Lin Mo descended the grand curved marble staircase with measured, unhurried steps.
Behind him, Commander Tie Niu and four veteran Iron Guards followed in lockstep. Their heavy combat boots produced a rhythmic, thunderous cadence that made the reporters and bystanders in the lobby instinctively part to the sides.
Down on the floor, Wang Cuihua was still writhing in her rented chrome wheelchair. Her purple velvet coat was splayed open, exposing a loud floral blouse underneath.
“Aiya! My chest is splitting open!” Wang Cuihua wailed, rolling her eyes toward the crystal chandelier as Lin Mo reached the bottom step. “Lin Mo, you ungrateful wretch! You ate our family’s dumplings for three whole years, and now you walk down the stairs like an emperor while I choke on cold marble!”
Beside her, Liu Yan turned her smartphone camera toward Lin Mo and leaned into the lens with an exaggerated pout.
“Look at him, viewers!” Liu Yan shouted into her livestream microphone, squeezing out two crocodile tears. “Taichu Hospital claims to be a sanctuary of charity, yet its chairman stands there watching my mother suffer!”
“If you want to prove your charity isn’t a corporate scam, Lin Mo, open your top-floor suite and pay my mother’s recovery settlement right now!” she demanded shrilly.
The crowd of forty reporters and hundreds of patients watched intently. Several camera lenses zoomed in on Lin Mo’s face.
Lin Mo did not look angry. In fact, a look of profound, deadpan sympathy appeared on his face.
“Auntie Wang,” Lin Mo said, his tone warm and deeply concerned. “I had no idea your heart was in such critical danger. Acute congestive coronary failure is a terrible affliction.”
Wang Cuihua sniffled loudly, clutching her chest with theatrical vigor. “You hear that, everyone? Even he admits I am critically ill! Where is my Presidential Suite? Where is my five hundred thousand yuan?”
“Right this way,” Lin Mo said, gesturing toward a gleaming, egg-shaped white pod stationed beside the primary intake reception.
The machine stood over eight feet tall, crafted from seamless white medical alloys. Pulsing emerald light flowed through its glass observation ring, and a wide biometric touch panel was mounted at the front.
This was the newly installed [Taichu Benevolence Triage & Morality Pod].
“What is that contraption?” Liu Yan asked suspiciously, lowering her selfie stick slightly. “Is this another cheap trick to delay treating my mother?”
“This is our hospital’s latest quantum-diagnostic triage pod,” Lin Mo explained in a serious, professional voice. “It was imported directly from Switzerland this morning. It detects arterial blockages, internal organ failure, and cellular inflammation within three seconds.”
Lin Mo stepped closer to Wang Cuihua’s wheelchair.
“Even better, Auntie Wang,” Lin Mo whispered in a conspiratorial tone loud enough for the reporters’ microphones to pick up. “This pod is linked directly to our Taichu Benevolence Endowment. Once it confirms a critical heart condition and an honest moral character, it automatically unlocks a free Presidential Suite, imported meals, and an instant cash grant of five hundred thousand yuan.”
Wang Cuihua’s eyes lit up like two incandescent lightbulbs. Her groaning stopped instantly.
“Five hundred thousand in cash?” Wang Cuihua asked, licking her dry lips. “Directly into my bank account? With no deductions?”
“Not a single fen of deduction,” Lin Mo assured her gravely. “All you have to do is place your right palm flat on that glowing sensor panel. Can you manage that, Auntie Wang, or are you too weak?”
“I can manage it! I can manage it!” Wang Cuihua yelled, tossing her floral blanket aside.
She shoved the wheelchair forward with her feet, rolled up to the diagnostic pod, and slammed her fleshy right hand onto the glowing blue scanner with all her might.
Liu Yan pointed her camera at the machine’s hundred-inch high-definition display mounted directly above the pod. “Watch closely, viewers! My mother is about to receive justice from this hypocrite!”
For two seconds, a soft emerald beam of light scanned Wang Cuihua from head to toe.
Then, the emerald light snapped off.
A violent, neon-red strobe erupted from the top of the pod. A deafening, hundred-and-twenty-decibel emergency siren shrieked through the atrium, echoing like a naval destroyer’s battle alarm:
[BEEP! BEEP! BEEP!]
[EMERGENCY DIAGNOSTIC SCAN COMPLETE!]
The massive hundred-inch 4K screen flashed bright crimson, projecting giant high-resolution cross-sectional body scans along with bold black letters:
[PATIENT: WANG CUIHUA (AGE: 51)]
[CARDIOVASCULAR STATUS: 100% ROBUST & NORMAL (RESTING HEART RATE: 68 BPM)]
[BLOOD PRESSURE: 118/76 MMHG (PERFECT ARTERIAL ELASTICITY)]
[GASTRIC CONTENTS DETECTED: THREE FULL BRAISED PORK KNUCKLES, TWO BOWLS OF SPICY NOODLES, AND HALF A ROAST DUCK, CONSUMED EXACTLY TWENTY-TWO MINUTES AGO AT LAO-WANG'S DINER!]
[ETHICAL INTEGRITY EVALUATION: 11/100 (SERIAL SHOPLIFTER, HABITUAL EXTORTIONIST, DOMESTIC BLACKMAILER)!]
[VERDICT: ZERO PATHOLOGY DETECTED — BLATANT MALICIOUS FRAUD!]
[PENALTY APPLIED: EMERGENCY TRAUMA FALSE-ALARM FEE: ¥50,000.00 RMB!]
The entire lobby fell into absolute, stunned silence.
Every single reporter stared at the screen. The high-definition 4K scan showed the three dense, partially digested pork knuckles sitting peacefully inside Wang Cuihua’s stomach, rendered in vivid three-dimensional color.
Lin Mo tilted his head, inspecting the screen with mild curiosity.
“Three braised pork knuckles and half a roast duck,” Lin Mo noted in a dry, even tone. “Auntie Wang, your congestive heart failure seems to possess an extraordinarily vigorous appetite.”
A junior cameraman burst into uncontrollable snorting laughter.
Within seconds, the entire lobby erupted into roaring laughter. Hundreds of waiting patients, nurses, and bystanders pointed at the giant screen, wiping tears of amusement from their faces.
“Three pork knuckles!” a man in the queue shouted. “She ate three pork knuckles twenty minutes ago and claimed her chest was splitting open!”
“Look at her moral score! Eleven out of a hundred!” an elderly woman cried. “Shoplifter and extortionist! She brought a livestream to blackmail a hospital!”
Liu Yan’s face turned from pale white to beet red, then to an ugly greenish-purple. She looked at her phone screen; the live chat was moving at blinding speed:
— “Hahahaha! Three pork knuckles! She’s as healthy as a prize-winning sow!” — “Look at the 3D stomach scan! The bones are still in there!” — “Unfollowed! Blackmailer family! Report her account to the fraud bureau!” — “False alarm fee of fifty thousand! Pay up, pork knuckle auntie!”
“No! This is broken! This machine is slandering me!” Wang Cuihua screeched.
At that moment, the diagnostic pod printed a formal red-stamped municipal citation. Tie Niu stepped forward, holding the fifty-thousand-yuan invoice directly in front of Wang Cuihua’s nose.
“Hospital disturbance citation,” Tie Niu said in a voice like rolling thunder. “Payment is due within sixty seconds. If unpaid, our security team will detain both parties and escort you to the municipal police precinct.”
Wang Cuihua looked at Tie Niu’s massive, scarred knuckles. She looked at the fifty-thousand-yuan penalty slip.
With a shriek that sounded like a startled pheasant, the ‘critically ill’ elderly woman leapt out of her wheelchair.
Her patent-leather shoes slammed against the marble tiles. Moving with the explosive acceleration of an Olympic sprinter, Wang Cuihua dashed across the lobby, shoved two reporters out of her way, and sprinted through the automatic glass doors into the street!
“Mom! Wait for me!” Liu Yan screamed in utter mortification.
She threw her selfie stick to the ground, hoisted her designer handbag over her shoulder, and ran after her mother in three-inch high heels. She stumbled down the exterior steps as the entire crowd clapped and cheered.
Lin Mo smiled faintly and turned to Tie Niu. “Commander Tie, donate that abandoned wheelchair to the outpatient desk. It seems Auntie Wang made a complete, instantaneous recovery.”
“Understood, Chairman,” Tie Niu chuckled, rolling the empty wheelchair away.
Throughout the rest of the afternoon, the newly established Taichu Sanctuary Hospital operated with clockwork efficiency.
Under the leadership of Dean Gu Qinghe and the hundred and twenty-three elite medical specialists, the hospital admitted cases in rapid succession. Dr. Zhang Wei performed two emergency craniotomies on construction workers who had suffered traumatic falls. Both surgeries were completely successful, with zero post-operative complications.
Nurse Wang Meiling and her team established the pediatric burn ward, dressing the wounds of six children with soothing herbal ointments. In the cardiac wing, Dr. Gu used his Nine-Turn Gold Needles to stabilize twelve elderly patients who had been suffering from chronic heart failure for years.
Thirty-five impoverished patients suffering from severe heart conditions, chronic kidney trauma, and fractured limbs were admitted, treated, and stabilized. Not a single person was charged a single fen for consultations, medications, or surgical rooms.
As the thirty-fifth patient—a retired sanitation worker whose severe cardiac arrhythmia had been cured with Dr. Gu’s gold needles—was wheeled out to a recovery ward, a crisp system notification chime echoed in Lin Mo’s mind:
[DING! TAICHU SANCTUARY PASSIVE HEALING STREAM ACTIVATED!]
[TODAY'S SUBSIDIZED CHARITY PATIENTS TREATED: 35 CITIZENS (GOODNESS: 80–93/100)!]
[TOTAL CHARITY MEDICAL OUTLAY: ¥3,000,000.00 RMB!]
[AUTOMATIC 100x PURE-HEART PASSIVE REBATE TRIGGERED: +¥300,000,000.00 RMB!]
[PERSONAL VAULT BALANCE: ¥31,140,680,000.50 RMB!]
[BENEVOLENCE MERIT POINTS: +300,000 BMP (TOTAL: 33,150,528 BMP)!]
[GOOD PEOPLE NETWORK EXPANDED: 745 -> 780 MEMBERS!]
Lin Mo checked his personal black-gold card balance on his phone. Thirty-one point one billion yuan. The passive stream had generated three hundred million yuan of pure, legal profit in a single afternoon simply by healing honest people.
“Saving thirty-five good people earns three hundred million,” Lin Mo mused to himself with a quiet grin. “This is far more lucrative than commercial real estate.”
Just as Lin Mo slipped his phone back into his coat, the heavy double doors of the executive corridor swung open.
Dean Gu Qinghe hurried into the room. His white coat was unbuttoned, his silver-rimmed glasses slightly askew, and his usually calm scholarly face was grim as granite.
Behind Dr. Gu, CEO Su Wan walked in with a dark expression, holding three signed cancellation notices stamped with red corporate seals.
“Chairman Lin,” Dr. Gu said, his voice tight with suppressed anger. “We have encountered a critical crisis.”
Lin Mo turned around calmly. “What happened, Dr. Gu?”
“The three major domestic medical device distributors—Huachang Diagnostics, Kangtai Medical, and Shenglong Instruments—have just canceled all our equipment delivery contracts,” Dr. Gu said, his hands clenching into fists. “They refuse to deliver our two three-Tesla superconducting MRI machines, four advanced CT scanners, and twelve Da Vinci surgical robotic consoles!”
Su Wan placed the documents on the desk. “They breached our agreement without warning, Chairman Lin. They are forfeiting their twenty-million-yuan deposit. Zhao Dehai personally visited their headquarters at noon and offered them five-year exclusive supply agreements with the Zhao alliance on the condition that they completely starve Taichu Hospital of diagnostic hardware.”
Dr. Gu took a deep breath, his knuckles whitening. “Without the superconducting MRI magnets and surgical robots, we cannot perform advanced neurosurgeries or delicate vascular bypasses on our seventy scheduled critical patients next week. Zhao Dehai has placed a complete hardware blockade around our hospital!”
“Where are those machines manufactured originally?” Lin Mo asked, his gaze fixed on Dr. Gu.
“The superconducting MRI components are produced in Zurich, Switzerland,” Dr. Gu answered. “The robotic surgical arms are precision-engineered in Munich, Germany. However, domestic maritime shipping and customs clearance take at least two months. Those three domestic distributors held the only pre-cleared stock in the southern province.”
“Two months is for standard container ships,” Lin Mo said, his lips curving into a cold, dry smile. “How long does a heavy cargo jet take to fly from Zurich to Jiangcheng?”
Su Wan looked up from her tablet, her eyes widening slightly. “A direct chartered Boeing 747 freighter takes eleven hours.”
Lin Mo picked up the cancellation notices. He glanced at the logos of the three domestic middlemen, then tossed the papers into the recycling bin with a cold, dismissive gesture.
“Zhao Dehai thinks three regional middlemen can strangle our throat,” Lin Mo said, his eyes gleaming with sharp resolve. “He forgot that medical equipment is manufactured in factories, not in the Zhao family’s backyard. Su Wan, prepare our flight clearances.”