The North American Gourmet Demon Handbook

It is not an industry, but an ecosystem, a giant meat grinder that operates in the name of human health but with profit at its core.

Every year, this complex squeezes hundreds of billions of dollars from the pockets of the American people, a considerable portion of which is converted into staggering profits.

High drug prices, patent monopolies, and complex pricing mechanisms ensure their steady cash flow.

The fact that the combined market value of just three pharmaceutical companies is nearly one trillion US dollars shows what a behemoth this is.

Although Li Shanze had no intention of killing this vampire for the benefit of the American people, the moment he chose to confront Archibald Drummond and the plague spreader Suffolk Reese, Li Shanze was mentally prepared for a head-on collision with the entire behemoth.

Although Li Shanze believed that things would not develop to that point, he still tried to be lenient with the enemy - in fact, facing three multinational pharmaceutical companies that could mobilize countless resources at once was already troublesome and dangerous enough.

So, yes, time is of course pressing.

Therefore, Li Shanze was not simply passively waiting for the reactions of the three pharmaceutical companies at the center of the storm, but was also taking the initiative.

Therefore, Li Shanze once again distributed Theodore Lancaster's "personal letter" to the desks of major media outlets.

However, just as Li Shanze had expected, after the letter was sent, the entire media industry fell into silence and collective speechlessness.

There were no exclamations on the front page headlines, no rolling reports on TV news, and even a few words on the Internet did not cause any ripples.

Those "personal letters" that should have caused a huge wave sank silently like a stone thrown into a bottomless abyss without even a splash of water.

But inside those glamorous TV stations and newspapers, a silent war is raging.

In an office of a national television station, the atmosphere was so heavy that it seemed as if water could drip out.

The news director slammed the table, his face flushed red. He pointed at the copy of the letter, spit flying everywhere. "Why are you stopping me from broadcasting this? If we dare to be the first to report it, this will become an exclusive! This is explosive news! It's concrete evidence of human experiments!"

"Just think about it, how much viewership and clicks this will generate? As long as we're the first to release it, we'll be miles ahead of those established media outlets! We'll hopefully soar to the top thanks to this buzz!"

His eyes gleamed with enthusiasm for news value and commercial interests.

However, the head of the legal department sitting across from him had a sullen face, veins bulging on his forehead, and spoke in an angry voice: "Ratings? Do you still want to live?!"

"What do you think this is? This is a declaration of war on the entire pharmaceutical complex! Do you know how much money they spend in Washington every year? Do you know how much they spend on advertising here every year? Do you believe they can make our stock price plummet to zero?!"

He stood up suddenly, pointed at the director's nose, and practically shouted, "This isn't a ratings issue at all! This is the life and death of our entire TV station! This is all our jobs! Even... our lives!"

"Are we just going to watch this crime happen and not dare to report it? Where are our journalistic ethics?!" The director retorted unyieldingly.

Of course, what he really wanted to say was, "Are we just going to sit there and watch this great opportunity slip away?"

"Morality?" the treasurer said disdainfully, as if the word came out of his nose, as if he had heard a funny joke.

"What do you think those pharmaceutical giants are? Charities, Nightingale, or the Virgin Mary?"

"They will use lawsuits to bring you down, public opinion to discredit you, and capital to crush you! They will let you know what true bloodless killing is!"

"We journalists are never afraid of violence!"

"Stop talking nonsense. I've already leaked the information to the pharmaceutical companies."

"What? You—"

Just when the two sides were arguing and the situation was tense, the office door was gently pushed open.

The head of the advertising department, a middle-aged man with a chubby figure and a greasy smile on his face, walked in cautiously.

He seemed unaware of the tension in the room, or perhaps he simply didn't care.

He held a document in his hand and had an expression of irrepressible excitement on his face.

"Hey, everyone, good news!" He grinned, revealing a mouthful of coffee-stained teeth.

"I just received a notification that those pharmaceutical companies... the ones we've been talking to recently, Merck, Johnson & Johnson, and Novartis, have decided to increase their advertising! And it's a big deal! It's several times more than we expected!"

He handed the document to the financial director and glanced at the news director with a tacit shrewd look in his eyes.

The financial director took the document, glanced at the numbers on it, and his tense expression instantly relaxed, revealing obvious satisfaction.

He looked at the news director with a look of triumph that said, "See, I told you so."

He flicked the document with his fingers. "Excellent! This year is off to a great start. We've already achieved almost half a year's worth of targets in January. I believe everyone will receive a generous bonus at the end of this year, probably several times what we received last year."

As the boss's confidant, the financial director naturally made the promise.

The news director, who had wanted to fight for it, shut up tactfully.

When the words "increased several times" entered his ears, his eyes, which were shining with "journalistic ethics", were instantly replaced by another more dazzling light - the green light of US dollars.

He quickly calculated in his mind how much profit this huge advertising fee could bring to the TV station and how much generous year-end bonus it could bring to himself.

His face, still showing a hint of reluctance, transformed from "righteous" to "responsibility-first" in just a few seconds.

He cleared his throat, and the excitement just now seemed to have never existed.

"Ahem... Well, in that case..."

The news director's tone became a little vague. He picked up the "handwritten letter" on the table, flipped through two pages carelessly, and then threw it aside casually, as if it was just an insignificant piece of waste paper.

"This letter from Theodore Lancaster... indeed, we cannot rashly report on something that has not been verified. After all, journalistic rigor is paramount."

"Not to mention that we can't confirm whether this letter is handwritten or not. Even if it is handwritten, how much authenticity can a kidnapper's words have?"

The news director looked at the finance director and forced a slightly stiff smile. "You're right. We can't joke about the future of the entire TV station. This kind of thing still requires a longer investigation and verification."

He even added, his tone full of social responsibility: "We are a responsible media outlet. We can't publish false information just to attract attention, right?"

The legal director and the advertising director exchanged glances, both seeing the same mockery and understanding in each other's eyes.

They knew that the news director had been completely bribed by the several times higher bonus, and the so-called "journalistic ethics" and "rigor" were just a fig leaf for his compromise - or to be more precise, the whore was just putting up a virtuous arch in order to sell at a higher price.

The "personal letter" from Theodore Lancaster was silently swept into the trash can under the temptation of money.

Similar conversations are repeated within major media outlets, with undercurrents surging beneath the surface.

However, under the guidance of some people with ulterior motives, the storm of public opinion has begun to shift towards the kidnapping case of Alex Drummond.

Most of the time, media discipline in America is not maintained by threats of violence, but more by bribery.

Now that a community of interests has been formed, people will naturally know when to remain silent.

In this sense, the power of the US dollar is indeed far-reaching.

Author's words: Thanks to Qianxiao Anran and Xiaopingguo112633 for their recommendation votes

308 Counterattack

Although Theodore Lancaster's "personal letter" was not visible to the public, some people were still furious about it.

The angry person was none other than Marco Giuseppe Romano, who was given full authority to handle public relations work.

In fact, Marco Giuseppe Romano was originally in a very good mood.

Theodore Lancaster was destroying his own future by doing this, and Vikram Chandrasekhar would find it difficult to gain the approval of the majority of the Seething Sages because of his racial issues.

Marco Giuseppe Romano felt that the day when he would unify the Medicine Valley, lead the School of Pharmacy to challenge the School of Finance in Chicago, and completely establish his position as the leader of the Boiling Sages was not far away.

This good mood made Romano feel good even under high pressure, and he was smiling all day long - this behavior was regarded as "the style of a great general" by Johnson's colleagues and subordinates, and the evaluation of Romano was raised to a higher level.

This put Romano in a better mood.

This good mood lasted until Romano saw Theodore Lancaster's "confession letter" that distorted right and wrong.

The fat Italian guy had completely lost his usual carefree appearance and the cold and shrewd calculations in his heart.

His fat body was nestled in the luxurious yet cramped custom-made chair in his high-end apartment, and his face was even gloomier than the dead gray Italian wall behind him.

"Theodore... Theodore Lancaster!" The name was like a hot iron, burning deep in his throat and forcing out a roar mixed with an accent, almost whimpering.

His well-kept fingers, adorned with large rings, clutched a grainy copy of a news summary—the very same handwritten letter the media had so purportedly described as "nonexistent" but powerful. The edges of the paper were nearly ripped apart by his uncontrolled finger pressure.

"The experiment...wasn't it you, Theodore Lancaster, the racist bastard, who was in charge of this experiment? Now you're pretending to be a good guy for no apparent reason?"

"And you're putting all the responsibility on us?"

The glaring accusations almost made Romano lose his composure, especially since the letter pointed the finger directly at Romano and Chandrasekhar, while clearing Theodore Lancaster himself.

"That's the fucking British, doing all this rotten shit and thinking they're saving the world and acting like the Virgin Mary!"

He cursed loudly.

Romano's heavy breathing was like a broken bellows.

Romano was disgusted by the hypocrisy of Theodore Lancaster in his letter.

In particular, this letter is full of all kinds of plausible lies that are not entirely true - after all, the content of the letter comes from Li Shanze's imagination, and the "amnesiac" Theodore Lancaster can't remember anything - it is naturally inconsistent with reality.

"Theodore Lancaster, this lunatic who treats humans as alchemical material, who's not at all as professional as Vikram Chandrasekhar, who has absolutely no medical knowledge, who enjoys concocting fake medicines and is obsessed with human experiments, who doesn't trust anyone because of his excessive pretense... is actually filming a real-life documentary about the 'White Paladin'?"

Romano even laughed at the ridiculous letter.

If Romano had been asked to name the worst person he had ever met, Theodore Lancaster would have been the obvious choice.

In Romano's opinion, this Theodore Lancaster was a scumbag in a well-dressed manner.

Even though Romano had manipulated the media to cover up countless evil deeds, whenever he saw Theodore Lancaster, an Englishman, he would always feel comforted - it was definitely not me who should go to hell.

Now such a scumbag suddenly wants to clean himself up and get away with it, and even wants to make himself look like a white lotus in his confession letter?

"Innocent lambs, damn innocent lambs!"

Romano slammed the "News Summary" to the floor. The paper bounced a few times on the luxurious carpet and finally unfolded weakly.

"If Theodore Lancaster were an innocent lamb, then hell would be full of saints!"

"That madman who used living people as petri dishes and souls as fuel, that pervert who used screams as background music in his laboratory, is now going to play the victim? The fucking victim?!"

His voice became hoarse with anger, and his fat body trembled in the chair, as if he would shatter the specially made chair at any time.

He thought of Theodore Lancaster's disgusting "experiments", those distorted products he called "works of art", those "materials" that were dismembered alive, transformed, and injected with various unknown drugs.

In Romano's opinion, Chandrasekhar at least has the ruthlessness and dedication to "professionalism" of a scientist - or a wizard - while Theodore Lancaster is simply a madman who enjoys torture, a devil in human skin.

"He's putting all the blame on us? What does he think I am? A scapegoat? Damn it, I've cleaned up so many messes for him, covered up so many shady things, and now he wants to kick me out?!"

Romano's eyes were bloodshot, and he felt a sharp pain of betrayal that was more unbearable than any physical pain.

It's true that he abandoned his conscience for this complex and these dirty deals, but now he's being bitten back by an even dirtier bastard?

Romano could accept almost anybody's insults without batting an eyelid, except for Theodore Lancaster!

boom!

He hurled a crystal ashtray, heavy as a fortress, towards the wine cabinet at the back of the room. The expensive red wine bottle shattered, its bloody sheen mixed with shards of glass, spreading across the floor like a shattered corpse.

"Not only did you flatter yourself in your confession letter, but you also tried to whitewash those messy colleagues who aren't even close to being clean?"

"Merck, Eli Lilly, AbbVie, Bristol-Myers Squibb... How clean are they? These—"

At this point, Romano's scolding stopped abruptly.

His eyes, bloodshot with anger, suddenly froze and his pupils contracted sharply.

His fat body was stiff in the chair, and his heavy breathing seemed to be strangled, leaving only a short, choked "uh" sound in his throat.

A cold and vicious thought, like a poisonous snake, instantly wrapped around his heart.

"Wait," he muttered, his voice horribly low and eerie, with a tone he had never heard before. "Fuck...this isn't right."

He suddenly struggled to stand up from the chair. His fat body looked particularly clumsy in the narrow space, but it also brought a heart-pounding sense of oppression.

He no longer roared, but paced back and forth in the room like an enraged beast, each step carrying a heavy muffled sound.

"Why these companies? Why did they point the finger at me and Chandrasekhar, while 'accidentally' whitewashing several others?"

He suddenly stopped, turned around, and stared at the unpublished news summary that he had thrown on the ground, as if the stack of papers contained some secret that he had never noticed before.

His expression became more focused than ever before.

He waved his hand seemingly casually, and the stack of news summaries on the ground flew into his hands obediently, just like his pet.

"Damn it, this nonsense is so carefully chosen!" A twisted, almost crazy smile appeared on Romano's face, and that smile was full of anger at being fooled.

"I understand, this is a conspiracy! A complete political conspiracy!" Romano's smile became more and more twisted, and his eyes showed an all-seeing enlightenment.

"Do you think you can bring me down like this? Do you think you can trample me under your feet by joining forces with those bastards?!" Romano's fist slammed hard on the window frame, making a dull sound.

"I'll show you what happens if you anger Marco Giuseppe Romano! Don't even think about getting away with it, you bastard!"

“Rome wasn’t built in a day, but it only takes a coward with a pen to destroy a man!”

He stopped roaring and fell into an unnerving calm.

Romano's eyes flashed sinisterly as he picked up the phone and gave a command in a low, raspy voice.