Free Web NovelChapter 247: Chapter 193: A Useless Academic Exchange, Ding Yang Visits Again
After this brief exchange, Lin Qi had a basic grasp of the capabilities of the small businesses present.
An A-level Researcher was a top figure in a company, part of the absolute upper echelon.
The vast majority of the small businesses present only had one or two A-level Researchers.
They were even worse off than United Pharmaceutical, which was just a startup.
After all, if a number of A-level Researchers from the Pharmaceutical Department at Liu’s Heavy Industries’ Greenfield City branch hadn’t been killed in the attack by the Round Table, United Pharmaceutical would have inherited a double-digit number of them.
The Liu Clan wasn’t even a company that focused primarily on pharmaceuticals; its Pharmaceutical Department was just a side project.
This just went to show the sheer size of the gap between large corporations and small businesses.
"Please follow me." Xiao Gu led the way, and Lin Qi followed him into a meeting room.
As he led the way, Xiao Gu explained, "The way we small businesses conduct our academic exchanges might be a bit unusual. I’m not sure if you’ll find it suitable."
"Typically, we prepare three A-Class Potions from different companies and use data from instrumental analysis to reverse-engineer them."
"We then attempt to deduce some of the material properties. During this process, we exchange ideas and brainstorm."
Lin Qi was a little surprised. This method of exchange was certainly unconventional.
’But on second thought, it did seem reasonable.’ freewebnovёl.ƈom
Small businesses had very little literature on Pharmacy; they might not even have complete tables for basic material reactions.
Researching A-Class Potions wasn’t like working with M-Class or L-Class, where you could just run through unlimited permutations and combinations.
The materials were expensive, so the design and preparation of most potions required theoretical modeling.
That was what the literature Lin Qi had read claimed.
But from Lin Qi’s perspective, it all came down to the different aggregation effects of Spiritual Particles, caused by different material combinations and processing methods.
Most instruments observed material reactions indirectly, by monitoring conditions like spectral or magnetic field changes.
It was nowhere near as direct as observing with his Spiritual Vision.
Because of this, Lin Qi’s personal database was actually more extensive than the data held by the Liu Clan.
Once the academic exchange began, the researchers from the various small businesses started to voice their opinions.
Most of the information was based on deduction rather than literature.
However, their reasoning was consistent with the fundamental properties of A-Class Extraordinary Materials.
During the discussion, Lin Qi curiously asked Xiao Gu, who was sitting beside him, "How are these basic material frameworks determined? Theoretically, A-Class Extraordinary Materials are extremely complex. You can’t possibly determine the full framework from a finished Potion, can you?"
For one of the potions, the provided data surprisingly listed around six hundred possible materials.
This struck Lin Qi as odd. After all, even if he were given the finished potion, he wasn’t sure he could have produced such a list.
Xiao Gu quickly explained, "Researcher Lin, you’re overthinking it. Of course this wasn’t derived from analysis. It came from additional intel."
"Additional intel?" freeweɓnovel.cѳm
Lin Qi still didn’t get it.
Xiao Gu continued to explain, "Before every academic exchange, all the small businesses pool their funds and commission a Mercenary Corps to investigate the procurement list of Extraordinary Materials used by the target corporation right before they produced that specific batch of potions."
"Those hundreds of materials weren’t identified through analysis—they’re what was on the list."
"Only by analyzing combinations from a limited list of materials can we hope to obtain valuable data at the lowest possible cost."
"After all, we small businesses don’t have the resources to build up our own research archives by brute-forcing every possible material combination."
Hearing this, Lin Qi didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.
’So that’s what this is about,’ he thought. ’This "academic exchange" sounds nice on the surface, but it’s really just a session to reverse-engineer material properties and preparation methods so they can build their own research data.’
This was vastly different from how the Liu Clan trained its Pharmaceutical Researchers.
As employees of a large corporation, they only needed to memorize and understand existing research data.
But for these small businesses, they had to resort to such methods just to obtain that same data.
’No wonder the contracts at large corporations are so stringent, and why they manage their researchers so strictly.’
’Looks like this so-called academic exchange is useless for me, then.’
’Sharing what I know with researchers from these small businesses would be nothing more than charity. It might even violate United Pharmaceutical’s employee code of conduct.’
After listening for a little while longer, Lin Qi lost all interest in the "academic exchange."
In the "Medical Small Business Alliance" group chat, messages were flying.
"Too bad. The big shot from United Pharmaceutical doesn’t seem interested in joining the discussion."
"Let’s be real. We call this an ’exchange,’ but we’re just picking up scraps left behind by the major corporations. He’s from a big company and is probably bound by a contract. Why would he ever participate in something like this?"
"Makes me miss my internship at a big corporation. That was the easiest time I ever had acquiring knowledge."
"Oh, give me a break. Do you have any idea how many Credit Points your company spent on that internship?"
Although a little disappointed, most of the researchers were understanding and didn’t hold it against Lin Qi.
The fact that he was gracious enough to sit here with them was the most they could ask for. They couldn’t possibly expect him to violate his own contract just to give them pointers.
While Lin Qi hadn’t completely zoned out, he had pulled up his United Pharmaceutical contract and was carefully reviewing the relevant clauses.
He had sort of stumbled into his role as a researcher, and Liu Weicai had never gone over the fine print with him.
It was a good thing this meeting happened. If he had waited until the summit and accidentally violated his contract, it would have been a disaster.
