Some more meddlesome folks continued asking, “Hallmaster Qiao, I remember that you mentioned introducing three types of pill medicine just now. What else is there apart from the Heavenly Karma Pill and the Vast Ocean Pill?”
“Yes, we trust the products of the Hall of Healing. Out with it, so everyone can rejoice!”
“Hallmaster Qiao, don’t keep us in suspense, speak!”
The crowd of people were all raising an uproar and on their tiptoes in expectation.
Qiao Baishi nodded, smiling with ease. “We have decided to discreetly introduce the third pill medicine after careful consideration. The Hall of Healing will be giving up a great share of profits with the third pill medicine. Our goal is to give back to those who have greatly supported the Hall of Healing over the years.
The third pill medicine is called One Buddha Powder, a type of refreshing, mind calming pill medicine. When compared to the best similar products on the current market, the effects of One Buddha Powder are possibly twice as effective. And yet the price we’re setting for it will be half of the best pill medicine currently on the market!”
Twice as effective at half the price!
Dead silence actually reigned supreme for a moment after Qiao Baishi had spoken. They almost suspected that something was wrong with their ears.
Had they heard incorrectly?
It was already exceedingly odd, and really didn’t make much sense, that a pill medicine twice as effective hadn’t undergone a price increase, but now its price was actually being halved?
This…
Finally, someone couldn’t hold it in. “Hallmaster Qiao, this… you’re not joking, are you?”
“The sign of the Hall of Healing is here, how dare I speak nonsense? Each bit of spittle from the Hall of Healing is as if a nail, please be at ease everyone. To be candid, we hadn’t planned on earning much from the One Buddha Powder.”
This last sentence however, was a bit watered down. In actuality, since the One Buddha Powder didn’t need to be refined, waste of materials didn’t exist and so its cost of goods sold were only a tenth of the Pill King Garden’s Crane Heart Pill.
With such low costs, even reducing the price by one half still raked in money.
To be honest, even if it were sold at the same price as the Crane Heart Pill, that was still absolutely enough to ignite the market, but Qiao Baishi had purposefully slashed the price in half.
The purpose of this was to beat the Pill King Garden down so hard that they had no chance at all in coming back.
In addition, they could make use of this opportunity to craft the image of a virtuous and sincere Hall of Healing, solidifying the Hall’s position as the first heavyweight of the spirit medicine.
Qiao Baishi had deployed three successive moves and introduced three kinds of pill medicine. And each was more stunning than the last.
But to the Pill King Garden, Qiao Baishi’s three successive moves were the equivalent of three successive heavy punches. Each was more debilitating than the last!
Courtmaster Wang could barely stay on his feet. The skies spun and the ground turned, he was about to faint right then and there as his teeth chattered, betraying his weakness.
He knew that this wasn’t a joke. This was a kind of bloodless slaughter in the marketplace. With these three moves, the Hall of Healing had utterly destroyed the foundations of the PIll King Garden.
“Grand Courtmater, what… what should we do?”
“Master Violet, say something. Surely you won’t watch the Pill King Garden go bankrupt?”
“Yes Master Violet, we all work for the Duke of Soaring Dragon, you…”
Master Violet snorted coldly and looked at the senior executives of the Pill King Garden with eyes full of disdain. He swept his sleeves up and left.
“Truly unable to accomplish anything, but good at spoiling things!”
The last bit of faith held by the senior executives of the Pill King Garden collapsed with the flourish of his departure.
The senior executives of the Hall of Healing also felt like they were in a dreamscape at the moment. They too hadn’t anticipated Qiao Baishi’s successive actions.
After all, in an effort to avoid leaks, Qiao Baishi had continuously concealed and not spoken of his intentions with regards to this matter. Even many of the senior executives present hadn’t been in the know.
Apart from a few elders absolutely loyal to Qiao Baishi, who had received hints from Qiao Baishi before the matter, many senior executives had had no foreknowledge, including the second hallmaster Yue Qun.
But at the moment, what did Yue Qun care about that. Seeing the faces that had been thwarted on the Pill King Garden side, his old face was smiling so hard that it was about to blossom into a flower.
“Number three, you’ve played this hand beautifully!” Yue Qun patted Qiao Baishi’s shoulder. “I had previously thought it a bit odd that the Lord Hallmaster had trusted you so and cultivated you. In this my regard, my insight is truly inferior to the Lord Hallmaster’s.”
“Second hallmaster is experienced and steady, there is much more that I must learn from you.” Qiao Baishi also responded humbly.
The next step was a showing by the Pill Trial Warriors.
The profession of a Pill Trial Warrior was first and foremost to be impartial and speak the truth.
Of course, the spirit medicines from the Hall of Healing could withstand trials. After the repeated tests by the Pill Trial Warriors, these pill medicines had gained complete certification!
Heavenly Karma Pill, Vast Ocean Pill, One Buddha Powder… they were all genuine goods at a fair price!
Under the guarantee of the Pill Trial Warriors, the last bit of reservations and suspicions held by anyone present were dispelled. All the guests boiled with fervor and surged to the front of the display tables.
“Hallmaster Qiao, I am the son of the Minister of War, Minister Fan. I will be over early tomorrow morning to place my order, remember to reserve a place for me.”
“Old Yue, my brother is Vice Minister Zhang in the Ministry of Revenue. Your relationship with him goes back more than ten years, right? Save a place for a brother tomorrow, I want to place an order!”
All sorts of favor currying and cottoning up to someone came rushing in during the span of a moment.
Although the Hall of Healing had many hands on their side, they too couldn’t fend off the press of people for a bit.
As for Princess Gouyu, who had been invited by the Hall of Healing, her charming face was incredibly grave as she looked at the situation that had taken a complete turn for the opposite. She would occasionally throw a rushed glance at Jiang Chen, her heart filled with questions.
She took another look at Jiang Chen. He had been smiling slightly all along, as if the hubbub in front of his eyes had nothing to do with him.
The more he was this way, the more Princess Gouyu resolutely believed that the Hall of Healing’s mindblowing comeback had some elements of this person’s influence in it.
Just as Princess Gouyu was sifting through complicated feelings, an elder from the Hall of Healing walked over respectfully, holding a luxurious jade box in his hands.
“Your Highness, this is a dry share agreement(1). According to young duke Jiang, the Princess was involved in the One Buddha Powder. Here are dry shares of twenty percent, we hope the princess kindly accepts.”
Twenty percent dry share, this was basically receiving money without lifting a single finger in effort!
Gouyu was dumbfounded, what involvement? What was the brat Jiang Chen playing at? But she immediately thought of the prescription that Jiang Chen had written for her and suddenly thought of what he had said – if she didn’t believe him, she could take that prescription and exchange it for several million silver at the Hall of Healing.
Indeed, the kid’s hands could be found behind this matter!
Princess Gouyu further affirmed her internal speculation. She was a royal princess and didn’t put on airs. She nodded her head slightly, and one of her servants accepted the agreement for twenty percent dry shares.
She was well aware that the worth of this twenty percent dry share was much more than several million. When this One Buddha Powder was introduced, it was sure to storm the market and, without a doubt, corner the sector.
In terms of long term calculations, the profits of this twenty percent dry share would absolutely be denoted in hundreds of millions.
The Pill King Garden’s furious build up had ended up benefiting the Hall of Healing in the end. It had also incidentally pushed itself into the abyss of destruction.
This was basically digging a hole and burying themselves!
The guests present finally left reluctantly, after repeated promises from the senior executives of the Hall of Healing.
The Hall of Healing had emerged victorious on all fronts in this campaign, and had returned home laden with spoils of war.
As the mastermind behind the scenes, Jiang Chen had watched the show that he’d come to watch, and was about to leave with his underlings when he suddenly halted as he passed by the Pill King Garden’s display tables.
“Oh right, Courtmaster Wang, I gave you a warning out of the goodness of my heart last time that your days were numbered. You treated my goodwill as ill intent. Ai, I don’t even know how to comfort you.”
Jiang Chen planned on stomping this Courtmaster Wang dead with one foot.
This man had publicly suppressed his Jiang family, and had humiliated Jiang Feng at the Soaring Dragon manor. In Jiang Chen’s eyes, this man was destined to be rotten bones in a graveyard, and he didn’t have much time left.
Cold killing intent shot out of Courtmaster Wang’s eyes as his bloodshot eyes were filled with wildness. He was like a starving wolf driven into an impasse, ready to risk his life at any time.
When he walked out of the Myriad Treasures Palace, Jiang Chen’s tone was frosty. “One will fall victim in return if a snake isn’t beaten to death. If we’re to do something to this Pill King Garden, then we must destroy and pull them down!”
The four Sheng battalion brothers all nodded and felt that Jiang Chen’s words made a lot of sense.
“Jiang Chen, wait a moment.”
At the entrance to the Myriad Treasures Palace, Princess Gouyu, wearing light green leather body armor embedded with a natural body scent, rushed in front of Jiang Chen.
She pushed the box forward, “I’m giving this twenty percent dry shares back to you.”
“What are you giving them back to me for?” Jiang Chen smiled. “Wasn’t this a red envelope for you?”
“Humph. Don’t think I don’t know that you were certainly involved in the Hall of Healing’s turnaround. Do you think I don’t know the origins of this One Buddha Powder?” Princess Gouyu’s face was flushed faintly red.
“If they gave it to you then just accept it, what’s with all the extraneous words?” Jiang Chen rolled his eyes. “Besides, you were the first to take this One Buddha Powder. You were a Pill Trial Warrior, receiving a red envelope would be quite normal, no?”
“What? Jiang Chen you brat. How dare you treat this princess as a Pill Trial Warrior!” Princess Gouyu couldn’t hold in her inexplicable anger.
“Look at you, you’re fine!” Jiang Chen chuckled. Please, he – Jiang Chen – was the most renowned alchemy master beneath the heavens. The pill recipes he took out were advanced recipes from even more lofty realms. They had undergone forging by hundreds and thousands of truths. What need was there for a Pill Trial Warrior?
“Don’t be so hot tempered, I know you’re internally grateful to me. If you want to pay me back, then send the set of flying daggers to me earlier.”
Jiang Chen squeezed his legs after he’d finished speaking and left on a galloping horse.
The four Sheng battalion brothers were under orders to protect Jiang Chen. They could only look with resignation at the princess, before rushing off in hot pursuit.
Only Princess Gouyu was left, staring off in the distance as she clutched the jade box. After the events of today, Gouyu could definitely be certain that Jiang Chen was not as simple as he appeared on the surface.
“Jiang Chen…” Princess Gouyu lightly mouthed this name and sank into bafflingly deep thought in that moment.
Back at the Jiang Han manor, Jiang Chen was not overly excited due to the events of the day. To speak frankly, the events of today were just an interlude for him
Endless martial dao was Jiang Chen’s ultimate goal.
“Jiang Zhen, make a trip to the Hall of Healing and tell Qiao Baishi to come here.” Jiang Chen thought momentarily and had an idea in his mind.
He didn’t want to split a portion of his mental energy to think of the affairs of the Hall of Healing. He needed to concentrate more on the path of martial dao.
One had to give it to him, Qiao Baishi was nearing blind worship now when it came to Jiang Chen. Although a multitude of affairs awaited him in the Hall of Healing, he immediately set off without hesitation when he heard Jiang Chen’s summons.
Jiang Chen was quite satisfied with Qiao Baishi’s attitude.
“Third hallmaster, I only have one sentence. What I’ve given to your Hall of Healing today, I can take back tenfold tomorrow. Do you believe me?”
1. Dry shares are shares of ownership awarded to someone who was pivotal to the founding of a company, but when that person wasn’t an investor