This conversation, aside from those in attendance and Jiang Fuyue herself, no one knew the specific contents.
The day after the talk, Jiang Fuyue did not continue staying in the experimental zone, but instead moved into a separate laboratory.
Between it and Xie Dingyuan’s personal laboratory, there was only a glass wall serving as a partition.
It was just that most of the time he stayed in the experimental zone with his team members and did not come here often.
Here, Jiang Fuyue would continue the research for the next several stages.
Kaza called over five soldiers to help transport the equipment.
That’s right, all the newly purchased equipment, Jiang Fuyue was taking everything with her.
After directing them to pack it up, and checking it again once it was done, she finally felt at ease.
As she was leaving, Xu Kuan caught up with her and called out,
“Wait a moment.”
Jiang Fuyue stopped and turned back, a questioning look in her eyes: “What is it?”
“I…” He paused for a moment, then seemed to steel himself. “Can I join your team?”
Jiang Fuyue raised an eyebrow: “Are you sure?”
“Actually, when the team first started researching the Schankwo vaccine, I proposed the direction of an attenuated live vaccine…”
But it was not adopted.
In the end, the team chose an adenovirus vector vaccine.
“When the team’s direction diverged from my own thinking, I barely struggled or hesitated before choosing to compromise. If I hadn’t met you, and if you hadn’t chosen the attenuated live vaccine direction, I might still be in the team now, dutifully continuing to research adenovirus vector vaccines.”
“But now that the attenuated live vaccine has been approved as a project, I have the opportunity to persist in my original direction, and you also need manpower, don’t you?”
Xu Kuan viewed this as cooperation, he and Jiang Fuyue could absolutely achieve mutual benefit and win together.
Jiang Fuyue: “Have you thought about what consequences there will be if you leave your current team and come to me?”
Xu Kuan fell silent.
Of course he had thought about it.
These past few days, every night when he lay in bed, he tossed and turned thinking about it.
Leaving the team midway was no different from betrayal.
His years of camaraderie with Bai Chuanhao and the other team members would be over.
Jiang Fuyue: “Besides that, you also have to bear the risk. If the development of the attenuated live vaccine fails and the project collapses, you will have nowhere to go.”
The temporary team would be disbanded, and the former team would not accept him, his academic career would very likely come to an end.
Xu Kuan broke out in a cold sweat.
“Go back. Think it through before making a decision. Don’t joke with your own future just because of a moment of impulse.”
After saying that, Jiang Fuyue turned and left.
Xu Kuan stood where he was. Cold wind poured in from the corridor entrance, chilling him to the bone.
At that moment, it was as if he had returned to the time of filling out his college applications after graduating high school, standing at a crossroads in life, struggling to choose between clinical medicine and immunology.
Stay with the original team, safe and steady, smooth sailing all the way; or take a risk together with Jiang Fuyue and shoulder an uncertain future?
For him, this was a huge gamble.
Win, and it would be like a fish leaping through the dragon gate, boundless skies and seas; lose, and it would all be wiped out, leaving nothing behind!
“What are you thinking about? You look absent-minded.” Bai Chuanhao walked over, smiling as he patted Xu Kuan on the shoulder.
Xu Kuan jolted, instinctively trying to dodge, then abruptly stopped halfway and forced a smile: “Nothing… just thinking about something…”
Bai Chuanhao drew back the contemplation in his eyes and smiled as well: “Come on, it’s time to eat. Let’s go to the cafeteria together.”
“…Okay.”
……
Xu Kuan found Jiang Fuyue again three days later.
By then, she had already begun the second stage of research, which required a large number of experiments.
And most of these experiments were complex and tedious; every step had to be personally completed by Jiang Fuyue.
So most of the time she stayed immersed in the sealed laboratory, only coming out once at noon to eat.
Xu Kuan was lucky, when he came over, Jiang Fuyue had just taken off her protective suit, finished sterilization, and was about to head to the cafeteria.
“Sit.” She pointed to the chair opposite.
Xu Kuan sat down as instructed and said, “Thank you.”
“You’re here today about that matter from last time?”
He nodded, but did not lift his eyes, a faintly dejected expression appearing on his face.
Jiang Fuyue withdrew her gaze; she had probably already guessed the answer.
Sure enough,
“Sorry, I didn’t think it through before. I was impulsive.”
Jiang Fuyue asked him: “Have you thought it through now?”
“Yes. I’m sorry, I don’t have the courage to bet everything on one throw. I’ve bothered you.”
Jiang Fuyue didn’t know what to say.
Everyone has their own choices, and their own path to walk.
She could, of course, have tried to persuade Xu Kuan, for example, telling him that everything was currently going smoothly with the project; or promising him that the final experiment would definitely succeed.
After all, it would just be boasting, who can’t draw big pies? Just a few words, no cost to pay, no responsibility to bear.
Yet it could make someone like him, who was wavering at this moment, make a choice again.
But in the end, Jiang Fuyue still didn’t speak.
Because,
There was no need.
Someone who was not firm enough from the very beginning might waver again halfway through, or even turn back.
If one doesn’t even know what they themselves want, how can they expect others to make decisions and resolve for them?
Every choice shapes the final outcome.
That is what makes fate so lovely.
Woven by one’s own hand, with cause and effect.
Jiang Fuyue: “You don’t need to apologize. You didn’t do anything wrong.”
Xu Kuan raised his eyes: “Then… I’ll go.”
“Mm. Go back, and keep it up.”
At the moment he left, Xu Kuan felt as if he had lost something, but on second thought, he realized that what he currently had was not little.
Perhaps one day in the future he would regret missing an opportunity, but perhaps he would also be glad that he had avoided a risk.
Who can say for sure about the future?
……
The only person who might have developed into a helper ultimately did not choose her. To say Jiang Fuyue felt no regret would be a lie.
But regret aside, she was not dejected.
Since there were no helpers, she would roll up her sleeves and do it herself.
To improve efficiency and complete more work within limited time, she began to rely on programming.
If she wrote every program herself, it would still consume quite a bit of time, so she made a set of automated programming systems.
And the system’s operation also seemed to require a certain amount of time; next, she began to simplify it.
Following this line of thinking, Jiang Fuyue pushed efficiency to the extreme at every step.
Just her alone, plus a set of systematic operations, actually amounted to the research output level of a small team.
To better control every experimental step and avoid repeating experiments that reached the same conclusion, Jiang Fuyue also created an “Experimental Traceback Table,” assigning fixed letters to each step and then filling them into the table instead.
Later, if such an experiment needed to be conducted again, it could be traced back directly from the table.
Especially when a certain step went wrong, checking the table would reveal the problem in the shortest possible time, effectively avoiding the embarrassment of one wrong step forcing a complete redo.
Since many things were privately set by her, aside from Jiang Fuyue herself, even if others obtained the materials, they couldn’t understand what was written at all.
Including Xie Dingyuan.
“Your table…” The man frowned deeply, looking at the dense letters and symbols on it, his eyes full of confusion.
Sudoku? A maze? A letter game?
None of them quite fit.
“Don’t look,” Jiang Fuyue pulled it out of his hands and casually set it aside. “You won’t understand it.”
“Is that so? Even I can’t understand it?”
“Of course.” The girl lifted her chin slightly, smiling.
Xie Dingyuan’s interest was piqued. He picked it up again and held it up between the two of them: “Then explain it to me, what do a through z represent? And what’s the difference between uppercase and lowercase?”
Jiang Fuyue: “a is what’s obtained from cryo-electron microscopy observation, b is…”
Xie Dingyuan: “Then what about this Cryo-SEM?”
“Ultra-low-temperature sample preparation and transfer…”
After listening to her explanation, Xie Dingyuan took a closer look, good lord, this table actually encompassed all the steps of a full thirty-six experiments!
As long as the table kept extending, even three hundred and sixty experimental steps could fit.
“Interesting!”
……
On February 27th, only seven days after project approval, Jiang Fuyue produced the first batch of experimental data at an astonishing speed, along with an analysis report!
The upper management was astonished,
“So… fast?”
“Isn’t there only Jiang Fuyue? Has she found suitable team members?”
That’s right, during that secret conversation, Jiang Fuyue had secured the right to independently choose team members.
This was equivalent to completely controlling the team’s core.
Adding or removing members, all of it was decided by her alone!
At first, the upper management was unwilling to agree, feeling that the authority given to her was too great.
It was Doctor X who said: “Jiang Fuyue is the most valuable thing in this team. Giving her even greater say would not be excessive.”
Only then did the upper management collectively nod in agreement.
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