Homo Sapiens

Inside a printing plant owned by the Xu Clan on the outskirts of Bangkok.

A dozen or so experts in plastic banknote design and manufacturing had been secretly invited by the Xu Clan. Along with over a dozen specialized printing machines transported from Xing Island by Victor, they began the work of counterfeiting the Jin.

The lead engineer, Gutman, had previously helped Xing Island, Siam, and Java design plastic banknotes.

He picked up a hundred-Jin banknote, placed it under a specialized camera, and then magnified the image on a computer.

The solar system star chart on the front was detailed but posed no challenge to replicate. However, when he flipped the note over, his expression grew serious.

On the magnified image, the double helix pattern on the back was exceptionally complex. There were also hidden watermarks and security threads.

Fortunately, this was still within manageable limits.

After cracking the watermark and security thread, Gutman sneered to himself, ’These Hongsawaddy country bumpkins, trying to copy others by using plastic banknotes. They don’t even have a transparent window or a holographic security feature in the window. Serves them right for getting counterfeited.’

In less than three days, they reproduced a banknote identical to the Jin and began mass printing.

「Meanwhile.」

「Yangon, Hongsawaddy.」

Several families who had failed to profit from the recent upheaval were starting to get restless.

At a pier in Yangon, Mao Tao and a dozen of his underlings were secretly receiving a shipment of art paper imported from Xing Island.

Meanwhile, in a canal on the border of Siam and Hongsawaddy, a small freighter passed a border inspection and arrived at Maudanmen Port.

「That day at noon.」

A young man carrying two million Jin went to a Qingye Bank branch in Yangon.

The young man, wearing a baseball cap and a face mask, looked tense and uneasy. He placed a large bag of banknotes on the counter. ”I... I want to make a deposit.”

The teller glanced at him and opened the bag. Inside were stacks upon stacks of banknotes, which made her a little surprised. She took out one stack and fed it into a money counter, which quickly processed it without issue.

The young man breathed a silent sigh of relief.

But he celebrated too soon. The teller then pulled a single bill from the stack and placed it in another detector. The machine’s indicator light immediately turned red. She frowned, and her other hand reached beneath the counter to press a yellow button.

In the security room, the captain of the guards immediately saw the yellow indicator light for teller window 3 light up.

”Xiaohu, Hailang, grab your guns! We’ve got a situation.”

The other two guards in the security room quickly took assault rifles and shotguns from the safe.

Back at the counter, the teller casually took out another stack of banknotes and fed it through the standard money counter. Once again, it registered as normal. The specialized detector, however, flagged it as counterfeit.

Of course, only the teller could see the specialized detector’s indicator light.

As the teller was taking out a third stack of banknotes, the security captain appeared behind the young man.

”Sir, please cooperate.”

”What...?” The young man started, but as he turned, he found himself staring down the barrels of a shotgun and an assault rifle. A look of pure terror filled his eyes.

His blood running cold with fear, the young man was suddenly filled with desperate courage and began shouting to the other customers. ”What are you doing? I’m not making a deposit! Everyone, look! Qingye Bank is trying to steal my money!”

The other customers in the bank turned to look.

But the security captain gave him no chance to continue, firing a taser dart straight into him.

”AAAAHHH...” The young man fell to the floor, convulsing and screaming in agony.

The security captain then pulled out a pair of handcuffs and secured the young man.

At that moment, the bank manager came out to the lobby and addressed the panicked customers. ”Ladies and gentlemen, my apologies. This individual was attempting to deposit a large quantity of counterfeit bills. We will handle the situation promptly.”

Counterfeit money? The crowd exchanged bewildered glances.

The teller then brought out the large bag of counterfeit bills, spread some out on a public counter, and then produced two currency detectors.

”Ladies and gentlemen, older models of currency detectors cannot identify this type of counterfeit; only the new models can. If any of you are concerned about counterfeit bills, you can purchase a new detector at any Qingye Electric store,” the teller explained.

The Hongsawaddy Branch had known about Victor’s counterfeiting scheme all along. However, they didn’t intervene at first, choosing to wait until the bills were transported into the country.

This was partly a sting operation to catch the culprits and partly an opportunity to sell a new wave of currency detectors.

「Less than three days later.」

A dozen or so families in Hongsawaddy were raided by heavily armed personnel. Faced with the discovery of billions in counterfeit Jin, these families were finished.

Hongsawaddy television stations quickly broadcast the story. Seeing the news reports, the public was spooked and rushed to buy the new currency detectors.

The Hongsawaddy Branch, which had orchestrated everything from the shadows, reaped massive rewards from the raids: gold, silver, jewelry, land, real estate, and overseas accounts. At the same time, they profited from the sale of the new currency detectors, benefiting from both ends of the operation.

「Bangkok.」

Victor and Xu Xuexi looked grim. Their plan had been crushed before it could even get off the ground.

Gutman and his team were also extremely embarrassed.

Victor asked with a tight, humorless smile, ”Mr. Gutman, what was it you were saying before?”

”My apologies. It was my mistake. Please give me another chance. I guarantee I can produce an identical copy of the Jin,” Gutman said hastily.

But Victor had already lost interest. This operation had cost him a large number of collaborators and several subordinates in Hongsawaddy.

Noticing Victor’s foul mood, Xu Xuexi tried to smooth things over. ”Why don’t we let Gutman and his team try one more time? This time, we could create small-denomination Jin and circulate them in the border regions and rural areas.”

”Do whatever you want. I’m going back to Xing Island to take care of some business.” Victor left without another word. He clearly had no faith in the plan.

After all, a successful counterfeiting scheme required the element of surprise and a high degree of authenticity. Now that Hongsawaddy was on guard, a small-scale operation with low-denomination bills would, at best, net a few tens of millions of Jin worth of Gold. The return on investment was simply too low.

But Xu Xuexi was unwilling to give up. For one, he was short on funds. For another, he couldn’t stomach the humiliation.

Soon, the Xu Group used its connections to procure several of the new currency detectors from Hongsawaddy.

「Inside Gutman’s counterfeiting workshop.」

He and a few other top experts disassembled one of the detectors, and they were all left dumbfounded.

”What kind of detection technology is this?” one expert who specialized in invisible watermarks asked, completely baffled.

They had long since cracked the principles behind the common currency detectors on the market.

But the detector before them was completely different from any common model. Without understanding its operating principle, they had no way to reverse-engineer the Jin banknotes.

Gutman took a counterfeit bill and a genuine one and ran them through the machine. The indicator immediately turned red for the fake, while the genuine bill triggered a green light.

He examined both banknotes again but could find no discernible difference.

’Where on earth is the difference?’

He cut open the genuine bill and examined it closely. Finally, under a magnifying glass, he discovered a tiny fibrous strip.

Sure enough, when he placed the fibrous strip into the detector, a yellow indicator light lit up.

’Why a yellow light?’

”Could it have to do with its integrity?” another expert suggested.

Gutman extracted the entire fibrous strip from a banknote. Sure enough, this time the detector’s indicator turned green.

’But what’s so special about this strip?’

When they took the fibrous strips from a dozen or so Jin banknotes to be analyzed, they discovered they were just fibers from rice leaves—nothing special.

But when Gutman created a similar strip using ordinary rice leaf fibers, it repeatedly failed the detector’s verification.

Gutman then had the lab run a genetic analysis on the fibrous strip to determine the specific type of rice plant it came from.

More than a week later, the genetic testing lab brought them some bad news.

”Genetically modified rice? And the GM rice is different for each denomination?” Gutman felt like he was going to cough up blood. Where was he supposed to find these specific strains of GM rice?

The others were speechless as well. Hongsawaddy was obviously guarding those specific GM rice strains with extreme prejudice. Obtaining the leaves needed to produce the fibrous strips would be virtually impossible.

Of course, if they were willing to invest several hundred million US Dollars to build a GM rice R&D center, they might be able to develop a similar strain based on the gene sequence, but there was no guarantee it would be an exact match.

But even if Gutman were willing, Xu Xuexi didn’t have hundreds of millions in capital to waste on it.

Clearly, the Jin’s anti-counterfeiting technology was beyond the capabilities of any ordinary faction to replicate.

If a superpower like America were to make a move, they might be able to use gene-recombination technology to produce a similar GM rice strain.

But everyone had underestimated the Jin’s security features.

The first layer of security within these GM rice fibrous strips was a special fiber composition that triggered a specific allergic-type reaction in the detector’s biosensor.

But inside, there was a second layer of security: a reagent strip for rapid detection of a target gene.

And hidden deepest of all was the third layer: rapid full-genome sequencing technology. A specific genetic code was embedded within the DNA of this rice.

Even if someone managed to crack all three layers of security and reproduce an identical Jin banknote, the cost with current technology would run into the hundreds of billions of US Dollars, with no guarantee of success.

Not even America was rich enough to spend hundreds of billions of US Dollars on a counterfeiting operation.

After all, it was incredibly easy for the Qingye Group to update its detectors. The cost of counterfeiting versus the potential profit was a world of difference. Anyone who dared to counterfeit the Jin was guaranteed to lose their shirt.

The Qingye Group was simply using its biotechnological superiority to bully its opponents, making it impossible for them to create low-cost forgeries.

Long before the Jin was issued, Ma Chi had consulted Li Qingye on how to prevent counterfeiting.

Li Qingye’s solution was direct: three layers of security on a genetic level, guaranteed to be uncrackable for at least twenty years.