Dr. Gu Qinghe lifted the lid of a three-legged bronze decoction cauldron on the twenty-eighth-floor rooftop conservatory of Taichu Sanctuary Hospital, releasing a fragrant cloud of golden herbal steam into the morning air.
Around him, rows of cedar planter boxes held wild mountain angelica, purple polygonum, and five-leaf ginseng. Moist soil and clean rainwater perfumed the glass sanctuary high above the bustling city traffic.
Dr. Gu adjusted his silver-rimmed glasses, carefully stirring the golden broth with a polished willow scoop. Inside the cauldron simmered the three-hundred-year Changbai Wild King Ginseng alongside a Nine-Petal Jade Lotus Root that Lin Mo had quietly redeemed from the System Mall for fifty thousand Benevolence Merit Points. Mountain snow-lotus petals, wild saffron, and royal cordyceps completed the medicinal blend.
Twelve children from the pediatric oncology ward sat on woven bamboo benches nearby. They wore clean flannel pajamas, their pale faces turned toward the steaming cauldron with wide, curious eyes. Their parents stood behind them, their hands trembling with hope.
These twelve children had suffered from aplastic leukemia for months. Their families were honest rural laborers and sanitation workers who had exhausted their life savings on useless starch pills from corrupt clinics. Today, for the first time, genuine life-saving medicine was within their reach.
“The decoction is complete,” Dr. Gu announced softly.
Nurse Wang Meiling and three pediatric trauma nurses stepped forward with small porcelain cups. They ladled out the warm golden broth and handed a cup to each of the twelve children.
The children drank slowly, savoring the rich herbal sweetness.
Within minutes, an astonishing transformation occurred. The grayish pallor on their cheeks receded, replaced by a radiant, rosy warmth. The painful bone tremors that had plagued their limbs for months ceased entirely. The children sat up straighter, breathing deeply and easily without oxygen tubes.
Nurse Wang checked the portable blood analyzer with a handheld sensor.
“Hemoglobin counts rising rapidly,” Nurse Wang whispered, her eyes filling with tears. “Platelets increasing by four hundred percent! Their bone marrow stem cells are active and generating healthy red cells! Dr. Gu, the marrow failure has completely reversed!”
The twelve sets of parents broke into quiet, joyous weeping. They embraced their children, whispering prayers of gratitude into their hair. Several fathers bowed repeatedly toward Dr. Gu and Lin Mo.
“Every child is cured,” Dr. Gu said, letting out a long, trembling breath of relief. “Three days of light rest, and they can all return to school and play under the sun.”
Sitting on a garden stool near the entrance, Little Guo’er watched the other children smile. The six-year-old girl wore a clean yellow dress and carried her favorite red watering can.
Beside her, Grandma Chen bustled around with a heavy bamboo basket. She handed out bowls of hot shrimp wontons and freshly steamed buns to the grateful parents.
“Eat while it’s hot,” Grandma Chen urged warmly, wiping her apron. “You’ve stayed awake for three nights by those hospital beds. A good mother needs strong broth in her belly.”
Grandma Chen walked over to Lin Mo, handing him a bowl of wontons with an extra scoop of shrimp.
“Xiao Mo,” Grandma Chen said softly, looking out over the city skyline. “Just a few days ago, I was boiling soup in a leaky alley basement, worrying about forty yuan of rent. Now look at where we are. You’ve given all these children their lives back.”
“Grandma Chen, strictly speaking, your shrimp wontons deserve seventy percent of the credit,” Lin Mo smiled faintly. “Good broth keeps the spirit grounded.”
Dr. Gu looked down at the bronze cauldron. A small spoonful of concentrated golden herbal essence remained at the bottom.
“Come here, Little Guo’er,” Dr. Gu smiled warmly, beckoning to the little girl. “You have been watering my herbs all morning. Drink this spoonful of sweet honey ginseng. It will protect your chest from the winter chill.”
Little Guo’er skipped over, took the small silver spoon from Dr. Gu’s hand, and swallowed the warm golden liquid.
“It tastes like wild mountain pears and clover,” Little Guo’er giggled, her dark eyes sparkling with innocent delight.
She picked up her little red watering can and walked over to a cedar planter box filled with fragile, yellow-leafed winter ferns.
Lin Mo stood quietly near the glass archway, watching with a calm, observant eye.
As Little Guo’er tipped her red watering can, clear drops of water splashed across the soil.
At that exact second, the air above the rooftop garden grew suddenly warm and fragrant.
A faint, celestial chime rang out in Lin Mo’s consciousness. His Pure-Heart Eye flared with brilliant golden light.
Behind Little Guo’er’s small back, the morning light bent into a luminous halo. A translucent golden lotus flower, measuring three feet across, manifested in the air. The lotus petals were carved from pure spiritual radiance, rotating slowly with profound ancient majesty.
A sweet, heavenly fragrance washed over the entire rooftop conservatory.
[DING! HEAVEN-DEFYING SPIRIT PHENOMENON DETECTED!]
[TARGET: LITTLE GUO'ER (GOODNESS: 100/100)!]
[INNATE PURE-LOTUS SPIRIT ROOT: FIRST STAGE AWAKENING COMPLETED!]
[AURA EFFECT: CELESTIAL LOTUS RADIANCE NURTURES ALL SURROUNDING MEDICINAL HERBS!]
[BOTANICAL VITALITY INCREASED BY 200%!]
Under the golden radiance of the lotus phantom, every plant in the conservatory began to grow at visible speed.
The yellowing winter ferns turned a lush, emerald green within five seconds. The five-leaf wild ginseng sprouted deep crimson berries. The purple polygonum roots swelled, cracking the surface of the soil with vibrant life.
Dr. Gu Qinghe dropped his wooden stirring ladle onto the flagstones. He stared at the golden lotus hovering above Little Guo’er, his breath catching in his throat.
“The... the Golden Lotus of Pure Vitality...” Dr. Gu stammered, his scholarly voice shaking with utter reverence. “I thought it was only an ancient legend from the Northern Song medical treatises! An innate soul so pure that heaven grants her the spirit root of life itself!”
The golden lotus phantom hovered for three seconds before softly dissolving into a shower of warm golden motes that sank into Little Guo’er’s skin.
Little Guo’er turned around, completely unaware of the miracle she had just caused. She patted a green fern leaf with her small hand.
“Look, Big Brother Lin Mo!” she called out happily. “The fern woke up! It is green now!”
Lin Mo walked over, knelt down, and patted her head gently. “You did a wonderful job watering them, Little Guo’er. You have the greenest thumbs in Jiangcheng.”
Little Guo’er beamed with pride and ran back to Grandma Chen to show her the blooming crimson berries.
At that moment, CEO Su Wan walked onto the rooftop terrace holding her tablet. Her steps were brisk and energized.
“Chairman Lin,” Su Wan said, handing him the screen. “It is nine-thirty in the morning. The stock exchange has opened.”
Lin Mo looked at the real-time financial market ticker.
On the board, the stock of Zhao Pharmaceutical Group (Ticker: 002849) had flashed a solid, blood-red wall of sell orders the millisecond trading began:
[ZHAO PHARMACEUTICAL GROUP (002849)]
[OPENING PRICE: -10.00% (LIMIT DOWN)]
[PENDING SELL ORDERS: 450,000,000 SHARES UNMATCHED]
[MARKET VALUE WIPEOUT: -¥4,200,000,000.00 RMB!]
“With Chairman Zhao Dehai hospitalized and Zhao Kai served with an emergency regulatory freeze for charity fraud,” Su Wan reported with crisp precision, “every institutional bank has frozen their revolving credit lines. The state securities regulator has dispatched a formal forensic audit team to their headquarters.”
“A company built on fake starch and stolen wages collapses the moment sunlight touches it,” Lin Mo remarked in a dry, even tone. “Sell-offs are just natural economic sanitation.”
Right as Lin Mo finished speaking, the System’s passive healing notification chimed in his mind:
[DING! TAICHU SANCTUARY PASSIVE HEALING STREAM MORNING BATCH COMPLETE!]
[DISCHARGED SUBSIDIZED CHARITY PATIENTS: 40 CITIZENS (GOODNESS: 80–94/100)!]
[TOTAL CHARITY MEDICAL SUBSIDY: ¥5,000,000.00 RMB!]
[AUTOMATIC 100x PURE-HEART PASSIVE REBATE TRIGGERED: +¥500,000,000.00 RMB!]
[PERSONAL VAULT BALANCE: ¥45,495,680,000.50 RMB!]
[BENEVOLENCE MERIT POINTS: +500,000 BMP (TOTAL: 47,600,528 BMP)!]
[GOOD PEOPLE NETWORK EXPANDED: 910 -> 950 MEMBERS!]
Lin Mo checked his personal black-gold account balance. Forty-five point four nine billion yuan. The automated passive stream from Taichu Sanctuary Hospital was now generating hundreds of millions of yuan every single morning.
The hospital was running smoothly, Grandma Chen and Little Guo’er were safe and flourishing, and the crooked Zhao monopoly was crumbling into dust.
Then, Lin Mo’s old delivery phone—the cheap, cracked Android device he still carried in his pocket—buzzed with an incoming call.
The caller ID displayed the name: Old Ma (Swift-Flash Courier).
Lin Mo remembered Old Ma clearly. A forty-two-year-old single father who raised a sickly five-year-old daughter alone. Whenever Lin Mo worked sixteen-hour delivery shifts in freezing winter rain, Old Ma had always shared his hot steamed mantou and offered dry gloves.
The delivery industry in Jiangcheng was notoriously brutal. Boss Wang operated Swift-Flash Station like a penal colony. He deducted fifty yuan for every three-minute delivery delay during heavy thunderstorms. He fined riders two hundred yuan if customer cardboard boxes had a single drop of rain.
Worst of all, Boss Wang forced all thirty couriers to sign predatory lease agreements for defective lithium batteries. The batteries overheated constantly, often failing mid-route. When riders complained, Boss Wang threatened to seize their security deposits and report them to commercial credit blacklists.
Old Ma had worked three hundred consecutive days without a single afternoon off. Every penny went toward his daughter’s cardiac medication.
Lin Mo answered the call. “Old Ma?”
From the speaker came the sounds of violent thuds, shattering glass, and loud, cruel laughter, followed by a man’s agonizing groan.
“Xiao... Xiao Mo...” Old Ma’s voice gasped through the receiver, choked with blood and tears. “Don’t come... don’t come near the station...”
Lin Mo’s eyes narrowed instantly, his Rank 1 Peak Martial senses sharpening to a razor edge. “Old Ma, what happened? Speak clearly.”
A harsh, grating voice snatched the phone on the other end.
It was Boss Wang, the crooked manager of Swift-Flash Delivery Station who had withheld Lin Mo’s forty-five hundred yuan in wages.
“Hey! Little Lin Mo!” Boss Wang sneered into the microphone, his voice dripping with greasy arrogance. “Your old delivery buddy Old Ma is lying on my station floor! He thought he could deliver medicine for his sick daughter instead of paying his monthly scooter lease fee! I just had my boys break two of his ribs!”
In the background, other couriers cried out in distress as heavy metal chains rattled violently.
“Listen to me, Lin Mo!” Boss Wang barked with a venomous laugh. “I know you’ve been strutting around town pretending to be a big boss!”
“If you want Old Ma to keep his hands, and if you want your thirty courier brothers to get their confiscated scooters back, bring fifty thousand yuan in cash to Swift-Flash Station right now! Otherwise, I will sell their delivery bikes to the scrap yard and throw Old Ma into the river!”
The call ended with a violent disconnect beep.
Lin Mo slowly lowered his phone.
The air around his body grew cold as winter ice. Faint ripples of golden martial qi shimmered across his shoulders, making the autumn leaves on the nearby planter box tremble in place.
Tie Niu stepped onto the rooftop, his military posture instantly hardening as he sensed Lin Mo’s lethal killing intent. “Chairman?”
“Boss Wang at Swift-Flash Station has broken Old Ma’s ribs,” Lin Mo said, his voice dropping to a calm, deadly whisper. “He is holding thirty of our delivery brothers hostage.”
Tie Niu’s scarred jaw clenched so tight the tendons bulged. “Chairman, how many Iron Guard vehicles should I mobilize?”
Lin Mo adjusted his coat collar, turning toward the elevator doors.
“All of them,” Lin Mo said, his footsteps echoing down the tiled hallway. “And prepare thirty emergency transport ambulances from our hospital fleet. It is time to settle my forty-five hundred yuan of unpaid wages once and for all.”
Behind him, Tie Niu saluted sharply, his radio barking tactical mobilization orders to every Iron Guard patrol squad across the city. The storm was coming to Swift-Flash Station.