Cooling is not calm.
It is controlled instability.
09:02.
Markets opened narrower.
Spreads down another 7 basis points.
Order book depth returning in upper tiers.
Not full restoration.
But thickness visible again.
Liquidity behaves like pressure equalization:
The sharpest adjustment occurs early.
Stabilization slows with time.
The emergency facility draw was disclosed in summary filings.
Predictable.
Necessary.
Costly.
Penalty rate priced into forward earnings.
Equity stabilized at -8% from pre-event.
Not a collapse.
Not a victory.
A scar.
Han Zhe recalculated systemic multiplier.
Confidence coefficient: 0.94.
Well below unity.
Self-sustaining cascade terminated.
Now in dissipation phase.
But dissipation does not erase memory.
Memory alters future behavior.
At 11:40, two counterparties reinstated partial tenor extension.
Seven-day funding restored for limited volume.
Conditional trust.
Trust rebuilt in increments.
Never in bulk.
Yet second-order effects began surfacing.
Credit lines elsewhere tightened.
Risk committees industry-wide revising exposure matrices.
Correlation matrices redrawn.
In statistics, variance reduction after shock follows mean reversion:
Volatility decays.
But baseline often shifts upward permanently.
New equilibrium carries higher cost of capital.
At 13:15, regulatory dialogue continued.
Supervisory language focused on "resilience reinforcement."
Translation:
Capital buffers will increase.
Liquidity ratios recalibrated.
Future tolerance bands narrower.
Survival today.
Constraint tomorrow.
The energy firm's leadership initiated gradual unwind of protective convex layers.
Not immediate liquidation.
Staggered decay profile:
Large benefits early.
Diminishing marginal gain as stability returns.
Exit before complacency resumes.
Protection is most valuable when scarce.
Least needed when abundant.
By afternoon, media tone shifted.
From "liquidity scare" to "contained volatility episode."
Language downgrade in severity.
Perception modulating.
Gu Chengyi addressed strategy council:
"The crisis was not liquidity."
"It was synchronization."
Simultaneous conservation produced density.
Density produced cascade.
Moderator broke rhythm.
Rhythm slowly normalizing.
Internal metrics showed improved rollover probability.
Withdrawal requests declined 62% from peak.
Spread curve flattening.
Slope now near zero.
Acceleration neutralized.
Yet balance sheet altered.
Assets sold at discount.
Facility debt incurred.
Reputation recalibrated.
Cost embedded.
Resilience proven.
But fragility revealed.
Night approached without urgency.
Screens mostly green.
Calmer hum across trading floors.
Cooling phase intact.
But Gu Chengyi understood something deeper:
The event was rehearsal.
Architecture stress-tested live.
Weakness mapped.
Coordination threshold identified.
Confidence elasticity measured.
The next shock—
whenever it comes—
will not be identical.
But it will probe the same variables.
And now,
they know
where the threshold lives.
Not in numbers.
Not in ratios.
But in synchronization.
And synchronization—
once fractured—
always remembers
the sound it made
when it broke.