Chapter 61 - 58: Our Company’s Position Is Unchanged
Outside the examination hall in Fudan’s physics building.
Elder Chen was chatting with Su Wan.
"Ah, Elder Chen," Su Wan sighed softly.
"For the past two years, our Southwest region has been completely dominated by ’super schools’ like Beijing Renmin University High School and Shanghai High School."
"We may have a great reputation within our province, but on the national stage, we always seem to fall a bit short. I really hope we can produce a few promising talents who can truly hold their own."
At this, Su Wan changed the subject.
"That Qin Yan from your Sixth Middle School seems excellent this year. I have high hopes for him."
Hearing this, Elder Chen slowly shook his head.
"That kid, Qin Yan, certainly has talent. He’s a quick learner and his fundamentals are solid."
"But he lacks that little bit of a creative spark."
"He’s an excellent problem-solving machine, but if he encounters an unsolved problem that requires thinking outside the box, he’ll easily get stuck going down a rabbit hole and be unable to get out."
Su Wan listened and nodded thoughtfully.
As gold-medal coaches of their caliber, they naturally understood the vast chasm between a "problem-solving machine" and someone with true "research intuition."
As the two were chatting, a man in a suit walked over.
He stood before Elder Chen, his tone polite yet distant.
"Hello, are you Teacher Chen from Jiangcheng Sixth Middle School?"
Elder Chen sized up the man before him, his heart tightening slightly. This man was clearly accustomed to being in a position of power.
"I am Chen Ke. And you are?"
The middle-aged man smiled faintly and extended his right hand.
"I’m Lin Wei."
Lin Wei?
The R&D Director and Vice President of Huaxuan Technology?
Lin Wei paid no mind to the shocked Su Wan standing beside them.
He had long since developed the habit of saving time and got straight to the point.
"Teacher Chen, I heard from my colleague that you wanted to speak with me about the follow-up handling of student Li Dong’s academic achievements?"
Elder Chen didn’t waste words either.
"Yes, Director Lin. There is indeed an urgent matter I’d like to discuss with you."
Standing to the side, Su Wan was completely baffled.
’Follow-up on academic achievements? Isn’t the final exam still in progress? What achievements?’
’Could it be that desensitized problem from the preliminaries? Did Huaxuan Technology take a liking to Li Dong’s solution?’
After all, Su Wan was a veteran teacher who had led teams in major top-tier competitions for years.
She finally understood why Jiangcheng Sixth Middle School would swallow its pride as a provincial key school and scramble to poach someone from Seventh Middle School.
A solution favored by Huaxuan Technology... if they could get the corporation’s permission for academic publication, compile it into an all-English research paper, and submit it for the Qiu Chengtong Middle School Science Award...
The probability of winning a medal in the global finals would be incredibly high. Backed by a real, core issue from a corporation, its competitiveness would be off the charts!
In that case, what Elder Chen wanted to discuss with Director Lin was now perfectly clear—academic publication rights!
Lin Wei nodded at Elder Chen.
"Teacher Chen, let’s step aside and have a private word."
The two walked to a quieter area to the side of the physics building.
Lin Wei glanced at his watch and spoke directly.
"Teacher Chen, what is this about specifically?"
"If you are dissatisfied with the two-million-yuan research start-up fund, or the price for transferring the trade secrets and patent application rights, you may have to wait until this afternoon to connect with our company’s legal and IP management departments."
"My schedule is quite tight, so I can only spare a few minutes."
"No, Director Lin, you’ve misunderstood. There are no issues with the funding or the compensation."
Elder Chen looked at Lin Wei with a solemn expression.
"I want to fight on Li Dong’s behalf for the academic publication rights to the ’Adaptive Correction for Dual-Beam Laser Interference Maskless Lithography’ solution."
Hearing this request, Lin Wei’s brow furrowed slightly.
He thought in silence for a moment before finally shaking his head.
"Teacher Chen, I’m afraid that won’t be possible."
Lin Wei’s tone was polite but firm.
"If we were to compile this solution into a research paper for publication, it would inevitably have to explain the underlying physical mechanisms, as well as the specific cost and yield optimizations it brings to Huaxuan Technology."
"Once these core logical components are exposed, the business risk is simply too great."
Elder Chen immediately argued his case.
"Director Lin, you can rest assured on that point."
"When writing the paper, we can perform deep obfuscation."
"For example, we would absolutely not mention your specific coherent light source wavelength, the precise tuning data of the piezoelectric ceramics, nor would we state the exact cost reduction."
"We will only publish the core innovative theoretical model of the solution, along with normalized simulation trend graphs."
"As long as we can clearly explain the innovation in the physical mechanism, that should be enough. What do you think, would that be acceptable?"
Elder Chen lowered his bottom line again and again.
However, Lin Wei remained unmoved.
"Teacher Chen, on the battlefield of commercial competition, there is no room for wishful thinking. I cannot approve this. I’m sorry."
Seeing Lin Wei’s unyielding stance, Elder Chen was truly at a loss.
After all, this results transfer agreement was negotiated directly by Huaxuan Technology with the Jiangcheng Seventh Middle School administration and Li Dong while he was still a student there.
At the time, Li Dong was just an ordinary high school student. What would he know about "retaining non-exclusive academic exemption rights"? He just agreed to it directly.
Thinking of this, Elder Chen cursed the leadership of Jiangcheng Seventh Middle School in his mind.
’These clueless, provincial fools!’ Elder Chen fumed internally.
Now what was done was done. If the other party refused to agree, what could he do?
"Director Lin, please reconsider. For a young student aspiring to a career in research, this is an extremely important stepping stone..."
"BRRRING..."
The bell for the examination hall rang.
Elder Chen’s words were cut off by the bell.
Lin Wei seized the opportunity to end the conversation and gave an apologetic nod.
"Teacher Chen, the exam is over. I have other matters to attend to."
"On this matter, our company’s position is unchanged. Farewell."
Watching Lin Wei’s retreating back, Elder Chen’s expression was dark and uncertain.
Of course, he couldn’t just give up like this.
Although Lin Wei had refused him to his face, he planned to swallow his pride and stay in Shanghai for a couple of days. He would use his old connections at Fudan and Jiao Da to try and approach other senior executives at Huaxuan Technology, to see if there was any room for maneuver.
Taking a huge step back, even if Huaxuan Technology absolutely refused, Li Dong could still write a purely theoretical discussion paper using the same ideas.
However, without the core puzzle piece of "corporate implementation and endorsement," its persuasive power would be greatly diminished.
"Sigh..." Elder Chen let out a long sigh.
"This is going to be difficult."
...
Meanwhile, Lin Wei walked down the corridor, preparing to go to the exam affairs office to find Old Zhou from the organizing committee.
He wanted to request a look at the anonymous answer outlines of a few students in this year’s finals who had caught his interest.
Just as he was passing the back door of an examination hall, a voice suddenly called out to him.
"Dad? What are you doing here?"
Lin Wei froze, stopping and turning around to see his son, Lin Jian, walking over with a look of surprise.
Lin Wei was usually extremely busy with work—working around the clock was the norm. Although he cared about his son’s studies, he never had the time to ask about every little detail.
He didn’t even know his son had signed up for this competition.
"Xiaojian? You’re in this competition too?"
Lin Wei asked, somewhat surprised.
At the mention of the competition, Lin Jian’s expression immediately fell, and he couldn’t help but complain.
"Dad, are you guys at Huaxuan crazy for the question you provided as the technical sponsor? An engineering-level problem, and you put it on a high school competition paper?"
Looking at his son’s dejected appearance, Lin Wei’s gaze turned stern.
"You have no fighting spirit!" Lin Wei scolded.
"Xiaojian, this attitude of yours won’t do. You’re creating mental blocks for yourself before you even start!"
"Just because you’re a high schooler, does that mean you subconsciously believe you can’t solve university-level partial differential equations or tensor analysis? Is there some insurmountable intellectual gap between you and a university student?"
"So why is it that when you’re given a cutting-edge problem from a real-world engineering field, you just assume that because you’re a student, you’re naturally incapable of solving it?"
"When faced with a scientific problem that no one has completely solved, what’s the fundamental difference between you and a PhD in optics at the starting point of ’building a problem-solving framework from scratch’? Don’t lose the sharp edge a researcher should have!"
Lin Jian was so thoroughly lectured that his face turned beet red.
While the father and son were standing by the side of the corridor for this lecture, a boy from the first batch of students allowed to leave rubbed his temples and walked quickly past them.
He was muttering to himself.
"Ah, I was so close... Just give me two more months, and I’ll definitely annihilate this stupid problem!"
Hearing this, both Lin Wei and his son, Lin Jian, were stunned.
They both turned their heads at the same time, looking at the distant back of the boy who had walked away, and then stared at each other in bewilderment.
Annihilate it?
’Is he hallucinating from taking the test?’