Chapter Fifty-Seven: Battleground of Public Opinion—The Flames Spread Like Wildfire

The brutal slaughter on the financial battlefield had come to a temporary end.

In the command center, before the thunderous cheers had fully subsided, a more sinister and unsettling alarm suddenly pierced the air!

"Beep, beep, beep—!"

It was not the red alert that signified abnormal capital movements, but a harsh black alarm, signaling a dangerous spike in information contamination!

Xiao Ran's pupils contracted sharply. In an instant, her gaze shifted to the other side of the command center—to the massive wall of screens, composed of hundreds of displays, responsible for monitoring global public opinion.

She needed only one glance. The faint warmth of victory just kindling in her heart was instantly frozen into eternal ice.

The plague of lies had erupted.

On the screen wall, the trending lists of all major social media platforms worldwide—Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and Weibo—were, in less than a minute, as if seized by a hellish black hand, simultaneously flooded and dominated by several terrifying topics, each marked with a bloody "explosive" tag!

#IrrefutableEvidenceOfHuaxinStealingAmericanTechnology#
#QimingOneAdmitsFatalBackdoor#
#HuaxinFounderChenJingming'sChaoticPrivateLifeAndEmbezzlementOfR&DFunds#
#TheCentury'sFraud!TheTruthBehindHuaxinYouNeverKnew!#

A barrage of dazzling images flashed wildly across the screen wall:

An anonymously sourced interview video—painstakingly edited, spliced, and paired with misleading subtitles—purportedly showing a "former Huaxin engineer admitting the core technology was plagiarized."

A seamlessly forged technical report, released by a non-existent "European Information Security Laboratory," falsely claiming that "Qiming One" housed a "military-grade data backdoor."

Several AI-manipulated, hyper-realistic photos—so convincing they could pass for reality—depicted CEO Chen Jingming consorting intimately with several blonde women at an exclusive private club on the eve of the product launch.

Each hit precisely at the public's most sensitive and anxious nerves!

"Report!"

An analyst in charge of monitoring domestic opinion shot up from his seat, face pale as death, his voice hoarse and cracking: "Global synchronization! This is a premeditated, saturation-level 'information pollution' attack! Weibo, Zhihu, Douyin… our positive opinion fronts… are being breached on all sides! Public sentiment… is beginning to show signs of panic…"

"…and wavering!"

…

The "Dark Bureau" command center, technical division.

Amid the chaos and outcries, this sector was as silent as an isolated island.

Old K and his team of young technicians watched calmly as the torrent of malicious, deceitful data surged toward them like a monstrous flood.

Their expressions were not those of warriors facing battle, but of seasoned virologists, dispassionately dissecting a specimen teeming with unknown pathogens.

"Found it."

Old K's voice was raspy, but carried a chilling, all-knowing clarity.

He pointed to the main screen's rapidly evolving "information propagation network diagram," forming before their eyes at a pace visible to the naked eye.

On that diagram, countless gray nodes representing "troll accounts" poured out from several fixed sources, spreading through layers of forwarding and amplification, ultimately converging into a few blood-red attack paths signifying "viral rumors."

"See there?" Old K gestured at those toxic hubs. "All hostile traffic points to three 'troll farms,' located in Southeast Asia and Eastern Europe."

He paused, a flash of cold fury—mixed with grief and murderous intent—passing through his eyes.

"Their attack models, behavioral patterns, IP proxies… identical to the ones used five years ago during Operation Zero, when they hunted down Professor Lu…"

"…The same source!"

"Anderson, that beast… he’s dragged those bloodless killers back from hell once again."

…

"Tech division, immediately execute the 'Purification Protocol.' Sever the enemy troll network's command nodes!"

Xiao Ran had already resumed her seat at the helm. The smoke of the financial war seemed to have left no trace upon her. Her voice, once more, was that of absolute, emotionless calm—mechanical in its precision.

Behind her, dozens of public opinion experts and news editors, long prepared, hovered their fingers above their keyboards like artillerymen awaiting the general's command.

"Public Opinion Division…"

Xiao Ran's gaze swept across the screens, slicing through the grotesque tapestry of lies like a sword.

"—Initiate the 'Great Wall' Counterattack Plan."

"First volley: Target the plagiarism narrative."

"Deploy Evidence Package One!"

The moment her command was issued, the horn of counteroffensive sounded at last.

An electronic document, jointly signed by National Security and the Supreme Intellectual Property Office, entitled [A Full Timeline and Internationally Notarized Legal Report on the 158 Core Patents of Huaxin Technology's Qiming One Chip], was unleashed like a divine spear of truth—disseminated in an instant to the official inboxes of all major domestic and international news and tech media.

The report contained not a word of angry rebuttal, not a line of weak explanation.

Only irrefutable evidence.

From the chip’s underlying architecture, to the chemical formula for its photoresist, and on to the packaging process—each of the 158 core patents, the date of their first-ever global application, the notary agency, the approval number—all were documented clearly, indisputably, predating any similar foreign technology by at least six months, sometimes a full year.

Evidence as solid as a mountain.

While you are still concocting rumors with doctored videos and anonymous sources,

My thousand-page, globally notarized legal dossier has already been slammed down before you!

…

The official thunderstrike of a rebuttal shot through the heart of the wavering "public opinion field" like the most potent dose of adrenaline.

Then, an even greater force surged from the grassroots.

Across the internet, countless leading tech bloggers, renowned lawyers, and even ordinary, tech-savvy, conscientious patriotic citizens, were ignited upon seeing the report.

They became, spontaneously, the volunteer army of this "battle for the truth."

"Holy crap! Guys, enough arguing! The official hammer has landed! I stake my reputation—this report is the real deal, not a single word is fake!"

"I'm a patent attorney. Let me break down the value of this report for everyone… Simply put, Huaxin has just laid all its cards on the table for the world to see: We are the originators! Not convinced? See you in court!"

Science explainers in long infographics!

Debunking shorts!

Technical deep-dive threads!

Like bamboo after the rain, they erupted madly in every corner of the web.

In the "Dark Bureau" command center, the massive screen wall monitoring public opinion showed the red zones of negativity and panic, visibly being reclaimed—bit by bit, stubbornly—by the green of reason and objectivity, and the blue of support and pride.

Xiao Ran gazed quietly at this reversing "sea of blue and green," formed from countless ordinary people. In her eyes—frozen for so long—appeared, for the first time, a rare and gentle smile.

"Anderson… you may never understand."

She murmured to herself.

"The strongest firewall on this land has never been code—"

"—but the hearts of the people."

Her gaze then slowly shifted to the last, and most critical, battlefield screen in the command center—the cyber battleground.

There, Lin Feng stood tall and unyielding as a spear.

The true aces were about to clash.