72: Chapter 72 Boss Li Doesn't Believe in Evil

Li Guibing is very famous in the Qinghe Old Goods Circle.

Everyone who knows him calls him Boss Li.

He is not the type of peddler who sets up a stall to collect old furniture, but a major businessman who truly controls warehouses, logistics, auction channels, and a group of middlemen.

In the Old Goods Circle of the three regions—Qinghe, Jiangbei, and Linhai—many items cannot bypass him if they want to change hands safely.

So, when that cardboard box with no sender was placed on his office desk, Li Guibing's first reaction was not fear, but anger.

"Who sent this?"

The secretary's face turned a bit pale.

"The surveillance didn't capture the face."

Li Guibing frowned.

"What do you mean 'didn't capture the face'?"

The secretary handed over the tablet.

In the surveillance footage, a person wearing a gray courier uniform walks into the warehouse's outer door. He is holding a cardboard box and never lifts his head from start to finish. But what is bizarre is that no matter which camera angle is viewed, the person's face looks like it is covered by a blur of mist.

Even more bizarre is that there is no record of the access control. There is no record of a license plate. Yet the cardboard box appeared in Li Guibing's office.

A courier slip is stuck on the cardboard box. Recipient: Li Guibing. Remarks: Luo Wei did not finish signing for it; you are to continue.

Li Guibing stared at that line of text for a few seconds and sneered.

"Playing tricks."

He has seen too many scams. The Old Goods Circle is never short of people who like to act mysterious. Some use fake antiques to cheat money, some use ghost stories to drive up prices, and some use the names of the dead to set traps.

But when his subordinate opened the box, the air in the office suddenly turned cold.

Inside the box is an old mobile phone. The cracks on the casing, the color of the body, and the scratches on the screen protector are exactly the same as the archived photos of Luo Wei's original mobile phone sent by Bai Ya.

But Lu Chen knows very well that the real original phone is still in the Torch Sealing Corridor. This is not the original item. This is a copy delivered by the Old Object Chain based on the residual rules of Luo Wei's mobile phone.

Li Guibing certainly does not know these things. He only sees that mobile phone suddenly light up on its own. A text message pops up on the screen. [Please sign for it.]

No one in the office speaks. Li Guibing pushes the phone a little further away, and the anger on his face finally fades a little. He is not a timid person, but being brave and courting death are two different things.

"Withdraw everyone from the warehouse."

The secretary is stunned for a moment. "Boss Li?"

"Withdraw." Li Guibing's voice lowers. "Lock the doors. Save the surveillance footage. No one is to touch the old mobile phones, old cameras, or old videotapes inside tonight."

He is able to sit where he is today in the Old Goods Circle not by being reckless, nor by bluffing.

Thirty minutes later, the warehouse area is cleared. But just as Li Guibing stands in the surveillance room staring at the screen, rows of old mobile phones deep in the warehouse suddenly light up simultaneously.

First one unit. Then ten units. Dozens of units. Hundreds of units. The screens are densely packed with the exact same sentence. [Please sign for it.]

Several old associates turn pale, and someone instinctively reaches to turn off the power switch. Li Guibing stops him. "Don't touch it."

He looks at the eerily glowing screens and finally understands that this is not a setup by his peers, nor is it someone trying to scare him. Money, connections, security, and storage Systems are completely useless in front of this kind of thing.

He is silent for a long time, then picks up his phone and dials the person with the best information in the Old Goods Circle. "Help me pass on a message."

The person on the other end asks: "Pass it to whom?"

Li Guibing looks at the screens in the surveillance footage, glowing like grave fires. "Torch." He says this name softly for the first time. "Just say that Li Guibing has something to show them."

The other end of the line is silent for a long time. Finally, they only reply with one sentence. "Boss Li, have you encountered it too?"

Li Guibing does not answer. Because in the warehouse surveillance, the text on all the mobile phone screens changes simultaneously. [Sign-for countdown: 23:59:59]

Li Guibing does not have his subordinates burn that mobile phone. This is the biggest difference between him and ordinary idiots. He has seen too many people whose first reaction to encountering evil things is to smash, burn, bury, or throw them into a river. But those who have been in the Old Goods Circle for a long time know that for some things, it's not that they won't come back just because you don't want them. Once some goods recognize a door, throwing them away randomly will only make them find more doors.

He has his secretary bring a lead-lined box, puts the old mobile phone along with the cardboard box and the courier slip inside, and then has people pull out all the batches, sources, and handlers of all the second-hand electronic goods in the warehouse.

"Check the last three months." The secretary says in a low voice: "Boss Li, the volume for three months is too large."

"Then check starting from the name Luo Wei." "What if we can't find it?" Li Guibing looks up at him. "If we can't find it, that just means it wants us not to find it."

The secretary stops speaking.

Half an hour later, the first report is delivered to his hand. There is no direct transaction record between Luo Wei himself and Li Guibing, but one week before Luo Wei's incident, a batch of second-hand mobile phones was transferred from Jiangbei to Qinghe, and it briefly passed through an outsourced warehouse under Li Guibing's name.

That batch of goods was later broken up and flowed into the communication market, repair shops, old goods stalls, and several online second-hand accounts.

Li Guibing stares at that flow chart, the veins on the back of his hand slowly bulging. This is the truly fatal part.

If it were just one evil mobile phone in the office, he could still close the door and handle it. But if this batch of goods has already been scattered, then his warehousing line has become the blood vessels of the Old Object Chain.

An old associate who has followed him for over a dozen years asks in a low voice: "Boss Li, should we buy that whole batch back first?"

Li Guibing says coldly: "Buy them back? Do you know which one is real, and which one is a hook?"

The old associate opens his mouth. Li Guibing slams the flow chart onto the table. "From now on, no one is allowed to privately recover that batch of goods. Do not buy them at a higher price, do not threaten the peddlers, and do not shout about it in the groups."

"Why?" "Because it might just be waiting for us to gather the scattered things back together."

The office becomes quiet again. Li Guibing is not a saint, but he is clear-headed enough. He knows that anomalies are not like business. In business, the more concentrated the goods, the easier they are to manage. With anomalies, the more concentrated the goods, the faster one might die.

Until the countdowns on all the mobile phones in the warehouse appeared in sync, he finally realized that his realistic means had reached an end. So he chose to find Torch. Not bowing down. It is recognizing the situation.

In this world, there are some doors that cannot be opened with money. Boss Li, who has managed to survive until today, at least knows when to change the way of knocking on the door.

When he says the three words "Find Torch" out loud, the expressions of the several old associates beside him change. They have followed Li Guibing for many years, seen him talk to banks, talk to rivals, and talk to some people who shouldn't be provoked, but they have rarely seen him voluntarily hand matters over to a force whose background he cannot figure out.

Li Guibing knows what they are thinking. He puts out his cigarette, his voice very low. "In the past, when we dealt in old goods, the thing we feared most was misjudging an item." "Now it is different." "Now what we fear most is that something is also looking at us."

Once this sentence is out, no one in the surveillance room speaks again. On the screens, the countdowns of hundreds of old mobile phones are still ticking down second by second. Every tick sounds like it is knocking on everyone's heart.

Li Guibing stares at those numbers and finally puts away his last bit of wishful thinking. No matter how deep the water in the Old Goods Circle is, it is still people swimming in the water. But this time, the thing reaching out from under the water does not look like a person.