Chapter 1866 — Deeply Angered

Hearing the affected tone in Wei Zhao's voice, Xu Shilan immediately frowned. In her impression, Wei Zhao was not that sort of frivolous man—he had never even looked her straight in the eye, so how had he come out with such a thing?

So although Xu Shilan was somewhat annoyed, she still reined in her temper and said, "Yes, is there anything you need my help with?"

"Actually, there is one thing..." Wei Zhao caught the displeasure in her voice and immediately composed himself, saying with perfect seriousness, "I've discovered that several of Kang the Divine Physician's pharmaceutical products contain chemical agents, which contradicts their advertising. When the time comes for the press conference, could you help drum up support? With your influence, you'll draw in a great many media outlets."

"Of course I can." Xu Shilan agreed without a second thought. She wondered—had she misjudged Wei Zhao? Had she just been dealing abroad with a rich young man's advances, and grown a little oversensitive?

"Then many thanks. I'll have Lai the Fatso get in touch with you when the time comes," Wei Zhao said.

"All right..." Hearing that Wei Zhao's tone was perfectly normal now, with nothing amiss about it whatsoever, Xu Shilan breathed a sigh of relief.

After ending the call, Wei Zhao went back to studying the weight-loss medicine. With every medicinal ingredient he identified by scent, he wrote it down on the paper, and he did not stop until he had distinguished every single ingredient in the weight-loss medicine!

An ordinary skilled physician could never have managed such a thing, but Wei Zhao had grown up amidst piles of medicinal herbs, and ever since he had cultivated the Xuan Yuan Dragon-Taming Art, his perception of the external world had grown ever more acute. Any herb he had come into contact with was, by and large, unforgettable at a glance—in this respect, even Old Man Wei himself admitted he could not compare!

Still, according to the alchemist's notes left by Zhang Liju, this sort of ability was tied to a person's constitution, and one possessed of such uncanny acuity for medicinal ingredients, if he became an alchemist, might well rise to the very pinnacle of the craft!

Even Zhang Liju himself had commanded only a portion of such acuity—hardly exceptional—and to guess eight out of ten herbs correctly was already quite remarkable. The hidden You family, naturally, had no such master, or they would never have needed to demand the formula for Wei Zhao's life-extending, toxin-expelling pill in the first place.

Of course, pleased as Wei Zhao was to possess such an ability, his control over alchemical fire was utterly abysmal. To have the gift alone, without the power to command alchemical fire, was as good as wasted effort! No matter how formidable, he could never become an alchemist—at best, an alchemist's attendant boy.

Shaking his head to cast off these impractical notions, Wei Zhao began carefully analyzing the prescription in his hands...

Non-toxic, no side effects, no rebound, no fasting—healthy, natural weight loss. Such was the advertising slogan for Kang the Divine Physician's weight-loss medicine.

But after the lessons of the previous two medicines, Wei Zhao did not believe for a moment that there was no trick hidden in this one!

With these medicines compounded together, Wei Zhao simply could not conceive what effect they were meant to produce. Many of the ingredients, placed side by side, were wholly unrelated—how could they possibly achieve weight loss?

Had Wei Zhao not possessed such strong confidence in his own tongue and nose, he might even have thought he had misidentified some of the ingredients.

Wei Zhao knitted his brows tightly and sat in silent contemplation.

After a long while, Wei Zhao finally opened his eyes, and a look of comprehension surfaced on his face.

These were two prescriptions, not one! Wei Zhao had previously conceived of them as a single prescription, which naturally gave rise to any number of irrationalities and contradictions—but once split into two, there was no problem at all!

Yet after Wei Zhao had separated the prescriptions, a flash of anger crossed his face! A physician's heart is one of benevolence. Wei Zhao was no saint, and he would not casually take on patients, but whenever he did treat someone, he would devote his utmost to curing their illness, rather than giving them perfunctory treatment or curing one ailment only to bring on another, over and over again. Now, of the prescriptions in Kang the Divine Physician's weight-loss medicine, one was unremarkable—an ordinary tonic formula. What puzzled Wei Zhao was this: people trying to lose weight were not the dying, so why use such a tonic prescription? Many of the ingredients in it could replace food and supply the body with a measure of nourishment, but such decoctions were used only for those unable to take food by mouth, to sustain their lives—and nowadays, glucose and the like had largely replaced them. One could say this prescription was all but obsolete.

But when he looked at the other prescription, Wei Zhao understood at once why the tonic was needed!

This prescription could suppress the function of the digestive tract, obstructing the digestion and absorption of food so that it passed straight out of the body. Taken over the long term, it could lead to gastrointestinal dysfunction—even outright damage to the stomach and intestines!

The principle behind the two prescriptions was now plain: one used medicine to supply the body with a small amount of nourishment, while the other prevented the digestion of the food eaten each day, and by these means achieved the goal of weight loss! But this was no weight loss—it was outright swindling.

Taken short-term, it might produce a marked effect, but taken long-term, by the time the stomach and intestines were ruined, it would be too late for regret!

This kind of dirty money was what Wei Zhao detested most. And the reason no one had discovered anything amiss in the prescription was precisely the formulator's cleverness: he had blended the two prescriptions into one, so that even if someone uncovered the formula, they could not make sense of the principle behind it!

Only a man like Wei Zhao, with no small gift for pharmacology, the properties of medicines, and the identification of medicinal ingredients, could spot the flaw—and this, in all likelihood, was an important reason the Kang family could openly sell such a product with such confidence!

Wei Zhao recorded, one by one, the testing methods and the pharmacology and properties of the weight-loss medicine, and with that an important task was done. As for the Kang family, Wei Zhao naturally could not resort to the same tactics he had used against the An family.

Domineering as Wei Zhao was by nature, he also held firmly to principle. The An family had used underhanded means against Gu Pengzhan, so Wei Zhao had answered with underhanded means in return. But the Kang family—at least on the surface—had employed legitimate business tactics in competing with Guandafu Pharmaceuticals. If Wei Zhao wanted to win back the market, he would do best to use proper means as well, rather than seizing it by force, which would do no good to Guandafu's reputation either.

As for You Shisan, the chief culprit last time, Wei Zhao had already disposed of him. Now, to deal with the Kang family, ordinary means alone would be enough to strike them down beyond any hope of recovery.

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