine the aftermath of this incident.

That day, I was doing morning prayers. A young monk hurried over in a panic to report that a woman had come to the temple to offer incense…