After the Divorce, I Found a Thousand Bitcoins - Chapter 194

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Team. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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I Got Divorced and Found a Thousand Bitcoins Episode 194

Seoul, South Korea, KH Group Headquarters VVIP Office.

Stiff parchment-textured documents were piled like a mountain on top of the finest mahogany desk.

From America’s Pfizer and Johnson & Johnson, to Britain’s AstraZeneca, and even Silicon Valley giants Apple and Alphabet.

These were requests for 3% equity transfer and residency contracts, offered competitively by major corporations that controlled half of the global economy’s market capitalization.

“These are the residency requests from 12 global big pharma and big tech companies received so far.”

Ha-ryul carefully placed a fountain pen for approval next to the pile of documents as he reported.

“These are perfect documents that have all completed board approval. If the Chairman provides the final signature at the bottom, the remaining sectors B, C, and D of Orbital One will be immediately sold out. The market value of the equity secured in the first phase alone exceeds approximately 3,500 trillion won.”

3,500 trillion won.

It was an astronomical amount of assets unprecedented in human history for a single private enterprise to hold.

Ha-ryul thought Kang Hyeon would naturally pick up that fountain pen and sign everything at once.

However, Kang Hyeon beyond the desk merely glanced over the pile of documents with an indifferent gaze and didn’t even move.

“Put them all in the safe.”

“…Excuse me?”

“I won’t sign them. Put all residency contract requests on hold for the time being.”

Ha-ryul’s pupils trembled slightly at Kang Hyeon’s dry instruction.

“On hold? They are currently begging for residency rights while enduring even the most humiliating conditions you demanded. If we miss this timing, there’s a concern they might change their minds…”

“Change their minds?”

The corner of Kang Hyeon’s mouth curved into an arc.

“Manager Ha-ryul. Fear and desperation are like wine – the longer you age them, the more potent their toxicity becomes.”

Kang Hyeon placed his clasped hands on the table and continued calmly.

“Their offer of 3% equity came from thorough calculations. If I sign the contracts right now, they’ll mistakenly think they made an equal deal with KH.”

“…”

“We need to clearly show the difference in our positions before this transaction.”

Kang Hyeon possessed perfect composure like an old fisherman who had cast a massive fishing line.

It was the violence of an absolute monopolist who knew that the bait he held was unique in the entire world.

Following Kang Hyeon’s instructions, the equity transfer agreements worth 3,500 trillion won were shoved into cold titanium safes without receiving a single signature.

Right after KH Group’s contract postponement notice was unofficially delivered to global corporations.

The top-floor conference room at Pfizer Headquarters in Manhattan, New York, USA resembled a funeral home.

“Hold? They’re putting our Pfizer’s residency request on hold? Even after we offered 3% equity in its entirety!”

Pfizer CEO Richard roughly grabbed his tie and slammed his fist on the conference table.

A loud bang echoed, but none of the seated executives could open their mouths, only watching nervously with pale faces.

“It was just a notice that they’d put us on the waiting list for now. Apple and Johnson & Johnson all received the same response. Only Switzerland’s Novartis, who betrayed the cartel first, has uniquely secured Area A residency.”

At the chief secretary’s trembling report, Richard’s facial muscles hardened stiffly.

He couldn’t understand it.

Why would an Asian capitalist who should be crazy about money close his wallet when trillions of won in equity was right before his eyes?

Anxiety soon turned to unease, and unease began to transform into shallow suspicion.

A month passed from then.

There was still no definitive answer from KH’s side.

Then the tone of the global market and media, which had been burning with anxiety, began to twist in a very strange direction.

[Wall Street Journal: KH Orbital One, Is It Really a Real Miracle? The Mystery of Delayed Residency.]

[Bloomberg: Space Station Empty for a Month. Rumors of Internal Module Collapse Due to Plasma Engine Overload Emerge.]

[Experts: “Perfect drug cultivation in zero gravity? Technology that’s 100 years too early. Could be KH’s massive investment scam.”]

It was vicious self-rationalization.

Since the door wouldn’t open, it was crowd psychology wanting to believe that what lay beyond that door was actually an empty garbage dump, not gold and silver treasures.

Pfizer’s Richard also read Bloomberg’s article on his tablet while nervously chewing his trembling fingernails.

“Yeah, it might be a scam. They launched a chunk of metal into orbit, but cultivating proteins with just machines and no humans inside? That’s ridiculous nonsense.”

Richard muttered to himself with bloodshot eyes.

Intelligence had come in that Novartis, the only company with a residency contract, had launched experimental modules multiple times via Falcon 9.

But since then, no results had come down from orbit.

As the silence lengthened, the world’s mockery and suspicion grew like a snowball.

KH Group’s stock price began to decline slightly, and among global capitalists, ridicule openly circulated that Novartis had been fooled by a scam and only had their equity stolen.

But while fierce noise and shallow suspicions from the ground were boiling over.

400 kilometers outside the atmosphere, in the perfect vacuum and pitch-black space where Orbital One Area A floated, a bizarre process that shattered human common sense was silently and fiercely operating.

Swoosh- Clang!

A perfect unmanned automated module where not a single human breath could be heard.

Orbis’s precision multi-joint robotic arms floated through the air, constantly transporting transparent flasks.

These were the raw proteins for Novartis’s core secret lung cancer targeted anticancer drug.

On Earth, due to gravitational sedimentation, proteins sank to the bottom and clumped irregularly, stopping growth at very small sizes.

But in perfect zero gravity where concepts of up, down, left, and right didn’t exist.

The protein particles inside the flasks spread evenly in all directions, growing beautifully into perfect spheres the size of large ping-pong balls, which would have been impossible on Earth even after a year.

The overwhelming production efficiency where core substances for new drugs, which required decades of time and astronomical money to burn, poured out in just 3 months with just the environment of space.

Hiss-! Clunk.

The completed first Made in Space cargo was neatly loaded into Astra’s small return capsule.

Special shock-absorbing gel firmly wrapped the cargo and a thick titanium hatch closed.

The small capsule separated from the station began plummeting at fierce speed toward Earth’s blue-glowing atmosphere.

Following its trajectory, a massive tail of flames stretched long, cutting through the pitch black of space.

And a few days later.

Basel, Switzerland, Novartis Headquarters Main Convention Hall.

With thousands of global press and pharmaceutical industry officials gathered, the curtain of the tightly closed podium rose.

Camera flashes poured down like a downpour, and Novartis CEO Mueller, who had been in seclusion for months receiving the world’s mockery, walked out.

His face was soaked with fatigue, but his eyes glittered with fierce madness like a wild beast.

“For the past 3 months. The world mocked Novartis as fools who sold equity to an illusion.”

Mueller’s heavy voice echoed through the hall via microphone.

He didn’t speak at length.

Instead, he pulled out a transparent special security case from his jacket pocket and held it up high under the podium’s lighting.

Flash-!

Camera flashes focused on that small case all at once.

Inside the transparent vacuum tube was a massive protein crystal, clear as a glass marble without a single flaw, emitting perfect light.

“This is the first harvest that arrived last night from Low Earth Orbit, Orbital One Area A.”

The murmuring in the hall stopped instantly.

Mueller pressed a remote toward the giant screen behind him.

Molecular structure data magnified thousands of times and clinical simulation results filled the screen like a waterfall.

These were overwhelming and abnormal figures that would stop the hearts of pharmaceutical industry experts the moment they saw them.

“Zero impurities. The purity of the protein crystal is 150 times the highest data from Earth cultivation. There is no probability of cellular deformation or collapse.”

Perfect silence where not even the sound of swallowing could be heard.

In that breathtaking silence, Mueller declared like driving in a wedge.

“Based on this raw material, we will begin exclusive mass production worldwide of a perfect lung cancer targeted anticancer drug with absolutely no side effects starting next month. As of today, we have completely conquered one of humanity’s incurable diseases.”

At that moment.

The silence of the convention hall tore apart and pandemonium erupted as if a bomb had exploded.

“Cr-crazy! The purity is 150 times higher?!”

“Exclusive mass production?! If that drug is released, the existing lung cancer treatment market will be destroyed overnight!”

Reporters’ screams and shutter sounds tangled together, and monitors in stock exchanges worldwide watching the live broadcast began fluctuating wildly.

Novartis’s stock price listed on the Swiss Stock Exchange broke through the daily limit and triggered circuit breakers just 10 minutes after the announcement.

Just 10 minutes was enough for the world’s shallow suspicions to completely transform into perfect shock and terror.

At the same time, Pfizer Chairman Richard, who was watching that live broadcast from New York Headquarters, lost strength in his legs and collapsed onto the carpet floor.

His gaze blankly stared at Novartis’s data on the screen.

“It’s over…”

A desperate moan leaked from between Richard’s lips.

The moment Novartis releases that drug to the market, all of Pfizer’s existing anticancer drug lineup, developed with tens of trillions, would become worthless paper.

Being monopolized out of space infrastructure wasn’t just a simple revenue loss.

It was a perfect death sentence that would erase the very survival of their companies.

Ring ring ring-!

Beep! Beep beep!

The phones in Richard’s secretary office began screaming frantically like mad.

They were urgent direct calls from global cartel CEOs including Johnson & Johnson, AstraZeneca, and Apple who had been holding out on the first round of occupancy.

They no longer doubted KH’s technology.

Swept up in fierce terror that being even one second later than others would mean eternal elimination from the space ecosystem, they had completely lost their rationality.

“Right now! Get a private jet to South Korea right now! We must meet Chairman Choi Kang-hyeon by any means necessary!”

“3 percent stake? No, 5 percent! Tell them we’ll give 5 percent! Please beg them to open just one remaining module in Area A!”

It was the beginning of a panic bank run where the arrogant capitalists who had dominated the world were now kneeling before the Asian giant, crying out to be saved.

At that very moment when enormous screams and wails were erupting from the other side of the earth.

VVIP office on the top floor of KH Headquarters in Seoul, South Korea.

The large screen filling the entire front wall was chaotically flickering with global stock market conditions surging red due to Novadis’s announcement, and breaking news from foreign media pouring out endlessly.

The secretary office outside the executive office was completely paralyzed due to pleading phone calls from global CEOs calling from around the world.

“Chairman. Meeting requests are pouring in from Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson, and Apple every 5 minutes. They’re desperately pleading for immediate occupancy contracts, offering blank checks and even raising their stake to 5 percent.”

Ha-ryul approached with a flushed face, holding a tablet.

Deep reverence lingered in her eyes.

Just three months ago, when Kang Hyeon had shoved those 3 percent stake documents into the safe saying he would ferment fear, she hadn’t anticipated this level of madness.

Just one successful demonstration.

That bone-deep sense of deprivation had ground the arrogance of global corporations to powder.

“Now it’s time to open the doors.”

Kang Hyeon spoke calmly while casually rolling up his shirt sleeve cuffs.

“We’ll only take the original 3 percent stake. That’s sufficient for my control.”

Kang Hyeon turned and approached the mahogany desk.

His cool gaze indifferently pierced through the urgent meeting request notifications from Pfizer and Apple floating in the air.

“However, please convey that one additional condition has been attached.”

“An additional condition… you mean?”

“The Asian regional headquarters and main data centers of all global companies wanting occupancy.”

Kang Hyeon took out a fountain pen from his jacket inner pocket and rolled it lightly between his fingers.

“A clause requiring all of those to be forcibly relocated within one year to the Nova Smart City I built in India. If they don’t accept, there will be no occupancy forever.”

This would elevate Nova’s reputation even further.

Space and Earth.

It was the moment when KH Group’s influence would grow overwhelmingly in both places.

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Team. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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