Chapter 93 - 94 – Embers Beneath the Ice: Fractures and Fronts
The headlines were still burning. Spectron’s connection to media bot networks had ignited national conversations, spawning livestream debates and influencer breakdowns across platforms. Public sentiment shifted like a tide crashing against a dam. Overnight, support for Lin Feng surged—tempered, skeptical, but no longer dismissive. He had exposed something real, and the public couldn’t unsee it.
But beneath that surface shift, something colder was settling in.
Zixuan hadn’t responded publicly, but he didn’t need to. Three media outlets that had run pro-Lin pieces now published walk-back editorials. Anonymous posts began circulating, accusing Lin of fabricating data, of forging the Spectron links, of manipulating the system himself.
It wasn’t random. It was coordinated.
Lin Feng stood in his study, arms crossed, watching a silent news clip on loop. The footage was cropped. It only showed him stepping into the Qiyuan Group offices, cut before Guo Yuwei had broken ranks and handed him the file. No context, no story. Just optics.
"They’re seeding confusion," Luo Bingbing said from the leather armchair behind him. "Tearing holes in your credibility, not refuting—just... muddying."
"Controlled fog," Lin Feng muttered. He turned to face her. "But if they’re moving that fast, they’ve got another play lined up."
Bingbing nodded. "They don’t want to win the argument. They want to blur it long enough to bury you with the next scandal."
He knew she was right.
At noon, his legal counsel arrived with grim expressions. A small-time investment fund Lin had barely interacted with filed a formal complaint alleging securities manipulation tied to his earlier acquisitions.
"It’s paper-thin," his lawyer said, flipping through the dossier, "but it’ll force a regulatory inquiry. Civil litigation follows. It’s lawfare—delay and discredit."