Chapter 417: Huang Quan
Ye Xiu inserted the needle, and Old Liu immediately let out a squeal like a pig being slaughtered.
"Ow, ow, ow, it’s killing me! Stop, stop..."
"Good medicine tastes bitter. To cure your illness, a little pain is nothing," Ye Xiu said, ignoring Old Liu’s struggles and continuing the acupuncture, targeting every spot that hurt.
Despite howling from the pain, Old Liu endured it, thinking about the 100,000 he’d earn after the torment was over.
When Jiao Fuping arrived with his secretary, they walked in on Old Liu’s screaming. Jiao Fuping’s face turned ashen.
He refused to believe that someone with Ye Xiu’s medical skills couldn’t tell Old Liu’s sense of smell was fine. Obviously, Ye Xiu was tormenting him on purpose.
However, Jiao Fuping didn’t seem to mind, watching with a smile.
A full ten minutes passed.
Finally, Ye Xiu stopped.
By then, Old Liu’s clothes were completely soaked with sweat from the pain.
"Can you smell anything now?" Ye Xiu asked with a smile.
Visibly exhausted, Old Liu sniffed a few times and shook his head. "Still can’t smell a thing."
Just then, Song Yushu came over with a strip of cloth and a box.
Ye Xiu took the cloth, blindfolded Old Liu, and said, "I’m going to have you smell something. See if you can detect a scent."
"Bring it on!" Old Liu braced himself, ready to claim he couldn’t smell anything regardless.
Ye Xiu took the box, held it under Old Liu’s nose, opened a corner, and said, "Take a deep whiff."
Curious, Jiao Fuping and his secretary leaned in to see what was in the box.
Old Liu, playing his part, took a hearty sniff, then doubled over and vomited.
"It stinks! It absolutely stinks..."
The moment the words left his mouth, his portly body trembled. This is bad!
Jiao Fuping’s expression turned utterly foul. He never expected Old Liu to drop the ball at such a crucial moment.
"Director Jiao, looks like your trick didn’t work," Song Yushu sneered.
Jiao Fuping was furious. "What’s in the box?" he demanded.
Song Yushu was too embarrassed to say.
Ye Xiu shrugged. "Fresh poop."
Jiao Fuping was speechless.
The secretary was speechless.
Old Liu let out another wretched gag.
"You... just you wait!" Jiao Fuping snorted coldly before angrily leaving with his secretary and Old Liu in tow.
"Come back anytime!" Song Yushu shouted smugly after them. He then turned to Ye Xiu, his voice filled with excitement and admiration. "Ye Liangchen, you’re the one with all the tricks! If it weren’t for you, that single move would have been more than enough to crush me."
"Your stomach isn’t in great shape. You should be more careful lately," Ye Xiu said, handing the box to Song Yushu.
With a pathetic whimper, Song Yushu blushed furiously and ran away.
Just then, Ye Xiu received a text message from Mo Luo: "Young Master, everyone from the Fire Seed Company’s Sang Jing branch has been executed. I have all their phones."
Ye Xiu breathed a long sigh of relief. Now he could continue his undercover mission without any worries. Pocketing his phone, he called out, "Next..."
「」
Annoyed, Jiao Fuping returned to the Wankang Wellness Hall. He was about to head to his office to regroup and devise a new scheme to smear the Mingde Ancient Medical Hall.
But as soon as he opened his office door, he found someone sitting inside.
"Xu Zhiqiang?"
Jiao Fuping was startled for a moment, then put on a beaming smile and joked, "What wind blew you here?"
With a stern face, Xu Zhiqiang was in no mood to joke with Jiao Fuping. He got straight to the point. "I’m looking for Qin Ming. Where is he?"
Last night, Qin Ming hadn’t returned to the Han Jin City International Entertainment Club, and his phone was unreachable. The Xu Family, sensing something was wrong, had sent Xu Zhiqiang to the Wankang Wellness Hall to find him.
However, upon arrival, Xu Zhiqiang was told that Qin Ming and his mother were no longer at the Wankang Wellness Hall.
"It seems Qin Ming really got on your bad side. Otherwise, a man with your usual devil-may-care attitude wouldn’t be so serious." An idea suddenly struck Jiao Fuping. He shrugged and said, "Unfortunately, you’re too late. Yesterday, Qin Ming transferred his mother to the Mingde Ancient Medical Hall..."
Before he could finish, he saw Xu Zhiqiang stand up and head for the door.
Jiao Fuping quickly intercepted him. "A word of advice," he said, "the chief physician of the Mingde Ancient Medical Hall, Ye Liangchen, is good friends with Qin Ming. If you go there looking for trouble, I’m afraid you won’t get past him."
"Ha! Jiao Fuping, is this the first day you’ve known me?" Xu Zhiqiang said with an arrogant sneer. "On my turf in Han Jin City, who would dare to block my path?"
With that, he left the office and headed straight for the Mingde Ancient Medical Hall.
Jiao Fuping laughed. "Idiot," he said with disdain.
"Director, are you planning to use Xu Zhiqiang to deal with Ye Liangchen?" the secretary asked.
"Exactly!" Jiao Fuping nodded.
"There are five or six hundred patients at the Mingde Ancient Medical Hall right now. Even if Xu Zhiqiang is a profligate son, surely he wouldn’t dare try to kill Ye Liangchen in front of so many people, right?" she asked.
"You know nothing about Xu Zhiqiang or the Xu Family." Jiao Fuping sat on the sofa and beckoned with his hand. The secretary immediately sat on his lap.
He continued, "Never mind Han Jin City; even on a global scale, there are few people the Xu Family can’t afford to provoke. Even if Xu Zhiqiang were to kill Ye Liangchen in broad daylight, the Xu Family could make it all go away."
"Is the Xu Family that powerful?" the secretary asked, shocked. "From what I know, they’re just an ordinary business family. Where do they get that kind of influence?"
"Have you heard of the Long Family of Guoyang?" Jiao Fuping asked in return.
"Of course!" the secretary nodded.
"The Xu Family and the Long Family of Guoyang are related. They are both branch families of the Long Family; the Xus just changed their surname. In the eyes of the Long Family, those so-called War Gods are no different from dog droppings. The Long Family is so powerful that not even the Xuanse Official Family would dare to provoke them lightly." As a disciple of Medicine King Valley, Jiao Fuping knew the Long Family all too well. "With the Long Family backing him, Xu Zhiqiang knows no limits. Even if he killed the National Protector War God of Xuanse, the Long Family could clean up his mess."
This revelation terrified the secretary. To an ordinary person like her, War Gods were untouchable figures who stood high above everyone else. She had never imagined that a terrifying entity like the Long Family, which viewed War Gods as mere ants, even existed.
She asked, "Who is stronger, the Long Family or Huang Quan?"
"Huang Quan is in a league of his own, a living cheat code. There’s no one in this world who can be compared to him. Huang Quan can intimidate the entire globe single-handedly, something the Long Family can’t even do within Xuanse."
At the mention of Huang Quan, Jiao Fuping’s eyes burned with a mixture of fervent admiration, envy, and resentment. How he wished that one day, he could be as impressive as Huang Quan.
「」
Ye Xiu was taking an old man’s pulse when he suddenly received a text from Gong Jin.
"Young Master, the Xu Family of Han Jin City is a branch of the Long Family."
Ye Xiu’s eyes narrowed. He replied, "How do you know?"
Gong Jin: "I had someone secretly enter Jiao Fuping’s office to plant a miniature camera and a listening device. I was originally trying to gather evidence of his malicious campaign against the Mingde Ancient Medical Hall. A moment ago, I happened to overhear a conversation between Jiao Fuping and his secretary. Jiao Fuping said with his own mouth that the Xu Family is a branch of the Long Family."