Chapter 318 - 280: Wow—So Much Food

Chapter 318: Chapter 280: Wow—So Much Food

The other end of the line was silent for a good while.

"Senior Brother Fu."

"This material you sent over..."

"Will I even be able to understand it?"

Fu Chen chuckled.

"I don’t know either."

"East God said you could help me."

There was another moment of silence on the other end of the line.

This time, only for half a second.

"East God asked me to help you?"

"Yeah."

"Alright then, Senior Brother Fu."

"I’m free tomorrow."

"See you tomorrow."

As Fu Chen hung up the phone, Wang Feng, propped up on the bed across from him, just watched.

About a minute later,

Wang Feng finally spoke up.

"Old Fu."

His voice carried a strange, unplaceable tone.

"So, that research group of yours..."

"How’s it going lately?"

Fu Chen glanced over at him but didn’t say anything.

Wang Feng slowly sat up in bed.

"Made any incredible breakthroughs yet?"

He put heavy emphasis on the word "incredible."

Fu Chen couldn’t be bothered to engage with his snide tone.

He simply replied calmly.

"You don’t get results this quickly in mathematics."

Wang Feng scoffed.

He climbed down from his bed, walked over, and sat down next to Fu Chen.

His eyes swept over the stack of scratch paper on Fu Chen’s desk.

"Old Fu."

"You know how much this little project of yours will be worth when you finish it?"

He continued without waiting for a reply.

"Best case, you publish in a top journal and get listed as a second author."

"Makes your resume look a little better, and that’s it."

He patted Fu Chen’s shoulder.

"Old Fu, you should just quit."

"We only have a few years of our youth."

"If you can’t achieve something that’ll really make a name for yourself, the best you can hope for is to be a lecturer at some university."

"Giving lectures, tagging along on other people’s research projects."

"Scrape by until you’re old and maybe, just maybe, make it to associate researcher."

He sneered.

"And even then, you’d have to wait your turn behind everyone else."

"Why bother with all that?"

Fu Chen didn’t respond.

He kept his head down, continuing to study the pile of scratch paper on his desk.

But Wang Feng was just getting warmed up.

"Old Fu, look at me."

"A few days ago, my family already pulled some strings and set things up with Huaxuan."

"They lined up a job for me at one of their core supply chain companies."

"It’s called the Dongyang Hardware Processing Factory."

"Don’t let the rustic-sounding name fool you."

"My dad told me..."

"This factory is a new supplier. It’s already gone through one round of technical training for Huaxuan’s core supply chain, and it’s set to expand at the end of the year."

"Plus, they’re setting up a supply-side R&D team."

"They’re even going to branch out into the higher-end field of optical path inspection."

"And further down the line..."

He smiled smugly.

"They’re also going to set up a separate department for data modeling and process iteration."

"It’ll specialize in taking on Huaxuan’s precision optical path calibration jobs."

"It’s a perfect match for my major."

"I’m meeting with their chairman the day after tomorrow. If the talk goes well,"

"once I graduate and start there..."

"I’ll be part of the core team."

"In a couple of years, when the company gets bigger,"

"I’ll be one of the pioneers."

"By then, my annual salary will be in the millions, don’t you think?"

"Isn’t that a hell of a lot better than what you’re doing now?"

Fu Chen still ignored him.

He turned a page of his notes, gently tapping his pen beside the section on the third step.

’When Gu Ming gets here tomorrow, we’ll start reviewing from this part.’

Seeing that Fu Chen still wasn’t responding, Wang Feng decided it was pointless to keep talking to himself.

He shot Fu Chen a look of contempt.

He climbed back onto his bed, pulled out his phone, and started texting his girlfriend.

...

「The next morning.」

Li Dong arrived at the North Building of the School of Chemistry once again.

As soon as he pushed open the lab door,

he found Wu Kai inside, happily chatting with Lu Mingyuan about something.

When he saw Li Dong arrive,

Wu Kai waved him over.

"Ah, Li Dong!"

"We really have you to thank for this."

"We’ve been running the data for the past few days, and your physical path is working so smoothly that I can’t quite believe it myself."

Lu Mingyuan, who was standing beside him, nodded in agreement.

Li Dong was happy to see their work going so smoothly.

He leaned in and asked,

"So, once this is done, will we be able to solve our most difficult problem?"

The smile on Wu Kai’s face vanished, as did the one on Lu Mingyuan’s.

Wu Kai shook his head.

"It’s going to be tough."

Li Dong frowned.

"Are we still stuck on the equipment issue?"

This time, it was Lu Mingyuan who spoke up.

"It’s the same old problem."

"We’ve tried other methods to fabricate the probe tip."

"We considered changing the geometry of the tip."

"But that didn’t work."

"As soon as we change the geometry, it invalidates the input conditions for the X-ray polarization."

He paused for a moment before continuing.

"We also looked into using a commercial FIB."

"The idea was to mill the end-face to a slightly coarser geometry, then use a wet process for a secondary etch to ’wash’ it down a notch."

Li Dong asked,

"And the result?"

Lu Mingyuan shook his head.

"The edge effect from the secondary etching knocked our precision from ’sub-nanometer’ right back to ’several nanometers’."

"All our previous work was wasted."

Wu Kai added from the side,

"Old Lu even made a special trip up north."

"He visited an institute that’s been in the micro-nano fabrication business for over twenty years."

"After their director heard our requirements, he told us straight up that their equipment couldn’t achieve that scale."

Li Dong listened without saying a word.

Wu Kai paused.

"Right now, the only place in the country that can do it is a semiconductor company down south."

Li Dong’s heart skipped a beat.

’A semiconductor company?’

"But the problem is,"

Wu Kai shook his head.

"Their equipment is imported."

"Never mind that their service agreement explicitly states it ’cannot be used for contract work on external research projects.’"

"Even if we swallowed our pride, gritted our teeth, and paid the breach of contract penalty to get them to do it,"

"the equipment is theirs."

"So what about the data?"

"All the raw data from that machine is sent directly from the server rack and transmitted remotely back to the original foreign supplier."

"What we’d ultimately get our hands on would be a processed, ’sanitized’ version that they give us."

Wu Kai sighed.

His earlier good mood had completely evaporated.

The room fell silent for a moment.

But as Li Dong stood there, the gears in his mind slowly began to turn.

’A semiconductor company.’

’That sub-nanometer probe tip they couldn’t fabricate.’

Putting those two facts together,

With a CLICK, two words popped into his head.

Huaxuan Technology.

’The kind of work they do—precision optical path calibration—goes head-to-head with the ’sub-nanometer’ scale.’

’Could Huaxuan do it?’

Another thought surfaced in Li Dong’s mind.

’Sigh.’

’I wonder how far Huaxuan has gotten with my 2.1 algorithm.’

’They haven’t called to ask any questions in a long time.’

’Based on his understanding of Lin Wei, the man should be calling at least once every week or two, either to report his progress or to ask for guidance.’

’But lately, it’s been radio silence from Lin Wei’s end.’

’That’s not like Lin Wei at all.’

Li Dong made a mental note to give Lin Wei a call as soon as he got back.

’Ask about my money—AHEM—ask about how their progress is coming along.’

’And while I’m at it, I’ll ask...’

’...if they can handle fabricating this probe tip.’