"Why? I haven't even met him yet…"
The remaining two candidates were Gu Xingye, heir to the Gu family, and Duan Lingze, Duan Mingxuan's younger brother.
Gu Xingye was currently the hottest top-tier celebrity in the Eastern Continent. He hadn't originally been the Gu family heir—the original heir, his cousin Gu Ran, had been in a car accident and was now a vegetable, lying in a hospital bed with little chance of ever waking up. So the heirship had fallen to him instead.
The last backup candidate the players were paying attention to was Duan Mingxuan's younger brother, Duan Lingze.
This man was also a UR with numerous Golden Traits, but he was currently abroad and hadn't returned to the Eastern Continent in a long time.
Xia Cheng had previously seen a childhood photo of the two brothers in Duan Mingxuan's study. The brothers looked very similar—the elder appeared more cold and stern, while the younger seemed more lively and spirited.
Duan Lingze had a purple special event called [Devil Market Manipulator].
The player was somewhat curious and clicked on the trait to take a look.
[Devil Market Manipulator: To seize enormous profits and achieve ultimate victory, just how far is one person willing to go?]
As the eldest son of the Duan family, Duan Mingxuan's conduct could be described as calm and rational to the extreme, never making a single misstep. His younger brother Duan Lingze, however, was far more willful. He was carefree by nature, loved all kinds of extreme sports, and was passionate about challenging himself. The only way to describe him was reckless and unrestrained, doing exactly as he pleased.
The Duan family elders found this youngest son a constant headache, so they shipped him off to the Northern Continent, placing one of the Duan family's major financial conglomerates under his management—officially to expand the Duan family's overseas influence.
Did they really think a financial conglomerate would be easy to manage? They had assumed this would be enough to keep him in line for a while, but before long, Duan Lingze pulled off something huge.
The key protagonist in this major event was a certain heavy metal—let's just call it "A."
After taking over the overseas conglomerate, Duan Lingze didn't interfere with any other business sectors. He simply used the conglomerate's massive capital to acquire stakes in mining companies worldwide, and through aggressive market manipulation in the futures market, drove the price of heavy metal A from its original 1,500 Western Continent coins per ton to more than double.
The Western Continent Metal Exchange issued multiple warnings to him about this severe disruption of market order, but Duan Lingze turned a deaf ear and continued doing as he pleased. The price of heavy metal A was pushed higher and higher by him, quickly skyrocketing to a terrifying astronomical figure.
His arrogant behavior soon attracted attention from all sides. Money never sleeps—the Eastern Continent wasn't the only place with financial magnates. The financial capital of the Western Continent was equally formidable, like restless hunters eyeing a young prey that had wandered into their territory, eager to tear a piece of flesh from it.
The digital war over heavy metal A thus began. Facing the fierce encirclement and pursuit of many hunters, the overseas conglomerate under Duan Lingze's control gradually struggled to keep up. Prices that defied market laws couldn't be maintained indefinitely, and defeat seemed only a matter of time. And if he lost this digital war, the conglomerate's losses would conservatively exceed 30 billion.
He seemed to have been backed into a corner.
Facing his youngest son's predicament, the current head of the Duan family, Mr. Duan, showed no intention of lending a hand. He even ordered his eldest son not to use any of his funds to help his younger brother. He wanted to teach his unruly youngest son a lesson, to make him understand that there is always someone better, and always a sky above the sky.
But his plan didn't work out.
Because the civil war in the L Region of the Western Continent broke out.
The L Region was a small country in the Western Continent. Due to geographical, historical, resource-related, and various other factors, it had always been a contested territory among the major powers of the Western Continent. Precisely because so many factions had entrenched themselves there, conflicts in the L Region were constant. The L Region was like a sealed room packed with gunpowder barrels—all it needed was a single match to explode instantly.
Someone dropped that match.
And so—"BOOM"—it exploded.
The Duan family's foundation was in the Eastern Continent, so they had no need to deploy forces in the L Region. But the other factions in the Western Continent couldn't simply ignore this mess. Behind each faction stood the support of major financial magnates, and to seize enough benefits from the L Region's internal turmoil, they had to immediately divert most of their energy and capital into it—naturally leaving no strength to continue contending with the Duan conglomerate.
In the end, in the price war over heavy metal A, Duan Lingze emerged the overwhelming victor. Not only did he survive the encirclement, but he also tore several chunks of flesh from the hunters who had tried to corner him, reaping unimaginable profits.
As for who dropped that match that ignited the L Region—the answer seemed to go without saying.
The winner takes all.
Of course, as the price for his reckless behavior, on the road from the Western Continent back to the Eastern Continent, Duan Lingze encountered no fewer than three assassination attempts from Western Continent forces. In one of them, a bullet lodged directly into his chest, blood spilling everywhere. Fortunately, he received timely treatment and was out of danger.
In this digital war, the ruthlessness, madness, cunning, and shrewdness Duan Lingze displayed made him famous in a single battle. Both the interest groups of the Eastern Continent and those of the Western Continent knew that the Duan family had produced a madman who followed no rules and played by no one's script.
This NPC's Personality Trait includes the 【Paranoid】 attribute, and his behavior is this crazy to boot. Better not to provoke a lunatic like this.
The player thought.
She was just about to close Duan Lingze's Character Profile page when she suddenly caught sight of his Favorability value toward her—
-999.
???
A negative favorability this extreme couldn't just be called dislike—it should be at the level of "hatred," right?
And the kind of "this hatred stretches on endlessly, with no end in sight."
"Why though? I haven't even met him yet, how is it already -999?" The player was baffled. "Did the Simulator glitch out?"