Chapter 104: The Real-World Protection Fee Service Goes Online, Helping Ordinary People Stand Up

Officer Zhou from the criminal police arrived at the Unscrupulous Business Center at nine o'clock the next morning.

He wasn't wearing his uniform, just a dark gray jacket with black casual trousers, carrying a thermos in his hand, looking like an ordinary middle-aged office worker.

When Su Qinghan led him into the first-floor reception room, Lin Ye was squatting in the corner watering a dying Money Tree; the spout was tilted by half an inch, and water was spilling all over the floor.

"Mr. Lin, my surname is Zhou, I'm from the Municipal Bureau's Criminal Investigation Detachment."

Old Zhou placed the thermos on the coffee table, took his police ID out of his jacket pocket, opened it for Lin Ye to see, and then put it away.

"Grandpa Zhang's case was closed the day before yesterday; all suspects were apprehended, and the full 500,000 yuan was recovered. I came to talk to you about some special circumstances in the case."

Lin Ye put down the watering can and sat on the opposite sofa; Fatty Wang handed over a cup of hot tea from the side, and Old Zhou took it to say thanks but didn't drink it.

He unscrewed the lid of the thermos, took a sip of the tea he brought himself, then pulled a copy of an interrogation record from his briefcase and flipped to a page.

"The suspect, He, who was the head of the scammers, confessed something during the interrogation. He said that after your studio intervened, all his bank cards were frozen, ATMs swallowed his cards, all payment software QR code scans failed, and he couldn't even pay for a bottle of mineral water."

"He even said that his mobile phone would automatically pop up a prompt box with the police station's address every half hour, suggesting he turn himself in. Our technical colleagues tested his phone and found no traces of malicious software, and the carrier's backend data showed no anomalies. We currently cannot explain this with technical means."

He closed the interrogation record, looked up at Lin Ye, his tone calm: "Mr. Lin, I'm not here to cause you trouble. You helped a lot in solving Grandpa Zhang's case and recovering the 500,000 yuan. But I need to understand one thing—how did you manage to do those things?"

Lin Ye picked up his teacup and took a sip, not answering directly.

Beside him, Ghost appeared from a corner at some point, holding a laptop, and turned the screen toward Old Zhou.

On the screen was a complete chain of electronic evidence: the scam gang's call logs from the past three months, virtual currency transaction flows, a list of bank accounts opened using stolen identities, and all records of their sales of illegal proceeds on various second-hand trading platforms.

Each entry was marked with time and IP address, the evidence chain was complete, and it could be directly used as evidence in court.

"Captain Zhou, we are a formally registered internet security consulting studio."

Ghost's voice carried no emotion, like reading a technical report, "We have self-developed network tracking systems and fund flow analysis tools, and both commercial licenses and software copyright certificates are available. The scam gang's electronic traces were captured by us using legal technical means, and the fund freezing was achieved through abnormal transaction reports submitted via official bank risk control interfaces; all operations have logs."

"As for the phone pop-ups you mentioned, that is a public welfare reminder function we cooperate with a certain anti-fraud app, and the push targets are phone numbers already under investigation by public security organs."

Old Zhou was silent for a while, took the laptop to carefully look through a few pages of evidence, then picked up his phone and made a call, asking his technical colleagues to check the enterprise qualifications and software copyright registration of Lin Ye's studio.

A few minutes later, the call came back, and the other party told him that the documents were complete and there were no records of violations.

He tightened the lid of the thermos, put it back in his briefcase, stood up, and reached out to Lin Ye: "Mr. Lin, since your tools are legal and compliant, we may come to you again if there are cases of telecom fraud or network infringement that require assistance in the future. I hope you won't find it troublesome then."

Lin Ye shook his hand: "You are welcome at any time. We prioritize cases involving ordinary people."

After Old Zhou left, Su Qinghan closed the reception room door and leaned against the doorframe, looking at Lin Ye: "Regarding the pop-ups you gave the scammers, how long can Ghost's explanation hold up?"

"The cooperation authorization for the anti-fraud app is real; Ghost signed it in the name of a subsidiary last month, and four provincial anti-fraud centers have stamped it."

Lin Ye finished the last sip of tea in his cup, "It should be fine until the day all scammers learn to turn themselves in voluntarily."

Fatty Wang laughed so hard he slapped his thigh: "You two have practically started a legitimate anti-fraud company, it's like using cheats."

Lin Ye stood up, stretched, and walked toward the third floor: "Let's go, hold a meeting, there's something to discuss."

On the whiteboard in the small conference room on the third floor, last week's order schedule remained; Su Qinghan wiped it clean and drew a new table.

The table was divided into three columns: Order Type, Target Audience, and Charging Method.

She finished writing the last character, clicked the pen cap shut, and turned to face the few people sitting by the conference table.

"After handling Grandpa Zhang's case, our consultation volume has nearly tripled. The help requests received by property manager Old Sun are already queued until next month."

She projected a statistical table from her phone onto the wall, "The currently backlogged requests mainly fall into four categories—young people suffering from long-term PUA by leaders in the workplace, students bullied by school tyrants, consumers cheated by unscrupulous merchants, and migrant workers maliciously owed wages."

"The commonality of these cases is that the victims are all ordinary people; the cycle for defending rights through formal channels is too long, collecting evidence is too difficult, and many people end up having to suffer in silence."

She flipped to the next page, and a set of numbers was listed on the table: "The processing cost for Auntie Zhou's audio case was almost zero, the cross-dimensional energy consumed by Boss Zhao's car door lock case was less than one yuan when converted into electricity costs according to Ghost's conversion standards, and Grandpa Zhang's cross-province scammer pursuit used twelve nodes of synchronous Decay, with energy consumption also within safety values."

"Technically controllable, cost-coverable, the only problem is that the order volume is rising too fast, and manually filtering and customizing skill parameters for each case is no longer keeping up."

Ghost connected the laptop to the projector and opened a management program interface he wrote himself.

The interface was divided into three modules: Target Locking, Skill Template Library, and Effect Tracking.

He clicked on the Skill Template Library, which already contained all the Decay effects they had used during this period—Volume Decay, Car Door Lock Decay, Financial Fortune Decay, Social Death Carousel, Attribute Castration—each marked with applicable scenarios, energy consumption values, and historical success rates.

"I have turned all the previous scattered skill parameters into templates. In the future, when encountering cases of the same type, there is no need to configure them from scratch every time; just adjust a few parameters in the template to make them effective."

"I've made a web version of the backend for the operations side; Qinghan can use it to process orders in batches, automatically match skill templates, and trigger with one click after approval. Monitoring of energy consumption and anomaly alerts have also been connected, and it will automatically stop if it exceeds the safety threshold."

Lin Ye stood up and walked to the projection screen, stared at the template library for a long while, then drew a circle on the blank space of the screen with his finger: "Since the tools are set up, let's not hide them anymore. We will launch a business directly."

He picked up a whiteboard marker and wrote a few big characters next to the table Su Qinghan drew: Reality Unscrupulous Protection Fee.

The conference room was quiet for a few seconds. Fatty Wang was the first to react, clapping his hands on his thighs: "Damn, Brother Ye, you want to move that protection fee system from the game into reality?"

"Not moving, but upgrading."

Lin Ye tossed the pen back into the whiteboard slot and sat back in his chair, "In the game, collecting protection fees is making whales pay for peace; in reality, we reverse it—let ordinary people spend a little money to buy justice."

"Set the price lower, basic packages for a few hundred, VIP packages for a few thousand, covering different types of bad people and bad things. Those who are cheated, bullied, or scammed, as long as they cannot be solved through formal channels, we take them all. The charging standard is based on the complexity of the case and the villain level of the target, not on the victim's income."

Su Qinghan had already quickly drafted a business plan on her tablet.

She read it out while writing: "The business name is tentatively 'Unscrupulous Justice Package', divided into three tiers—Basic tier, 999 yuan per time, targeting light rectification of a single target, such as disturbing the peace, illegal parking, or occupying the road for business."

"Advanced tier, 2,999 yuan per time, targeting moderate malicious behavior, such as petty fraud, malicious wage arrears, or school bullying."

"Deep tier, 9,999 yuan per time, targeting major malicious cases, such as large-scale fraud, commercial fraud, and unscrupulous merchant groups."

"All cases promise response within 48 hours, and full refund if the effect is not satisfactory. Ten percent of the income will be used as a public welfare fund, specifically to pay for those destitute victims who cannot even afford the basic tier."

Fatty Wang leaned over to take a look and added: "Add one clause: for everyone who comes for help, as long as the situation is true, even if they cannot pay for the time being, we can process first and pay later. But those who actively cause trouble, report maliciously, or want to use our hands to strike competitors will be blacklisted and never accepted."

Ghost had already written the pricing page in the backend.

He projected the interface for everyone to see, white background with black text, listing the content, price, and purchase button of the three packages, with a line of small print at the bottom: "All packages promise—client information will not be exposed during rectification, full refund if rectification effect is not satisfactory, and illegal evidence obtained during the rectification process will be automatically packaged and handed over to public security organs."

That evening, Lin Ye had Ghost post the purchase page for the "Unscrupulous Justice Package" on the studio's official public account.

The title was very straightforward, just eight characters: Reality Protection Fee, Specially Treating Rotten People.

Below it was an image introducing the three tiers of packages, corresponding to the types of villains that could be treated, and a bolded disclaimer—This service does not take effect on the innocent; if there is accidental injury, the Talent will self-destruct.

Less than ten minutes after the push was sent, the backend order notification sound started ringing non-stop; Ghost temporarily increased the server's concurrent processing limit to barely keep it from crashing.

The first to place an order was a female college student who had just graduated, who had been PUA'd for a long time by her department manager, scolded to tears in public at every morning meeting, worked overtime for three consecutive months without overtime pay, and had her files withheld when she submitted her resignation.

She chose the Advanced tier and wrote a long paragraph in the remarks, the last sentence being: "I don't want to take revenge on him, I just hope he won't bully the next new colleague again."

Lin Ye finished reading the remarks, called up a simplified version of the "Social Death Carousel" parameters from Ghost's template library, locked the target as the department manager's work phone and office computer, set the trigger condition to "verbal abuse or personality insult to subordinates", and set the effect to "automatic stuttering when speaking + synchronous broadcast on the whole office loudspeaker".

He sent the configured task to Su Qinghan for review, and Su Qinghan checked it once and clicked confirm.

The next morning, the department manager habitually pointed at the new intern and started cursing during the morning meeting.

As soon as he cursed the first sentence, his voice suddenly seemed to be stuck by something in his throat, and the originally fluent dirty words turned into stuttering monosyllables; every time a word popped out, the broadcast speaker on the office ceiling would play it synchronously, and the volume was quite loud.

All colleagues in the entire office area looked up at him, and some even took out their mobile phones to start recording.

His face turned from red to white to purple; he wanted to explain, but the more he stuttered, the worse it got, and finally, he could only slam the door and rush into the restroom.

The female college student sent a message: "He went to the HR department to handle his resignation procedures himself this afternoon, and I also got my files."

When she said thank you, there were three exclamation marks behind it.

Immediately after, the second, third, and fourth orders poured in like an avalanche.

There were consumers who were tricked by the gym into buying an annual card only to have it close down and run away the next day, an old lady whose downstairs barbecue stall operated until the early morning and filled her bedroom with oil smoke, a migrant worker who lent money to a friend for five years without being repaid and was blocked instead, and a neighbor who kept large dogs in the residential area without leashes and cursed at people.

Every person wrote in great detail when placing the order, including transfer screenshots, audio recordings, video footage, and chat records; they were not making unreasonable demands, but after hitting walls too many times through formal channels, they treated this as the last straw.

Su Qinghan sat in front of the computer looking at the backend order list for a long time, then turned to Lin Ye and said: "The schedule is already lined up until the middle of next month. If there are twice as many orders, we need to hire at least two more people to specifically handle order review and effect tracking."

Fatty Wang added: "I can recruit people, but one thing must be thought of in advance—our protection fee business will eventually run into a tough nut to crack."

"Previously, they were all small villains fighting alone; if one day we take a case backed by a chain group, it won't be solvable by just a car door lock or a stuttering skill."

Lin Ye leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes, the corners of his mouth slightly raised: "What is there to be afraid of with chain groups? In the game, those large guilds with dozens of branch alliances were still plucked bald by me one by one."

Just as he finished speaking, a new order popped up on the order backend in front of Su Qinghan.

The person placing the order was the landlady of a small supermarket, who chose the Deep tier highest package for payment, and the remarks column was filled with a dense page.

Fatty Wang leaned over to read a few lines, and the smile on his face slowly faded.

A chain fresh food supermarket opened opposite her supermarket, and the brand group behind it had thousands of stores across the country.

After that store opened, they engaged in malicious low-price dumping for three consecutive months, pushing her shop to the brink of bankruptcy.

She had sought help from the market supervision department, but the other party played a game of whack-a-mole, and continued to do so after paying fines.

She had hired a lawyer, spent tens of thousands in legal fees, and the lawsuit had been going on for a year without a judgment.

Her mother had a cerebral hemorrhage due to this matter and is still lying in the hospital.

The last sentence of the remarks read: "I don't ask them to pay me how much money; I only ask them not to continue harming the next small shop like mine."

Lin Ye opened his eyes and finished reading the whole remark.

He picked up his phone and sent a message to Ghost: "Get all the associated companies, legal person information, offline store distribution, and administrative penalty records from the past three years of that chain fresh food group. Give it to me before eight o'clock tomorrow morning."