70: Chapter 70 Three Women Make a Drama

In truth, he already had plans in mind.

In Morgan's eyes, Rockefeller was likewise an inscrutable, arrogant, and rude old fox.

Although Morgan was slightly behind in terms of cash, his actual influence on Wall Street faintly overshadowed that of Rockefeller.

Since Rockefeller had nodded, Lin Tian had to attend this weekend banquet to gauge the situation.

"I might as well bring Elizabeth and Anna along!"

Both young girls had now grown into young women.

The two were of immense help to Lin Tian's career.

Behind Elizabeth stood the wealthy and powerful Rockefeller Family.

Anna was an even rarer scientific genius; the Umbrella Laboratory would not be at its current scale without her contribution.

More than half of the senior researchers in the laboratory were poached by her right under the nose of her own father, Edison.

Lin Tian could not afford to offend either of these young ladies, nor could he abandon either one.

Truth be told, Lin Tian was also a scumbag who left his heart everywhere.

After his rebirth, the first woman to get together with him was actually Jiang Meier, who had been serving him personally all along.

When Lin Tian was seventeen, the two naturally came together.

The two had kept this matter hidden and never made it public.

Although Jiang Meier was born in the USA, she had received a traditional education in female virtues since childhood, and at her core, she was a typical conservative Chinese girl.

While she claimed that she was willing to follow the young master without any status, she would undoubtedly feel stifled if she truly had to watch Lin Tian marry another woman.

Besides Jiang Meier, there was also the foreign head maid, Helen.

She was the typical blonde with blue eyes, delicate features, and a sizzling hot figure.

Lin Tian, who was in his puberty, simply couldn't hold himself back.

However, Lin Tian was purely playing around with Helen.

If they were to break up, a severance package would settle it cleanly, with no emotions involved.

How to keep the balance and prevent a fire in his backyard had become the most troublesome headache for Lin Tian at the moment.

While he was pondering, the wooden door to his office was knocked on.

"Come in."

Editor-in-Chief Ed pushed the door open and walked in.

Back when the fast-food restaurant became an overnight success, this guy had contributed a great deal of effort.

Now that Raymond and Jones had stepped down, he had naturally taken over the entire newspaper office.

"Boss, this is the sample edition of The New York Times ready for publication tomorrow!"

"Let me see it."

Lin Tian took the newspaper, which still smelled of ink.

The front-page headline was surprisingly not the big news about the relocation of Wells Fargo, but a full-page advertisement for medicine with an exaggerated layout.

The bold black characters were very eye-catching:

"Eight Years Later! Mr. Bruce Lin Once Again Uses His Genius Brain to Present a Life-Saving Gift to All Mankind!"

"Are you still suffering from severe inflammation caused by bacterial infections?"

"Are you still facing the tragic fate of amputation due to worsening wounds?"

"A Mysterious New Drug — Sulfonamide! It Will Become the Ultimate Gospel for Countless Patients!"

Looking further down, the article detailed the miraculous efficacy of Sulfonamide.

The latter half of the article changed its tone, beginning to describe in great detail the arduous journey Lin Tian went through to develop this miraculous medicine.

The newspaper portrayed Lin Tian as a "living saint" who, in order to save the common people, gave up a comfortable life and spent eight years grinding away in the laboratory without a single day of rest.

It even wrote hyperbolically: If the Pope in the Vatican had any vision, he should immediately award him the highest medal of honor.

After reading this press release, Lin Tian's face flushed red; he really couldn't keep a straight face.

He looked up at Ed and asked awkwardly, "Isn't this blowing things a bit out of proportion? What is this about 'passing his own door seven times without entering'? And this line, about only eating one meal a week and drinking cold air to conduct experiments! This is too ridiculous!"

Ed, however, was dead serious and shook his head repeatedly. "Boss, it's not an exaggeration at all! Although we don't understand how this medicine was created, as long as it can truly cure diseases and save lives, everyone in the newspaper office feels that no amount of praise for you is too much!"

Ed's eyes were a little red. He was nearly forty years old.

His own father had fought in the Civil War and taken a bullet in the leg.

The wound wasn't actually deep, but because the bacterial infection couldn't be cured, his leg had to be sawn off, and he lived his whole life in pain and decadence.

If there had been such a miraculous medicine, his father would never have ended up as a cripple.

Seeing Ed's emotional expression, Lin Tian could only sigh helplessly. "Fine, don't change it. Print it as it is tomorrow!"

A few minutes after Ed left, the telephone on the desk rang again.

"This is Lin Tian."

"Boss, this is Browning!"

On the other end of the line was the younger brother of John Browning.

He was currently in full charge of the two large armories in Chicago and San Francisco.

Although this younger brother was a blockhead when it came to drawing blueprints, he was definitely an expert at managing enterprises.

He had put in tremendous effort for Lin's weapons to stand on equal footing with Winchester.

"What happened?" Lin Tian asked.

"The San Francisco factory just sent an urgent telegram. A Japanese officer named Major General Murata came knocking, wanting to order a large quantity of model 1882 lin rifles. Not only does he want to buy the guns, but he also wants to pay for the patent authorization, intending to directly introduce an assembly line for manufacturing guns and smokeless ammunition."

Upon hearing that it was the Japanese, Lin Tian's eyes instantly turned cold. He asked casually, "What price are they offering?"

"For ten thousand ready-made guns, plus the patent and the production line, the other party is willing to pay one million taels of silver!"

Lin Tian calculated rapidly in his mind.

According to the current silver exchange rate, one ounce could be exchanged for 0.7 US dollars, so one million taels of silver amounted to a huge sum of approximately 1.25 million US dollars.

Looking at the books alone, this was definitely a lucrative deal with guaranteed profits.

If it were any other arms dealer in the USA, facing such a large sum of hot money, they would probably have happily packed up the blueprints and machines and sent them over long ago.

After all, once the authorization was sold, every time Japan manufactured a gun in the future, they would have to honestly pay a patent fee, which was equivalent to lying down and counting money.

Unfortunately, they had run into Lin Tian.

Having lived two lifetimes, Lin Tian was still a hot-blooded youth at heart. Let him sell the world's most advanced lethal weapons and technology to these scumbags, so they could use them to attack his own people?

Dream on! He wouldn't sell even for a mountain of gold!

However, Lin Tian was also muttering to himself, "How could these poverty-stricken shorties be willing to spend such a huge sum to buy such expensive gear?"

One had to know that the retail price of the model 1882 lin rifle in the USA was firmly set at thirty dollars each.

The German's latest Mauser only sold for twenty-five dollars, and a bunch of old, obsolete guns only sold for ten to fifteen dollars.

The Lin Rifle dared to sell at a high price only because it was a one-of-a-kind quality product in the world, worth this high price.

In fact, Lin Tian did not realize that the reason Japan had set its sights on the Lin Rifle was entirely thanks to the live advertisement he himself had created.

The armory spent money every year to hold shooting competitions, and the champions were all uniformly experts using the Model 1882 Rifle.

Plus, this gun had long been sold to European powers like Germany, making a name for itself abroad.

The most fatal factor was the battle fought by the Qing Dynasty against the French on the southwestern border two years ago.

Japan had been secretly watching every move on the other side.

They were shocked to discover that the Qing army, which had always been regarded as weak and incompetent, had beaten the French to a pulp after switching to this batch of rifles.

Because of this, Japan instantly felt that their own Murata Type 13 rifles and the smokeless ammunition aided by the French had simply become junk.

The Model 1882 rifle was good, but it was just too expensive.

Japan didn't have much spare money, so they had the crooked idea of buying the production line.

Anyway, their domestic labor was so cheap it was like it was free, so buying it back and manufacturing it themselves was the most cost-effective.

Thus, this army Major General named Murata had stubbornly embezzled a sum of military funds sufficient to buy a heavy battleship, intending to completely re-equip the army with divine gear.