Astral Apostle

Chapter 87: Corruption (1)

In the house, a few wooden boxes were placed on the ground. There were bottles of colorful medicine inside. There were no labels on the bottles, and the medicine was turbid. It looked like the quality was very poor.

The goateed man, his two surviving followers, and the witch doctor, Gamma, squatted in the corner with their hands on their heads. They watched in fear as Zhou Jing checked the potions one by one.

Because Zhou Jing was present, they did not dare to resist or escape due to the fear of the combat strength of a Mutant Beast Hunter.

Zhou Jing looked at the potions, then turned around and looked at Gamma.

“So you stowed away quite a lot of potions. Half a year ago, you lied that you didn’t have any potions and deliberately left my brother todie.”

“No!” Gamma quickly explained, “This is a new potion I made recently. I really used up all the potion at that time. I…”

Facing Zhou Jing’s gaze that seemed to say, “Keep making things up,” his voice became softer and softer.

Zhou Jing snorted. “Just because he was an outsider, you didn’t treat him… I don’t know why you feel that my brother is a threat to your business.

“But if I hadn’t come, you would have gotten your way. It’s too simple to felch things while doing your duty, right? Not many people will even notice.”

Gamma lowered his head, not daring to answer.

Zhou Jing fiddled with the potions and asked casually, “How’s the profit from reselling potions? What’s the price of these potions?”

“Usually four bottles for one silver coin…” Gamma replied shakily.

So cheap? It was much cheaper than the cost of purchasing normal potions from the pharmacy.

Zhou Jing calculated and was a little surprised, “Then your boxes of potions are only worth more than 30 silver coins? The income of pharmacists isn’t that low, right?”

Just because of this bit of money, he took this big of a risk?

Zhou Jing originally thought it was at least a few hundred silver coins.

It’s just that there weren’t many goods this time. In the past, each batch could be sold for 50 to 60 silver coins… Although Gamma was thinking in this manner, he didn’t dare to say it out loud.

“How did you get in touch with this person?” Zhou Jing glanced at the two of them and took out his dagger to play with.

Gamma’s heart trembled. He turned to look at the goateed man and suddenly made up his mind to tell Zhou Jing everything about his cooperation with this man.

A high-level pharmacist was indeed profitable, but he had always been a lousy pharmacist.

A few years ago, Gamma came to White Plains Town as a wandering pharmacist to cooperate with the White Plains City Pharmacy. However, because he wasn’t good enough, he was rejected to even sell potions. His potions could not be sold at all, and his money was almost spent. He could not even afford the raw materials for the potions.

At that time, it was this goateed man who had secretly stopped him and pointed out a path for him to go to the surrounding village to be a village doctor. That was why Gamma had come to Frostwood Village and stayed here.

After staying in Frostwood Village for several years, he had a hunter team here to help collect raw materials for him for free. Making potions had become a profitable business.

However, with his craftsmanship, the products he made were inferior goods. This goateed man would always come with the cover of the grain collection team and secretly purchase his defective potions in batches to bring back to White Plains City.

As for what he did with it, Gamma didn’t know and didn’t care.

Although the price was very low, it was already not bad for him. After all, it was very difficult to sell the medicine he made.

Therefore, over the years, he had used the excuse that the production of potions was prone to failure as an excuse to embezzle most of the materials brought by the Hunter Team. Only a small portion of the potions produced was enough to satisfy the needs of the village. The rest were his own private gains.

After hearing Gamma’s explanation, Zhou Jing looked at the goateed man and raised his eyebrows. “You’re from the pharmacy, right? We’ve met once, remember?”

The goateed man nodded subconsciously.

When he saw Zhou Jing, he thought that he looked familiar. He squatted at the side and thought for a while before he vaguely remembered the short meeting between the two of them three months ago.

Hearing this, Zhou Jing touched his chin.

Fortunately, he did not go forward to talk to this person as soon as he discovered him in the morning. Otherwise, he might have alerted him and caused him to be on guard. If the guy chose not to do anything tonight, he would not have encountered this matter.

It was a better decision not to rashly come into contact with him. After all, one did not have the golden exclamation mark on their head here. It was not something that could be triggered with just one interaction.

(TL Note: In RPGs, those NPC with quests always have that golden exclamation mark on their heads.)

“Then tell me, you can’t possibly kill my friend to silence him because of a business deal of 30 silver coins, right? How did you make money buying these defective potions? You must have earned more than this, right?”

Zhou Jing played with the dagger as he stared at the goateed man.

The cold light of the dagger flashed in his eyes. He swallowed hard before he carefully spoke.

“I’m a minor supervisor of White Plains Town’s potion shop. I purchased these potions to secretly swap the stock of the potion shop…”

After hearing these few words, Zhou Jing understood.

This goateed man bought the defective medicine produced by the village doctor at a low cost in the nearby village. Then, he used his position to replace the quality of the medicine in the storehouse with the defective medicine.

Just like that, he secretly changed the stock of the pharmacy.

The potions in the inventory would still match the account book, but he could also profit and resell the good potions in the inventory.

Using the government’s things to earn personal benefits, he would slowly hollow out the potion shop. This way, the goateed man would have already made a few thousand Terra silver coins just from this deal itself.

As for the defective potions, they were mixed in with the normal potions and were placed on the shelves. They were also sold at the price of normal potions. The income of the potion shop was still guaranteed, and the buyer would only suffer in the end… However, there was only one potion shop in the city, so no one else had a choice.