Chapter 1524 - 496: So It Was a God! Unable to Activate!_3

Chapter 1524: Chapter 496: So It Was a God! Unable to Activate!_3

But what kind of society is Europe, really?

Back in the day, they could ease social pressure by literally forcing domestic populations into maritime work with a 50% death rate, throw people onto factory assembly lines where average life expectancy didn’t make it past 25, and chop off Ireland heads to sell in Prussia for side cash—so you think I’m gonna care about you now?

Bro, don’t think just because we threw on some Cold War cosplay back then, you can mistake us for some kind-hearted saints.

Seriously think we never considered there’d be large-scale resistance?

With the lessons from the ancestors, the new generation of capitalist warriors are fully kitted out for dealing with a popular backlash.

Even if the private security firms from various countries got rekt hard in Cuba and we’re short on usable Soldiers, and the cops can’t cover this many places—you really think all those cybernetic implants were given to you for free use?

And you still dare to storm the city hall?

I’d say you’re just tired of living!

The Horizon Corporation and a few other cybernetic Giants across Europe, including Divergent Path Systems, jointly activated the backdoor protocol, and protest marches all over Europe were paralyzed on a massive scale.

Why can Hackers break into personal signals and gain control over someone’s cybernetics?

Mostly thanks to these companies—they buried control backdoors in the implant control programs specifically to prevent this kind of situation.

People in the marching crowds suddenly found their two cyber-legs refusing to move, frozen on the spot, completely out of their control. Some had their vision go pitch-black as their cyber-eyes went blind and saw nothing, and others had their internal organs directly shut down, dropping to minimum power—whole body collapsing to the ground.

It was like some invisible heavy artillery was firing straight into the crowd; the protestors went down like harvested wheat, row after row, chaos everywhere, and then the cops rushed in and slapped handcuffs on them one by one.

We’re talking marches covering over a dozen countries and hundreds of thousands of people—enough to be an international incident in any era—and it all got dissolved by them with just a few lines of commands.

People despairingly realized that they had no power whatsoever to resist these corporate Giants—hell, they didn’t even own the control rights to their own bodies anymore.

But... is that really the case?

"Holy shit, that’s sick!"

West Fire Grass was standing in the presidential suite on the top floor of the Berlin International Hotel, looking down at what was happening on the streets, absolutely loving it.

He’d never even seen this kind of spectacle on the news before; once you leave Europe, you don’t get shows this good.

"Typical Europe FW shit. If Tokyo University dared to pull something like this, their heads would be hanging from the old crooked tree the very next day."

Just as he was clicking his tongue in amazement, the suite door was opened from the outside. A group of men in black walked into the room and surrounded him.

"West Fire Grass, you’re suspected of involvement in multiple major financial fraud operations and terrorist attacks. You are now under arrest."

"Huh? Financial fraud? Terrorist attacks?"

West Fire Grass acted clueless, putting on a cocky, arrogant expression.

"You trying to scare me? Don’t talk shit if you’ve got no evidence. Who’s your superior? Report the name. Believe it or not, I can have you fired right now?"

But the agents had no time to play double-act with West Fire Grass. They slapped cuffs on him and dragged him out on the spot.

The fact they would come knocking was only a matter of time, and West Fire Grass knew that full well.

The nuclear-bomb decoy layout done by Family Joy was a smokescreen West Fire Grass designed to cover for Kalenina.

Even though he’d cleaned up carefully and left no useful clues, West Fire Grass was, after all, a former employee of Horizon Corporation.

When they can’t find clues anywhere, the only person publicly known to have had ties with Horizon Corporation naturally becomes Suspect No. 1.

If it were just that, West Fire Grass could still use his connections to press the matter down. Money works miracles, and in the European Community he basically counts as half a man-with-eyes-everywhere.

But then something else came up, and West Fire Grass’s get-out-of-death card went up in smoke.

Once the European Community investigation locked onto West Fire Grass, the investment company he founded obviously had to be investigated too.

And boy, did that investigation blow up.

West Fire Grass had bribed Fitch and several other loan rating agencies plus bank presidents, using high rates of return as bait to lure a massive amount of idle capital into his hands, then funneled that money through the banks as loans to unemployed workers who had absolutely no chance of paying it back.

Then he repackaged these lowest-grade subprime loans into high-quality loans via agencies like Fitch, sold them off, and used the proceeds for a second round of lending and repackaging.

The cycle repeated over and over; he used mere billions to lever up a trillion-level market. Countless institutions jumped into the game with him, triggering skyrocketing housing prices in cities across Europe, GDP climbing steadily, and a fake "economic recovery."

When the European Union Payments Network fully grasped what was going on, their hearts went half cold.

Behind this illusion was an unprecedented giant bomb, Da Lei, big enough to blow the entirety of Europe into the sky.

If it were just a normal subprime crisis, it wouldn’t be enough to cause this level of disaster. But here it’s subprime + P2P + mass unemployment at the bottom + no giant population-industrial country to hold the line for you.

If they cut the loans, Europe would immediately run into large-scale bankruptcies and liquidations, triggering a financial avalanche. If they don’t, then this bomb keeps charging up, killing even more people.

"Talk! Who sent you? Where did you hide that nuke? Who ordered you to do this?!"

High-level officials from various countries watched through glass walls as the agents put West Fire Grass through round after round of brutal torture interrogation, using practically every trick in the book. His whole body was mangled, limbs dismantled, turned into a human stump—they even pried open his skull.

By normal standards, not even a dead man could stay silent under that, but West Fire Grass only looked at them with mockery in his eyes, like he was saying: "So you finally get a taste, huh?"

The interrogation agent jabbed West Fire Grass with a dose of high-strength truth serum, and went straight for the kill shot: needle rammed into his neck.

West Fire Grass’s pupils snapped tight, his whole body shook, his lips trembled like he was about to say something.

The agent hurriedly pulled the microphone close and leaned in to listen.

Everyone present heard West Fire Grass let out a final roar, like a dying flare of consciousness:

"Gen... Gen... Genshin!!! Impact!"

Then he dropped dead.