“It’s not a blue morpho butterfly.” Ai ShuQiao corrected me, “It’s a subspecies, the Blue Moore Armenian butterfly.”
“It doesn’t matter what type it is.” I yelled into the phone, “What’s important is what you planned to do with it by offering a $500,000USD reward. Don’t tell me it was for your collections.”
“In order to create new medication.” Ai ShuQiao gave a succinct reply and also explained:
“I bet you’ve already heard from various sources that I’m not satisfied with the entertainment industry, so I’m currently trying to make a breakthrough in the pharmaceutical industry…”
“It’s not just the pharmaceutical industry, right?” I taunted, “Didn’t you also cooperate with the mob to sell munitions?”
“You shouldn’t go around saying things that aren’t true. It’s hard to break into the arms business and even if I do have some connections, I still can’t out-compete the largest arms supplier, the US government. The pharmaceutical industry would be much more reliable in that respect.”
I suddenly realized the reason why Ai ShuQiao recruited Dr. Yu’s senior, the King of Poison, was because she already had a plan.
“What kind of medicine can you make with the butterfly. It’s extremely toxic and I almost died after eating it.”
“Every medicine has side effects. An appropriate amount of arsenic can cure rheumatoid arthritis, and an excessive amount of steroids will kill you. The blue butterfly contains a strong poison, so it would be impossible to be used as medicine in its original form, it must be first refined and processed… it would be rash to eat it directly like you.”
That’s right, I ate it, so what? It’s the Spartan way because Spartans are brave and fearless.
“One reason why the reward was posted in a ‘Butterfly Collector’ forum was to avoid competitors in the pharmaceutical industry realizing that the butterfly has medicinal value. The second reason was because the butterfly is extremely rare and it’s difficult to capture live butterflies if you aren’t a professional.”
I got suspicious, “It sounds like you’ve known for a long time that the butterfly has medicinal value. How did you know about it?”
“Ha, that’s thanks to your dad.”
I instantly thought of He Ling’s father.
I remembered my dad told me that during university, he went with his roommates (including He Ling’s father) to Cui Song mountain and even saw the butterfly.
So he did bring along Ai ShuQiao? I bet he never would have expected at the time that his girlfriend would eventually toss him away heartlessly like an old rag.
“You’ve seen the butterfly on Cui Song mountain?” I blurted, “Maybe you’ve even caught one alive.”
“I’m sorry, you guessed wrong.” It sounds like Ai ShuQiao did a roll on her bed and she said rather languidly, “Ye YuanDeng didn’t take me along to Cui Song Mountain, he only picked up a piece of a dead blue butterfly’s wing, thought it was beautiful, and gave it to me as a gift. I admit I felt quite happy at the time.”
“However, I didn’t keep that wing, but instead ground it into a fine powder and analyzed its chemical composition… by the way, you probably already know that my major was in organic chemistry.”
Who the hell would know, my dad never told me and I never asked… so I’m the offspring between a physics teacher and a chemistry teacher. No wonder I learned science with ease, I had incredible genetics.
“The chemical composition of the wing was very interesting… looking at its molecular structure through an electron microscope was even more intoxicating than directly seeing its beautiful blue wings. Afterwards, I got my hands on a few live blue morpho butterflies, but could not find the same molecular structure. I then realized that the wing Ye YuanDeng gave me came from a subspecies.”
For some reason, it seemed like Ai ShuQiao was in a good today and she couldn’t stop talking.
“I couldn’t get that wonderful molecular structure out of my mind even after I arrived in the U.S. I later showed the molecular structure to Klinger, and he also said that the structure was unique in nature. If we could get a live sample of the butterfly, it was possible to develop an historic new drug.”
The first thought that came to mind when I heard the name “Klinger” was the German soccer player, but later I realized that Klinger referred to Dr. Yu’s senior, the eldest of the Three Musketeers of Stanford University.
Among the Three Musketeers, the ‘Poison King’ Klinger had the closest relationship with Ai ShuQiao. The reason why he delayed my antidote must have been because of Ai ShuQiao.
“So what do you and Klinger need my blood for, what kind of harmful medicine are you planning to develop?”
“Don’t be so biased. Businessman only chase profits, so if we can invent special medicine that can cure cancer, why would we go out of the way to harm others?”
“The blue morpho toxins can cure cancer?”
“It’s a subspecies, also don’t ignore the ‘if’. In any case, if we have the butterfly subspecies as a research subject, it might be possible to develop a lot of special drugs that are not currently available on the market and make my pharmaceutical company a hit overnight. The profits from the pharmaceutical industry isn’t much less than the arms industry, it’s also easier to manage than the entertainment industry. It’s very energy consuming for me to just manage your sister.”
Is that why you wanted to make a deal with me? Once you make a breakthrough in the research with the butterfly, then Ai Mi and the other talent wouldn’t be as important anymore.
“Hey, I’m not a blue morpho, but a human who ate a blue morpho!”, I said, “Since you’re so rich, you can always catch other Blue Moore Armenian butterflies. Just go to Armenia to catch them, why do you need me?”
Ai ShuQiao sneered, “Do you think I haven’t caught other subspecies? Just a week ago, I was sent two live ones from Armenian at once, and I did find that special molecular structure, but…”
“It was too toxic, even Klinger wasn’t able to neutralize the toxicity. If the toxicity was forcibly neutralized, its medicinal value would be equivalent to a saline. We were quite frustrated, but we found a breakthrough in your frozen blood sample sent in by Dr. Yu.”
“After passing through your digestive system, its toxicity was diluted in your blood, but the medicinal value wasn’t reduced, rather it even increased. Now, you have become a better experimental subject than the live butterfly. As long as you provide us with enough blood samples, we can develop a new drug worth a lot of money in a short period of time.”
“A new drug for euthanasia?” I remained skeptical, “Dr. Yu showed me the video of the test on the mice. The extract injected into the mice killed them immediately after a half hour of getting high.”
“Ye Lin, are you trying to say that a drug for euthanasia has no value? It was only a crude refinement, but it’s already this effective… it’s hard to imagine what will happen after complex processing. In the worst case, it would become a super painkiller that can greatly improve the quality of survival of patients with late-stage cancer. “
“I don’t believe you would care about cancer patients. Do you really only intend to use my blood to develop painkillers?”
“Of course I don’t care about cancer patients, but it’s a super-effective painkiller that could help me carve a path in the pharmaceutical industry. Ai Mi won’t always be popular as an idol, but humans will always need painkillers.”
I was speechless for a moment. Ai ShuQiao’s reasoning was also very good. It didn’t even matter if I stole the calculation program from Fang Xin, my blood alone was an indispensable material for the development of super painkillers, so my potential value in her eyes was no less than Ai Mi.
Was this a blessing in disguise? Even though I fell into a bear trap, ate a blue butterfly and almost died, but was still eventually able to gain some initiative where Ai ShuQiao wouldn’t hesitate to use Ai Mi’s freedom to make a deal with me.
I never would have thought that the daunting task of saving my sister would be accomplished through such inconceivable means. I thought I would have to fight a protracted battle for years with little hope, but the light of victory was already close at hand. I didn’t need to harm anyone, I just needed to make a copy of a program from Fang Xin and have Dr. Yu draw some blood from me.
Ai ShuQiao may be insatiable, and didn’t let Klinger cure my heart disease in order to endlessly draw my blood, but I’m not an idiot. As long as she doesn’t give Ai Mi freedom and let her leave the entertainment industry, I can go on strike. I can even drink excessively and risk getting brain damage in order to expel the toxins from my body so that my blood can no longer be used.
Isn’t that what Ai ShuQiao was afraid of since she told me not to drink?
I felt like I was able to take the initiative and made a verbal deal with Ai ShuQiao for Ai Mi’s freedom.
She said that she would give me support after I infiltrated the Happy Science cult. Once I made a copy of the calculation program, it would count as the completion of half of our deal.
The other half of the deal was that I would continue to provide blood samples for Dr. Yu and Klinger to study. Once I hand over the calculation program, Ai ShuQiao would stop all of Ai Mi’s appearances except for the filming of “Legend of the Magic Cauldron”.
Once my blood is used to create a new drug and it hits the market, Ai Mi can officially announce her retirement from the entertainment industry. Ai ShuQiao promised she would no longer be involved in our lives, and will use the profits of the pharmaceutical company to give us a monthly dividend.
Although I don’t trust Ai ShuQiao, I think it was still worth a try. The choice to donate blood or not was in my hands. Since Ai ShuQiao specifically came to me, it meant that she didn’t have a way to create a person like me, someone who ate the blue butterfly subspecies but did not die.
I admit that I was overly optimistic and didn’t think it through very well.
It was true that I was the only person in the world who had eaten the subspecies and didn’t die at the time, but there was no need for her to make a deal with me. With her ruthlessness, she could have kidnapped me and hidden me in a secret place for the rest of my life as “experimental subject”.
One of the reasons she didn’t kidnap me was because she needed me to infiltrate the Happy Science Cult and steal the calculation program, but she hid the main reason from me.
As she concealed the reason, she became much more caring to me in other areas. If someone didn’t know her well, they would mistakenly think that she had a found a conscience and wanted to compensate for the motherly love she owed me in the past.
I didn’t understand why she did it as she clearly knew that I would not reconcile with her even if she shows me a tiny bit of favoritism.
But in any case, for some reason Ai ShuQiao began to defend me, as if me being in a good mood was really important for her as my mother.
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