One week before the annual report release, the shorts maxed out their positions.

On Fang Yiming's sheet, the market's total open short positions piled up to 4.4 billion US dollars, and the stock-lending interest rate doubled again.

The current interest rate was now so expensive that only maniacs would be willing to borrow.

There were quite a few maniacs.

A betting method was popular in the market: betting that the Big Four would not dare to sign HTO's annual report.

Before Ruixing exposed itself, the Big Four's signatures were also lying on its books—this phrase was constantly on the shorts' lips, told to everyone they met.

Several financial channels in the United States called March 31st "Judgment Day", starting the countdown a week in advance.

Hobbs smiled very relaxedly on television: "I don't need to speak. The annual report will speak for me."

Over at the trading desk, Yan Hongzhi stared at the screen for a while and asked Lin Yan: "He's not hiding?"

"He can't hide." Qin Yan answered for Lin Yan, "With a position of over four billion, if he runs now, he'll be short-squeezing himself."

Lin Yan didn't speak and looked through the press conference schedule again.

March 31st, Wednesday, 12:00 PM.

The press conference was held in a hall at the exhibition center, conducted both online and offline simultaneously.

Over three hundred people sat in the audience, and hundreds of thousands crowded into the online livestream room.

Shen Xiaowei went on stage alone.

There was no opening remark, no promotional video.

She stood at the edge of the stage, and her first sentence was: "Over the past dozens of days, everything everyone heard was HTO from other people's mouths. Today, listen to what we have to say ourselves."

The annual report was projected onto the large screen behind her.

Full-year revenue was 70% higher than the "true value" in the short-selling report; net profit fell beyond the upper limit of all brokerage prediction ranges.

Twenty percent of livestream orders were shipped from warehouses, and 80% were shipped directly from the brand's cloud warehouses—that shipping structure chart was printed verbatim into the text of the annual report.

On the audit opinion page, one of the Big Four issued an unqualified opinion.

An unqualified opinion meant that after auditing all the accounts, the auditor signed and sealed it: these accounts were clean.

"For daily active user data, there are verified working papers and signatures every quarter," Shen Xiaowei said. "The statistical caliber has been adjusted seven times, and the working papers for all seven times are here. Six adjustments resulted in smaller numbers, and one remained flat. The auditors reviewed them item by item."

People in the audience began lowering their heads to take frantic notes.

"The second matter, Look."

Shen Xiaowei turned a page.

"Over the past two years, we haven't fully disclosed Look's operational data in the United States.

It's not that we couldn't disclose it, but that we didn't want to—our strategy hadn't finished running its course, and talking about it would be teaching our competitors.

Today, we will explain it thoroughly all at once."

On the large screen, data flashed page by page: registered users, monthly active users, average daily usage duration, mall GMV, and repurchase rate.

The last page was a cross-validation report issued by an American third-party data monitoring agency—not data given by HTO, but data they themselves crawled for two years and brought out today to reconcile accounts.

The error between the two sets was less than three percent.

The sound of an analyst in the audience drawing a sharp breath could be heard in the front rows.

"Look's new round of financing signed a term sheet yesterday," Shen Xiaowei paused. "The lead investor is a local American fund.

The number in the valuation column is worth more than the entire Look that the report claimed we 'fabricated'."

"Doing business with ourselves?" she said. "Americans used real money to buy this accusation."

That same data package was submitted verbatim to the SEC by the legal team that afternoon—the user data requested in the inquiry letter was all inside.

If you want it, you get all of it.

"The third matter, Shengdaojia."

The large screen changed to another report: an independent review issued by one of the Big Four for Shengdaojia, detailing the real order volume, customer unit price, and fulfillment cost for an entire winter, page after page of raw numbers.

"They said, how could a three percent commission survive?" Shen Xiaowei said. "Now the accounts are laid out—the direct procurement proportion, order density, and fulfillment cost are all on paper.

What survives is not three percent, but efficiency."

There was a sudden uproar in the audience.

The financing market doesn't listen to stories, only recognizing numbers; this was louder than any clarification announcement.

During the Q&A session, a Hong Kong journalist stood up and asked in Cantonese: "President Shen, is the company worried about the SEC's inquiry?"

Shen Xiaowei answered without the slightest hesitation: "We hope they investigate more than anyone else. The more detailed the investigation, the more beneficial it is for us—all data has been handed over, not a single word deleted."

The second question came from online: "Is there anything else you want to say about that short-selling report?"

She thought about it.

"Thank them," she said. "If they hadn't forced this hand, we originally planned to hide Look and Shengdaojia's foundations for another year."

The audience burst into laughter. The livestream room's bullet comments scrolled across an entire screen: "Executing them and condemning their heart."

At 1 PM in the afternoon, the hong kong stocks opened.

HTO's trading board looked like it had been entirely lifted up from the bottom of the water.

Buy orders piled layer upon layer, and the stock price headed straight up: eight percent, fifteen percent, twenty percent.

On Fang Yiming's three screens, green covering orders began to appear—that was the shorts buying back to stop losses.

The borrowed goods now had to be bought back at a more expensive price to return.

At the close, it rose by twenty-six percent.

A massive bullish candle completely swallowed back that massive bearish candle from March 9th.

Inside the trading desk, Qin Yan looked at that line and chuckled as if remembering something: "Short it once, and it rises once."

Yan Hongzhi didn't smile.

Staring at those green covering orders on the market board, he said: "This is just the beginning. The bulk of them are still trapped inside."

Over at the Stock Connect, mainland funds' net buying of HTO surged into the top three again that day.

In Xueqiu's comment section, the style completely changed.

Posts from before shouting "Delist" were dug up and hung on the city walls one by one; the most highlighted comment was: "The people who bought the bottom on report day are burning incense for Hobbs today."

It was still early morning in New York.

Hobbs appeared on a morning show, his complexion much worse than last time, but his voice even louder: "Data? Data fabricated by the company itself! Auditors have been bought off by Chinese companies; things like this have happened and will happen again!"

The host asked something, and he answered rapidly.

But after the broadcast ended, no one joined in to egg him on anymore.

That afternoon, someone discovered: the twelve-page report on Greystone Research's official website had been quietly taken down, and the link turned into a 404.

Night Patrol Capital's external liaison phone went unanswered all day.

One hour before the market close, Zhuozu Research's prime broker made a phone call, asking about only one thing: margin.

At 11 PM at night, the trading desk was still lit up.

Fang Yiming sent the post-close numbers to Lin Yan: open short positions across the entire market still stood at 3.9 billion US dollars.

"They are only experiencing floating losses and haven't conceded defeat yet," Fang Yiming said. "To close their positions, they have to buy the stocks back. But right now, most of the borrowable and sellable goods on the market are locked up in accounts belonging to a few of us."

"If they want to return the goods, they can only buy from us."

Lin Yan looked at that line that had just tilted upward on the screen for a very long time.

"Then let them buy," he said. "Starting tomorrow, it will get more expensive by the day."