Chapter One: The Bankrupt Man Heard the Clock

At 9:27 a.m., the last brokerage account in Lu Chen's name was frozen. He was sitting in the liquidation room on the thirty-seventh floor of Polaris Capital. Rain had flattened Shanghai beyond the glass into a lead-gray balance sheet. Across the table, three creditors, two lawyers, and a risk officer Lu had once hired waited for his signature. Three million, seven hundred twenty-six thousand yuan. That was the world's final valuation of a man who had fallen from Quant Newcomer of the Year to the edge of a debtor blacklist. “Sign it,” Han Che said, sliding over a pen. “Polaris is already covering the litigation costs.” Six months earlier, Tidal One, Lu's strategy, had lost 1.2 billion yuan in forty-seven minutes.