Chapter 18 — The Mighty, All-Powerful Genie

News that the young CEO of Đường Gia and her husband were planning to divorce, although not officially confirmed, began to leak out just a few days after that fateful conversation. No one knows exactly where the leak came from, but in a large corporation with hundreds of employees, such sensitive information can rarely be kept completely confidential, especially when Nhã Kỳ herself, in a state of panic and confusion, accidentally revealed her worries to a few close people in the company.

A few financial newspapers began publishing probing analysis articles, tactfully asking questions about "the stability of the personal lives of senior management" without naming anyone, but everyone clearly understood what they were referring to. Rumors spread like wildfire in the business and financial media world. Investment forums began to talk about the instability in the young CEO's personal life, raising the question of whether this would affect the leadership and stability of the group, especially when Đường Gia is preparing to enter an important stage: the signing ceremony of a strategic cooperation with a large multinational corporation in the field of logistics, a deal considered a historical turning point that could bring Đường Gia to regional level.

Hứa Việt Long, when he heard this news through his information network, could not hide his extreme excitement. This was exactly the last chance he had been waiting for many years.

"Đường Nhã Kỳ's marriage is on the verge of breaking up, right on the eve of the most important deal in her corporation's history," Việt Long spoke to his trusted team, his eyes sparkling with cold victory. "This is the perfect time to take the most drastic action."

"Are we sure we have the resources to pull off an acquisition of this scale?" A senior assistant asked, somewhat wary of the scale of the plan. "This will be the biggest campaign Long Thịnh has ever carried out."

"I have waited twenty-six years for this opportunity," Việt Long replied, his voice did not waver. "Mobilize all necessary resources. There is nothing more important than right now."

He immediately implemented a plan more daring than anything Long Thịnh had ever done before. Through a network of satellite investment funds that had been carefully established over the years, he began to aggressively buy more Đường Gia shares from small shareholders who were confused by rumors of instability, pushing the purchase price much higher than the market price to quickly accumulate the necessary number of shares for a decisive takeover.

At the same time, he also gave people direct access to the multinational corporation that was preparing to sign a strategic cooperation agreement with Đường Gia, sowing subtle doubts about the long-term stability of Đường Gia's leadership, implicitly suggesting that perhaps they should reconsider their cooperation partner before signing an agreement worth up to trillions of dong.

Meanwhile, Nhã Kỳ's personal life was also in an equally chaotic state. Since the night Bách Nguyên proposed a divorce, the two had almost stopped talking to each other except for brief exchanges about necessary housework. She buried herself in work to avoid having to face the confusing emotions in her heart, working until late every day, sometimes sleeping at the office instead of returning to the villa where the oppressive atmosphere between the two of them still remained.

"We need to make sure everything is perfect for the signing ceremony," Nhã Kỳ said in an emergency meeting with the board of directors, trying to put aside personal turmoil to focus on work, although her face still showed signs of obvious fatigue and stress after the conversation with Bách Nguyên a few days ago. "This is the most important deal in the group's history, we cannot let anything disrupt it."

But she did not know that, right now, Việt Long had almost completed gathering the necessary number of shares to have the right to request the convening of an extraordinary shareholder meeting right after the signing ceremony, enough to propose a vote to change the board of directors on the grounds that "instability in governance and the personal life of the head of the group seriously affects the reputation and business operations".

As for Bách Nguyên, even though he proposed a divorce, he never stopped caring for the safety of Nhã Kỳ and Đường Gia for a moment. The extraordinary intuition left over from a thousand years of being a genie made him clearly feel that an aura of danger was accumulating stronger than ever around the corporation in recent days, a feeling of insecurity that was even greater than what he had felt before the stock crisis last year.

He immediately returned to working hard on his information network, even more actively than before, even though he and Nhã Kỳ were now in an unprecedentedly tense, ambiguous relationship since the divorce proposal. He discovered signs that a large amount of shares were being quietly purchased through many different satellite investment funds, and when comparing it with data collected in previous years about Long Thịnh's shell company network, he immediately realized that this was a much larger scale attack than the previous one.

He spent two days and nights in a row, barely sleeping, to track down each financial clue, comparing them with the data he had quietly accumulated over the years about Long Thịnh's network of shell companies. The deeper he dug, the more he realized the scale of this conspiracy was much larger than he had ever imagined.

"This time, Việt Long does not simply want to cause instability." He told Lâm Đắc Tường in an urgent meeting. "He is preparing for a real takeover, and he chose the right moment at the signing ceremony to strike, when all the attention of the media and international partners is focused on Đường Gia."

"What are you going to do?" Đắc Tường asked, his voice full of worry, his hand unconsciously tightening his grip on the cup of tea that had long since cooled.

"I need to see Nhã Kỳ," Bách Nguyên said, his eyes were determined. "No matter how complicated things are between the two of us right now, I cannot leave her alone to face the biggest conspiracy that Việt Long has ever orchestrated, especially when he is deliberately taking advantage of our privacy as a weapon to attack," he called her immediately, but the call went to voicemail after a few rings. He texted, only to receive a silent response for more than an hour, perhaps because she was busy with a series of meetings to prepare for an important upcoming event, or perhaps because she was still keeping a distance from him after the tense conversation a few days ago. But when he went to Nhã Kỳ's office to inform her of the approaching danger, he realized that she had left the villa early to prepare for the final rehearsal before the signing ceremony that would take place in just two days. He stood silently in her empty office, his eyes looking out the window towards the towering Đường Gia headquarters building in the city center, filled with anxiety when thinking that the most important ceremony in the group's history could become the stage for the most brutal plot to humiliate and take over that both of them had ever faced, right at the time when their relationship was at the most fragile stage since the day they officially became husband and wife.

He knew he needed to act quickly, collect all the final evidence and find a way to approach Nhã Kỳ before the ceremony took place, even though he didn't know if she was still willing to listen to him after everything that had happened between the two of them in the past few days.

The night before the signing ceremony, Bách Nguyên sat alone in the room, the completed set of evidence documents neatly placed in a black leather briefcase on the table. He looked out the window, where the light in Nhã Kỳ's room on the third floor was still on even though it was almost midnight. Even though the relationship between the two was at the most tense stage, he knew he would not let her alone face the biggest attack that Việt Long had ever prepared, even if tomorrow was the last day he stood by her side as a husband.