Chapter 161 A Collective Assault

"A bunch of fucking morons, sold out and still helping others count their money! The batch of machines brought in by the Student Aid Alliance has refurbished monitors, fake motherboards and optical drives, and the memory, graphics cards, and processors are all defective garbage. If you don't believe me, just look at the plastic on the back cover of the monitors—isn't it much newer than the plastic on the bezel? Isn't the workmanship of the motherboards and optical drives atrocious? Pull out the memory cards and graphics cards and check the interfaces—aren't they heavily worn out? Do they look even a tiny bit brand new and plugged in only once?"

Skin-Peeler's reply instantly attracted dozens of responses. The vast majority of these dozens of responses were hurling abuses at him while defending Sun Tan, with only a small fraction expressing doubt. However, shortly after, quite a few people started separate threads asking whether Skin-Peeler's recent exposés were true.

Another few minutes passed before someone replied: "Fucking hell! Skin-Peeler is right. The monitors really do look a bit off, and the motherboards and optical drives don't look like things made by major manufacturers. The plastic edges even feel pricking sharp to the touch, damn it! And the contacts on the memory and graphics cards have significant wear and tear—you can tell at a glance they've been plugged and unplugged more than a few times! Except for the processor and hard drive, which I can't quite tell yet, everything else has issues! Damn it, I'm returning mine!"

Right after that, another person replied: "Bastard! My optical drive makes a reading noise louder than a tractor, and there's clearly something like a screw or a plastic piece rattling around inside, clattering away!"

Someone else said: "Mine is the same. The optical drive is totally trashed; the eject button sank in after being pressed a couple of times and won't pop back up! It's a fucking fake!"

At this point, "Skin-Peeler" started a brand-new thread titled: "Student Aid Alliance: Are They Helping Students or Screwing Students?"

In the content of the post, Skin-Peeler re-pasted the exposé from his previous reply and added: "Fellow students who have doubts about what I've said can take the hardware to various brand stores to consult. We are so close to Zhongguancun that it's not many steps away. It's better to verify things for greater peace of mind."

Subsequently, Skin-Peeler dropped another bombshell: "The Student Aid Alliance is a vampire that preys on student part-timers and an unscrupulous labor trafficker of students."

In this post, Skin-Peeler exposed the fact that all off-campus part-time jobs introduced to students by the Student Aid Alliance involved kickbacks taken from the employers. Even when organizing students to participate in television show recordings, they used the students as a means to make money. Every television station provided hardship fees for the audience members attending the recordings, but all of this money was pocketed directly by Sun Tan and Wu Shuai from the Student Aid Alliance.

This completely blew the lid off the entire Yishaochi Pond area. Many students who saw the post rushed to notify those who had just purchased machines in their dorm buildings. The speed of information dissemination was unimaginable.

Sun Tan hadn't even finished distributing the machines when the whole school already knew.

Standing on the balcony, watching Sun Tan and Li Mu chatting and laughing, Wu Shuai felt irritated and simply retreated back into his dorm room. With nothing better to do, he logged onto Yishaochi Pond, preparing to see if his post about voluntarily withdrawing from the student union had received any new replies.

However, as soon as he logged in, he was almost frightened to the point of collapsing to the floor by the overwhelming titles of condemnation and abuse.

After reading through the exposé posts one by one, Wu Shuai had only one thought in his mind: It's over. The Student Aid Alliance is finished.

Right after that, he felt that he was finished too.

All of the Student Aid Alliance's moneymaking secrets had been exposed—introducing off-campus part-time jobs to students, leading them to various paid cheering gigs, and peddling seemingly cheap yet viciously scammy merchandise to them. The exposure of these secrets would inevitably trigger the righteous fury of the entire student body. More importantly, the status of the Student Aid Alliance in the eyes of the school leadership would plummet to the bottom!

Wu Shuai even felt that if this matter blew up, there was an eight-tenths chance he would have to take responsibility.

So, acting on a sudden impulse, Wu Shuai immediately registered a new account and replied beneath every post mentioning him. The content of his replies was largely consistent: "The original poster has misunderstood Wu Shuai. In fact, all these things were done by Sun Tan. Wu Shuai and the other members of the Student Aid Alliance were merely his tools."

After making these replies, Wu Shuai breathed a slight sigh of relief. Fortunately, the attacks weren't directed much at him; almost all of them targeted Sun Tan. Only the occasional post or two mentioned him. It seemed Sun Tan was the one in the biggest trouble right now.

The moment he thought about how this guy had forced him to swallow his pride for his own benefit, a wave of resentment welled up in Wu Shuai's heart. Looking back at all the posts peeling away Sun Tan's facade, his mood suddenly became much more cheerful.

Sun Tan had finished distributing the computers, and the remaining task was just for these assembly technicians to take turns going door-to-door to set them up. Breathing a sigh of relief, he said to Li Mu with a beaming smile, "You see, the Student Aid Alliance isn't actually much different from 3321, and it complements 3321 perfectly."

Li Mu smiled faintly, "It's precisely because I recognized the value of the Student Aid Alliance that I became interested in our subsequent cooperation."

Sun Tan laughed, "The Student Aid Alliance has massive influence and is involved in many projects. Once combined with 3321 in the future, we can move many of the things the Student Aid Alliance is currently doing onto the internet."

Just as Sun Tan was full of rosy anticipation, a freshman male student, accompanied by two dorm mates and carrying two large cardboard boxes, rushed aggressively up to Sun Tan, dumped the boxes on the ground, and said, "Senior Sun, I want a refund!"

"A refund?" Sun Tan couldn't help frowning. "The machines were just set up today. How long have you even used them before wanting a refund?"

The male student said with an indignant expression, "Your machines are pure fraud! The monitor has issues, the optical drive and motherboard have issues, and the graphics card and memory have issues too!"

Sun Tan felt a buzzing in his head, but he quickly forced himself to calm down and warned the student: "Junior, don't go throwing baseless accusations around. Our Student Aid Alliance operates purely on a voluntary, helpful basis, aiming to let you buy computers at the most reasonable price..."

"I want a refund too!"

Before Sun Tan could finish speaking, another group of people carrying boxes arrived in front of him.

"And me, I want to return mine too!"

Sun Tan had no idea at all that while he was reaping the students' adoration, Yishaochi Pond had already published all his vile deeds.

At that moment, one of Sun Tan's lackeys answered a phone call, then immediately hurried over to Sun Tan's side and whispered a few words into his ear.

Sun Tan's complexion turned instantly as pale as paper. He muttered, "Back to the dorm," and then forcefully shoved his way through the crowd surrounding him, striding rapidly back toward the dormitory building.

It took Sun Tan half an hour to read through all the content on Yishaochi Pond concerning himself. Unfortunately, he discovered it far too late. The sentiment on Yishaochi Pond had now formed a one-sided consensus. When Skin-Peeler first exposed him, quite a few people were still speaking up for him, but as more and more victims and their dorm mates exposed the scam online, those who had trusted him quickly defected to the other side.

In his desperation, Sun Tan immediately called the founder of Yishaochi Pond. The other person was also a senior student at the university and a member of the student union. Without a word, Sun Tan told him to shut down Yishaochi Pond immediately. That person hurriedly went online to check and discovered that Sun Tan had become a street rat that everyone wanted to beat, so he rushed to disable all external access to Yishaochi Pond first, and then brought his laptop to Sun Tan's dorm.

Sun Tan asked him to analyze the IP addresses of all related posts. He wanted to know where the people exposing him came from—which ones were inside the university and which ones were outside. However, once the forum was shut down, the students exploded. Those who realized they had been scammed quickly notified others around them who had also bought computers. More than two hundred students, bringing their roommates, formed multiple layers of tight human and machine encirclement, trapping the two box trucks brought by the profiteering merchants dead in their tracks, demanding that they issue refunds or else nobody was leaving.

The merchants panicked. Before coming, they had specially coordinated with the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China branch next to the university. After counting the collected payments for the goods, the money was to be directly escorted to the bank by bank security, staff, and the dealers to be deposited. They never expected that right after depositing the money, they would run into this kind of situation.

The boss supplying goods to the Student Aid Alliance this time was named Huang Lishan, a local from Beijing who had been in the hardware business for two years. He understood all the shady tricks inside out and operated them with great proficiency, but never in his wildest dreams did he expect to capsize in a gutter at a school today.

Surrounded by so many angry students, not only could he not leave, but he didn't even dare to call the police. Every single machine here contained fake and refurbished parts. If the police came and saw the uproar was this massive, they definitely wouldn't let him off.

However, surrounded by so many furious students, he was terrified that they might lose control. If anyone took the lead, there was a real possibility he'd get beaten up today, so he could only hide in the truck and rack his brain for countermeasures.

Outside the truck, the students chanted four words in unison: "Scumbag merchant, give back our money!" Huang Lishan found it unbearable to listen to. Knowing that he had incurred public wrath today and it would be extremely hard to get out of this school safely, he thought of finding a way to appease the situation quickly. Otherwise, once the school administration was alerted, he would truly be doomed; if the school made respective phone calls to the police and the Administration for Industry and Commerce, he would be completely finished.

Driven to a dead end, Huang Lishan called Sun Tan and demanded refunds, stating his willingness to return all the computer purchase payments in full to the students. However, the five-hundred-yuan deposit per machine was currently in Sun Tan's hands, and his stance was that Sun Tan needed to fork over that portion of the money as well to plug the financial hole completely.

Sun Tan agreed, but demanded that Huang Lishan pay out the full refund first, after which he would hand over the hundred-plus thousand yuan in deposits.

Huang Lishan was unwilling to do that either.

Although he had cooperated with Sun Tan for a long time, he had never run into such a massive issue before. Judging by today's posture, he could no longer count on Sun Tan to help him move merchandise in the future, so this was precisely the time to fight for his own interests. If Sun Tan didn't produce the money, there was no way he would pay out of pocket; what if Sun Tan reneged on the debt afterwards? What was he supposed to do then? This kid was a local bully with a certain degree of background.

All of Sun Tan's attention right now was focused on tracing the IP addresses, so he told Huang Lishan, "I don't have time to come over right now. You refund the payments you received first, and tell the students I'll handle the deposits."

With that, Sun Tan hung up the phone. The founder of Yishaochi Pond sitting next to him said, "Skin-Peeler's IP address is local to Beijing. The one I traced belongs to an internet cafe about six or seven kilometers away from our school. The rest of the IP addresses are mostly from within our university campus. I checked the user info for those on-campus IPs; most of them are accounts registered a long time ago, but there is one account that was registered just this afternoon."

"What account? Has the IP address used for that registration logged into any other accounts?"

"Yes."

"Whose? What kind of statements did they post?"

"That account is called 'Open Your Eyes Wide', and the posts it made basically claim that all the responsibility for the Student Aid Alliance's problems lies with you, not Wu Shuai and the others."

"What are the other accounts that IP address logged into?"

"The other account is... 'I Am Wu Shuai'..." (To be continued.)