Chapter 103 Helping an elderly person recover their swindled money; a stroke of bad luck leads to a scam.

On the day Grandpa Zhang came to the door, Lin Ye was squatting by the coffee table in the first-floor lobby of the studio, eating takeout. Fatty Wang had ordered him a portion of pickled fish with double chili, and the heat made sweat bead on his forehead. Su Qinghan was nearby organizing the weekly order schedule, and Ghost was huddled in a corner workstation typing code at three holographic screens; the only sounds in the lobby were the clicking of the keyboard and the slurping of Lin Ye eating fish slices.

When Old Sun led Grandpa Zhang inside, Lin Ye still had half a piece of pickled cabbage in his mouth. Grandpa Zhang looked to be in his early seventies, his hair completely white, wearing a faded deep blue work jacket with frayed cuffs. He stood at the door, not daring to step further in, clutching a peeling old brown faux-leather briefcase with both hands; his eyes were red, looking as if he had already cried several rounds.

Old Sun guided Grandpa Zhang to sit on the sofa and turned to Lin Ye, saying, "Brother Ye, this is Grandpa Zhang from the twelfth floor of Building 2. He was a machinist at a state-owned enterprise before retiring. His wife passed away early, and he lives alone. Two days ago, he was scammed out of five hundred thousand yuan by a telecom fraudster; that was the retirement money he’d saved his whole life. He reported it to the police, and they opened a case, but this kind of case is too difficult to trace. Grandpa was so anxious he hasn't eaten for two days and almost did something drastic."

Grandpa Zhang pulled a stack of bank transfer vouchers from his briefcase, his hands shaking violently; the thin slips of paper rustled like leaves in an autumn wind. He handed the vouchers to Lin Ye, his voice as raspy as sandpaper on sheet metal: "Little Lin, I'm not here to beg you to definitely get the money back; I just can't accept it. That scammer called me 'Uncle Zhang' on the phone, said he was a staff member from the Social Security Bureau, and that someone had stolen my social security card, so he needed me to cooperate with the Public Security Bureau for a fund audit. He knew my social security number, ID number, and even my record of getting medicine from the community hospital last month, so I believed him. I transferred the five hundred thousand in five installments to the 'secure account' he mentioned. After the last transfer, when I called back, the number was out of service."

He paused for a moment, his lips trembling for a long time before he squeezed out the next sentence: "Of that five hundred thousand, two hundred thousand was what I saved over my retirement years, and the remaining three hundred thousand was the compensation from my son's death in a work accident last year. My son was only thirty-five when he passed, leaving behind a granddaughter who just started elementary school. This money was for my granddaughter's future university tuition, and now it's all gone."

The lobby fell silent for several seconds. Fatty Wang set his chopsticks on the coffee table; a few drops of the pickled fish broth splashed out, but he didn't wipe them away. Su Qinghan stopped her pen, and Ghost's fingers hovered over the keyboard, not descending for a long time.

Lin Ye swallowed the last piece of pickled cabbage, wiped his mouth, and picked up the stack of transfer vouchers, examining them carefully from beginning to end. The recipient account for all five transfers was the same, with the bank located in a small county under a remote prefecture-level city in another province. The transfers all took place between 2:00 PM and 4:00 PM the day before yesterday, one hundred thousand each; all five hundred thousand was drained within two hours. It was a standard telecom fraud tactic—fast in, fast out; once the money hits the account, it's usually quickly transferred and withdrawn.

"Grandpa Zhang, give me that scammer's phone number." Lin Ye handed the vouchers back to the old man, his tone very calm.

Grandpa Zhang found a landline number from his call history; the caller ID showed a city in another province, and calling it indeed resulted in an out-of-service message. Lin Ye noted the number and logged into several public telecom fraud reporting platforms using Ghost's encrypted computer, which was equipped with a full suite of tracking tools. After entering the number for comparison, he found that the same number had been linked to at least six similar fraud cases in the past three months, with victims spread from the northeast to the southwest—all of them elderly.

"Ghost, help me trace the real-name registration info for this number and its call history for the past three months. While you're at it, check who the owner of that recipient account is and if there are any other linked accounts."

Ghost nodded, his fingers falling back onto the keyboard. The screen in front of him began to scroll rapidly, countless lines of code pouring down like a waterfall. In less than twenty minutes, he had organized the information: "The landline is registered under a defunct shell company, and the linked ID is fake, but the physical route was captured by my probe. The actual calling location is in a group rental room in a village-in-the-city in another province. The IP address matches login records from several mainstream second-hand trading platforms and virtual currency exchange platforms. The recipient account holder is a local farmer who sold his ID to a stranger for two hundred yuan six months ago, completely unaware his account was being used for money laundering. The scammer group likely consists of three to four people with clear roles: someone for the calls, someone for laundering, and someone for withdrawals."

Lin Ye stood up and walked to Ghost's workstation, looking at the jumping strings of data on the screen. One line was marked in red by Ghost—a network port in that village-in-the-city had just generated a new virtual currency transaction ten minutes ago, the amount equivalent to exactly twenty thousand yuan.

"That's him, still offloading the goods." Lin Ye patted Ghost on the shoulder. "Lock onto the target's precise location for me, down to the door number."

Ghost typed for a bit longer, and a specific coordinate and detailed address popped up on the screen. Lin Ye took out his phone and opened the mini-program for Cross-Dimensional Energy Synchronization Control, locking the target onto all electronic devices and bank accounts currently performing fund transfer operations within that address. He clicked into the skill parameter configuration page and selected an effect he had used countless times in the game but never in reality: Financial Fortune Decay.

The logic of this skill was simple—it forced a mandatory Decay on any behavior related to "financial fortune" for the target. In reality, this meant transfer failures, payment errors, ATMs swallowing cards, and frozen accounts; anything related to money would go wrong until the person involved proactively terminated the illegal behavior and returned the illicit gains, at which point the Decay effect would be lifted.

Lin Ye set the trigger condition as "fund transfer behavior" and the deactivation method as "victim Grandpa Zhang receives full refund and confirms receipt." The scope of effect was set to all electronic devices and linked bank accounts within the group rental room in the village-in-the-city locked by Ghost. After finishing the setup, he clicked the confirm button, and a green prompt box popped up on the screen: Financial Fortune Decay has taken effect; 12 nodes currently affected.

" nailed it." Lin Ye tucked his phone back into his pocket, returned to the coffee table, picked up the bowl of now-cold pickled fish, and stuffed another slice of fish into his mouth. "Don't worry, Grandpa Zhang. Within three days at the latest, the money will return on its own."

Grandpa Zhang stared at him blankly, clearly not quite understanding what "Financial Fortune Decay" meant, nor daring to believe that the money could be recovered just by tapping on a phone a few times. But before coming, he had heard many people in the neighborhood talk about Lin Ye—how the square-dancing aunties' speakers would lose sound on their own, and how Boss Zhao's car doors would unlock and windows would roll down by themselves. He used to think these stories were jokes made up by young people, but now, sitting on the sofa in this studio and looking at the young man in his early twenties, he felt inexplicably a bit more at ease.

After Old Sun escorted Grandpa Zhang home, Su Qinghan put down the schedule in her hand and sat down next to Lin Ye. "When you fixed Boss Zhao's car last time, the energy consumption was still within the safe range. This time, you've remotely locked twelve nodes across provinces for synchronized Decay. Can the effect hold up?"

Lin Ye finished the last bite of his meal and grabbed a tissue to wipe his mouth. "In the game, I could hang debuffs on two hundred people in a guild at once; what are twelve nodes? The power is discounted in reality, but it's enough to deal with a scammer group."

Ghost added from the side, his tone as calm as ever: "I will monitor the target's network activity throughout the process. Once they attempt to transfer funds or contact accomplices, all operation records will be automatically captured and packaged to be sent to the local police."

[part:gemini-3.1-flash-lite]

That evening, the scammer gang in the urban village sensed that something was wrong.

First, when the accomplice responsible for money laundering was processing a transfer on a cryptocurrency platform, the transaction failed three times in a row, with the platform repeatedly popping up a notification: "Transaction error, please contact customer service."

He switched to two other platforms, but the result was the same—after the order was created, it would inevitably crash during the payment confirmation stage; it was either a network timeout, the verification code wouldn't load, or the bank interface would suddenly throw an error.

He assumed the platform's risk control system was glitching out, so he didn't pay it much mind and planned to try again in a few hours.

Then, the other person responsible for cash withdrawals received a task and took three bank cards used for receiving payments to an ATM on the street to withdraw cash.

He inserted the card and entered the password, and a prompt popped up on the screen: "This card has been temporarily frozen due to abnormal transactions. Please bring your ID card to the issuing bank counter to unlock it."

He switched to another card, but got the same prompt.

When he switched to the third one, the ATM screen went black and rebooted, and the card was swallowed and never spat back out.

He stood in front of the ATM, stunned for a long time, and the people queuing behind him started grumbling in dissatisfaction, so he had to hurry back to the group rental apartment to tell his accomplices about the situation.

The most devastated one was the scammer ringleader responsible for making calls.

He usually used a bank card linked to multiple virtual payment channels to collect funds, aggregating all the scattered illegal income into one account, and then laundering it overseas through underground banks.

That evening, when he opened his online banking to collect the day's income, he discovered that his main account had actually been added to the bank's risk control restricted list, and all external transfer functions were frozen.

He called the bank's customer service, and the representative said that his recent transaction history showed abnormal fluctuations, and he needed to bring his ID card and proof of employment to the issuing bank to apply for unfreezing.

He didn't dare go, because he knew very well that his transaction history was entirely derived from fraud.

By noon the next day, the entire scammer gang was completely paralyzed.

All payment channels were either frozen or throwing errors, all bank cards were restricted from transactions, cryptocurrency platform accounts were temporarily banned, and even the VoIP software they usually used to contact victims and accomplices inexplicably developed registration errors—either they couldn't receive SMS verification codes, or when they made calls, the other party couldn't hear anything, as if someone had attenuated the audio signal to zero.

The scammer ringleader sat on the dilapidated sofa in the group rental apartment, sweating profusely with anxiety.

He threw his phone on the floor and stomped on it twice, then switched to a new phone and logged in again, but the result was the same.

He even thought about using cash to buy some new SIM cards to re-register accounts, but just as he opened his payment app to scan a code to pay, a notification box he had never seen before popped up on his phone screen: "Your account has been temporarily frozen by public security organs due to suspected telecom fraud. Please turn yourself in voluntarily to seek leniency."

The bottom right corner of the notification box even thoughtfully included the address and contact number of the local police station.

That afternoon, Grandpa Zhang's phone rang.

The caller ID showed a strange number, and Grandpa Zhang answered. On the other end of the line was a man's voice, his tone urgent and panicked, a far cry from the composure he had when he called him "Uncle Zhang" the day before yesterday: "Grandpa Zhang, I'm the person who called you two days ago. I can return the money to you, I can return it right now, please, just ask the person you found to lift whatever restriction that is. All my cards are frozen, I can't even scan a code to buy a bottle of water, and I haven't eaten a proper meal in two days."

Grandpa Zhang's hand holding the phone began to tremble; this time it wasn't sadness, but excitement.

He followed the script Lin Ye had taught him beforehand to keep the scammer steady, telling him to return the money via the original route first, and they would talk about other things after it was returned.

The scammer had no bargaining chips left at this point, so he used the only remaining payment app that he could barely operate to return the 500,000 in five installments to Grandpa Zhang's bank account.

Every time the SMS notification for a deposit sounded, Grandpa Zhang would turn the phone screen over to show Old Sun, who was guarding him nearby, laughing louder each time.

After the final 100,000 arrived, Grandpa Zhang called Lin Ye.

He didn't say more than a couple of words before he started crying, sobbing intermittently, repeating only a few words over and over: "It's back, it's all back, my son's money is back too."

Lin Ye smiled on the phone: "As long as the money is back, that's fine. In the future, be careful when answering strange calls, and just hang up if anyone asks you to transfer money."

That evening, the duty officer at the local police station received a strange report call.

The caller's voice was hoarse, claiming to be a suspect in a telecom fraud case, and that he was now voluntarily turning himself in, requesting the police to immediately dispatch officers to arrest him.

The duty officer initially thought someone was playing a prank, until the caller accurately stated his identity information and modus operandi, and clearly confessed the name of the defrauded elderly person and the transfer amounts, at which point the officer realized this was no joke.

Twenty minutes later, the police from the local station arrived at the door of the group rental apartment in the urban village, and when they pushed the door open, they saw a group of scammers who had been tormented to the point of mental breakdown—the table was piled with various invalid bank cards and scrapped mobile phones, instant noodle cups and mineral water bottles were thrown on the floor, and a few people were sitting listlessly on the sofa, actually showing expressions of relief the moment they saw the police enter.

When the scammer ringleader was being put into the police car, he said one thing to the officer: "Officer, before you arrest me, can you help me contact that old man surnamed Zhang and ask him to notify the person who messed with me to lift whatever it is on me? I really can't take it anymore, I'd rather go to jail than be unable to scan payment codes again."

The officer didn't understand what he was talking about, thinking the suspect was hallucinating due to excessive mental stress, so he followed standard procedure, took a statement, and detained him.

Three days later, Grandpa Zhang came to the Unscrupulous Business Center holding a silk banner.

The silk banner was bright red, with eight large characters embroidered in gold thread: "Unscrupulous yet Just, a Living Lei Feng of our time."

The inscription was signed by Zhang Jianguo from the twelfth floor of Building No. 2 and his granddaughter, with a crooked smiley face drawn at the end.

Grandpa Zhang handed the silk banner to Lin Ye, then pulled a brand-new bank card from the pocket of his washed-out work clothes and placed it solemnly in Lin Ye's hand: "Little Lin, if it weren't for you this time, I really wouldn't know where to hide my old face."

"There is 20,000 in this card; Fatty Wang said it doesn't count as a service fee, it's a token of appreciation, my granddaughter put it in herself, and she told me I must give it to you."

Lin Ye pushed the bank card back, accepting the silk banner but not the money.

He hung the silk banner on the most conspicuous wall in the studio's first-floor lobby, right next to the thank-you letter sent by the residential property management last time.

Then he picked up his phone and sent a message to Ghost: "For the Financial Fortune Decay on those twelve nodes, keep the partial restrictions on bank cards and payment software, but the rest can be lifted."

"Let them taste the experience of not being able to pay for a pack of instant noodles by scanning a code even in prison."

Ghost replied with one word: "Received."

Su Qinghan stood by, watching the wall of honor that was becoming increasingly full, her lips curling slightly.

Fatty Wang leaned over to take a look at the silk banner Grandpa Zhang had sent, scratched his head, and said: "Unscrupulous yet Just—I think these eight characters could be used directly as our studio's official slogan."

Lin Ye leaned back on the sofa and stretched, just about to head upstairs to take a nap, when Su Qinghan's phone suddenly rang.

She looked down at the caller ID, frowned slightly, walked to the window, and pressed the answer button.

The voice on the other end of the line was kept very low, but Lin Ye still faintly heard a few words: Su Qinghan, police, special abilities, coming over to communicate.

Su Qinghan hung up the phone and turned to look at Lin Ye, her expression somewhat complex: "News from the police station. In Grandpa Zhang's case, the scammer ringleader repeatedly mentioned your name during the interrogation."

"He said you can remotely control his bank card and mobile phone, and that there's something indescribable about you. The criminal police captain in charge of this case is surnamed Zhou, and he wants to come over tomorrow morning to talk to you in person."

Lin Ye was stunned for a moment, then laughed out loud.

He picked up the cup of tea that had already gone cold, took a sip, and looking at the sky gradually darkening outside the window, said: "It's good that they're coming. It's a legitimate business, I'm not afraid of an investigation."