Chapter Three: The First Fortune Was Not a Gamble

PAN-72 was not an account. It was an order-routing protocol. Tang found that the tiny purchases came through unrelated brokers but shared identical latency tolerances. They were five fingers tapping the same rhythm across five celebrity stocks. “Enough for an investigation?” Lu asked. “Common technology doesn't prove manipulation,” Xu said. “We need intent and a profit trail.” They aligned ninety days of PAN-72 orders with Blaze funding, stablecoin issuance, and ETF creation. Each appearance nudged the five stocks across technical thresholds. Trend funds automatically bought; optimism raised Blaze collateral values; Furnace Pool issued more stablecoins; the new money purchased more tech ETFs.