Chapter 181: The Poison and the Antidote (2/2)

I sighed. This was not my expertise at all, but out of everyone here, it seemed that I was the one best suited for the job. I put the mouse in a sterile box and pinned its two front limbs on its side. Then, I went ahead and cut its belly open with a scalpel. The mouse did not resist at all. Once the abdominal cavity was open, I found that the internal organs were all in a stagnant state. It looked no different from a dead mouse, except for the fact that its heart beat very slowly. How slowly? Once every ten seconds!

“It’s basically in a fake death condition!” shouted Dali with fascination.

I stabbed the mouse in the heart, killing it immediately. Then I recited the reincarnation mantra and prayed that it would be reborn as a human being in its next life. Then I took the other mouse and injected it with the antidote extracted from the victim. Within minutes, the mouse ‘woke up’ and seemed to return to its normal behavior.

“That’s incredible!” exclaimed Xiaotao. “I would never believe that drugs could do this if I didn’t see it with my own eyes!”

“This is interesting,” I thought out loud. “The poison and the antidote are both clearly specially formulated. Wouldn’t that just cost too much? Why not just use ordinary poison instead? Who would go to such trouble?”

“Would it really cost that much, dude?” asked Dali. “Can’t someone just buy some chemicals and mix them together?”

“You may not realize it because you’re a lay person,” Xiaozhou explained, “but any chemist knows that it takes a lot of manpower and resources to develop a drug. Take the painkillers, for instance. It cost hundreds of millions of dollars when it was first developed. You can’t just cook up some drugs in your kitchen without having a strong financial backing.”

“Xiaozhou is right,” I nodded. “Ordinary people do not have the ability and the financial resources to develop these drugs. Yet, the rich lady owns a pharmaceutical company. Don’t you think it’s too much of a coincidence?”

“Perhaps her company developed these drugs!” Xiaotao realized.

“Yes,” I agreed, then speculated further. “Perhaps the murderer used to work for the rich lady, probably as a researcher. Then, a dispute might have arisen between them, so the murderer used the drug to attack the rich lady.”

“By the way,” I added, “I figured out how the murderer threatened the rich lady using that missing knife!”

Firstly, Chen Da was injected with this fake death drug, followed by a small amount of antidote to keep him alive just enough to carry out a task for the murderer, which was to stab the rich lady. The murderer did not intend to kill the rich lady at all, only to poison her with the fake death drug by coating the drug on the knife. Once Chen Da had completed the task, his life didn’t matter to the murderer anymore.

Once the rich lady was rescued, she would find that her heart was beating very slowly and that her blood flow was almost stagnant. She would then realize what was going on, and when she received the call from the murderer, she would have no choice but to submit to the murderer’s demands. This was when she was ordered to kill her secretary and get into his car.

“But if her company developed the drug, wouldn’t she have access to the antidote too?” asked Xiaotao.

“That is the point that still puzzles me,” I replied. “I think this is the key question that we need to answer if we want to solve the case. There’s one more thing that I’m curious about—what medical value can this fake death drug possibly have?”

We all thought about it for a long time, yet none of us could come up with a possible answer.

“Enough with this ruminating!” Xiaotao suddenly exclaimed. “Let’s go to the rich lady’s company and see what we can find out there!”

“Okay!” I nodded.

Xiaotao, Dali, and I then headed to Ronghua Pharmaceuticals soon afterwards. Because their president was missing, the whole company seemed to be in disarray. We were kept waiting for a long time before we were ushered into an office to meet an executive manager whose surname was Wang. He was the company’s research and development director.

“What kind of drugs is your company developing?” I asked matter-of-factly. “May I see a list of these drugs?”

“I’m afraid that’s a company secret that I can’t disclose,” the man replied nervously.

“The president of your company has been kidnapped and every second could mean the difference between her life and death!” I stated. “We’re the police and we have the right to see this information. If you want to save your president’s life, then please cooperate with us!”

“R-Right!” the man bit his lip. “I’ll call the board of directors right away!”

He excused himself and made the call outside the office. When he was gone, Xiaotao chuckled and commented, “You’re acting exactly like a police officer now, Song Yang!”

“I learned from the best!” I replied, blushing.

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