Chapter 409: The Dongfeng Has Arrived, So Let

In the apartment, the two characters lay silently in the center of the screen, like two bottomless vortices, instantly sucking away all sound and emotion.

Dongfeng Missile.

Lu Qingjun's mouth was half open, glancing at the screen, then at his brother; the excitement and agitation on his face were replaced by a huge bewilderment.

"Brother… what does this… mean? Dongfeng? A delivery?"

Li Junjie's notebook fell onto the carpet with a "snap".

He didn't pick it up; his whole body seemed frozen as if under a stasis spell, and he muttered unconsciously, "All is ready, only the Dongfeng is missing… Red Cliffs… fire burning the enemy camp…"

David Cohen looked at this, then at that, feeling like a tourist who had stumbled into a mysterious Eastern sacrificial ceremony; every symbol, every syllable was filled with a bizarre power he could not comprehend.

He gently tugged at Zhang Qianru's sleeve and asked in a hushed voice, "Dongfeng? EastWind? What is that? A new fund code?"

Zhang Qianru gave no answer; her eyes, always sparkling with clever light, now stared unblinking at Lu Qingshan, filled with an indescribable shock.

"Dongfeng is not a code."

Lu Qingshan's voice broke the stagnant air; he walked to the special communication Terminal and stared at the two characters.

"It's a signal."

He turned around, looking at his team, already fully in a war footing.

"In an ancient Huaxia tale, a decisive naval battle hinged on one side having everything ready—fleet, soldiers, strategies—all set, waiting only for a wind from a specific direction to blow their fire ships toward the enemy fleet."

"That wind is the Dongfeng."

Lu Qingshan's voice was calm, but to Li Junjie and Lu Qingjun it sounded like a thunderclap.

Li Junjie's body began to tremble; he wasn't scared, but excited—a shiver of intellectual resonance at its peak.

"So… they mean the moment has arrived, we can… launch a full assault?"

"Exactly," Lu Qingshan said, nodding slowly, "They have already completed their layout, opened the bag. Now it's our turn to drive the prey into the bag."

"My God…" David Cohen finally grasped the metaphor, dramatically clutching his chest, "So… everything we did before—buying CDS, targeting Goldman Sachs—was just… preparing fire ships?"

"You can interpret it that way too," Lu Qingshan said, looking at Li Junjie and David. "Now our fire ships are ready. Our 'Friendlies' have also prepared the wind direction for us."

He paused, his tone suddenly turning sharp.

"Then what we need to do now is ignite it."

The blood of the entire team was ignited completely at that moment.

If earlier actions were based on trust and reverence for Lu Qingshan's personal abilities, now they clearly felt they stood at the center of a grand chessboard, with a massive state machine's solemn gaze behind them.

They were no longer lone speculators fighting alone.

They are the fuse of this storm!

"How do we ignite it?" Lu Qingjun rubbed his fists, already impatient.

Lu Qingshan walked toward the floor-to-ceiling window covered with names and arrows.

"John Parker thought his trump card was my family. Wall Street thought theirs was an AAA rating. They were both wrong."

He picked up the black marker and drew two big crosses over the names of "Moody's" and "S&P".

"The real foundation isn't a Subprime loan; it's 'trust'."

"Trust in the rating agencies, trust in Wall Street, trust in the American financial system."

"What we need to do now is burn that foundation down."

He turned and issued the most reckless, yet core, order since the war began.

"Li Junjie, David!"

"Here!"

"Gather all the 'ammunition' you've compiled—about subprime default rates, about loan officers' false reports, about how Wall Street traders package trash into gold—and sort them for me!"

"Ye Ning!"

"Yes!"

"Immediately contact Wilson, activate all the financial media, columnists, finance bloggers, and those so‑called 'independent analysts' we have bought or partnered with in Europe and North America!"

"Zhang Qianru!"

"I'm here!"

"You are in charge of vetting all material slated for release, using your legal expertise to package them as untraceable 'internal leaks', 'confessions of conscientious whistleblowers', and 'tips from Wall Street's deep throat'. I want each piece to be like a precise scalpel, but its handle must bear no fingerprint of ours!"

Lu Qingshan spoke slowly, but every word carried an indisputable command tone.

"Our target is no longer a single company or a single stock."

"Our target is to shake the entire market's confidence in MBS credit products, especially AAA‑rated MBS!"

"I will make farmers in Nebraska, retired teachers in Tokyo, bank managers in Frankfurt, and everyone who bought these so‑called 'safest assets' begin to doubt whether the thing they hold is actually a bomb about to explode!"

"Understood!"

The entire team roared in unison, their voices laced with a resolve to create history.

The apartment instantly became a high‑efficiency war command center.

Li Junjie and David sorted the mountain‑high pile of negative information into a dozen or so distinct 'ammo packs' by theme and target audience.

Some targeted rating agencies' conflicts of interest, some exposed how banks loaned to 'ninja' (no income, no job, no assets), and others used plain language to diagram how junk assets were layered into AAA‑rated products.

Zhang Qianru put on her glasses; her versatility and legal expertise peaked at that moment.

She 'desensitized' each document, erasing any detail that could reveal the source, and designed the optimal 'leak' channel for each.

"This piece on rating agencies can be anonymously sent to that investigative reporter at the Wall Street Journal who's been itching for a big story."

"This exposé on loan scandals can go to that TV‑familiar financial commentator who loves conspiracy angles."

"And this one, blast it across major finance forums to make retail investors panic themselves!"

Ye Ning sat calmly at the communication Terminal, like a cold‑hearted dispatcher, routing each order through Wilson's massive network in London to precise locations worldwide.

"London, Financial Times column, target Moody's."

"New York, Bloomberg column, targeting Lehman Brothers' balance sheet."

"Frankfurt, 'Business Daily', targeting the Risk Exposure of MBS credit products held by Germany's banking sector."

Countless streams of information emanated from this tiny apartment, like a silent digital tsunami, crashing into the seemingly calm global financial market.

The whole team ran at high speed, no one spoke, only the dense clatter of keyboards and occasional low murmurs confirming commands.

Lu Qingjun's purchased champagne sat quietly in the corner, untouched.

Because everyone knew that the real celebration would have to wait until the first explosion sounded.

Time passed minute by minute, second by second.

Afternoon in New York, the sunlight was just right.

Wall Street remained a sea of traffic, traders were preparing to finish the day's work and head to a bar to celebrate another profitable day.

Everything looked the same as always.

Yet, in the invisible online world, a storm was gathering.

First, on an inconspicuous financial forum, a post appeared titled "I Was a Subprime Loan Reviewer, I Confess to God".

Then, a financial news channel released an urgent video, using exaggerated animation to show how AAA rating MBS were made up of a pile of "dog shit".

After that, on a well‑known European economist's personal blog, a short article was posted questioning the independence of rating agencies.

These pieces of information were like pebbles tossed onto a lake's surface, initially only causing trivial ripples.

But the pebbles grew in number, becoming denser.

The ripples began to overlap and resonate.

Finally, half an hour before New York's close.

The Bloomberg Terminal emitted a sharp, rapid alarm unlike any before.

It was not a rumor, but an official announcement.

On the screen, a bold breaking‑news alert popped up.

【German Industrial Credit Bank (IKB) announced: due to massive losses in its fund invested in the US subprime mortgage market, it is immediately suspending all redemption activities for that fund.】

In the apartment, all the keyboard sounds suddenly erupted in that instant.

Everyone looked up, staring fixedly at that alert.

David Cohen's body began to sway uncontrollably, his eyes bulging like copper bells, his lips moving but producing no sound.

He pointed at the screen, his fingers trembling violently.

"First… the first domino tile…"

He finally managed to utter a few words, and then his expression shifted from extreme shock to a manic joy.

He leapt violently from his chair, swinging his fists, letting out an uncontainable roar.

"It's down! It finally fucking fell down!"

Lu Qingshan stood by the window, watching the city outside gradually sink into dusk.

He did not turn around, only whispered a single sentence.

"No, this is not a collapse."

"It's a great fire, it's ignited."