American Medicine God: Starting by Inheriting a Pharmaceutical Company and Selling Medicine

Port Elizabeth, Abandoned Warehouse No. 44.

This is the Irish gang's temporary headquarters, currently engulfed in the sounds of revelry.

Dozens of shirtless, burly men sat around a campfire, the air thick with the smells of cheap tobacco, sweat, and that strange, sweet aroma of grapes.

"To our victory!"

Sean O'Neill held the "Family Reserve" bottle with the gold label high in his hand, while clutching a bottle of cheap whiskey in his other hand.

"And, screw Sprite!" he laughed, pouring the viscous purple liquid directly into the whiskey bottle, shaking it a couple of times, and watching the eerie purple vortex spread in the amber-colored liquor.

"Only sissies who haven't been weaned yet mix it with soda! The Irish only mix it with hard liquor!"

"A toast to the Irish!"

"A toast to the Irish!"

His men shouted in unison, and followed their boss's example, mixing the purple liquid into vodka, whiskey, and even homemade liquor.

Sean took a big gulp of the "Irish Special".

This flavor... is too strong!

If the purple water mixed with Sprite is silk, then this "family reserve" mixed with whiskey is a heavy hammer wrapped in barbed wire. The cloying sweet syrup mixed with the spicy alcohol slides down the esophagus, instantly turning into a ball of fire that explodes in the stomach, and then rushes straight to the top of the head.

"Cool!"

Sean wiped the purple droplet from the corner of his mouth, feeling as if the whole world had instantly brightened.

The flickering flames of the campfire seemed to transform into dancing sprites, and the Irish bagpipes emanating from the broken radio sounded like hymns from heaven.

But he didn't notice that this "force" came too fast and too fiercely.

It wasn't just the calming effect of codeine, but also the neurotic storm triggered when toluene, an industrial solvent, penetrated the blood-brain barrier.

One mile away.

A black Lincoln sedan was parked on a high ground, overlooking the brightly lit dock area.

Mozart's Requiem was playing inside the car.

Victor sat in the back seat with a chemistry book open on his lap and a stopwatch in his hand.

"Twenty minutes," he said softly, pressing the stop button.

"What, twenty minutes?" the driver in front, who was also Tony's confidant, asked cautiously.

"Peak absorption time of toluene after oral ingestion".

Victor closed the book and looked out the car window at the warehouse in the distance.

"When the concentration reaches 2.5 milligrams per liter of blood, the visual cortex of the brain begins to short-circuit. They will see what they subconsciously fear the most."

"What could that be?"

"Who knows?" Victor shrugged. "Maybe it's hellfire, maybe it's a vengeful spirit coming to claim a life."

He adjusted his glasses, a barely perceptible smile appearing at the corner of his mouth.

"It's like a chemical version of the Rorschach inkblot test. Except, the result is fatal."

.....

Inside the warehouse, paradise is collapsing.

Sean O'Neill sensed something was wrong.

The campfire before him was no longer a warm orange, but had turned into a ghastly green will-o'-the-wisp. The flickering flames suddenly elongated and transformed into twisted human figures—the Italian thugs he had personally killed last month.

"What are you doing here?... What are you all doing here?"

Sean staggered backward, dropping the bottle in his hand and spilling purple liquid all over the ground.

But in his eyes, it wasn't syrup; it was blood.

Hot, viscous blood was spreading across the floor, crawling up his ankles like a living thing.

"Get out of here! Get out of here!"

He screamed in terror, waving his machete wildly at the air.

His men weren't much better off.

The henchman who had been laughing just moments before was now kneeling on the ground, vomiting violently. He was vomiting not only purple liquid but also yellowish-green bile. As he vomited, he frantically scratched his throat, as if some kind of worm was crawling inside.

"Fire! Fire!"

Another burly man suddenly ripped off his pants and screamed as he charged at the wall. In his hallucination, his body was crawling with burning, poisonous spiders. He frantically pounded against the corrugated iron wall, making dull thuds, until his head was bleeding profusely, but he wouldn't stop.

Mass hysteria erupted under the influence of drugs.

Panic spread like a virus in the closed warehouse.

Some people started attacking each other, some cowered in corners trembling, and some knelt down and begged for mercy in the void.

What was originally a joyous banquet instantly transformed into a scene of purgatory as depicted by Bosch.

Sean O'Neill had completely lost his mind. He saw the dead Italian riding on his neck, choking him.

"Ahhhhh!"

He let out a non-human roar, raised his cleaver, and instead of slashing at his enemy, he viciously chopped at his own thigh—he was trying to cut off the non-existent ghostly hand.

Fresh blood gushed out.

.....

"This is it! Hurry! Hurry! Hurry!"

The warehouse's large iron gate was violently smashed open, and a dozen blinding beams of tactical flashlights instantly tore through the darkness.

Hank Schrader, wearing a bulletproof vest and gripping a Glock pistol tightly in both hands, was the first to rush in.

"DEA! Everyone stay still! Get down!"

He envisioned many scenarios: intense gunfights, desperate bandits, and mountains of drugs.

But he hadn't anticipated this.

Hank was stunned.

Even someone as experienced as him as he was of crime scenes felt a spasm in his stomach at that moment.

This is not a gangland shootout.

This is a zombie apocalypse.

Dozens of burly men twisted and rolled on the ground like madmen. The air was filled with the nauseating stench of vomit, blood, and an overwhelming, pungent smell of chemical solvents.

"My God..." Gomez gasped behind him. "What's wrong with these guys? Did they take bath salts?"

"Don't move! Drop your weapons!"

Several SWAT officers rushed forward, attempting to subdue Sean O'Neill, who was still brandishing a machete and self-harming. But Sean possessed immense strength at that moment, and even two or three burly men couldn't hold him down.

"Devil! You are devils!" Sean roared, his eyes rolling back and foam at the mouth.

"Stun gun! Use the stun gun!" Hank yelled.

"Sizzle—"

After a few crackling electrical sounds, the warehouse finally quieted down, leaving only heavy breathing and painful groans.

Hank put away his gun and walked over to Sean.

This once arrogant Irish gang leader was now sprawled on the ground like a lump of mud, the wound on his thigh so deep that the bone was visible. But he seemed to feel no pain, staring blankly at the ceiling, muttering to himself.

"Purple...all purple..."

Hank crouched down and picked up a purple plastic bottle that was half full from the ground.

The gold label gleamed under the light of a tactical flashlight.

"Family Reserve"

Hank unscrewed the cap and carefully sniffed it.

The familiar sweet scent wafted over, but this time, beneath that sweetness, he keenly detected a pungent industrial smell.

Is that the smell of paint? Or glue?

"Toluene," Hank said in a low voice, his face terribly grim.

"What?" Gomez walked over.

"This isn't drugs at all." Hank stood up, looking around at the mess on the floor. "This is poison. Someone added industrial solvents to it."

"You mean... they stole a batch of poison and then drank it themselves?" Gomez asked incredulously. "That doesn't make sense, boss."

"That won't work."

As Hank looked at the exquisite gold label in his hand, a blurry figure appeared in his mind.

A shadow whose face is obscured, yet whose mind is meticulous and whose methods are ruthless.

That man knew the Irish would rob, knew they would greedily keep the good stuff for themselves, and even calculated the timing of the attack.

This was a perfect murder.

They used someone else to do their dirty work. And that "knife" was the greed of these Irish people themselves.

"Take all the bottles back for testing."

Hank tossed the bottle into the evidence bag, his voice as cold as ice.

"Also, find out where this 'family collection' label was printed. I need to know which rat hole this batch of goods crawled out of."

"What about these Irishmen?" Gomez asked, pointing to the wounded scattered on the ground.

"First, send them to the hospital for a stomach lavage, then throw them all into a detention center."

Hank turned around and strode outside.

"The Irish gang is finished. After tonight, the New Jersey underworld will be reshuffled."