Chapter 53 Black-hearted Drug Dealer Chenjia Village is nearly two hundred kilometers away from Haicheng. Cheng Ming drove for nearly three hours and arrived at Chenjia Village at around two o'clock in the afternoon. the sun is big. The village was very quiet in the afternoon, with almost no one walking around. Occasionally one or two children were seen, looking at the boy and girl who came to this small mountain village with strange eyes. Most of the houses in the village had their doors closed, and most of them looked like they had not been lived in for a long time. "Why are there so few people here?" Guan Jing said. "These days, many people go to the city to work. Many people buy houses in the city and never come back, so naturally there are fewer people in the countryside." While chatting, the two of them followed the recorded address to find the herbalist's home. This is a one-story self-built house, undecorated, with red bricks and stones exposed. There are many racks in the yard, which should be used to dry medicinal materials, but there is nothing on the racks now.
When you get close, you can smell the fragrance of medicine. The courtyard gate was not closed, so Cheng Ming and Guan Jing walked in and knocked on the door. After a while, the door opened and a dark-skinned face appeared in the eyes of Cheng Ming and the others. "You are?" "Hello, I run a pharmaceutical factory. Are you Chen Hui?" Chen Hui is the name of the herbalist. The man nodded. "I have something to talk to you about. Can we talk?" Cheng Ming asked. "Then come in." Chen Hui opened the door. The small living room was still cluttered with all kinds of sundries. There was only a small corner where people could move around. There was a small coffee table and a few stools. This self-built house is not big. Apart from the living room in the middle, there is a staircase at the back and two doors on the right side of the entrance, which are closed. Cheng Ming, Guan Jing and Chen Hui sat down at the coffee table, and Chen Hui poured two glasses of water in disposable cups. "Boss, what do you want?" Chen Hui asked. "I came to you mainly to ask you to help me collect herbs in the mountains." Cheng Ming said, "I need two wild medicinal herbs, the mountain heartwood and the golden vine." After hearing what Cheng Ming said, Chen Hui was stunned for a moment. "Boss, I don't collect herbs anymore." Cheng Mingxiao was surprised: "Why?" Speaking of this, Chen Hui sighed: "The income from collecting herbs is too low to support my family." Can’t support your family?
Cheng Ming found it a little unbelievable. As far as he knew, medicinal herbs like heartwood cost hundreds of yuan per catty. If one could find four or five catties of heartwood in the mountains, he could earn nearly four or five hundred yuan. Rounding it off, it’s more than 10,000 yuan a month. How can you not be able to support your family? At this moment, a painful groan was heard from the door next to the living room. "I'm coming!" Chen Hui ran towards the room and after a while, he came out supporting an old woman in her sixties or seventies. The old woman's face looked pale and she was extremely skinny. Chen Hui helped her sit on a chair beside him, then massaged her calves and joints. "This is my mother." Chen Hui said as he took care of her. Cheng Ming and Guan Jing greeted the old woman. "Sorry, I'm here to talk to you about something." said Chen's mother. Cheng Ming and the other man quickly said that everything was fine. After a while, Chen's mother's condition seemed to have improved a little, and Chen Hui sat down again. "Boss, I'm afraid your trip is in vain. I really don't want to be a herbalist anymore." "As you can see, my mother has leukemia, and the income of a herbalist is not enough to pay for her medical treatment, not to mention the tuition and living expenses for my children at home." "Look, I have packed my luggage and am planning to go south to Haicheng to find a construction site to work today." Chen Hui pointed to the side, and sure enough, there was a large suitcase there. At this time, Mother Chen seemed to have bone pain again and groaned. Chen Hui quickly squatted over and massaged her joints. She would feel better if he massaged her like this. But I don’t know what happened today. After a long period of pain, she still showed no signs of improvement, and Chen Hui's forehead was covered with sweat. Cheng Ming sighed inwardly, took out a medicine bottle from his bag, poured out a pill and handed it to Chen Hui. "Give her this medicine." Chen Hui looked at Cheng Ming in surprise and hesitated a little. After all, Cheng Ming was just a stranger to him, but seeing his mother's groans of pain growing louder and louder, he gritted his teeth and gave the pill to his mother. Less than ten minutes later, Chen's mother's symptoms were greatly alleviated and she stopped humming. Chen Hui asked in surprise: "Thank you, boss. Why did you bring Greewei with you?" Cheng Ming was stunned. It seemed that Chen Hui mistook his pills for Gleevec, but Cheng Ming did not intend to explain. Guan Jing next to her was very surprised. The pill just now emitted a fragrant aroma. Having grown up in a pharmacy, she knew very well that it was a Chinese patent medicine. Not some Greve.
What surprised her was that in addition to having pills that inhibit liver cancer, Cheng Ming could now make pills that treat leukemia. How did he do it? This man has a secret! "Boss, you have seen that my mother has to take a bottle of Gleevec every month. A bottle of Gleevec costs more than 20,000 yuan. Even with medical insurance, it still costs 4,000 to 5,000 yuan a month. The income of a herbalist is not enough." Chen Hui smiled bitterly. Cheng Ming paused for a moment and asked, "Master Chen, to whom did you sell the herbs you collected in the past?" "Every two weeks, a boss would come to Chenjia Village to collect medicine. The boss's surname seemed to be Song." "How much did he pay you?" "It depends on the species. Some rare herbs are expensive, costing dozens of yuan per pound, while inferior ones are only a few yuan per pound. Sometimes you can't even scrape together 200 yuan after a whole day in the mountains." "How much did he pay you per pound for the two medicinal herbs, heartwood and golden vine?" Cheng Ming asked. Chen Hui thought for a moment and said, "He doesn't collect a lot of these two kinds of medicine. He charges twelve yuan per pound for the heartwood and thirty yuan for the golden vine." Cheng Ming was stunned. Twelve? Thirty? It's really dark enough. He remembered that the pharmaceutical factory originally purchased Chinese magnolia at 150 yuan per pound and golden vine at 500 yuan! The price difference is more than ten times! What kind of conscientious capitalist is that guy named Song? Traditional Chinese medicine on the market is sold by gram. The cheapest one is 10 cents or 20 cents per gram, and the most expensive one is more than ten yuan per gram. In other words, the cheapest one may cost around 100 or 200 yuan per kilogram, while the most expensive ones can cost over a thousand yuan! Not to mention wild medicinal herbs! For the same medicinal material, sometimes the wild one can be dozens of times more expensive than the cultivated one! Nowadays, drug dealers only give a dozen or dozens of yuan per pound when buying drugs! This drug dealer is really a bastard! "Master Chen, my factory needs a large amount of wild medicinal materials, like the mountain heartwood I just mentioned. The factory charges 150 yuan per pound." "Other herbs are more than ten times more expensive than you said." "How about you supply the herbs you collect to our pharmaceutical factory in the future?" Cheng Ming said seriously. "How much?" Chen Hui seemed not to hear clearly, or thought he had heard wrongly. Cheng Ming repeated the price. Chen Hui was so shocked that he was speechless. At this moment, he had only one thought in his mind: The herbs I collected are so valuable? (End of this chapter)