Murphys Anon

Murphys Anon

Once Murphy accepted the gold coins, Locke left.

Murphy stayed where he was for a while, then finally put the gold coins away.

Gringotts was already suspicious of him, and exchanging money through Gringotts was no longer an option. Locke was, in truth, Murphy's only choice right now.

Besides, he actually rather liked the goblin.

He was far cuter than most of those stiff, stubborn wizards.

With the galleons in hand, he swept through several apothecaries in Diagon Alley again. After arranging future purchases with the shopkeepers, Murphy returned to Darkholm Manor.

After processing the herbs the same way as before, Murphy let out a breath of relief.

He had bought quite a lot of raw materials this time. Just crushing them and mixing them together had taken him no small amount of effort.

Still, the materials were not enough.

And personally making trip after trip to Diagon Alley to haul materials back was not a long-term solution.

Never mind how easily it could attract attention; just all the back-and-forth was annoying enough.

"I have to produce the raw materials myself. Grow my own dittany."

There were few wizards, and their demand for dittany was small. The scattered little patches they planted here and there around their homes were enough.

But that level of production was completely insignificant in the Muggle world.

In the end, the wizarding world was far too small. Even if he emptied it of all its dittany, it probably still would not be enough to meet the Muggles' demand for Essence of Dittany—or rather, what was now Cloud White Medicine.

"When I go back, I'll find a way to establish a dittany farm."

"But before the farm is set up, maybe I should hire someone to take over these odds and ends."

Buying raw materials, processing raw materials, and the like required no real skill, but they were time-consuming. He was already too lazy to do them himself.

But that person had to be a wizard.

After thinking for a moment, a round, freckled face popped into Murphy's mind.

You're the one, shit-refining warlock!

He wrote a letter.

Its contents were as follows:

"Dear Alex Wood:

The potion you brewed is a lump of shit!

Slug & Jiggers Apothecary is also a lump of shit!

If you keep staying in that shit heap run by those two dumbass brothers, it'll only ruin you.

Come work for me. I'll show you the future of potions."

Signed: Peter Parker.

Then he had an owl deliver the letter to Slug & Jiggers Apothecary. Murphy paid it no further mind and turned to find Patrick.

"I need you to help me obtain a piece of land."

Patrick had already grown used to Murphy appearing and disappearing unpredictably, and he did not question his sudden ideas either. He merely asked, "What for?"

"To grow medicinal herbs."

Patrick understood. "Raw materials for the White Medicine?"

Murphy nodded.

Patrick thought for a while, made a few phone calls, then returned and said to Murphy, "Land for scientific use is basically all wasteland, so it's easy to apply for. But land that can be used to grow medicinal herbs has to meet at least Grade 3 standards, and that isn't easy to get approved. Also, considering future expansion and confidentiality, open-air land isn't suitable for us."

Farmland in Britain was extremely scarce, so the difficulty of acquiring land was within Murphy's expectations. But he really had not considered the issue of confidentiality.

"What do you have in mind?"

"Have you heard of soilless cultivation, or vertical farming?"

Murphy truly had not thought in that direction. Mainly, he had no sense of what the Muggle world's technology was capable of at this point. "Can it already be done now?"

Patrick nodded. "The technology is already very mature. It's quite popular in countries where farmland is scarce. Last year, the Netherlands' soilless cultivation area had already reached two thousand five hundred hectares. Technically speaking, it shouldn't be a problem."

The concept of soilless cultivation, even vertical farming, was not new. What had hindered its development was still, in fact, the issue of cost.

Only in regions where farmland was extremely scarce, and the planting costs of soilless cultivation or vertical farming were lower than traditional natural farming, or when the agricultural products produced by this method were worth far more than naturally cultivated crops, did this mode of production have value.

But in Murphy's eyes, none of these limitations were a problem.

Cloud White Medicine's profit margin was far too high. Even if its cultivation costs were several times higher than ordinary methods, it would be entirely acceptable.

"That's a fantastic idea!"

Soilless cultivation directly freed agricultural production from land restrictions. Location would then be affected only by one factor: light. That greatly expanded the range of possible sites.

Moreover, compared with a vast stretch of open-air farmland, a sealed building was clearly much easier to manage, and better able to ensure secrecy.

Find some remote place, fence off a stretch of wasteland, put up a few buildings—if you didn't say so yourself, who would know what you were growing? For that matter, who would even know you were growing anything?

And this plan had another advantage.

Compared with traditional soil planting, soilless cultivation offered a huge increase in environmental control, which would help with research into and cultivation of the plant's properties.

The entire farm could be regarded as a dittany research base.

This happened to line up perfectly with Murphy's original idea of integrating production and research.

In the future, this model could also be extended to other potions.

"Then let's do it! Draw up a proposal, and we'll push it forward as soon as possible," Murphy said. "Right, has the second batch of orders arrived?"

"Even if you hadn't asked, I'd have had to report it to you," Patrick said, the smile on his face almost impossible to suppress. "Cloud White Medicine has exploded. Our orders are already lined up three months out!"

"So fast? The materials I got this time are probably only enough for five thousand bottles of stock solution..."

"It's fine," Patrick reassured him. "The production capacity I disclosed publicly is fifty thousand units a day. These materials of yours should be enough to hold us for a while."

Five thousand bottles of stock solution came to roughly fifteen liters. Converted into the various products that only needed two or three drops of stock solution each, that was about one and a half million units.

If they shipped at a rate of fifty thousand units a day, it would be enough to last a month.

Murphy let out a breath of relief. "You've got methods, all right. Hunger marketing—brilliant!"

"It's only a stopgap measure. The farm can't wait. I'll get it implemented as soon as possible."

"Right, you said just now that the White Medicine has gone viral. How so?"

Patrick picked up several newspapers and handed them to Murphy. "You'll know when you see."

Murphy glanced at them. They were all mainstream newspapers in the Muggle world: The Times, The Guardian, The Daily Telegraph, Financial Times, and so on.

Then he looked at the pages Patrick had deliberately folded open.

Miracle! The Magical Cloud White Medicine!

<A Miraculous Drug Appears Out of Nowhere; Experts Say It Will Change the World>

<Death Defeated Once Again: The Miraculous White Medicine!>

<A Divine Drug That Overturns Medical Understanding—What Kind of Company Is Umbrella?>

<Gold-Medal Salesman Strikes Again, This Time Ushering in a New Era!>

<Sold Out! Reservations Backed Up for Half a Year—What Is So Miraculous About Cloud White Medicine?>

<The Creator of the Miracle Drug: An Exclusive Interview with Patrick>

Murphy skimmed a few lines. Almost all of it was praise, and plenty of people in the medical world had issued statements full of shocked hyperbole. His mood immediately soared, his vanity greatly satisfied.

That was more like it. To Muggles, the effects of potions were an outright dimensional strike. This kind of reaction was only normal.

Unlike that bunch of wizards, who all looked as if they'd seen it a hundred times before. They made him too embarrassed to act overly surprised, lest he be treated like some country bumpkin. It had been stifling.

"By the way, Patrick, you didn't mention anything about me, did you?"

To avoid attracting the attention of wizards in the future once Umbrella Corporation's influence grew further, Murphy had used a fake name when registering it: "Murphys Anon."

All related information was false. As long as Patrick did not say anything, no one could find any information about Murphy through that name.

"No. It's just that this may cause misunderstandings outside and make them think I'm the company's actual controller."

"That's fine. That's exactly what I want."

With Patrick helping draw fire for him, he was more than happy to hide in the back and develop sneakily.

Develop quietly, stockpile grain, and delay proclaiming himself king. At the very least, now was still far from the time for him to stand at the front of the stage.

What he did not know, however, was that someone had already noticed him.

In a gloomy old mansion that Muggles could never reach, a man with long pale-gold hair put down the letter in his hand and frowned. After quite a while, he said into the darkness, "Bring Slug to see me. Now!"

Sunday release push—please keep reading, don't stockpile chapters, it'll die, it really will die...