Li Trum's modest chambers resembled a historical metaphor—cramped, shadowed, and damp, with mold patterns spreading across the walls like slow-growing financial corruption, silently witnessing their master's descent and struggle. He inserted Wang's data device into his aging computational apparatus, the sole electronic possession remaining from his downfall, once a powerful tool for market analysis, now relegated to tracking expenses and seeking temporary employment.
The screen's cold illumination revealed his exhausted features, reflecting how thoroughly the system had ground a once-promising financial prodigy into dust. The device contained a single folder labeled "Truth"—a simple word encompassing content beyond most mortals' reach throughout their lives.
Li Trum opened the folder, discovering dozens of documents, spreadsheets, and visual recordings. The first file, named "Begin Here," prompted him to draw a deep breath, as though preparing to cross a threshold into forbidden territory.
The screen displayed a message:
"The financial market is not the fair arena you imagined, but a carefully designed slaughterhouse. You once believed yourself a hunter, when in reality, you have always been the prey."
These opening words struck Li Trum like a warhammer to the chest. What followed was a series of detailed technical analyses revealing how high-frequency trading algorithms predicted and exploited ordinary investors' behavior patterns at millisecond intervals. This was no theoretical concept from financial scrolls but the naked market truth—a deliberately inequitable system designed to transfer wealth rather than create it.
The document concluded with a brief notation: "This merely scratches the surface. Continue your exploration."
Like a curious acolyte tasting forbidden fruit, Li Trum opened the next file, a document marked "Internal Institutional Communications." Its contents revealed internal message exchanges between premier investment houses and hedge funds, dated just before the 2008 financial collapse. These communications showed, without pretense, how financial lords knowingly continued selling toxic assets to common investors while establishing short positions for themselves.
One message stated plainly: "Let the sheep enter the pen; we prepare for harvest."
Li Trum's hands began to tremble as though discovering his entire life existed within a carefully constructed illusion. He had been among those sheep, proudly believing himself a clever contrarian thinker, when he was merely another calculated sacrifice.
The subsequent files proved even more disturbing: records of private meetings between government officials and Wall Street commanders, showing how financial regulations were leaked to specific institutions before implementation; secret agreements between media analysts and investment banks, arranging favorable ratings for certain stocks in exchange for banking business; even evidence of social media companies selling user sentiment data to trading algorithms.
This formed a complete ecosystem—a cage constructed jointly by finance, politics, and media, perpetually trapping ordinary investors in positions of informational disadvantage, like commoners outside castle walls, subject to rules established by nobles they would never meet.
Most shocking was a program demonstration labeled "Sentiment Map." The recording displayed a real-time global map of retail investor emotions, with colors ranging from deep blue to bright red indicating varying degrees of fear and greed. Operators could select any region to view investors' collective psychological state and precisely predict their behavior based on this data.
"This represents our latest harvesting tool," the demonstrator explained with evident pride. "It predicts with 93% accuracy exactly when retail investors will panic-sell or chase rallies."
Li Trum felt nauseous, as though witnessing his own past psychological patterns dissected and mapped. This was no market but an elaborate psychological warfare campaign. Every retail decision, every emotional fluctuation, was being precisely captured and exploited by institutions wielding informational and technological advantages, like cheese in a mousetrap luring prey to its doom.
He continued his examination, discovering a document titled "Policy Arbitrage Guide." This detailed manual described how to leverage government policy changes for excess returns: establishing political connections to acquire inside information, influencing legislative processes, and manipulating public policy expectations through media—a complete playbook for converting political power into market advantage.
The document included a "Finance-Politics-Media" triangular relationship chart, illustrating how these three domains interpenetrated to form a closed information advantage ecosystem, permanently excluding ordinary investors, like commoners outside a medieval court, subject to rules they had no voice in creating.
Li Trum had been reading for six hours without noticing the passage of time. When he finally looked up, night had fallen outside his window, countless stars hidden behind the city's light pollution, much like the market truths concealed from public view. He experienced unprecedented clarity, as though a lifelong fog had suddenly lifted, revealing a world both cruel and authentic.
He recalled his experiences from recent years: investment decisions seemingly based on thorough research, supposedly astute market judgments, stocks that "coincidentally" plummeted immediately after purchase... everything now had a new explanation, like the final puzzle piece clicking into place to complete the picture.
He had not lost to the market but to a meticulously designed system, a precision machine specifically built to extract wealth from people like himself.
The final file was a personal message signed by Wang Wei Ke:
"Li Trum:
If you have reached this point, you have glimpsed the game's true nature. You now face a choice: continue as harvest-ready material awaiting collection, or learn to become a harvester, standing on the system's other side.
Whatever you choose, remember this: in this game, morality is a luxury good, an ornament only victors can afford. The moral stands of losers are merely self-consolation.
If you are prepared, I await you tomorrow. I can teach you survival and victory within this system. But first, you must discard your past illusions and moral burdens.
The true financial battlefield exists not on exchange floors but between human fear and greed. Master this understanding, and you master wealth's cipher.
—Wang Wei Ke"
Li Trum closed his device, plunging his chambers into complete darkness. He sat motionless in the blackness, like a statue contemplating during a storm, feeling emotions surge within—anger, shock, shame, and a strange sense of liberation.
For years, he had believed his failure resulted from insufficient skill or unfortunate timing. Now he understood he never had a genuine opportunity because the game was designed from inception to be unfair. This realization brought both despair and new possibility: if he understood the game's actual rules, perhaps he could rejoin not as prey but as predator.
As the night deepened, Li Trum approached his window, gazing toward Manhattan's distant lights. Those illuminations no longer provoked pain and loss but awakened cold determination, like a battle commander surveying future conquest grounds.
He opened a drawer and retrieved a long-forgotten notebook, once used for recording trading insights, now dust-covered, symbolizing his market-abandoned past. He opened to a blank page and wrote a single line:
"If one cannot defeat the system, join it, then surpass it."
Outside, New York's night sky appeared ink-dark, stars obscured by the city's light pollution. Li Trum knew that somewhere in this world, countless investors similar to his former self were falling asleep clutching dreams, entirely unaware of their participation in such an unbalanced game.
He would no longer count himself among them. He now stood upon knowledge's watershed, seeing truths most would never glimpse in lifetimes of striving.
As dawn's first light appeared, Li Trum gathered his meager possessions. He had little worth taking—one presentable garment, several essential documents, and the truth-laden storage device. Before departing, he surveyed the cramped chambers that had imprisoned him for two years, closing the door without regret, like bidding farewell to a former self.
Outside, New York awakened to a new day. Street crowds hurried toward various battlefields, continuing their individual dreams. Li Trum joined the throng yet felt an invisible barrier now separated him from the surrounding world. He was no longer yesterday's Li Trum; though outwardly unchanged, his inner self had begun a fundamental transformation, like a chrysalis awaiting the moment of emergence.
He sent a brief message to Master Huang: "Urgent matters require my attention. Cannot continue employment. Apologies." No explanation, no farewells, like his former wealth—everything could vanish in an instant.
Boarding transport toward Bellevue Hill, his decision was made. Whatever conditions Wang proposed, he stood ready to accept. Morality, principles, compassion—qualities his former self had treasured now appeared as mental shackles designed by the system to keep the harvested maintaining dignity during extraction.
The reborn Li Trum had prepared himself to discard these constraints and redefine his own rules of engagement. This represented not betrayal of ethics but acceptance of truth, a clear-eyed confrontation with reality.
As the transport climbed toward the summit, the surrounding landscape gradually transformed into something exclusive and hidden. Li Trum's gaze traveled beyond the winding path to Manhattan Island below. Within that commercial forest, his dreams had once been mercilessly crushed; in that same realm, he would establish a new empire, more formidable and profound than his previous creation.
He could not discern whether this path led to paradise or damnation, but one certainty remained: he would no longer be slaughtered like a lamb but would become a wolf in sheep's clothing, lurking within system crevices, awaiting the perfect moment to strike. This embodied the market's iron law—survival of the fittest, victory to the strongest. And Li Trum had prepared himself to become that survivor, that victor, regardless of the price demanded.