Morality and Money

"Get the hell out of my way!" Beichen cursed at Su Ziyang, who was blocking his way.

"Let's talk this out! Master is so old, how could you hit him!" Su Ziyang was also very angry.

"Young man, this is none of your business. Take your things and leave tomorrow!" The Lao Pang gently nudged Su Ziyang's waist and gave Su Ziyang a wink.

Seeing the Lao Pang's expression, Su Ziyang ignored Lao Pang words and instead tightly protected Lao Pang behind him.

"Young man, get up! Let this kid talk to me directly!" Lao Pang pulled Su Ziyang again, but Su Ziyang remained standing straight in front of Lao Pang without moving an inch.

"You fucking get up!" Beichen saw Su Ziyang standing motionless in front of the Lao Pang and reached out to grab Su Ziyang by the collar.

Although Su Ziyang was not proficient in Baguazhang, he at least had a basic understanding of it!

Su Ziyang stepped to the left front, turned his waist and hid next to Beichen, pushing Beichen's side with both palms.

Beichen was pushed so hard that he stumbled back several steps, looking at Su Ziyang with a shocked expression. "I underestimated you. You're not very big, but you know a bit of martial arts!"

"Brother Chen!" Even so, Su Ziyang still respectfully addressed Beichen as "Brother Chen." "Can't we talk things out? Why do you have to resort to violence?"

"Where did you come from? If you hadn't come, the old man would have passed on the secret recipe to me long ago! I bet you've been causing trouble here too! What's the point of talking to you!"

As soon as Beichen finished speaking, he immediately lunged forward again. Su Ziyang dared not use acupoint striking techniques and could only barely dodge Beichen's attacks by relying on Baguazhang.

"Smack!" Beichen threw a punch that grazed Su Ziyang's nose and hit the wall, shattering the corner of the wall instantly!

Su Ziyang was secretly alarmed. If that punch landed on him, his brains would be splattered out.

"Enough! Stop hitting him!" Lao Pang roared angrily at the wall that Beichen had damaged.

Upon hearing this, Beichen didn't continue chasing after Su Ziyang. Su Ziyang also breathed a sigh of relief, his heart still pounding.

"You give me the secret formula, and I'll give it to Manager Li at the pharmaceutical company! In the end, you'll benefit, and Bian Mei will too! I didn't want things to come to this, you forced me into this!"

Beichen stared coldly at the Lao Pang.

The Lao Pang shook his head again. "I don't have a secret recipe. None!"

"Damn! You don't need to pretend, I'll just go look in your room myself. If there's no secret recipe, I'll just find all your medicinal herbs and give them to these two!"

After Beichen finished speaking, he turned back to look at the two men in suits who were watching the commotion. "Manager Li, if I find all the ingredients for this secret recipe, does that mean I've found the whole recipe? Can you identify these ingredients?"

Manager Li nodded. "Sure! If you can find the medicinal herbs in this house, and our experiments show they are effective, the contract will still stand!"

"Good!"

Beichen said "Okay" and walked towards the backyard. Su Ziyang turned to stop Beichen, but was grabbed by the Lao Pang.

"Dare to stop me, I'll beat you to death!" Beichen pointed at Su Ziyang's nose and strode into the courtyard.

Su Ziyang was held tightly by the Lao Pang's arm, unable to move or speak, and could only frown as he watched Beichen's back.

"You!" Lao Pang didn't stop Beichen, but turned around and pointed at Manager Li standing at the door, his voice trembling, "You! How many times have you come here this year! Do you want to break our family apart?! Other people are fighting in their homes, and you just stand here watching the show, are you even human?"

Manager Li sneered as he watched the Lao Pang criticize him, "Uncle Pang, your feudalistic thinking is outdated. I think your son-in-law is right. What's the use of clinging to the secret recipe? Look at your shabby barbershop, the plaster is peeling off the walls!"

"What does it matter to you if my house collapses! Get out of here!" The Lao Pang directly ordered them to leave.

"Hehe!" Manager Li chuckled again. "We can't control collapsed houses, but we can rebuild your collapsed house! And right now, we're not talking to you. We're talking to Mr. Beichen; he'll give us the secret formula, and it'll be the same!"

Lao Pang was about to shoo the two away again, but Manager Li waved his hand at Lao Pang, took out a stack of contracts from his bag, and said, "Uncle Pang, if you want to give us the secret formula, you can sign the contract yourself!"

"No!" The Lao Pang raised an eyebrow and shoved Manager Li. "Get out of here! I'm calling the police if you don't leave!"

Manager Li was nudged, but he didn't seem to mind and chuckled, "Uncle Pang, don't be in such a hurry. Let me finish what I have to say. Aren't you wondering why your good son-in-law would rather hit you than give you the secret recipe?"

Upon hearing this, Lao Pang stopped chasing the two men away and instead wanted to hear what Manager Li had to say.

"Once this contract is signed, we'll pay you 20 million upfront! I mean immediately! Furthermore, you'll hold 0.01% of our pharmaceutical group's shares. You might be getting old and not fully understand what that 0.01% means, but it means that once your formula is mass-produced in our group, you'll receive at least one million in dividends every year! Now you know why Beichen was willing to turn against you just to get the formula!"

Manager Li handed the contract to Lao Pang, but Lao Pang didn't even look at it and threw it directly into the sink where he usually washed customers' hair. The dirty water in the sink hadn't been drained properly, and the contract instantly got soaked.

"You!" The man next to Manager Li pointed at the Lao Pang and was about to step forward, but Manager Li stopped him.

"It's okay, we can just print another copy later! Don't worry!"

"Get out!" the Lao Pang pointed to the door.

"It's alright, let's wait in the car!" Manager Li smiled, pulled the person next to him, turned around, and got into the car.

After chasing the two men out, the Lao Pang plopped down in a chair, panting heavily, clearly furious.

"Young man!" The Lao Pang stared at Su Ziyang, who was standing silently to the side. "You were tempted by that money too!?"

Su Ziyang shook his head and remained silent.

"You still won't admit it? Your eyes widened when that guy said he could give you twenty million right away! You were tempted, weren't you? Well, that's right, it is indeed too much money!"

The first few sentences Lao Pang spoke were about Su Ziyang, but his last sentence was spoken in a very low voice, almost as if he were comforting himself.

"Master, I was just spacing out because I was calculating their group's market value, trying to see how much their company is worth. I wonder how big the group really is. I don't really have a concept of money; enough is enough. Too much is a burden!"

Su Ziyang's words always made Lao Pang's eyes light up.

"Young man, take the prescription and leave tomorrow. Never come back, they're all wolf cubs!"

The two exchanged only a few words before Beichen returned with several bags in his hands.

He glanced at the two people sitting in the barbershop without saying a word, and walked straight into Manager Li's car.

The three men were talking in the car, while Su Ziyang and Lao Pang watched quietly from inside the house.

A short while later, Beichen got out of the car, fuming.

"Tell me! What exactly is the secret formula!" Beichen Chenpeng shouted, throwing the package in his hand to the ground, scattering the medicinal powder all over the floor.

"I told you, I don't know!" Lao Pang had left to say was "I don't know."

"Bian Juncheng, you really treat me like a thief, huh? Knowing I wanted the secret formula, you actually ground the herbs drying in your yard into powder beforehand! You knew all along that even with modern technology, the powdered herbs wouldn't be able to identify what kind of Chinese medicine they were, right?"

Only after hearing Beichen's explanation did Su Ziyang finally understand why Old Lao Pang hadn't eaten lunch that day, exploiting him like a capitalist by grinding all the medicine into powder.

It turns out that Lao Pang had already anticipated that Beichen would use these medicinal herbs to piece together the secret formula.

"Little Beichen, you've been with me for twenty years. I can tell what kind of nonsense you're going to spout the moment you open your mouth! Even so, you should have stolen seven or eight tenths of the medicine from the secret formula, right?! The voice recorder you left in my room must have recorded some of the medicine too! You think I don't know any of this! You're not just like a thief, you are a thief!!!"

Lao Pang's blood rushed to his head, and his face turned bright red.

"You..."

Beichen was speechless for a moment.

Su Ziyang suddenly remembered what Lao Pang had told him a few days ago when he was grinding medicine, "Listen more, observe more, and don't speak!"

The reason they didn't speak while making the medicine wasn't because of any taboo. It was to prevent Beichen from recording and eavesdropping...

Seeing that he couldn't get the secret formula, Beichen's tone suddenly softened. "Master, just give me the formula. If you don't want a good life, you still have Meimei! Don't you want her to have a good life too? Meimei loves dressing up so much, but she can't bear to buy herself a few new clothes. You just watch the two of us live in a shabby cheap rental, and watch Meimei work in a massage parlor, earning only 50 yuan an hour for a massage!?"

"Our ancestors had their own rules. I told you about them when you were an apprentice. Our Bian family has a long and distinguished tradition!"

Even though Su Ziyang became Lao Pang Bian Juncheng's personal disciple, Lao Pang never told Su Ziyang about his family's tradition of martial arts. Su Ziyang always thought that this was Lao Pang family's tradition passed down through generations.

Only after the Lao Pang said that did Su Ziyang understand what Bian Clan Bonesetting was all about.

Lao Pang's ancestors were natives of this place, and they were always uneducated farmers. One year, during a disaster, Bian Juncheng's great-grandfather rescued a ragged old Daoist priest by the roadside.

The old Daoist priest was starving and almost died. Although everyone was extremely poor at the time, the Bian family, who lived frugally, still had some food stored up. So they cooked some food for the old Daoist priest.

As everyone knows, in times of famine, having a bite to eat is enough to keep you from starving. So a hot meal saved the old Daoist priest.

The following spring, the harvest was good, and everyone started farming again. Although the old Daoist priest was old, he was incredibly strong and helped the Bian family with their work for almost a year.

When autumn came and it was time to harvest the grain, the old Daoist priest helped with the harvest and was about to leave. Before leaving, he taught Lao Pang's great-grandfather bone-setting massage techniques, several secret recipes, and the Thousand Gold Art.

However, the old Daoist priest did not leave his name, but only instructed the Lao Pang's great-grandfather not to use this method for profit, but only to use it to help people and save lives.

"This is the rule of our Bian family for generations! Me, my father, my grandfather, my great-grandfather! Four generations! Not a single one of us has ever made a fortune using this formula! We've never even considered it! Over the years, there have been people who came to buy the formula! They weren't the first batch! But we haven't sold it to them! This isn't about money, it's about morality! It's about the principles of medicine!!!"

Lao Pang spoke with force and conviction, every word resonating powerfully!

Su Ziyang was moved, but Beichen felt nothing; his brows furrowed even more. "I've told you, your feudal and superstitious ideas are outdated! How can you, you old fogey, not understand! Have you ever seen twenty million? Do you know how high and thick that money would be if stacked up?! Meimei respects you and doesn't dare say these things, so I'll say them for her! The secret formula, I must get it today!"

"Meimei!??" The Lao Pang's face turned even redder. "Meimei thinks so too???"

"You don't believe me? Fine. Just you wait!"

As he spoke, Beichen took out his phone and dialed Bian Mei's number. "Hey! Come over here. You've already talked to your dad, but the old man won't listen. Come over, you'll see when you get here!"

After saying that, Beichen hung up the phone and sat down in a chair.

The atmosphere remained tense for twenty minutes before the fat woman Su Ziyang had met before entered the room, dressed the same as that day, looking somewhat fashionable.

When Bian Mei actually appeared, the Lao Pang's face turned from red to white.

"You..."

"Sigh!" Bian Mei sighed first. "Dad, just listen to Beichen and hand over the secret recipe. It's useless for you to keep it, Dad! I can't have children because we owe Beichen. What will we do if we run out of money without children? We can't keep shaving his head and giving him massages for the rest of our lives!"

Bian Mei finished speaking, the Lao Pang's body went limp like a noodle and he slumped into the barber's chair with a thud. "You two are in cahoots! You both think the same thing! I... I..."

"Dad! Don't be angry. Don't you miss others? Don't you miss me? You said you'd take good care of me when Mom was dying!" Bian Mei walked to Lao Pang's side, tears streaming down her face, and said, "Dad, please stop arguing, just give us the secret recipe! Please, Dad!"

The Lao Pang pointed tremblingly at his daughter, then at Su Ziyang: "This recipe doesn't belong to the Bian family. It was taught to us by an unknown Daoist priest. Now, the recipe doesn't belong to the Bian family anymore; it belongs to the Su family. You... you should ask Ziyang! I... I passed the recipe on to him!"

As soon as the Lao Pang finished speaking, Beichen's blood-red eyes fixed on Su Ziyang like a wolf's. "Fuck you! I knew it was you who did this!"

After saying that, a barrage of punches, accompanied by a whooshing sound, swept towards Su Ziyang.

Su Ziyang dodged two of the three punches, but the last punch landed squarely on Su Ziyang shoulder. Su Ziyang felt a sharp pain and was sent flying.

When I tried to stand up, I found I couldn't lift my arms anymore.

That punch dislocated Su Ziyang's arm!

"No~ Don't hit him!!!" The Lao Pang sat motionless in his chair, his trembling voice trying to stop the crazed Beichen.

"Beichen!"

Bian Mei hugged Beichen from behind, who was about to pounce on her again, and Beichen stopped.

Then Bian Mei helped Su Ziyang up from the ground and said softly, "I still hope you can return our family's things to us!"