Super Zoo

The bald man was almost driven to collapse by the pack of dogs, and this was not without reason. If he indeed encountered a pack of wolves, he would be scared too, might even wet his pants, but that fear certainly wouldn't match the shock these dogs gave him.

The more docile a person or animal usually is, the more terrifying it becomes when it turns to the other extreme. Just like a fluffy little sheep, if one day you suddenly see it with a mouth full of blood, gnawing on another sheep, that would be scarier than seeing a wolf eating a sheep, even though the action is the same, but the former goes beyond people's psychological expectations and tolerance.

Zhou Jin had gotten the fish and these past two days he had been so busy that he barely touched the ground. He first took them to the city's Animal Disease Prevention and Control Center for a check and was overjoyed with the results, the fish indeed contained large quantities of hormones.

To be on the safe side, he even went to the provincial capital to find the agricultural science academy's animal inspection station for a confirmation.

After two days, the final certification finally came out.

Both the provincial and city-level inspection agencies found various residual artificial hormones in the fish that were tested, mainly urea and diamine, and also a portion of ****ketone!

There have long been rumors on the internet about aquaculture farmers feeding fish and shrimp contraceptives, but this statement isn't accurate and falls under the category of rumors. For one, doing this is too expensive and not worth the cost; secondly, for most fish and shrimp, taking contraceptives not only doesn't promote faster growth but can in fact affect their growth.

But this rumor wasn't without basis.

There were indeed a few unscrupulous breeders who, for the sake of making fish and shrimp grow faster and bigger, did indeed add various hormones to the feed! After eating it, the fish would balloon in size crazily, just like the ones in Shuijun Lake, growing several pounds in half a year, and appearing very healthy at a glance.

Clearly, if people ate these hormone-grown fish, it would definitely affect their health, and could even cause serious diseases and hidden dangers! Therefore, this practice has always been prohibited by the state.

"No wonder this guy's fish grow so fast!" On the way back to Yangchuan City from the provincial capital, Zhou Jin was extremely excited. After passing two levels of inspection, there was no doubt about the result!

With this huge leverage in his hands, even if Suming had powerful backing, he was bound to fall. Perhaps, even the zoo might be implicated because of this!

Of course, plotting someone's downfall is a profound knowledge.

The same incident, with different methods of execution, yields different effects. Zhou Jin had been in the mix for decades, climbing up from the bottom of society, dealing with everyone from petty thugs to government leaders and social elites. When it came to the experience of playing the social game, he was definitely rich.

Now that he had a significant leverage in his hands, Zhou Jin actually calmed down. He decided that he must carefully plan a fatal blow to Suming this time, completely break him down so he could never get back up again.

The gears were slowly beginning to turn.

Suming was now one of the top leaders of the zoo with his own office. That day, he was drinking tea and reading the newspaper in his office when he casually turned the page. There was a news piece of modest length that caught his attention.

"Nine-year-old girl's breast development"

As a major sleaze, seeing this title made Suming's eyes light up, and he couldn't help but read on.

The content of the news was brief, and he quickly finished reading it. It was about an incident in another city, where a nine-year-old girl with chest pain was taken to the hospital and discovered, to her parents' shock, that she had developed breasts. Although girls do tend to develop earlier nowadays, it should still occur after the onset of menstruation, at least at eleven or twelve years old. This is common sense that everybody knows. A nine-year-old girl barely has any body hair, so what is there to develop?

After a series of examinations, the hospital found that the girl had far too much estrogen.

Thus the parents started looking for the cause. The girl quite liked seafood, and tracing the clue back to the market, many of the crabs sold by the fish farmers were found to have been enlarged with hormones.

Suming had been waiting for several days and finally got a piece of news related to hormones and aquaculture. After reading it, he felt that the news was very familiar, as if it wasn't the first time he'd seen it. So, he looked it up online and it turned out to be news from several years ago, which somehow got revived.

Interestingly, this several-year-old news, published in a small section on the fourth page of the newspaper, had somehow garnered quite a bit of attention.

First, there was a buzz in the Yangchuan City forum; the Food and Health sections were flooded with posts about hormone-induced breeding.

"Hormone-fed pork, causing man to become sterile!"

"How to correctly identify fish products boosted with growth promoters!"

"Sterility-inducing baby cucumbers!"

"Don't just pop cold medicine, or you might turn into a busty babe!"

"Why is a 70-year-old grandpa playing with.. his joystick every night? Turns out it's because he took hormone-containing health products!"

...

Sensational and eye-catching headlines like these weren't limited to fish products; they covered almost every type of food one might encounter in life - chicken, duck, fish, eggs, cucumbers, carrots, vegetables, and even some health supplements and medications.

But all of these issues pointed decisively to one thing: hormones.

To be more precise, it was about illegal hormone additives.

Besides their shocking headlines, these posts were accompanied by many disturbing images, such as girls whose breasts were bigger than their heads, or old men whose faces were withered due to an overload of who-knows-what.

Those were the mild ones, some pictures of food and people looked as if they had been radiated by a nuclear bomb, and were simply nauseating to look at.

Netizen reactions to this were mixed.

"Have some common sense, will you? Hormones don't work on plants!" That's a science buff, who listed a ton of data and chemical formulas below.

Some people pointed out that many of these posts were several years old and had already been debunked, like the one about 'a young woman eating raw tomatoes and then becoming uncontrollably aroused, attacking her father-in-law.' That story is clearly a hoax. Even if tomatoes did contain hormones, could they really have such a strong effect?

Yet, many others couldn't help but feel a wave of panic. After all, this issue was tightly linked to everyone's daily lives, dealing with it every day, the inevitable cycle of buying groceries, cooking, and doing nature's call.

"Reject hormone-laden food, advocate for all-natural!"

"Scared the hell out of me, from now on I'll just grow my own veggies in the courtyard..."

"What if I don't have a yard? Am I supposed to plant broccoli in a flowerpot?"

"What about chicken, duck, fish, and meat? You can't possibly raise these yourself, can you?"

"Sigh, it all comes down to luck then. I can only pray to God that I don't buy any hormone-contaminated food! There's a little sister in my family, if she gets affected, we're doomed!"

Some saw a business opportunity amidst the chaos: "Selling homemade fertilizer, fresh and spicy poo, guaranteed all-natural, stinky as hell, free shipping my dear, it's still warm upon delivery..."

"My four decades of virginity finally come in handy, aged virgin urine, guaranteed to make your bok choy grow healthy and tender..."

"Once I've got the money, I'm emigrating. This country is too dangerous!"

"Don't worry, I grew up on Tri-Cow milk powder, got vaccinated with expired shots, and Love for Life is munching on gutter oil-fried skewers while strolling through the first haze of the morning. I'm invincible, a little bit of hormones is nothing to me!"

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Suming had almost scrolled through all the posts. The internet nowadays really left one speechless, any topic could deviate and spiral into wild tangents.

However, no matter what, the interest of many citizens was indeed drawn to the 'food hormone' issue. In just a few days, the number of posts about hormones had exploded to over a hundred on the Yangchuan Forum, almost monopolizing the health and dietary sections. Just about any related post got thousands or even tens of thousands of clicks, the interest rivaling the craze Suming once created with his money-attracting cat and the fish-riding stunt.