Chapter 143: The Campus Dealer

A university is half a society, or even more than half a society. It accommodates tens of thousands of young people from all corners of the country. These individuals come from different regions, possess different personalities, backgrounds, and upbringings, meaning their overall caliber is inherently varied.

Even at top-tier universities, it only proves that their academic scores are high and they are successful at test-taking education. It absolutely does not imply that their character as human beings is significantly superior to that of ordinary people. Therefore, in any university, there will never be a shortage of despicable and untrustworthy individuals.

It was just that Li Mu had not expected Wu Shuai to resort to such a method to pit himself against him—deliberately targeting his roommates and then privately having someone reveal the reason. The motive was none other than to make his roommates harbor resentment toward him or dare not get close to him, effectively stoking animosity against him to a certain degree. This kind of low-handed tactic amazed someone like him who was living a second life.

However, Li Mu's rationality was stronger than his impulse, which was why he did not slam the table in anger, nor did he want to immediately seek out Wu Shuai to argue or fight him to the death. He was simply thinking about how to defend himself and then how to counterattack.

Compared to a student like Wu Shuai, whose methods were sordid and lacked any real sophistication, Li Mu's mindset when dealing with enemies was truly ruthless.

Guo Lin, Xue Guilan, Wu Dong, and Li Jiawei in the detention center were the best proof of Li Mu's ruthlessness. Therefore, the more this happened, the calmer his emotions became. Being bullied didn't matter; he just needed to find an opportunity to bully them back tenfold or a hundredfold. There was only one rule: one must weigh the actions and ensure the gains outweighed the losses.

Under his attitude, the few hot-tempered young men in Room 606 calmed down slightly.

Seeing that everyone had calmed down, Li Mu said, "Everyone should be careful in the future and not fall into their traps. Once we manage this, we can figure out how to find their weak points and seize the opportunity for a fatal blow."

All five of them nodded repeatedly.

Li Mu asked again, "Does anyone know what kind of off-campus jobs he has been introducing to students?"

Li Mu always felt that this guy Wu Shuai had a rather toxic personality and the makings of a complete scumbag. The tactics he used to pursue Su Yingxue and his humiliating treatment of Liu Nian showed that this person was narrow-minded and petty.

Normally speaking, such a person would thank the heavens if he didn't do things that harmed others for his own benefit. Even if he wanted to court a good reputation, his personality made it unlikely that he would genuinely do good deeds wholeheartedly. There was probably some hidden benefit for him in all of this.

Therefore, Li Mu wanted to figure out Wu Shuai's foundation first. If he wasn't going to make a move, fine; once he did, he had to knock him down and break his spirit.

Liu Nian thought for a moment and said, "Off-campus jobs are generally temporary clerk, typist, or assistant positions. They are basically doing odd jobs at small companies."

"What about the salary and benefits?"

"It should be around two yuan per hour or so."

Li Mu pondered for a moment and said, "Two yuan an hour is absolute cheap labor. Nowadays, clerk and typing jobs that require some basic computer skills should still be relatively popular, right?"

The five roommates all shook their heads. Li Yawei thought for a long time before saying, "In my impression, many small companies don't really use computers much. Whenever they occasionally need documents typed, they just go straight to a print shop."

Li Mu nodded slightly. "That's right. My point is that it's unlikely Wu Shuai is acting out of pure kindness. This wage level is obviously low; he must be pocketing the price difference."

Sun Jian suddenly thought of something, slapped his thigh, and said, "I remember now. A fellow townsman said that Wu Shuai is very capable and has all sorts of connections outside. Not only does he introduce people to these part-time jobs, but sometimes he also sends female classmates with good appearances to exhibitions and other events to work as receptionists and models. He can even take over a hundred classmates to live TV show recordings. He's very powerful."

Upon hearing this, Li Mu immediately frowned and said, "Isn't this fucking just a campus labor broker?"

Everyone was somewhat puzzled, but Li Mu was very clear about how things worked in these circles. Actually, the student union was far from being a pure place. It generally consisted of three types of people: the first type was purely driven by vanity; the second type wanted to build up their campus credentials while accumulating connections with school leaders, belonging to the realm of campus politics; and the third type made money off students to satisfy their vanity, ranging from those who simply resold various goods to classmates to those who engaged in labor trafficking on a larger scale.

Introducing cheap labor to earn commissions was the most common tactic used by campus labor brokers, especially when introducing female classmates to work as amateur models or high-end venue attendants. In Li Mu's past life in university, there were similar guys who frequently introduced several girls to exhibitions. The meager part-time pay the female classmates earned was less than the commission he pocketed, yet they still felt deeply grateful to him.

As for participating in show recordings, that was the most deceitful of all. On the surface, they would fool classmates by claiming that they had connections to get everyone into the audience for a certain TV recording, and that the production team would even provide a meal. The students, full of curiosity, felt that going over to sit for a while would allow them to see celebrities and get on TV, but they had no idea that the television station paid these brokers. Generally, they earned at least several dozen yuan per person per show, almost all of which went into the brokers' pockets. Due to the information blockade, this phenomenon continued for several years, and Li Mu only learned about this inside story close to his graduation.

After listening to Li Mu's deconstructing analysis, the roommates were extremely annoyed. They hadn't expected that people in the student union could make money so easily, and all by exploiting their own junior schoolmates.

Xue Jianfeng said angrily, "Damn it, those senior student union guys came to our class to promote assembled computers just two days ago. They claimed they had connections, and for the same configuration, their assembled PCs were two hundred yuan cheaper than buying them from a store. They even handed out a configuration list. I went to a store to ask, and it really was about two hundred yuan cheaper, so I acted on impulse and ordered one. Now looking back, it makes my blood boil thinking about letting these bastards make money off me."

Sun Jian asked, "Why didn't you say anything?"

Xue Jianfeng sighed and said, "I thought we were all brothers, and if I brought it up, I was afraid you guys would think I was showing off. I was just waiting for the machine to arrive so it could naturally become our room's shared property, just like Li Mu's laptop..."

Li Yawei said, "They definitely have connections. They negotiate bulk purchase discount prices with suppliers in Zhongguancun. Even if they save you two hundred, they must make at least three hundred off you. There are lots of tricks involved in this kind of thing. Sometimes they hand you two identical memory sticks where you completely can't tell the difference in quality, but the price can differ by dozens of yuan."

Li Mu curiously asked Xue Jianfeng, "What computer configuration? How much?"

Xue Jianfeng scratched his head and said awkwardly, "I don't understand computer configurations either. I just took a look—some Pentium III processor, 128 megabytes of memory, a 40-gigabyte hard drive, and some 32-megabyte graphics card, or something like that. I roughly asked around at a store, and the whole thing would cost about 5,300 yuan. The student union guys said it would only cost 5,100, and they'd even throw in a backpack."

Li Yawei curled his lips and said, "Brother Feng, it's not that I want to criticize you, but guys like them are in cahoots with unscrupulous merchants. Not to mention them heavily hoodwinking students into buying assembled PCs like this, even if you went to find the boss of a computer assembly shop yourself and said you were introducing classmates to buy computers, he would give you a commission of at least one or two hundred yuan per machine."

Xue Jianfeng said, "Damn it, I've already paid the deposit—500 yuan! They told everyone to prepare cash because the merchant is stocking up and will deliver the computers to the school next week, and they'll even provide on-site installation..."

Sun Jian asked him, "Can't you get a refund?"

Xue Jianfeng said, "They said once the deposit is paid, it's non-refundable..."

Li Mu curiously asked, "Do you know how many people they've fooled into buying computers?"

Xue Jianfeng shook his head. "I'm not really sure about that, but just in our class alone, four people ordered."

Li Mu was somewhat surprised and clicked his tongue, saying, "There are about forty people in a class, and a tenth of them ordered. If they are playing on a large scale, with over two thousand freshmen this year, following this proportion, wouldn't that be more than two hundred computers?"

Coming from a modest background and having roamed Beijing for many years, Li Mu naturally knew the massive markup hidden in hardware, especially in this era where the market lacked regulation and consumers lacked professional knowledge. It was practically the paradise of unscrupulous merchants.

The most outrageous thing was that unscrupulous merchants would sand off the labels of 64-megabyte memory sticks and replace them with 128-megabyte ones, and consumers wouldn't know they were being scammed even after buying them home for a year or two. Such instances were everywhere, not to mention the massive amounts of refurbished monitors, hard drives, and optical drives, as well as motherboards that passed off low quality as high quality or small manufacturers as big brands.

The water here was too deep. If Wu Shuai and his cohorts didn't understand much, two hundred plus computers could guarantee a bottom-line profit of fifty to sixty thousand yuan. If they understood the markups and went to negotiate an even greater profit margin with the unscrupulous merchants, extracting four or five hundred yuan per machine was entirely possible, which would amount to a hundred thousand yuan!

Li Mu sighed. No wonder everyone wanted to join the student union; sitting around helping unscrupulous merchants outside exploit classmates could make one's pockets overflowing with wealth.

Just as he was thinking, Xue Jianfeng suddenly received a phone call. After answering it, he uttered only six words from start to finish: "It's me... That's right... What?"

Hanging up the phone, Xue Jianfeng said with a bewildered expression, "These assholes are really vicious. They called to ask if I had ordered a computer from them. When I said yes, they said the people in our room are no longer eligible to get discounted goods from them, and told me they would refund my deposit and asked me to go to their room to pick up the money later..."

Li Mu smiled. "Do they really think they are philanthropies helping others?"

Xue Jianfeng smiled and said, "This works out perfectly. I wanted a refund anyway; no way am I letting them make money off me."

Li Mu then said, "If you go, they will definitely tell you how great of a discount you missed out on, and then blame all the reasons for missing these opportunities on me."

Xue Jianfeng curled his lips. "To hell with them. I couldn't care less."

Sun Jian asked Li Mu, "You know more about computers than we do. How much money do you think they can make if they hustle dozens or hundreds of computers?"

Li Mu thought for a moment and said, "It's hard to say. Anywhere from two or three hundred at the least, to five or six hundred or even higher per machine is possible."

Xue Jianfeng's eyes widened. "That has to be at least tens of thousands! Li Mu, do you think we can make a fuss out of this? Don't they want to make money? If we can find a breakthrough point, we can ruin their plans and turn their joy into sorrow!"

Li Mu smiled slightly and said to the group, "If we really want to turn this matter into a great opportunity for a counterattack, we must let them actually get this money into their hands." (To be continued.)

PS: This is the third chapter. Over the past seven days, the average daily update has been 12,219 characters. Brothers and sisters, with such powerful updates, how can we not cast monthly votes, how can we not cast more monthly votes? There's no justification anywhere not to!