The Pill Inspection

There was a sign on the door on the right that said, "Storage Room". Arthur decided to check out the place first before going upstairs. In case of emergency, he realized it would be better if he familiarized himself with the layout of the building. It would be tremendous help should he need to do a quick exit.

The storage room was no bigger than a closet and the space was almost fully occupied by multi-tiered metal racks. There was literally only enough space left for Arthur to turn his body. There were three metal racks, one on each wall, minus the one that was the door.

On two of the racks, there were paper boxes that were labelled "Herbs". Arthur assumed these were the raw materials used to make the pills. Arthur felt bad for snooping through people's stuff without permission but to find out more information on this "doctor", Arthur had to do this.

He pulled out the box that was next to him and opened it. The young man frowned when he saw what was inside. Arthur was not a doctor or a Chinese Medicine practitioner so he could not recognize these herbs but one thing was for sure, they were not in good conditions.

The herbs were definitely not fresh, in fact, they were so dry and brittle that the leaves broke apart in Arthur's palm when he tried to pick one up. Arthur knew there was something called dried herbs but he really did not think these were them. The leaves were brown and flaky, some even had spots on them.

Just to confirm, Arthur picked one up and sniffed it with his nose. There was no medicinal smell or really any smell. These were simply dead grass.

'Perhaps these have been kept here too long that they've passed their expiry date.' Arthur tried to find an excuse for his discovery. He did not believe a "doctor" would be so heartless and immoral to sell people medicine made from dead herbs. He closed the box and pushed it back.

Arthur turned to the second rack and pulled out another box. The content of the box was pretty much similar to the first one. This not only confirmed the "doctor's" immorality but also the fact that they were carrying the Jade Rabbit's mortar and pestle. The miracle nature of the pills either came from the raw ingredients used or the magical property of the instrument. In this case, Arthur believed it was the later... that is if the miracle pills were indeed magical. After all, he had not seen them in action before, this whole thing might just be a scam.

Then again, that would not have explained the Jade Rabbit's reaction when it saw the picture of this place show up on Arthur's phone. There were still many questions that needed to be answered and the young man continued his diligent search in the storage room.

After that, Arthur confirmed yet another lie. The young woman told him when she was trying to sell the miracle pills, they were made from more than 100 types of herbs. From what Arthur had seen so far, there was just 1 herb. He did not know what species it was but he knew all the boxes were filled with them. This either meant that either they had a separate storage room somewhere filled with other herbs or she was lying to him. It did not take a genius to figure out which was the truth.

Now, the question became did she lie to him out of malice or she was just too tired and unbothered to come up with another more convincing lie. Either way, the young woman was guilty of false advertising and that lowered Arthur's opinion of her. That didn't really matter because Arthur did not think he would see her again.

Finally, on the lowest level of the third rack, Arthur found something different. This time, the paper box was not packed with dead herbs but the miracle pills. They were not yet packaged and there were about 200 of them filling up almost half of the box. If 10 pills cost one thousand dollars, this whole box would cost twenty thousand dollars!

Arthur decided he would give them a closer look. He did not have that chance earlier because they were prepackaged and the young woman wouldn't let him examine them without payment.

The pills were firm to the touch and had a shiny sheen to them. They held their shape well because when Arthur pressed on them, they did not squish into mush instantly. Arthur took a sniff and they did not really have a distinct smell. Arthur held one in his palm and honestly, the brown sphere looked more like chocolate bites than medicine.

Arthur considered taking a small bite out of one of them but after seeing the raw ingredient that went into making them, he had second thoughts. Arthur used the sharp end of the metal rack to shave half of the pill off. However, the cross-section did not give him any useful information either. The pill was uniformly brown throughout.

Unfortunately, Arthur could not tell heads or tails from the pills he found in the storage room. He was not professionally-trained to discern whether they had healing property or not. The only thing he could do was to leave them in their box and leave.

Arthur closed the door to the storage room and headed up the stairs. There was yet another door at the top of the stairs. Arthur leaned his ears towards it to try to listen for any sound. There was no sound, this meant that either the place was soundproof or there was no one on the other side of the door.

Arthur did not know which one it was and there was only one way for him to find out. He placed his hand on the doorknob and gingerly tried to twist it open without making any noise. To his surprise, the door wasn't locked!