Chapter 611: All the Gold Has Been Sold!

On the evening of October 20, Li Yi received another call from Li Futiao—another five tons of gold had been successfully sold.

In this transaction, one side went to great lengths to lure the other into a trap, while the other couldn’t wait to walk right into it—their coordination was flawless!

Upon receiving the news, Li Yi was in high spirits!

A quick calculation showed that over the past few days, they had sold 6.5 tons of gold to the Lin family and the British-funded group—and that didn’t even include the small amounts sold by the Li Family Gold Shop.

In other words, they now had only about three tons of gold left to sell.

Plus, they needed to set aside a few hundred kilograms for Li Jiuying, so the actual amount left to sell was at most 2.5 tons—a significant relief.

Of course, Li Yi was still pondering how to offload these remaining 3 tons of gold.

For him right now, how to sell the gold wasn’t the main issue; what mattered was how to get a high price while also taking the opportunity to screw over those bastards at the British-owned Group.

On the morning of the 21st, news came in again from Li Futiao.

Under pressure from the He family, the Lin family had already shipped the gold, and all payments had been settled in full; the transaction between the two parties was officially complete.

Immediately, Li Yi called Li Jiuying and instructed him to reduce the daily gold shipments starting today—from the previous 100 kilograms to 80 kilograms, with a further reduction of 10 kilograms each day thereafter.

At the same time, Li Yi also instructed him to step up gold purchases and raise the buyback price once more, putting on a show of desperation and going all in.

In his words, this was a tactic of feigning weakness—he had to let the Lin family and the British-funded group behind them have their fun, after all, they had spent their money.

Only then would they jump into the trap he had set without hesitation the next time.

Li Jiuying didn’t hesitate and carried out the orders immediately.

Over the next few days, Li Yi didn’t take any further action; instead, he watched coldly as the Lin Family Gold Shop and the Li Family Gold Shop went head-to-head.

As the saying goes, haste makes waste. He needed to give the Lin family and the British-owned conglomerate some breathing room, lest these scoundrels catch on to anything unusual.

It’s like fishing: the best catch is a fish that’s never taken the bait before. Once a fish has taken the bait and gotten away, it’s much harder to catch next time.

People are the same—you learn from your mistakes. If these bastards grew wary this time, it would be much harder to take them down next time.

And things unfolded exactly as Li Yi had predicted. As the Li Family Gold Shop’s shipments dwindled, the Lin family and the British-backed group behind them grew increasingly smug.

In their view, the Li family was truly on the verge of collapse this time—after all, they only had a few hundred kilograms of gold reserves.

Even with the sales volume capped, they couldn’t hold out for much longer.

So, on one hand, they continued to send people to buy up large quantities of the gold the Li family was dumping; on the other hand, they used the newspapers they controlled to smear Li’s Gold Shop, claiming their campaign was merely a publicity stunt and lacked sincerity.

After all, the Li family operated 36 gold shops throughout the city, yet their daily sales amounted to only a few dozen kilograms of gold—averaging just one or two kilograms per shop.

Basically, as soon as the shops opened, the triad members arranged by the Lin family would arrive and, with a wave of cash, buy up the entire daily quota.

As for ordinary citizens, those who arrived early might be able to snag a piece or two of jewelry, but if they arrived even a little late, there would be nothing left.

The power of the media is immense. With those people setting the tone, ordinary citizens who didn’t know the full story also felt that the Li family’s event lacked sincerity.

Overnight, public dissatisfaction with the Li Family Gold Shop grew by the day. Every morning when the shop opened, as soon as the daily quota was sold out, a deluge of abuse would pour in.

The reputation of the Li family—and Li Jiuying personally—on Hong Kong Island was significantly tarnished.

Seeing this, those scoundrels—including the Lin family—were celebrating in triumph, each of them gloating uncontrollably.

In their eyes, the Lai family was already on its last legs.

They believed that if they could keep them cornered for just a little longer, the Li family’s gold shop would lose all credibility and eventually shut down for good.

With this in mind, nearly the entire British-owned group mobilized to block the Li family, fearing that Li Jiuying might secure supplies through other channels.

To counter them, Li Jiuying worked day and night to secure new supply channels, even making a personal trip to Macau.

Li Jiuying’s trip to Macau was primarily to visit the Xie family, a giant in the gold retail industry, in the hope of purchasing a batch of gold from them at a premium price.

To provoke the Lin family and the British-owned group, Li Jiuying directly offered the Xie family an astronomical price of 22.8 million US dollars per ton.

This price wasn’t just high—it was absurdly high.

Currently, the international gold price was only $598 per ounce, but based on the price Li Jiuying offered, it equated to $645 per ounce—a full $47 more than the international market rate.

Buying at such a high price would certainly yield no profit; on the contrary, it would result in a significant loss.

Naturally, the Xie family was very tempted by this offer. With their supply channels now well-established, they could acquire a ton of gold from other sources for around 21 million USD.

A profit of $1.8 million on the resale—who wouldn’t be tempted!

The Xie family immediately agreed to supply the Li family with one ton of gold at that price.

However, just as the two sides were about to finalize the agreement, representatives from the British-owned conglomerate approached the Xie family.

News soon spread that the Xie family had canceled their partnership with the Li family and switched to partnering with the Lin family instead.

Upon learning of the situation, Li Yi knew immediately that it was time to act.

He immediately contacted Li Futiao again, instructing him to arrange for the remaining gold to be sold off as well.

Upon receiving Li Yi’s call, Li Futiao immediately followed the same playbook, finding another family with whom he was on good terms and asking them to help stage a ruse.

With Li Jiuying acting as the “front,” the Lin family and the British-owned conglomerate behind them took the bait once more, swallowing 2 tons of gold in one go.

By this point, the 10 tons of gold Li Yi had brought over from the mainland had been almost entirely sold off.

Of that total, the Lin family and the British-funded conglomerate behind them alone had purchased 8.5 tons in three large transactions.

In addition, through buybacks, they had also absorbed over 400 kilograms of gold offloaded by the Li family.

Although Li Yi still had 1.1 tons left in his possession, he had intentionally set this gold aside for Li Jiuying.

Li Jiuying had also played a significant role in this gold sell-off.

Thanks to skillful execution, what was originally expected to fetch only $210 million ultimately sold for $200 million—based solely on the 8.9 tons already offloaded.

Li Jiuying had both contributed to the success and endured the hardships, so Li Yi intended to hand over the remaining 1.1 tons of gold to her to be used in a counterattack against the Lin family and to restore the Li family’s business reputation.

Although the price might not match what they could have gotten from the Lin family, the significance was entirely different.

More importantly, Li Yi felt that fleecing the Lin family and the British-funded conglomerate out of over 20 million US dollars wasn’t enough—he wanted to make them lose 100 million US dollars in the future, and he still wanted to keep digging holes for them.

This 1.1 ton of gold was the bait; whether or not he could drive the British-funded conglomerate to the brink of collapse hinged entirely on this shipment.

In any case, the results of this gold sale were better than anyone could have imagined.

However, just as Li Futao, Huang Lixing, and Li Jiuying thought Li Yi was preparing to make a public appearance, Li Yi had already made a new move…

………