198: Chapter 198 Senior Medical Researcher

Jiang Feng walked up the steps from the Underground Street, the sunlight making him squint.

The world above ground continued to function as usual, with traffic and pedestrians busy with their own affairs; no one knew that the underground commercial street beneath their feet had just concluded a commercial slaughter that lasted over half a month.

He walked north along the main road for two blocks and turned into the Antique Street.

He had been to this street a few times; the last time he bought a fortune-stick cylinder was in Deshan Alley in this area.

He had no particular purpose today, simply taking a stroll to aid digestion and seeing if any fate would come his way.

At this time, it was still crowded beneath the archway outside the Antique Street.

With one hand in his trench coat pocket, Jiang Feng had just strolled to the middle of the alley when he heard a highly inflammatory sales pitch coming from ahead.

"Uncles and aunties, let me tell you, this medicine is definitely no ordinary medicine!"

The voice was bright and crisp, with a well-trained sense of rhythm; the end of every sentence rose in pitch, specifically designed to hook people's attention.

"High blood pressure, coronary heart disease, early-stage tumor cells—one pill and they'll all be cleared away!"

Jiang Feng stopped in his tracks.

Seven or eight elderly men and women were crowding around a simple street stall, making it completely impassable.

The stall owner was a middle-aged man in his forties, wearing a brand-new white lab coat with a silver stethoscope around his neck, holding a small glass medicine bottle and boasting animatedly, spittle flying everywhere.

The bottle contained about a dozen red granules; looking through the glass, the color was excessively uniform, and the surface had an abnormal waxy sheen.

"You can't buy this anywhere else! These are nano-targeting factors I brought back directly from a Swiss laboratory, specifically for repairing damaged human cells!"

Getting excited, the middle-aged man patted a name tag pinned above his left breast pocket, which was printed with the words "Senior Nanomedicine Researcher, Dr. Zhang."

Jiang Feng's gaze fell on the name tag.

The font sizes were inconsistent, and the layout was crooked.

This kind of thing could be made at a print shop for five yuan.

Standing in the innermost circle of the crowd was an elderly man wearing a jacket.

His clothing stood in stark contrast to the neatly dressed elderly people around him.

His hands were covered in rough cracks, and his skin was etched with deep grooves left by exposure to the elements.

The old man was unbuttoning his inner pocket.

His fingers were bent and stiff, and it took several seconds to fumble with that small button.

After unbuttoning it, he tremblingly pulled out a tightly wrapped handkerchief.

He opened it layer by layer.

Inside was a stack of cash.

The outermost bills were hundred-yuan denominations, while further in were fifties, twenties, and even a few ten and five-yuan notes.

The bills were neatly folded, some so old they were frayed at the edges and stained with sweat from years of being kept close to the body.

The old man dipped his rough thumb in saliva and counted them one by one.

When he reached one thousand eight hundred, he paused and dug out two crumpled hundred-yuan bills from the deepest part of the handkerchief to make exactly two thousand.

It was just enough to buy one bottle of that "life-saving medicine" priced at two thousand yuan.

"Old man, you really have a good eye!"

The medicine peddler's gaze was fixed on the stack of cash, the smile in his eyes completely irrepressible.

"Let me tell you, there are fifteen pills in this bottle. One a day for a half-month course. Once you finish them, come find me again. I guarantee your blood pressure will return to normal, and you'll be walking like the wind!"

He reached out to take the stack of money and handed the medicine to the old man, unable to suppress his grin.

The old man took the medicine, his eyes full of resolve, and turned to leave.

"Wait a moment."

The voice came from the periphery of the crowd, steady and full of confidence.

Jiang Feng pulled a pen from his pocket, took a piece of scrap paper from a young man handing out flyers by the roadside, and strode into the crowd.

In the time he had stopped at the edge of the crowd, he had completed all his preparations.

The time the medicine peddler shouted the figure "two thousand yuan" was 2:17 PM.

His position was to Jiang Feng's southwest, the Kun position.

The time served as the outer hexagram, and the direction as the inner hexagram.

Setting up the Plum Blossom Divination, a hexagram was formed in a single thought.

The structure of the hexagram took shape in his mind.

In the main hexagram, Kun Earth was on the inside and Qian Metal was on the outside. Earth produces Metal; the inner hexagram was completely drained by the outer hexagram, losing all its vitality.

The changing hexagram landed in the Dui Palace. Dui represents the marsh, talk, and breakage; its five-element attribute is Yin Metal.

Kun Earth is mud, and Dui Metal is the mouth.

This hexagram clearly indicated that the contents of the bottle were entirely "earth-natured" waste, and relying solely on the peddler's mouth, the hard-earned money in the common people's pockets was being completely "drained" away.

There was no trace of Wood or Fire energy in the hexagram.

Traditional Chinese medicine emphasizes rising, falling, floating, and sinking, while Western medicine emphasizes molecular targeting; as long as there are active healing ingredients, traces of Wood or Fire energy will always appear in the hexagram.

This bottle of stuff was completely clean, containing only Earth and Metal.

Earth was the filler, and Metal was the packaging and the silver tongue.

It didn't even qualify as a placebo.

It was all mud, flour, and pigment.

Jiang Feng went over the material properties in the hexagram in his mind, converting the ratio of Metal and Earth into the corresponding formula composition in reality.

Wheat flour accounted for about seventy percent, used as the main filler for the pills.

Talcum powder accounted for about twenty percent, adding a smooth feel and weight to the granules.

The rest was food coloring and cheap essence, responsible for the appearance of this counterfeit medicine.

He wrote a line of words in a flamboyant script on the scrap paper and pushed through the crowd.

The medicine peddler's fingers touched the edge of the stack of bills the old man was handing over.

Jiang Feng grabbed the old man's wrist and slapped the scrap of paper with the writing onto the medicine stall with his other hand.

"Old man, don't leave yet."

The old man was startled by this turn of events and looked up at Jiang Feng in confusion.

The medicine peddler's originally high-pitched voice came to an abrupt halt.

A quick-witted auntie nearby picked up the scrap paper and read the words on it aloud.

"Seventy percent flour, twenty percent ash, the remaining ten percent industrial water; it won't kill you, but it won't save your life either."

The surrounding elderly people looked at each other, and those who had been clamoring to pay all froze mid-motion.

The medicine peddler was the first to speak, his voice rising an octave.

"Who do you think you are! Spreading such inflammatory delusions here?"

He snatched the scrap paper, crumpled it into a ball, threw it on the ground, and pointed his finger directly at Jiang Feng.

"This is the latest nanotechnology! A global exclusive patent! What do you know!"

"A little brat coming to crash my business?"

"Who are you?"

Jiang Feng watched his performance, remaining motionless.

The medicine peddler was cursing vigorously, but his body was retreating.

The zipper of a snakeskin bag was stealthily opened a crack, revealing half of several empty medicine bottles at the opening.

His right foot quietly shifted direction, toes pointing toward the depths of the alley.

He was preparing to make a run for it.

Jiang Feng's gaze swept past the crowd and landed on the sign of the community hospital across the alley entrance, which bore a green cross logo; a hint of leisurely amusement at the spectacle flickered in his eyes.

Two thousand yuan for a bottle of flour pills.

Costing less than two yuan.

A profit margin of a thousand times.

Making money even more ruthlessly than Jiang Feng did with fortune-telling.

Jiang Feng gave a scornful laugh. "Me?"

"Just a passing enthusiastic citizen."