HLnovel Chapter 469 The Shopping Frenzy and Suspicious Orders
Chapter 469 The Shopping Frenzy and Suspicious Orders
In the monitoring hall of Jinan Xinghuo Group's headquarters, a large screen covering an entire wall is divided into twelve sections, each corresponding to a real-time view of a brand store in a different city. At the very center of the screen is the official website's backend data; the order volume number starts jumping upwards from 9:00 AM sharp, a dizzying display.
Zhao Weiguo stood in front of the large screen, holding a telephone in his hand.
"Are the stores in Guangzhou open yet?"
"It's open. There are over three hundred people lined up at the entrance, stretching across two streets." The voice on the phone was mixed with the noisy background noise, and someone was shouting not to push.
"What about Shanghai?"
"It opened a while ago, and the first one has already been sold."
At 9:06, the inventory number on the official website dropped from 100,000 to zero.
A dozen or so people in the monitoring room fell silent at the same time. Some stared at the words "Sold Out" on the screen, their mouths agape.
Zhao Weiguo slammed the telephone on the table. "Six minutes? Sold out completely?"
"Boss, look at this—" A technician moved the cursor to the backend order list and scrolled down two pages. "There are hundreds of orders, all from the same IP range. The shipping addresses are random, and the phone numbers are all invalid."
Zhao Weiguo bent over and stared at the screen, his face gradually darkening.
"Call him Ling Yun."
When Ling Yun entered the monitoring hall, he wasn't wearing a coat; his shirt sleeves were rolled up to his elbows. He glanced at the sold-out notice on the big screen, then at the batch of suspicious orders pulled up by the technician, and said nothing.
"Someone is engaging in fraudulent order placement," Zhao Weiguo said. "The same batch of IP addresses, within the same time period, are placing orders but not paying. They're locking up the inventory."
Ling Yun pulled up a chair and sat next to the technician. "Freeze all the orders involved in the fraudulent transactions. Put the released inventory back on the shelves. When will it be finished?"
"The data volume is quite large, it will probably take—" the technician typed a few times on the keyboard, "forty minutes."
"You have twenty minutes."
The technician swallowed hard and started typing.
Ling Yun stood up and walked to the window. Downstairs in the park, people were moving goods; a forklift was slowly backing up with wooden crates. He took out his phone and dialed Zhao Hu's number.
"Zhao Hu, investigate the IP addresses used to generate these fake orders. Who are they, where are they, and who is in charge?"
"We're already investigating," Zhao Hu said steadily. "It's an IP address from Shenzhen, belonging to a company called Pengcheng Network Marketing."
"Pengcheng" (meaning "a bright future").
The legal representative is named Yang Peng.
Ling Yun paused for a moment, his hand holding the phone still. "Yang Peng—that name sounds familiar."
On the other end of the phone, Zhao Hu flipped through a few pages. "Found him. He used to be a salesman at Yixiang Group. Five years ago in Nanjing, he helped Chen Jian stage an accident involving Zhao Weiguo. That's the guy. After Yixiang was investigated, he ran away from the company and opened this marketing company in Shenzhen."
Lingyun leaned against the window. A breeze picked up outside, causing the trees in the park to sway back and forth.
"Secure all the evidence. Compile all order records, IP addresses, and payment account transaction details and send them to me. Then, notify the legal department to report the case to the Shenzhen Public Security Bureau."
"clear."
After hanging up the phone, Ling Yun turned and walked back to the monitoring console. The technician's fingers clattered on the keyboard, and the frozen orders on the screen were cleared line by line, while the released inventory numbers slowly increased in another window.
"President Ling, the freezing is complete. Approximately eight thousand real machines have been released."
"Re-list it," Ling Yun said. "Also, post an announcement on the official website."
"Write what?"
"We've stated that some orders are suspected of being fraudulently placed and have been frozen. The released inventory will be relisted within 30 minutes. Xinghuo reserves the right to pursue legal action."
As expected, the forum exploded after the announcement was released. Users dug up the old posts criticizing Xinghuo's hunger marketing tactics and retaliated against them, with comments like "They've been proven wrong," "So it was all fake," and "Who did this?!"
Ling Yun sat in front of his computer, opened the Spark Developer Community, and clicked the "Develop Post" button. He typed a few words, deleted them, typed a few more, and deleted them again. Finally, he wrote only one sentence: "These extra few thousand units were returned by those who engaged in fraudulent order placement. They wanted us to be criticized, but we chose to return the phones to the real users."
Then he clicked send.
Within ten minutes of the post being published, the comment section was flooded with thousands of replies. The first top comment read: "I got it! It was gray just now, but suddenly it lit up!" The second comment was even shorter: "Order placed, thank you Mr. Ling." The third comment was just a string of exclamation marks.
By evening, news came back from the offline stores: all 8,000 units released after the cleanup of fraudulent orders had been sold out. Zhao Weiguo said on the phone that some stores still had lines of people waiting outside, and they couldn't be driven away.
"Call Ma Baoguo first thing tomorrow morning," Ling Yun said. "Have the Shenzhen factory add another production line."
"Production capacity is already ramping up; adding another line would require workers to work in three shifts—"
"Damn it." Ling Yun interrupted him, "Users have been queuing all night, what's one more shift for us?"
After hanging up the phone, Ling Yun leaned back in his chair. It had already darkened outside, and the lights in the monitoring room cast shadows on the walls. The technician was still staring at the data on his computer when someone handed him a boxed lunch, which he took and placed aside without touching it.
Just then, my phone vibrated. A text message from an unknown number popped up on the screen, containing only one line: "President Ling, Xinghuo played a brilliant move. But the game isn't over yet."
Ling Yun read the text message twice and put his phone on the table. He stood up and walked to the window. The night outside was quiet; the wind had stopped, and the streetlights bathed the roads in the park in an orange glow.
Zhao Hu pushed open the door and handed over a folder. "We've investigated Pengcheng Company's background. When Yang Peng registered the company last year, there was a hidden shareholder—it was Xiao Zhou, Liu Chuanzhi's former secretary."
Ling Yun took the folder, flipped through a couple of pages, and didn't look up. "Is all the evidence locked?"
"It's locked. Bank statements, company registration information, IP logs—everything is locked. I've already submitted the materials to the Shenzhen Economic Investigation Department."
Lingyun closed the folder.
"Liu Chuanzhi has already stepped down, but his remaining supporters are still causing trouble." He put the folder on the table, picked up his coat, and said, "Let's go home. An Shiyu and our daughter are waiting."
He paused at the door. "Zhao Hu, that number—find out who sent it for me." He gave the number from the text message.
Zhao Hu wrote it down and nodded.
The corridor lights were very bright. Ling Yun walked to the elevator, then suddenly remembered something, took his phone out of his pocket, and opened the Spark Developer Community. His post had already been pushed to the top of the homepage, and the number of views below was still jumping up at a visible speed.