Chapter 678 — Press Conference

Yet at this very moment of tension, Lai Changyi, president of Guan Daifu Pharmaceuticals, called an emergency press conference!

Ever since its founding, Guan Daifu Pharmaceuticals had been a focus of media and public attention! Though the company's product, "Guan Daifu Trauma Medicine," had yet to officially reach the market, the name of Guan Daifu Pharmaceuticals already rang loud and clear!

For no other reason than this: news of Guan Daifu Pharmaceuticals' dazzling showing at the Yanjing Yu family's auction, though it first circulated only among the great houses and the wealthy merchants, was soon picked up by the omnipresent news media, which ran report after report on the company!

Among them were no few tales of hearsay, wondrous beyond belief -- talk of how Guan Daifu Pharmaceuticals had mastered the art of raising the dead and growing flesh upon bare bones, and the like... all of it, of course, derived from the Longevity and Detoxification Pill.

But Fat Lai did not step forward to refute the rumors, for such reports were a muddle of truth and falsehood, the stuff of gossip; with the media stirring them up, he was spared even the cost of advertising, and the name of Guan Daifu Pharmaceuticals was hyped into prominence!

And so, when Guan Daifu Pharmaceuticals called an emergency press conference, every major media outlet in Songshan City, the moment the news reached them, dispatched reporters racing to the venue.

Though the media's attention was fixed on the mass fainting of First High's students, the press conference of Guan Daifu Pharmaceuticals mattered a great deal as well; those outlets that had failed to seize the initiative on the fainting incident now trained all their attention on this press conference, hoping to lay hands on some first-hand material there.

The conference was held in the new tower Fat Lai had built; this would serve as the corporate headquarters of Guan Daifu Pharmaceuticals, and the construction and trading companies on the floors below had been contributed free of charge by Fat Lai as well, merged into Guan Daifu Pharmaceuticals.

The construction company would henceforth be charged solely with building the pharmaceutical company's factories, while the trading company would be charged solely with selling the medicines produced.

What he gave away in that single stroke was Fat Lai's entire fortune. Fat Lai's wife was rather reluctant to part with it, but Fat Lai would not consider a woman's opinion at all; in his view, his wife had long hair and short wits!

This was nothing yet! Once he had attached himself firmly to Wei Zhao, what could he possibly lack? Wei Zhao's medical skill was superb beyond description; to say he could bring the dead back to life would hardly be an exaggeration. As his underling, could Fat Lai fail to reap the benefits?

Gazing at the packed press seats, Fat Lai felt a satisfaction such as he had never known. In the days when he ran his own companies, he would likely have had to spend a few favors just to get a handful of reporters to attend a press conference -- and even then the number would have been no more than a third of this.

Now he had to invest nothing at all; he merely put out a single word, and the reporters came flocking like grass before the wind. There was no help for it -- the products of Guan Daifu Pharmaceuticals were not yet on the market, but the name was already made!

"My thanks to all you friends of the press for attending this press conference of Guan Daifu Pharmaceuticals. I am Lai Changyi." Fat Lai walked up onto the stage beaming and announced: "The main subject of this press conference is the mass fainting of First High's students! If any of you came for our company's new products, I'm afraid you will be disappointed!"

Hearing Fat Lai's words, the reporters below were instantly stunned! The fainting of the First High students -- how did it fall to Guan Daifu Pharmaceuticals to hold a press conference on it? If a conference was to be held at all, it should be held by First High or by the Gu Group, shouldn't it? Or the police, that would make sense too. Yet Guan Daifu Pharmaceuticals, the one party with no connection to the matter whatsoever, was holding a press conference here to release news concerning the mass fainting at First High -- which struck every one of these reporters as rather odd, no matter how they looked at it!

Odd though it was, these people were also very excited; not only were they not disappointed, they all congratulated themselves on having come! The mass fainting at First High was the headline story every media outlet was vying to cover, and every outlet was digging deeper into the inside story and the truth. If Fat Lai's press conference was in fact tied to this matter, how could they not be delighted?

"First of all, I must say that the rumors circulating in society are not entirely true -- all this talk of a terrifying campus, an unknown virus, a biochemical base, is utter nonsense!" Fat Lai knew of the relationship between Wei Zhao and the young mistress, so with this press conference he meant not only to build momentum for his own Guan Daifu Pharmaceuticals, but also to restore the reputation of First High!

Fat Lai's words left the reporters below somewhat abashed; those reports about a "terrifying campus, unknown virus, biochemical base" and the like -- they had published such things too, but those were no more than works of following the crowd. Now that Fat Lai had denied them outright, they all pricked up their ears.

"Through the clinical research and analysis of our Guan Daifu Pharmaceuticals, we have found the cause of the students' fainting, and diagnosed it as poisoning!" This one sentence of Fat Lai's left every reporter present utterly astonished!

"But didn't the hospital already say it was not poisoning? And that they could not discover what had caused the fainting?" one reporter below could not resist asking.

"Indeed, by ordinary methods the poisoning cannot be detected, because the poison these students took is an exceedingly rare ancient poison, one unseen through the ages!" Fat Lai said: "As everyone knows, Guan Daifu Pharmaceuticals is a company devoted to pharmaceutical research and development; in both research capacity and expert team, we stand at advanced international standards! So, through the tireless research of our expert team, we have at last analyzed this ancient poison: it is a virulent poison compounded from seven Chinese herbal medicines, called the Seven-Herb Death Powder, a lost poison of ages past! Once taken, this poison is swiftly absorbed by the body and then wreaks destruction upon the body's physiological functions; if treatment is not administered in time, the victim will die within three days at the latest! And because this poison is made purely of Chinese herbs, it is very difficult to detect by conventional chemical means -- which is also why the hospital failed to find it earlier! For the scent of many Chinese herbs resembles that of seasonings, and so arouses no suspicion!"

This poison had in fact been discovered by Wei Zhao himself, so Fat Lai's so-called expert team and tireless research were pure nonsense, no more than a bid to drum up publicity for the pharmaceutical company. But of these things the reporters knew nothing, and Wei Zhao cared even less for such fame, and so Fat Lai seized upon it to hype his company!

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