The Billionaire's Multiplier System-Chapter 86 - 87 – Threads of Smoke, Hands of Iron

For two days, Lin Feng didn’t appear in any public spaces—not on interviews, not in panels, not even in his own company’s social pulse.

To most of the city, it looked like silence. To those paying attention, it looked like vulnerability.

But to those closest to him—it meant something far more dangerous.

He was preparing.

In the heart of the industrial district, far from the polished skyline of downtown, sat a weathered-looking logistics office that didn’t even show up properly on city property maps. Inside, through a set of secure biometric doors, Lin Feng had repurposed the lower two floors into what Yuyan once described as "a strategist’s lair disguised as dust."

Here, within dark walls and a minimalist steel desk, Lin Feng sat flanked by six monitors. The screens didn’t just track numbers or headlines—they monitored silence. Activity drop-offs. Employee behavioral shifts. Sudden legal interest in unrelated shell companies. Subtle narratives emerging from anonymous handles.

Zixuan hadn’t made a move yet.

And that was the move.

[SYSTEM ALERT: Emotional Drift Detected – Secondary Asset: Zhu Wenliang]

Relationship Proximity: Tier 2

Exposure Potential: Moderate

Detected Keywords in Sentiment Profile: "uncertainty," "mistrust," "outside offer"

Suggested Action: Re-engage / Neutralize / Isolate

Lin stared at the alert. Zhu Wenliang was a junior partner at one of Yuwei’s affiliated firms. Not high-profile—but close enough to hear things.

And now, his emotional profile was starting to shift.

This wasn’t just a betrayal. It was targeted corrosion. Subtle. Infectious.

Zixuan didn’t believe in explosions. He believed in erosion.

Lin stepped away from the screen and pulled out a leather-bound folio. Inside were a series of printed reports, hand-delivered the day before by Ruoxi. Not digital. Not traceable. And nothing shared via any cloud.

The headline of the first report read:

"Entity: Nantai Holdings – Silent Capital from the Shadow Bank Route"

Funding Traces: Linked to Eastern Sub-Trust managed by Zixuan Xuanzhi

Movement Pattern: Preemptive stake in key marketing firms and internal media outlets

Zixuan wasn’t just watching.

He was buying the lenses.

By noon, Lin met Yuwei in a private room inside an old converted opera hall—now a law firm’s side property.

She was already reviewing digital logs, eyes sharp behind frameless glasses.

"Zhu Wenliang’s emotional profile confirms it," she said. "He’s been approached. They used ambiguity—no promises, just pressure."

"Did he respond?"

"Only with questions. But in our field, curiosity can be deadlier than greed."

Lin nodded. "How long before he leaks something, even unintentionally?"

"Three days. Maybe less."

"Then I’ll burn that bridge before it collapses."

Yuwei looked up. "How?"

Lin opened his folio and laid out a blueprint: a proposal for a multi-entity urban redevelopment initiative. On the surface, it looked like a socially beneficial, investor-friendly collaboration between public and private firms—green zones, affordable business leases, cultural integration. But layered beneath the civic dressing were detection grids: sub-clauses that allowed them to track digital sentiment, proposal authorship metadata, and behavioral analytics from submission portals.

It was a trap.

Not for the public.

For the parasites.

"Zixuan will see it as low-hanging fruit," Lin said. "He’ll send someone to quietly corrupt the process. Redirect the funding plan, inject skepticism into the narrative, pit us against city infrastructure allies."

"And we’ll trace it all back," Yuwei said, smiling faintly. "I’ll clean the language. Strip out the bait just enough so only someone overconfident would bite."

Later that evening, Lin convened an off-grid strategy circle—what he called "Silent Orbit."

Present: freёweɓnovel_com

Bingqing, in a plain bomber jacket, no cameras

Ruoxi, freshly returned from a policy think tank dinner

Yuyan, who brought her sketchbook and not much else

Yuwei, now acting as both general counsel and counterintel lead

There were no press briefings. No board minutes. Just a gray projection wall and trust.

Lin walked to the front and spoke calmly.

"Zixuan won’t challenge me in public. He’s too careful. He doesn’t want attention—he wants shift. To move the ground under our feet so slowly, we don’t notice until we fall."

He pulled up the civic initiative proposal.

"We’re launching this tomorrow. It’s not about publicity. It’s about exposure. The people who try to twist this? We catch them. The ones who stay silent? We monitor. And the ones who come to us afterward? They’ll be tested."

Ruoxi raised an eyebrow. "And what do we do when we find the leak?"

"We don’t just isolate them," Lin said. "We turn them."

Yuyan’s sketch pen paused mid-line.

Bingqing leaned forward. "Dangerous game."

Lin didn’t flinch. "We’re in one."

At 9:00 a.m. the next morning, the Urban Renewal Initiative quietly launched.

It wasn’t splashy.

It appeared on a secondary government site and a few business community feeds.

It promised opportunity:

Joint revitalization grants

Long-term leasing to small businesses

Cultural inclusion programs for underrepresented neighborhoods

Within the first four hours, Lin’s system detected 27 hits from dormant shell companies.

By the end of the day, three media contributors had published skeptical commentary, each of which was traced to historical financial ties with Zixuan’s media fund.

And one submission came from Zhu Wenliang—a detailed business plan wrapped in urban policy jargon, but with hidden language suggesting fund redirection and covert asset stacking.

He bit.

That evening, Lin and Yuwei met inside the rooftop garden office at Celica Analytics.

She handed him a single sheet of paper.

"Confirmed: Zhu’s submission was written by a second party. IP traces and phrase overlap point to someone inside Nantai Holdings’ shadow team."

Lin folded the paper. "We don’t go public. Not yet."

Yuwei nodded. "What’s the next step?"

"We invite him to dinner."

The dinner was held in a quiet lounge overlooking the river—private, dimly lit, with no wait staff after the first pour.

Zhu Wenliang arrived on time. Nervous. Overdressed.

Lin Feng wore a midnight-blue tailored suit, expression unreadable.

The first ten minutes were pleasantries.

Then, Lin placed a black envelope on the table.

"This is your submission," he said. "And the digital fingerprints of the man who helped you write it."

Zhu went pale.

"I—I didn’t mean—"

"You were tested," Lin said. "And you failed. But I didn’t call you here to punish you. I called you here to ask you a question."

Zhu looked up, sweating. "What question?"

"Do you want to disappear into Zixuan’s stomach?" Lin asked softly. "Or do you want to help carve it out from the inside?"

Silence.

Then, slowly, Zhu nodded.

Back in the command office, Ruoxi watched the full recorded interaction with narrowed eyes.

"You turned him."

"No," Lin said. "I showed him the fire and asked if he preferred warmth or ash."

Bingqing chuckled. "That’s the most poetic threat I’ve heard in weeks."

Yuyan handed Lin a folded piece of paper—a sketch of a chessboard with one side missing a king, but hiding a second in the corner.

"Sometimes," she said, "you don’t need to win. You just need the other side to lose track of who’s playing."

And across the city, in a shadowed office with smoked glass windows, Zixuan Xuanzhi stared at a paused video feed of the Urban Renewal Initiative’s press mention.

No reaction on his face.

But his fingers tapped a slow rhythm on the marble desk.

Behind him, a voice spoke.

"Lin Feng is learning too fast."

Zixuan didn’t answer.

Because he already knew.

The 𝘮ost uptodat𝑒 novels are pub𝙡ished on fre(e)webno(v)el.𝒸𝑜𝘮