Homo Sapiens

「North America.」

Cargill Company Headquarters.

A gloomy atmosphere now hung over the place.

President Vid’s expression was awful, and seated across from him, Chairman Little William’s face was as black as thunder.

"Can someone tell me? What is going on with Hongsawaddy’s rice?"

Foster Nietzsche, the man in charge of market research, replied fearfully, "Chairman, we don’t know much about Hongsawaddy, especially since they tightened their entry inspections and restrictions this year. We’ve only been able to analyze their rice production via satellite remote sensing."

BANG! Little William slammed his hand on the table. "Fuck you! Your analysis report is completely unchanged! You just copied last year’s data! Do you really think I’m a fool?"

But Foster complained inwardly, ’You’re the one who demanded we cut costs. You think commercial satellites are free? Who’s going to waste resources monitoring some tiny country?’

Vid sighed. "Hahh... Mr. Chairman, our grain war in Southeast Asia has clearly failed. Hongsawaddy’s rice is enough to supply Luzon. We lost another 530 million on rice futures today. As for the 320 million we invested in Luzon’s grain market, I’m afraid it’s all tied up."

Hearing of such catastrophic losses, everyone in the room felt their hearts ache.

Many people might assume that with the collapse of rice prices in Luzon, the ABCD companies could simply sell their surplus on the international market.

On the international market, rice prices had indeed seen a significant drop, affected by the Luzon rice war and the sudden emergence of Hongsawaddy’s rice.

However, the international price of rice still hovered around 430 US Dollars per ton.

After all, the impact of reduced soybean production was so great that it was difficult for other grain prices to fall.

However, the ABCD companies understood that while getting rice into Luzon was easy, getting it out was incredibly difficult.

Luzon’s recent move to raise the rice export tariff to 300% was alone enough to make the grain traders want to cough up blood.

Furthermore, the operators of Luzon’s various ports, railways, and highways were all backed by the five major families and the Homo Sapiens Company. These entities could set targeted, exorbitant fees, driving the grain traders’ transportation costs to unbearable heights.

This was also why people like Fan Ao Ka had chosen to jump off buildings.

They could store the grain or sell it to the locals, but they couldn’t dream of shipping a single grain out of the country. Faced with these restrictions, the speculative traders could either sell locally at a massive loss or continue to pay for storage.

If they had used their own capital, it would have just been a financial loss.

But many of these speculative traders had borrowed heavily from banks. With domestic rice prices having plummeted, they now had to repay their loans while also absorbing the losses from the cheap rice. Some couldn’t handle the pressure and resorted to jumping off buildings or into the sea.

This time, the Homo Sapiens Company’s scythe was exceedingly sharp, and it reaped its harvest with speed and brutality.

During the earlier price hike, they had secretly fanned the flames, then covertly had local cooperatives sell a large batch of rice to these speculators at inflated prices. At the same time, they arranged for banks to provide these speculators with collateralized loans.

Now, they had precisely imploded Luzon’s rice prices, trapping all the speculators who had bought in at the peak. Then, they swiftly sealed off all channels for exporting grain from Luzon, completing their checkmate.

On top of that, they used news of the Luzon rice war and Hongsawaddy’s production capacity to screw over the ABCD companies in the international futures market.

Next, if those speculators couldn’t repay their loans on schedule, their rice, companies, and other assets would be forcibly seized by the banks.

When the banks were selecting their prey, the Security Department had secretly assisted, carefully handpicking targets for them. They ensured that these prey had assets that, once seized after a forced default, would turn a tidy little profit.

Clearly, these speculators had no idea of the true terror of the Homo Sapiens Company.

They thought they were the hunters, but in reality, they were the prey.

...

Little William was on the verge of bursting a blood vessel.

Cargill Company had lost a fortune on soybean futures, another fortune on the soybean spot market, and now a third fortune on rice futures and speculation.

What was even worse, they had originally planned to use the rice war to fleece Luzon and recoup their losses from the soybean industry.

Now, their plan had backfired spectacularly, costing them even more.

Fortunately, Cargill Company wasn’t publicly traded; otherwise, its stock price would have plummeted through the floor.

Meanwhile, the stock prices of the publicly traded Archer Daniels Midland, Bunge, and Louis Dreyfus plummeted today, allowing the Financial Office of the Homo Sapiens Company’s Internal Affairs Department to fleece them mercilessly.

Of course, other financial speculators in Europe and America didn’t miss out on this opportunity either.

Even the ABCD companies themselves were short-selling their own stock to hedge some of their losses.

However, this series of clashes in the finance, grain, and soybean markets also attracted the close attention of the Wall Street Financial Group.

As the ultimate power behind the Wall Street Financial Group, the Morgan Clan ordered a full investigation into the matter.

In Seattle, Thomas Morgan set down the file in his hand and lit a cigar. "Hahh... The ABCD companies have taken a heavy blow, Philip."

"Your orders, sir?" a middle-aged, white-haired man replied, standing respectfully to the side.

"Have someone talk to Little William. Tell him I’ve taken an interest in Cargill Company."

"OK, I’ll see to it at once."

After the man left, Thomas picked up the file again. His eyes flickered with uncertainty as he stared at a particular section. ’Who are you?’

Through the Wall Street Financial Group and their global financial network, the Morgan Clan had detected a mysterious force making waves amidst this series of financial operations.

But their investigation had yet to turn up any obvious targets.

The accounts used to short the ABCD companies, go long on soybean futures, and short rice futures originated from all over the globe; a great many were even based in North America and Europe.

Among them, a dozen or so investment funds from Luzon held over two billion US Dollars.

However, their activities were mainly concentrated on rice futures and the later shorting of the ABCD companies. It was obvious these were fronts for Luzon’s five major families—a fact the Morgan Clan was already aware of.

But the origins of the remaining hundreds of thousands of accounts were far more complex.

This was especially true for the batch of accounts that had laid the trap for the ABCD companies in the soybean futures market early on. They involved all sorts of offshore companies, offshore accounts, and convoluted identities.

Even for a heavyweight of global finance like the Morgan Clan, the situation was proving to be incredibly thorny.

Faced with this tangled mess of account information, the Morgan Clan had assembled a special team to investigate the financial channels, but they still hadn’t found anything of value.

In reality, the fundamental reason the Morgan Clan couldn’t identify the mastermind was the unique operational model of the Internal Affairs Division’s Financial Office.

Leveraging the Security Department, which had already infiltrated every corner of the globe, the Internal Affairs Division mass-produced fake identities in any region with exploitable loopholes.

To this end, the Internal Affairs Division even established an "Identity Information Editing Office" dedicated to forging unassailable fake identities.

Then, using these fake identities, they opened companies and financial accounts around the world. They further laundered these identities through offshore channels for a second layer of camouflage.

Although the Morgan Clan could access data from some offshore jurisdictions, many of these places were riddled with loopholes, making the authenticity of their information highly questionable.

After applying this camouflage, they placed a small number of Soldiers and managers out in the open, establishing or acquiring investment funds and companies in major financial markets.

This created a confusing fog, mixing truth with falsehood.

Furthermore, because the Soldiers and managers would never betray the Homo Sapiens Company, they formed a financial network that appeared to be a collection of isolated nodes but was, in secret, tightly interconnected.

The Morgan Clan was thwarted by this fog, unable to find the so-called mastermind.

After all, the funds in these accounts were never consolidated. Instead, they remained parked in various corporate and personal accounts across different regions.

If the funds were ever consolidated on a large scale, the Morgan Clan, with its influence in the financial world, could easily detect the anomaly.

Therefore, the Homo Sapiens Company had no intention of consolidating the funds. Instead, they planned to launder the money through other means or use it as development capital for the Security Department and its secret branches around the world.

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