The Billionaire's Multiplier System
Chapter 108 - 109: Smoke and Mirrors – When Silence Breaks the Game

Chapter 108: Chapter 109: Smoke and Mirrors – When Silence Breaks the Game

The air in Lin Feng’s study was unusually crisp, laced with the faint scent of sandalwood incense he rarely burned—reserved only for moments requiring deep calculation or intense clarity. Tonight was both.

The shifting alliances in the Apex Circle were stabilizing. Slowly. Cautiously. Lin Feng had spent the past week initiating backdoor dialogues with fringe Council members, replacing mid-level managers quietly, and building credibility among the new generation of founders Sun Yuhan had sourced. The "Future Board" initiative had taken root faster than expected.

But despite this slow consolidation, Cassandra remained a phantom presence—elegant, elusive, and irritatingly effective. Her influence didn’t push; it seeped. Into dinner conversations, charity roundtables, design expos, even AI ethics panels. It wasn’t domination—it was presence. She was becoming the elegant shadow at the edge of every conversation, and Lin Feng knew shadows grew longer when left unchecked.

He looked down at his tablet. A single line glowed across the center of the screen—an encrypted message from an anonymous whistleblower flagged by the system’s passive surveillance mode:

"Something is coming from the West. Bigger than Cassandra."

His brows furrowed. The sender had no name, but the data trail—buried deep in the metadata—matched a certain Taiwanese financial analyst who’d been embedded in two European tech espionage investigations last year. Quiet, reliable, anonymous. The message wasn’t about Cassandra.

It was about who stood behind her.

"System," he whispered, voice calm.

[SYSTEM ONLINE. STRATEGIC RESPONSE MODE ACTIVE.]

"Display Cassandra’s real-time influence map."

A glowing hologram emerged, detailing public sentiment, media tracking, and political leverage. Cassandra’s green nodes were slowly shifting to gold. Not dominant—but increasingly favored.

He closed the projection.

It was time for a move that wasn’t reactive.

It had to be public, symbolic, and precise—not to humiliate Cassandra, but to remind the world that he was the gravitational center.

The next day, Lin Feng summoned Gu Qing, Mu Qing, and Tang Wei to a sealed meeting on the top floor of the Apex Media Holdings office—once used for film investments, now converted into a media warfare laboratory.

"I’m going to lead a national youth innovation pledge campaign," Lin Feng said. "It’ll look like philanthropy. It’ll feel like reform. But it’s positioning."

Mu Qing narrowed her eyes. "Against Cassandra?"

"No. Beyond her," Lin said. "She built elegance around curation and exclusivity. I’ll build mine on inclusivity and velocity."

Tang Wei nodded slowly. "You want to become the moral compass of this generation’s innovation movement."

Gu Qing tapped her pen lightly. "Who’s backing it?"

"We are. Quietly. But we’ll use retired national figures as public faces. Old deans, former ministers, civil servants turned educators. No celebrities."

Tang raised an eyebrow. "That’s... reverse glamor."

"Exactly."

He turned to Mu Qing. "You’ll coordinate with the Ministry of Science and Youth Innovation Bureau. Make it look like an intergenerational bridge program. Quietly push Cassandra’s art and design summit off the calendar."

"Subtly?"

"Subtly."

Meanwhile, across the city, Cassandra was hosting a salon. Small, intimate, expensive. A Swiss performance artist recited haiku in Mandarin, and guests mingled over lavender cocktails. Foreign investors and ex-pats made up half the room. Qin Xue stood beside her, all polished glass and lethal confidence.

"He’s pulling back from the media," Cassandra said quietly.

Qin Xue sipped her drink. "Or circling for a more public strike."

"We need to know what he’s planning."

They didn’t.

And that’s exactly how Lin Feng wanted it.

Three days later, the innovation pledge campaign launched. It began with a viral moment—an 84-year-old retired educator kneeling in front of a young AI robotics team, gifting them an old slide rule and whispering, "Use what I never had."

The moment spread across Douyin, Bilibili, and Weibo. No glitz. Just emotion. Within 36 hours, #NextGenInnovationPledge topped charts. Hundreds of young founders—ignored by the elite—flocked to the movement. The system began pulsing behind the scenes.

[DING! FAVOURABILITY INCREASE DETECTED: Public Perception Index +12%]

[REWARD: +¥280,000,000 Strategic Capital (Locked – Social Equity Triggered)]

It wasn’t just about girls anymore.

The system had evolved. His public influence was becoming its own tier of capital.

Mu Qing burst into his office two days later. "The Geneva Forum on Cross-Continental Innovation just invited you as keynote speaker."

"Decline."

"Decline?" she blinked.

"We’ll launch our own forum. Homegrown."

That night, Lin Feng hosted his version of a salon—not in a luxury penthouse, but in a repurposed warehouse in Xicheng. No alcohol. No ambient lighting. Just open circular seating, noodles, laptops, and chalkboards.

Every attendee was under 30.

Every attendee had failed at least once.

By midnight, they were still arguing. Still debating. Still laughing.

Cassandra’s curated elegance had no foothold here.

This was raw. Electric. Alive.

Xue Yating showed up uninvited, leaning against the wall silently.

"You’re changing the venue," she said.

"I’m changing the language," Lin replied.

But just as momentum began to swing, the ripple arrived.

News broke in global business media: a major foreign venture firm had been blacklisted from operating in multiple Asian countries for backdoor data laundering via "philanthropic art initiatives."

The firm?

Arcanis Holdings. A Luxembourg-based shell fund.

The same entity behind Cassandra’s offshore supporters.

The implications were clear. Cassandra was now linked—indirectly—to an international scandal involving ideological manipulation via art, data, and soft power.

Tang Wei burst into Lin Feng’s office the next morning, phone in hand.

"She’s hemorrhaging. Her soft influence network is collapsing. Half the people who hosted her in the last six months have begun distancing themselves publicly."

Gu Qing entered right behind him. "Two foreign journalists just contacted my department for comments. They’re circling."

Lin said nothing.

He simply adjusted his cufflinks, then stood.

"Prepare a speech," he said. "I’ll deliver it live at the Youth Innovation Summit in two days. Make it about courage, not Cassandra. This isn’t a takedown. It’s a rise."

Tang frowned. "And what if she tries to twist it? Paint herself as collateral damage?"

Lin’s eyes gleamed. "Then let her. Sympathy is a leash. And I’ve never worn one."

Two hours later, Lin received an anonymous envelope delivered directly to his assistant’s desk.

Inside: a single photograph.

A much younger Cassandra, seated beside a European man—face blurred—but with a diplomatic badge visible on his lapel. The note attached read:

"You’re not playing chess anymore. You’re on the map."

No signature.

No return address.

Lin stared at it for a long time.

The real battle hadn’t even begun yet.