The gluttonous little boy is four and a half years old, and even the wealthy family kneels down and

Yun Ziang looked down at the house number again, then checked the address Sang Dong had sent on his phone again. It was indeed correct.

He muttered, "Could it be a fake address? That shouldn't be the case. Sang Dong said that this is the sender's address every time he sends a package..."

Xiao Jin had already slipped past his legs, and then tiptoed to knock on the door twice more.

The door was opened again, and the man looked down to see a little girl, not even as tall as his waist, standing in the doorway with her face upturned. He swallowed the swear words that were about to come out of his mouth.

"Who are you looking for? I've already told you you've got the wrong person!"

Xiao Jin looked up at him, her voice sweet and childlike but firm: "Xiao Jin didn't make a mistake, Xiao Jin is looking for you."

The man was taken aback, somewhat bewildered by the child's self-righteousness.

Taking the opportunity, Yun Ziang stepped forward and showed him his phone screen, which displayed a tracking number: "Have you been sending packages to Shanghai all this time?"

The young man glanced at the screen, his brow furrowing. "I ship dozens of packages every day. Which one are you talking about?"

Yun Zi'ang's heart sank.

Dozens of packages every day?

This harmful stuff is actually mass-produced?

He looked at me with a puzzled expression: "What do you do for a living?"

"You come looking for me without knowing who I am?" Zhang Yang sized him up, his wariness rising again. "Are you looking for trouble?"

Yun Ziang sighed and picked up his phone: "Open the payment code."

"I'll give you a thousand dollars to ask you a few questions. Just a few, then I'll leave."

Zhang Yang's expression relaxed slightly when he heard about the money.

He coughed lightly, then opened the door and stepped aside:

"Come in. But my house is a mess, there's nowhere to sit."

Yun Ziang led Xiao Jin inside and realized that his comment that it was "very messy" was already a polite way of putting it.

In the small two-bedroom apartment, the coffee table, sofa, and floor of the living room were piled with goods—all of them were seven thick wooden strips tied together with colorful ropes, each bundle neatly tied and stacked high, and the air was filled with the smell of dry wood.

Xiao Jin curiously picked up a loose piece of wood from the ground, turned it over to look at it, then brought it to her nose to smell it, and then looked up at Yun Ziang and said, "It's a peach wood branch."

Yun Zi'ang looked around and asked the young man, "What are you doing?"

"Packaging," Zhang Yang pointed to the pile of delivery boxes and tape in the corner, "My cousin runs an e-commerce business, I pack and ship for him. What exactly do you want to ask?"

Xiao Jin put the peach wood branch back and looked up at him: "Do you only sell peach wood?"

"This is the only one." Zhang Yang said confidently.

Xiao Jin blinked and said, "No. Are you sending other kinds of wood? Not this ordinary peach wood, but something else."

Zhang Yang opened his mouth, and the word "no" was already on the tip of his tongue, but he suddenly stopped.

He remembered that his cousin would always give him carefully packaged goods to send out, but for a moment he wasn't so sure.

He re-examined the two people in front of him; a young man with a four-year-old child—it all looked strange.

He dropped his impatient expression and his voice turned serious: "Why are you asking this?"

Yun Ziang's mind raced, and he immediately adopted a businessman's tone, speaking casually yet sincerely:

"Here's the thing, a friend of mine has bought goods from you before. I saw that your goods were pretty good, and since I'm currently on a business trip to Nanhai City, I was thinking of coming over to see if I could order a batch myself."

"However, the wood I want to order is not this kind of ordinary peach wood."

Zhang Yang did not answer immediately after hearing this.

He glanced at Yun Zi'ang, then looked down at Xiao Jin. "What's your friend's name?"

"Sang Dong," Yun Zi'ang replied.

Zhang Yang was silent for a few seconds, then picked up his phone from the coffee table, scrolled through it, pulled up an electronic invoice, swiped his finger across the screen several times, and then stopped.

A shipping record was clearly displayed on the screen—Recipient: Sang Dong.

He put his phone back in his pocket and asked again, his tone more serious than before: "Are you really here to place an order?"

Yun Zi'ang nodded: "Otherwise, why would I come all the way to this old town so early in the morning?"

Zhang Yang fell silent again, looking at Yun Ziang with suspicion.

Yun Ziang continued, "I can pay five times the price, as long as I can get the goods."

Once money was mentioned, Zhang Yang lost all self-control. A moment later, he picked up his phone and dialed a number.

"Hey bro, two people came to the house. They said they were introduced by Sang Dong and want to place an order."

He glanced at Yun Ziang and lowered his voice, "It's not ordinary stuff. Yes, that kind."

Zhang Gaoming was sitting in the warehouse taking inventory when he received the call. He thought Zhang Yang was joking again and scolded him into the phone:

"Are you drunk this morning? What order? Who recommended you? Don't bring just anyone home, what if they're the cops?"

"Brother, really, he's sitting right here in our living room," Zhang Yang said in a low voice, covering the microphone as he walked onto the balcony. "It's a man, in his early twenties, with a child. He said Sang Dong introduced him, he saw our goods and thought they were good, so he wants to order a batch, not the ordinary peach wood kind."

"They're willing to pay five times the price."

Zhang Gaoming was stunned when he heard "five times the price". He put down the order form in his hand, but his brows furrowed even more.

He knew all too well the true nature of those "special goods" in his possession; they weren't his goods at all.

Mr. Li was just using his channels to ship goods. Each time, Mr. Li would take the initiative to contact him, hand over the goods, and then he would have Zhang Yang pack and send them out.

To put it bluntly, he was just a middleman; he never controlled the source of the goods.

Five times the price is tempting, but what does he have to offer? He has nothing to sell.

"Sang Dong? Who's that?" He rolled his eyes, searching his memory. "I don't remember him."

"You don't recognize him? He said he got his goods from us. I checked the records, and there is indeed such a person." Zhang Yang's voice came through the microphone.

Zhang Gaoming scratched his head: "Mr. Li gave me all the goods directly. How could I possibly have any goods for them? If they want to buy that kind of product, they have to go to Mr. Li. What use is it to them to come to me?"

"Ask them if they know Mr. Li."

"They seemed to be looking for Mr. Li. As soon as they came in, they asked me if I was Mr. Li. I said my surname was Zhang, and that's when they changed their address," Zhang Yang recalled the scene at the door.

Zhang Gaoming then realized that it made sense.

It makes sense that people looking for Mr. Li would come to him, since there aren't many people involved in this line of work.

He breathed a sigh of relief, and his tone softened:

"That's right. They must be here for Mr. Li. Here's what we'll do: have them add me on WeChat, and I'll give them Mr. Li's business card."

"But you have to make it clear to them beforehand that Mr. Li has strict rules. He only sees guests on Tuesdays and Thursdays. He won't see anyone at other times. Even if the King of Heaven himself came, it wouldn't make a difference."

"I can only receive the goods after Mr. Li agrees to them. It's not that I'm trying to obstruct them, it's just the rule."

Zhang Yang responded, hung up the phone, relayed Zhang Gaoming's words, and then showed Yun Ziang Zhang Gaoming's WeChat QR code.

Yun Ziang scanned the QR code and added Zhang Gaoming as a friend. A few seconds later, Zhang Gaoming sent him a WeChat contact. The profile picture was a completely black background, with no image or signature, and the WeChat name consisted of only one character: Li.

Yun Ziang glanced at the business card and couldn't help but mutter to himself:

"They don't even write their full names. Are all shady characters this brand-conscious these days? Meeting clients on Tuesdays and Thursdays, they're busier than me."

He glanced at the date; today was Wednesday.

Not too early, not too late, stuck in the middle, it's like deliberately making things difficult for someone.

He put away his phone and asked Zhang Gaoming again:

Where does Mr. Li usually live? Does he have a fixed address? We can't place an order without even knowing where he is.

Zhang Gaoming replied after a few seconds:

It's not that I don't want to tell you, it's that I genuinely don't know. Mr. Li always comes to me himself; he doesn't let me go to him.

All I know is that he has several addresses, his whereabouts are unpredictable, and he frequently changes his phone number. If you want to find him, you can only add him on WeChat and wait for him to accept your request, then arrange to meet him on Tuesday or Thursday.

Yun Ziang frowned, glanced down at his phone screen. The pure black profile picture lay quietly in his WeChat friend list, with no reply to the verification message.

With unpredictable whereabouts, multiple residences, frequent changes of phone number, and fixed times for meeting guests, what kind of despicable things have they done to hide so deeply?

Meanwhile, at the other end of Nanhai City, in a teahouse hidden at the end of an old alley, without even a sign above the door, Mr. Li was sitting at the tea table.

He was in his fifties, with gray hair, wearing a well-fitting navy blue Chinese-style jacket, and a string of old amber beads on his wrist. He had a somewhat mean appearance.

He was brewing tea, and his tea-brewing movements were very particular: warming the pot, adding the tea leaves, pouring the tea from a high position, and skimming off the foam. He did each step of the process slowly and deliberately.

A man was sitting opposite him.

Black shirt, thin-rimmed silver glasses, sleeves rolled up to the forearms.

This is the same person who teased Xiaojin in the hospital supermarket last night.

Mr. Li poured a cup of tea, presented it to the person opposite him with both hands, and said with a respectful attitude: "Mr. Zhou, please."

Zhou Kai took the teacup but didn't drink it; he simply twirled it between his fingertips twice.

His gaze swept past the rim of the glass to Mr. Li's face, a faint, enigmatic smile playing on his lips: "Three months?"

He placed the teacup back on the tea table, the porcelain making a very soft, crisp sound as it hit the wooden surface. "One hundred days. You told me it would be two months last time."

"The old man can't wait any longer, you know what I mean."