Ye Xia stood in the empty master bedroom of the Ye family villa. The legal battle was over. The forged loan documents from Strickland's shell company had been invalidated, and the title was now irrevocably hers. The house was silent, empty of the ghosts of Wang Yan and Ye Zhentao. They had left the city, their reputations and finances in ruins.
It was a hollow victory. The house was just a structure, a symbol of a painful past. She had no sentimental attachment to it.
"What are your orders?" Silas asked, standing in the doorway.
"Sell it," Ye Xia said without hesitation. "Liquidate everything. Use the proceeds to establish a scholarship fund in my mother's name. For girls studying finance and economics."
It was a decision that felt right. It was a way to honor her mother's memory without being shackled to the physical location of her suffering. It was also, though she didn't realize it, a move that Mo would have approved of—turning a negative into a positive.
As they walked through the empty halls, her phone rang. It was an unknown number, but with a Swiss prefix. She answered.
"Miss Ye?" a smooth, elderly voice said. "This is Ernst Gessler, from Bauer & Cie in Zurich. We met briefly."
"Of course, Mr. Gessler. What can I do for you?"
"It is more what I can do for you," he said. "Following the activation of your mother's estate, a secondary clause was triggered. You are now the beneficiary of a series of private, blind trusts managed by our bank. The assets are… substantial. They include a minority stake in a German automotive manufacturer and a collection of rare earth mineral rights in Africa."
Ye Xia stopped walking. This was her mother's legacy continuing to unfold. It was a labyrinthine safety net her mother had constructed.
"The annual dividends alone are in the tens of millions of euros," Gessler continued. "I will send the full portfolio for your review. Congratulations, Miss Ye. You are now, for all intents and purposes, one of the wealthiest young women in the world, entirely independent of your recent… activities."
The news was staggering. Combined with the system's daily generation of wealth and the Capital Infusion function, her financial power was now on a scale that could rival small nations. The Yun family's offer of a "suitable station" seemed laughably pathetic now.
She ended the call and looked at Silas. "It seems my mother was even more prepared than I thought."
"It appears so," Silas said, a grim smile on his face. "This changes the calculus significantly. With these assets, you are no longer a disruptive upstart. You are a legitimate global power."
Ye Xia nodded. The transformation was complete. She had started with nothing but rage and a mysterious system. Now, she had an empire.
But with great power came greater enemies. As if on cue, Silas's phone buzzed. He listened, his face hardening.
"That was my contact in Singapore," he said after hanging up. "Yun Zhong has just closed a deal. He's acquired a controlling interest in 'Horizon Dynamics,' a cutting-edge AI research firm based in Shenzhen. The company's flagship project is predictive market analytics."
Ye Xia's blood ran cold. Predictive market analytics. It was the one advantage she had—her foreknowledge of the future. If Yun Zhong developed technology that could even partially replicate that, her edge would be neutralized.
The war was not over. It had just evolved into a technological arms race.