Chapter 343: This Is a Trial!

Meanwhile!

On the other side of the ocean, at the Metropolitan Opera House!

Chu Chen's performance was still continuing!

The balance on the white cardboard was still decreasing!

A young woman sitting in the second row pointed at that line of numbers and screamed, "Look at that number! It's still changing!"

Everyone's gaze turned simultaneously to the place where that beam of white light fell.

6,000,000,000

As of now, more than half of Brian's balance had already vanished!

And this vanished money was still continuously flying into the accounts of the guests below the stage!

At this moment, the barrage in the livestream room had once again turned into a white, rapidly scrolling Waterfall composed of countless exclamation marks, question marks, and meaningless interjections!

It had turned into a complete mess!

One minute later, the line of white numbers on the cardboard finally stopped.

10,000,000,000!

From fifteen billion to ten billion.

Brian's balance had directly vanished by fourteen billion!

He stood at the right side of the stage, at a loss, less than three meters away from Chu Chen.

It formed a sharp contrast with the revelry of the audience below!

"Brian!"

Amidst countless screams and applause, Chu Chen shouted his name aloud: "From fifteen billion to ten billion. Do you guess where those fourteen billion went?"

He turned around, faced the audience, and spread his arms, like a statue that had been blown by the Wind for too long and finally unfolded its wings.

"They went to them."

His hand pointed toward the audience, toward those two thousand eight hundred people whose flashlights had been extinguished, but whose phone screens were still glowing.

"This money went to your former clients, went to those who paid their premiums to you on time every year but were refused coverage by you when they fell ill. It went to those who, in front of your company's AI review system, were dismissed by a cold, heartless 'denial of coverage notice'."

His voice went from soft to heavy, from slow to fast, like a car sliding down from a mountain peak, faster and faster, heavier and heavier, more and more unstoppable.

"Your company's AI review system—nHPredict. The error rate is ninety percent. But you insist on using it. Because by using it, you can reject more claims. Because by rejecting more claims, your payout ratio can drop below the industry average. Because the payout ratio has dropped, your profits have gone up. Billions of dollars in profit every year. Where does it come from? It is saved from the patients' medical expenses. It is saved from the operating table. It is saved from those who should have been saved but were pushed home by you with a denial notice to wait for death."

"Every day, you calculate with the abacus of the Grim Reaper, and then pretend to politely say 'sorry' to those desperate people."

Someone below the stage was crying.

"The guests present today are all family members of those who were once denied coverage by you and have already passed away."

His hand stopped in mid-air, pointing to the southwest corner of the audience.

A young woman in a black dress was sitting there, holding a photo frame in her arms, inside which was a black-and-white photo of an old person.

"Her name is Emily. Her mother was diagnosed with breast cancer last year. The doctor said the cure rate was over eighty-five percent, as long as she had surgery and chemotherapy. Her mother bought your company's insurance. The best tier. Monthly premiums of twelve hundred dollars, paid for eight whole years. Eight years of premiums, adding up to over one hundred and eleven thousand dollars."

His gaze moved away from the young woman and landed in the center of the audience. An old man with graying hair sat there, with no one beside him, sitting alone in the middle of three seats. He had no phone in his hand, no invitation, nothing at all. Only a gray hat, which he clutched in his hand, clutching it until his knuckles turned white.

"His name is Robert. His daughter was sixteen and suffered from a rare disease. Your company's AI review system determined her treatment plan was 'not medically necessary' and denied coverage. Robert sold his house, sold his car, and withdrew all the retirement savings he had accumulated for twenty years. It wasn't enough. Far from enough. His daughter passed away last winter. She was four months shy of seventeen when she left."

Chu Chen paused.

The theater was so quiet that one could hear the sound of the air conditioning system.

"Every single person present tonight has a story like this. They are not randomly selected audience members, not ordinary guests at your company's annual meeting. They are your company's clients—no, they were once your company's clients. Their family members or they themselves have all been denied coverage by you."

He took a small remote control out of his pocket and pressed it.

The LED screen behind the stage switched.

It was no longer a starry sky background, no longer a close-up of his profile. A photo appeared on the screen—a little girl wearing a hospital gown, lying in bed, making a V-sign at the camera.

Her hair had already been shaved off, and there were scars left by surgery on her scalp, but she was smiling.

That smile was very bright, so bright that it made people want to cry when they saw it.

"Her name is Lily. She is fourteen this year. Diagnosed with bone cancer two years ago. Your company's AI system denied coverage twelve times on the grounds that 'this treatment plan is experimental'. Her father—who is also here tonight—sent hundreds of emails, made thousands of phone calls, and wrote three handwritten letters to your CEO. It was useless. All the denial notices had the same wording: 'According to the terms of your policy, this treatment is not covered.'"

Chu Chen turned around and faced Brian.

Brian was still standing in the same spot, but his body was trembling slightly.

"Brian, do you know what happened to Lily later?" Chu Chen paused and continued: "Her father sold his house and car and withdrew all his savings. He went from a middle-class family to someone living in a motel. But his daughter survived. The surgery was successful, and the chemotherapy ended. She is now recovering at home, her hair has grown back a bit, and she can already walk on her own."

He walked to the edge of the stage, squatted down, faced the front row of the audience, and lowered his voice a little.

"But her father, sitting in this theater tonight, has a bank card balance of—seven dollars."

Chu Chen stood up, turned around, and walked back to the center of the stage. His pace was not fast, but every step stepped on the audience's heartbeats.

"Your company's annual meeting theme is 'Co-creating the Future'. What a pleasant-sounding name. Co-creating the future. What kind of future have you created? It is billions of dollars in profit every year. It is the stock price tripling in the past five years. It is your CEO—with a net worth of fifteen billion dollars."

His voice suddenly rose, like a knife being drawn from its scabbard.

"And your clients—those who paid their premiums on time every month but were dismissed by you with a cold denial notice when they fell ill—what kind of future did they create? It is a father forced to sell his house to pay for his daughter's medical treatment. It is a daughter attending the annual meeting holding her mother's portrait. It is an old person burying their child."

His gaze swept across the entire theater, across those two thousand eight hundred people whose flashlights had been extinguished, but whose eyes were still burning.

"What I did tonight is not stealing, it is not robbing; I am simply returning to them the portion they deserved. Just like those ancient magicians in Egypt thousands of years ago, making things disappear from where they shouldn't be, and then appearing where they should be. Those premiums your company took from the clients—those premiums that should have been used to save Life, but were shut out by you using various clauses—should not be in Brian Thompson's bank account. They should be here."

Chu Chen pointed to the audience.

"In the hands of all those tonight who have been denied coverage by you, been hurt by you, and been pushed off a cliff by you."

The audience below the stage stood up in droves!

Applause gradually rang out!

The barrage in the livestream room was no longer a barrage at that moment.

It had become a wall!

A wall composed of millions, tens of millions, hundreds of millions of barrages, airtight, with white, green, and yellow intertwined, as brilliant and chaotic as an aurora!

No one could clearly see the content of any single bullet comment, but everyone could feel the emotion behind that wall:

It was not hot; it was scalding.

Within those few minutes, Chu Chen alone occupied eight of the top ten spots on Twitter's global trending list.

The number one hashtag was no longer #ChuChenAtTheMet, but had been replaced by a new entry that had been retweeted over one hundred million times in just ten minutes: #TheyShouldBeThere.

One user wrote in a tweet: "I originally thought this was a magic show. After watching for twenty minutes, I realized this isn't magic; it's a trial."

Another user wrote: "Chu Chen didn't commit a crime. He is simply executing an order that all insurance companies should be subjected to—give the money back to them."

A third user wrote: "He said magicians make things disappear from where they shouldn't be and appear where they should be. I have never heard such a simple, accurate, and tear-jerking sentence."

On Weibo, a short video from an audience member at the scene was being reposted at a rate of millions per minute.

In the video, Chu Chen stood in the center of the stage, the LED screen behind him displaying the photo of the little girl making a V-sign, and his voice came through the video's speakers, every word as clear as if carved into glass: "They should be here."

The comment section under this video flooded with over one million comments in ten minutes. The most-liked one read:

"I cried. I really cried. Not because I was moved, but because of anger. Anger that we live in a world that needs to rely on a magician to act on behalf of heaven!"