Chapter 513: Auction House (Part One)
After making it back to Lin Chuxue’s apartment, Xu Cheng was taking a shower in the bathroom.
After getting out and changing into new clothes, he saw Lin Chuxue in front of the computer watching a video.
It was a soliloquy of a cancer patient.
Watching how engaged she was with the video, he asked, “What is this?”
“It’s a guy that had been posting his diary on his battle against cancer, and there are many people following him. You know as well, what the M Nation has the most is the hero of individualism, so many netizens have donated money and raised money for him. But, just as he felt there was no hope left with all the treatments available, someone apparently saved him. I checked and it led to a medical lab that also recently posted on twitter saying that they’ve developed a drug that can save cancer. Do you believe someone really conquered the cancer case?”
Xu Cheng said, “Why wouldn’t it be possible? Mankind will eventually reach that stage, sooner or later. Why are you suddenly concerned about this?”
Lin Chuxue pointed at the drug description posted by the lab and said, “I’m following because it says that this can also maintain youth. Which woman wouldn’t mind staying young for a few more years?”
Xu Cheng paused for a moment.
Oh right, even he forgot that aside from prolonging a person’s life through resuscitating the cells, this also indirectly maintained one’s youth.
If it can allow a woman’s beauty and adolescence at the age of 20 to be maintained for another 20 years, which woman wouldn’t be crazy over it?
It seemed like he underestimated the point.
“It’s fine, my wife will still be very beautiful when she’s older. Even if you get very old and can’t travel anywhere anymore, I will still be accompanying you and taking you to places on a wheelchair,” Xu Cheng smiled and said.
Lin Chuxue rolled her eyes at him. “Let’s not talk about old age, we will live until then first and then worry about it.”
Then, she got up and walked towards the washroom as she said, “Come with me to the auction, I want to see how much this medicine can go up to. If it’s too much then I won’t get it. Wait for me to take a bath first.”
Xu Cheng turned around to look at the computer. Wasn’t this the auction that he instructed Lin Dong to plan to test out the market’s demand for cancer treatment?
There was no way he would fully promote this technology first. Once that happens, the capitalists would utilize the antitrust law to force him to give up this technology, and that would be very dangerous. But since he already developed it, he obviously had to make money with it, right? Aside from occasionally treating some people that would be helpful to him in the future and accumulate favors, the other doses he makes would obviously be taken out to sell for some money.
Then, there was only one way left, and it was to promote the scarcity of this medicine and auction it, telling the public that the technology was still not mature and they could only make a few syringes worth of this medicine every few years. This would allow the wealthy men that were also afraid of death to fight over for it. On the other hand, aside from testing the marketing positioning price, Xu Cheng also wanted to see if there were people with ulterior motives for this drug.
Before Xu Cheng left, he had already left this in Lin Dong’s hands to prepare. So, he went to his first patient in the M Nation to be the inspirational icon, getting him to speak and endorse the lab.
The description and development of the drug had been broadly marketed for a while and the comprehensive medical report of this inspirational icon from his hospital also went viral online and caused a heated discussion.
In addition, the lab directly explained a series of difficult issues it was facing at the time in terms of ingredients, technology, and other obstacles. The implication was to tell the netizens that producing and pushing it on a mass scale was unlikely, at least in the near term.
Chapter 513: Auction House (Part Two)
But, that didn’t stop the wealthy tycoons around the world that had cancer or family members that had cancer from calling the lab for inquiries.
But, at this time, the lab directly announced to the outside world that the lab had been operating for five years, but there are only two doses of this medicine that were successful.
Five years, only two doses!
That means, among the millions of people affected by cancer worldwide, only two people could be saved as of right now. This still couldn’t put out the enthusiasm the wealthy cancer patients had for this newly-found hope. After all, in the past, no matter how much money you had, you couldn’t treat this illness if it had progressed to a later stage, and the only option was to endure the suffering and try to extend your life month by month, day by day!
Now, there was this glimmer of light of hope. For those wealthy tycoons that had been through hell to climb to the position they were at and finally got to enjoy the heaven-like luxurious lifestyle that money brought, almost no one wouldn’t be afraid of death. The richer they were, the more afraid they became!
With this point alone, Xu Cheng felt that even without much promotion, just with girls talking about it would get the word across and thus push the auction price to a sky high point!
At least before the full emergence of cancer treatment technology, this medicine was completely unique, there was no lacking buyers at all to push up the price!
“Little Dong, tonight’s the auction?” Xu Cheng called Lin Dong and asked.
“Yeah, Teacher, did you forget? I thought you were still in Huaxia so I didn’t bother you.”
“I’m already back in the M Nation, at my wife’s city,” Xu Cheng said. “Where’s the auction?”
“Uh…” Lin Dong felt a bit embarrassed to reply to Xu Cheng.
“What happened?” Xu Cheng asked.
“Teacher, those large auction houses don’t believe our product and are unwilling to host our item, so… we could only find an auction house that’s mid-tier in terms of scale and reputation. This might affect the desired price you have on the product…” Lin Dong bitterly smiled. “Teacher, I might’ve screwed up…”
“It’s normal. No one would easily believe that this can really cure cancer, and auction houses pay great attention to their reputation and don’t want to take the risk of hosting scammers. Besides, we don’t have any qualifications to prove the legitimacy of our medicine, we only have an inspirational icon, and not even he could cut it. Many people already knew that he was battling against cancer, and they are probably more willing to believe he won the battle himself than with the help of our medicine, which was absent for most of his treatment period. With only this information, it’s normal that those big auction houses don’t want to take the risk. Just send me the address of the auction house you picked, I will go over with my wife tonight.”
“Alright.” After Xu Cheng hung up the phone, Lin Dong hung up as well.
After showering and changing into a new set of clothes, Lin Chuxue came out. She was dressed very simply and casually, and putting on a jacket, the two of them went out for a long trip.
– New York –
– At the place with the densest population and strongest economy in M Nation –
There were many world-famous auction venues in this city, but only an unknown auction house with no popularity was willing to be the agent for Lin Dong’s medicine.
In addition, the person in charge of this company was facing bankruptcy and was already prepared to sell the auction house after this. Lin Dong’s product would probably be the last product he would auction before he moved on to another career.
The handling fee was 5%!
This was also the result after Lin Dong bargained with him for a long time and the auction house finally agreed to it.
Xu Cheng and Lin Chuxue arrived at the auction house, and to be honest, it was quite plain.
The facilities and amenities at this venue weren’t comfortable enough. There weren’t many waiters to take care of the guests, but that was fine because not many people came anyways. Normal auction houses had a couple of hundreds of seats in capacity, but this one only had less than a hundred, which was quite shabby.
The mentality of some of the guests was that they would rather be scammed than let go of a potential hope to be cured, so they still showed up. But, in the end, there were about 50 people that showed up in the venue that could host about 90 or so people.
After Xu Cheng and Lin Chuxue found a seat and sat down, they watched as the host entered the stage.