Chinese 'Breaking Bad' professor cooked 425 lbs of methylone after realising there was heavy demand

It's basically Breaking Bad IRL.

A Chinese associate chemistry professor was sentenced to life in prison on Thursday for manufacturing drugs and selling them abroad.

The prof, named only as Zhang, made more than 4 million yuan ($582,000) in profit annually with his partner, according to a report by the China News Service.

He sold at least 193kg (425 lbs) worth of methylone to buyers in Britain, Canada, the U.S. and Australia, after realising that psychoactive drugs were heavily in demand in Australia, whilst on a research trip there in 2014.

Upon returning to China in 2015, he started a company producing methylone, which is often used as a substitute for MDMA.

Parcels with "hundreds of kilograms of drugs" were mailed overseas to clients under pseudonyms, with buyers allowed to pay in Bitcoin.

Alarms were raised in November 2014 after Wuhan customs found nine parcels bound for abroad which contained methylone.

But it wasn't until June 2015 that Zhang's lab was raided, and police nabbed him along with eight others. About 20kg worth of drugs were seized.

But Zhang isn't the only one in China living a Walter White-esque lifestyle.

In May 2015, Chinese police arrested another chemistry professor in Xian, who was alleged to have provided the recipe for methcathinone, also known as "cat."

17 people were arrested, and over 128kg of the drug was seized.

China has one of the world's harshest penalties for drug laws, with the country known to impose the death penalty for drug traffickers.