Online Game: My Decay Drives the Entire Server Crazy

Chapter 105: Fighting a Shady Business Group – Declining Customer Traffic Leads to BankruptcyWhen Ghost handed the investigation report to Lin Ye, the sky outside was just beginning to brighten.

He hadn’t slept all night, but his eyes were frighteningly bright.

The laptop screen was densely packed with tables and annotations, with every data node marked in different colors.

He turned the screen toward Lin Ye and Su Qinghan, who were sitting at the conference table, his voice carrying the hoarseness peculiar to someone who had stayed up all night.

”This chain of fresh food supermarkets is called Fresh Direct, and behind it is the Dingsheng Retail Group.

Dingsheng has over 1,400 stores nationwide, covering more than thirty cities, and last year its revenue exceeded twenty billion.

On the surface, it’s a legitimate chain enterprise, but in reality, their expansion model is always the same routine—they target old community stores that have been operating for over a decade, open an identical fresh food supermarket across the street or next door, and then use group subsidies to engage in malicious low-price dumping.

They sell eggs cheaper than the cost price and slash prices on fruits and vegetables every day, all with the goal of dragging the old stores to death.

Once the old stores go bankrupt, they restore original prices and monopolize the fresh food supply within a three-kilometer radius.”

He clicked to the next table, which listed small supermarkets and community vegetable shops that had been forced to close due to Dingsheng’s dumping in the past three years—over two hundred of them had clear industrial and commercial deregistration records.

Behind each store name was the owner’s name and contact information, and Ghost had added a remarks column at the end, noting the current status of these owners.

Most were marked as in debt, some as impoverished due to illness, and a few were marked as deceased.

Su Qinghan flipped to the last page, her finger stopping on a name.

It was a sixty-three-year-old shop owner. After his small grocery store, which he had run for over twenty years, was crushed by Dingsheng’s dumping tactics, he owed suppliers hundreds of thousands in payments.

His wife was diagnosed with cancer, and three months later, he died of a cerebral hemorrhage on a temporary hospital bed in the corridor.

This case had been filed locally, but ultimately, it couldn’t be confirmed as a causal relationship due to insufficient evidence.

She pushed the documents to Lin Ye.

Lin Ye flipped from the first page to the last, turning them very slowly. The morning light shone in through the window and hit his face, revealing no expression.

After finishing, he closed the report, handed it to Fatty Wang, stood up, walked to the window and stood for a while, then turned and asked Ghost: ”What is the current hospitalization cost for the mother of the landlady who placed the order with us?”

”One hundred and twenty thousand. Her small supermarket was already squeezed to the point of running out of stock last month.

Suppliers were threatened by Dingsheng and didn’t dare to supply her. Her daily turnover is less than three hundred, and she can’t even pay the rent.”

Lin Ye picked up his phone and made a call.

After the call connected, a middle-aged woman’s voice came from the other end, her voice raspy as if she hadn’t slept well for days.

Lin Ye pressed the speakerphone so everyone in the conference room could hear.

”Auntie He, this is Lin Ye from Que De Studio.

We have accepted the order you placed, and we will process it according to the deep-tier package.

I’m confirming one thing with you now—your request is for Dingsheng to stop malicious dumping and not continue to harm the next small shop, right?”

The other end of the line was silent for a few seconds, then a sobbing voice came: ”Mr. Lin, I went to the hospital to see my mother yesterday.

The first thing she said when she woke up was to tell me to stop running the shop and go back to my hometown to farm.

I’m not reconciled; that shop was something my husband and I started from scratch and saved up for over eighteen years.

I don’t want any compensation. I just want those people sitting in offices wearing suits to know that the promotional plan they sign casually is the life of another family.”

Lin Ye said ”Received” and hung up the phone, sitting back down in his chair.