Eight Tons of Tripe and the End of the Labyrinth

Old Wang, the third-generation owner of Wang's Fresh Tripe, had spent his entire life dealing with beef offal. He prided himself on having seen more of the world than the varieties of tripe simmered in hotpot. His shop was tucked away deep in the city's alleys, the neon lights barely managing to dampen his faded sign. The shop wasn't large, and the air perpetually carried an honest, coarse smell – a mix of spices and raw freshness. Regulars knew Wang's tripe: dipped briefly, it came out perfectly crisp and tender.

Until that afternoon, when a phone call, like a cold probe, punctured the familiar bubble of Old Wang's life.

The voice on the other end was young, calm, almost like an AI, possessing an inhuman precision: "Boss Wang? I need to order some beef tripe."

"How much?" Old Wang was wiping down his cutting board, head down. Normal business was a few pounds, maybe a few dozen pounds supplied to restaurants at most.

"Seven point eight tons," the voice said.

Old Wang's rag froze mid-air. He wondered if his ears were still ringing from staying up late watching a soccer game. "How much?" He cleaned his ear, making sure he wasn't dreaming about dipping tripe.

"Seven point eight tons. Accurate to one decimal place. Top-quality fresh beef tripe," the other party repeated, their tone unwavering, as if ordering a pack of tissues, not enough bovine stomach to fill his entire shop plus half the alley.

Old Wang put down the rag, walked to the phone, and gripped the receiver tightly, like holding a slippery fish. "Young man, are you sure you got that right? Seven... over seven tons?" He had lived over fifty years, and the tripe he'd handled probably amounted to a small hill, but seven point eight tons at once? That was a landslide.

"Correct. Money is not an issue, full prepayment. I'll send the delivery address to your phone shortly." The person finished speaking and hung up with a click before Old Wang could ask another question.

Old Wang stared at the dial tone for a few seconds. He'd seen large orders before, but this number felt like a joke from another dimension. Seven point eight tons of tripe – enough for the entire city to have a grand hotpot feast simultaneously, and it would have to last three days. Which restaurant had such a large freezer? What banquet required such extravagance? Or was it some kind of... code?

He looked at the bank transfer notification that popped up on his phone screen: a long string of zeros, precisely corresponding to the price of his most expensive tripe multiplied by seven thousand eight hundred kilograms. The money was real. But the fear, like tripe just pulled from ice water, instantly contracted, becoming hard.

This wasn't business, Old Wang thought, this was more like a trap, an absurd trap constructed from tripe. He barely hesitated before dialing the police. Yes, he called the police. The reason? Receiving a suspicious large order potentially involving... well, an unconventional transaction. He himself found the reason a bit ridiculous, but the weight of those 7.8 tons pressed down on his heart.

Officer Zhang arrived, young, full of rookie enthusiasm and a firm belief in the way the world worked. After listening to Old Wang's account and checking the transfer record, Officer Zhang's brow furrowed into a question mark. He'd dealt with false alarms, neighborly disputes, lost cats and dogs, but reporting a real, astronomical tripe order was a first.

"The address?" Officer Zhang asked.

Old Wang handed over his phone. The address was an abandoned industrial park on the edge of the city, warehouse C-17.

Officer Zhang began his investigation. He contacted the bank, confirming the transferring party was a newly registered shell company with unclear legal entity information. He tried calling the order number back; it was always unreachable. He checked the abandoned industrial park through the system: chaotic property rights, changed hands several times, the last registered use was... a textile warehouse, ten years ago.

The investigation hit a strange impasse. All clues pointed towards nothingness, as if the buyer, along with the need for 7.8 tons of tripe, were just a ghost existing within the network and banking systems. Yet, the huge sum of money sat, undeniably real, in Old Wang's account.

For the next few days, Old Wang was restless. The shop stayed open, tripe was sold as usual, but he always felt something hanging over him. He even started dreaming: piles of tripe flooding into his small shop like a tide, drowning him, ultimately turning him into a piece of tripe floating in hotpot broth.

Officer Zhang wasn't idle either. He went to the abandoned industrial park. Warehouse C-17's gate was locked tight, rusty, a faded 'For Rent' sign pasted on it, the phone number long blurred. Weeds grew wild around the warehouse, only the wind whistled through the broken windowpanes. There was no indication that this place was about to receive nearly eight tons of fresh food.

Officer Zhang started to feel something wasn't right. It didn't seem like a scam, because the money had been paid. It didn't seem like a prank, because the cost was too high. It felt more like an inexplicable bug that randomly appeared in a vast system. He reported the situation up the chain; the file circulated between different departments, got annotated, and circulated again. Each circulation meant a dissolution of meaning and a blurring of responsibility. The case went from "suspicious transaction" to "pending investigation," and was finally almost relegated to the "unclassifiable files."

Just as Old Wang was about to accept this windfall and ask the bank how to refund the money, Officer Zhang showed up again. His face wore an expression mixing exhaustion and absurdity.

"Boss Wang, the matter... might be clear now," Officer Zhang sighed, handing Old Wang a printout.

The document was from the Municipal Big Data Management Center. After tracing through multiple layers, they discovered the order originated from an internal test of a municipal project. This project aimed to use artificial intelligence to optimize the city's emergency supply reserves and allocation. A programmer, while writing an algorithm to simulate resource needs during extreme disasters (like, say, a hypothetical disaster requiring the entire city to unite and resist severe cold with hotpot for three consecutive days), accidentally set the "simulated order placement" to "actual execution." Furthermore, it was mistakenly linked to a defunct test payment interface, which, somehow, bizarrely connected to the real banking system. As for why tripe, instead of more conventional instant noodles or mineral water? The report explained it might have been a randomly selected sample when testing the supply chain pressure for "non-standard fresh goods." The order phone number was a system-generated outbound call number. The shell company was a system-registered virtual supplier account. The abandoned warehouse address was an uncleared test point in an old database.

It was all a carnival of code, an accidental sneeze in the digital world that had kicked up an absurd storm in the real world over eight tons of tripe.

Old Wang held the report, feeling like he was reading an incomprehensible text. He didn't understand artificial intelligence or algorithmic models; all he knew was that he had almost become the only person truly prepared with 7.8 tons of tripe for that "hypothetical disaster."

"So... the money?" Old Wang asked cautiously.

"According to regulations, it needs to be returned. But the procedures are a bit complicated. We'll need your cooperation to fill out many forms, proving you indeed received this 'mistaken payment' and did not ship the goods," Officer Zhang explained, a hint of sympathy on his face. "You might need to run around to get stamps from several offices."

Old Wang looked at Officer Zhang, then down at his greasy apron and hands damp with moisture. He suddenly smiled – not a bitter laugh, nor a mocking one, just a feeling of tiredness, and also... relief.

In the end, he didn't navigate that labyrinth of official seals. He left the huge sum untouched in his account, like safeguarding a sleeping talisman from a digital temple. He continued to wake up at dawn every day, go to the market to select the freshest tripe, return to his small shop, wash it carefully, and slice it.

Only occasionally, when a customer asked, "Boss, how's the tripe today?" Old Wang would habitually look up at the fragmented night sky outside his shop door, sliced by neon lights, and answer in a low voice, "Don't worry, it's very fresh. But whether it's enough... depends on whether it's for people to eat, or for the system to consume."

No one understood him. Life went on, the hotpot kept bubbling, tripe bobbing up and down in the red oil. And that phantom order for 7.8 tons, like an undecipherable book in Borges' library, lay quietly in some corner of the city's information network, proving that sometimes, only a line of runaway code and an unanswered phone call separate absurdity from reality.