After being separated from my family, I became a darling of the military region thanks to my medical

2:30 PM. First conference room of the North City Military Region General Hospital.

Green painted wainscoting, cement floor. Four fluorescent tubes are lit overhead, their ends slightly blackened, occasionally emitting a faint "hissing" sound.

At the front of the conference room was a blackboard that took up half a wall. Professor Green stood in front of the blackboard, holding a piece of chalk in his hand, and had already filled half the blackboard with English formulas.

Below the stage, Dean Zhou Hai and several key surgical personnel from the General Hospital of the Military Region sat ramrod straight, notebooks open, their brows furrowed deeply. Xu Wenqiang sat beside them, rapidly jotting down professional terms on paper, sweat beading on his forehead.

"Dr. Ye." Green put down his pen, turned around, and his deep-set eyes revealed a sharpness that was almost rigid and meticulous.

He tapped a core function group in the center of the blackboard with chalk.

"Based on the kinetic model of the glutaraldehyde cross-linking reaction, a low concentration of 0.6 percent is simply insufficient to form a sufficiently stable degree of macromolecular cross-linking within a short time window of ten minutes. This results in the inability to completely shield the residual antigenic determinants."

Green's gaze was fixed on Ye Zhen, who was sitting in the first row: "Insufficient cross-linking will inevitably trigger a strong immune rejection in the host after implantation. Rejection and tissue tension, under these parameters, are an impossible balance. May I ask, how did your team circumvent this fundamental physicochemical law?"

Parker sat down next to him, picked up the enamel mug on the table, blew on the tea leaves, and slightly curled the corners of his mouth upwards.

The conference room was quiet. All eyes were on Ye Zhen.

Ye Zhen stood up.

She wasn't wearing a white lab coat today, just a plain white shirt with the sleeves rolled up to her elbows, revealing her clean-lined forearms. She didn't bring any notes, nor did she ask Xu Wenqiang to translate; she went straight to the blackboard.

Ye Zhen picked out a red piece of chalk from the chalk box.

"Professor Green, your derivation process is perfect," Ye Zhen said, her fluent and even London-accented English filling the conference room.

Parker's eyebrows twitched. This female doctor speaks such good English?

"However, your model is missing two key intervention variables."

Ye Zhen turned around and drew a long horizontal line on the blank space of the blackboard with her red chalk. The chalk rubbed against the blackboard, making a short, crisp "shh" sound.

"First, there are differences in physical constitution among different races."

Red chalk flew across the blackboard. Not words, but a series of complex chemical equilibrium equations and formulas for calculating tissue density.

"The density of connective tissue and the microstructure of collagen in East Asians differ from those in Caucasians by 11% to 15%. When processing autologous pericardium, this difference in initial density results in completely different permeability and reaction cross-sectional area of ​​glutaraldehyde molecules."

With each line Ye Zhen wrote, Green's eyes widened a little more.

"Using the classic cross-linking model established by European and American laboratories based on Caucasian tissue samples to measure the autologous tissue response of Asian patients..." Ye Zhen stopped writing, turned to look at him, and said in a flat tone, "This is like trying to find a sword by marking the boat."

Green stood there, staring at the lines of red equations, his lips moved but he didn't speak. His mind was racing like gears, calculating the results after substituting the eleven percent density variable.

"This is unreasonable!"

Dr. Van der Hearst, who was sitting next to Parker, suddenly stood up. The materials science expert from KU Leuven strode to the blackboard and pointed to the last parameter that Ye Zhen had just written down.

"Even with density differences, a concentration of 0.6% is still too low. At this concentration, the polymer's macromolecular chain structure simply cannot overcome the activation energy required for cross-linking! Unless you extend the tanning time to more than forty minutes!"

Ye Zhen looked at him, her expression completely unchanged.

"Dr. Van der Hearst, what is the ambient temperature in your laboratory?"

Van der Hearst paused for a moment, then instinctively replied, "Twenty-two degrees Celsius. That's standard room temperature."

"That's right." Ye Zhen threw away the half-eaten piece of chalk in her hand and patted the chalk dust off her hands.

"You're doing in vitro tests in an air-conditioned room at 22 degrees Celsius. But in my operating room, that bottle of 0.6% glutaraldehyde solution isn't on the instrument table; it's soaking in a water bath at a constant temperature of 37.5 degrees Celsius."

Upon hearing this, Van der Hearst froze.

"Thirty-seven and a half degrees. The core temperature of the human body." Ye Zhen's voice resonated clearly in every corner of the conference room. "The laws of thermodynamics tell you that for every ten degrees increase in temperature, the rate of chemical reactions increases two to three times. A water bath environment of thirty-seven and a half degrees not only replenishes the activation energy you mentioned, but also perfectly simulates the in-situ microenvironment after patch implantation, allowing the cross-linking reaction to reach the saturation peak at a specific temperature range within ten minutes."

Dead silence.

The entire conference room was completely silent.

Van der Hearst stared, his intuition as a materials science expert telling him that this 37.5-degree operational detail was both brutal and ingenious to the extreme.

Green plopped back into his chair, opened his notebook, and began frantically jotting down the red equations Ye Zhen had written on the blackboard. The sound of the pen nib slicing through the paper was particularly jarring in the quiet conference room.

In the back row, Sir Williams leaned back in his chair and let out a long sigh.

He turned his head and whispered to Anderson, who was staring in disbelief, "See? This is what I told you. Discussing theories with her will make you feel like you're in elementary school."

Anderson swallowed hard and nodded.

Parker's composure vanished. He didn't understand the complex equations, but he could see the stunned expressions on the two experts' faces.

That's absolutely unacceptable.

"Brilliant deduction. Absolutely brilliant."

Parker suddenly stood up and clapped his hands loudly twice, abruptly breaking the academic atmosphere in the conference room.

"Dr. Ye, no matter how beautiful the math games on the blackboard are, they can't save a patient's life. Surgical materials, in the end, depend on their physical strength."

Parker winked at Van der Hearst.

Van der Hearst snapped out of his daze and immediately picked up a silver aluminum combination lock case from under his seat.

The box was placed on the table, and the snap latches opened with two "clicks".

Inside lay a remarkably sophisticated metal instrument, complete with an LCD screen, miniature mechanical grippers, and external sensors. In 1980s China, this thing seemed straight out of a science fiction movie.

"A portable tissue tension tester." Van der Hearst adjusted his gold-rimmed glasses, regaining some confidence. "This instrument is the latest development from Gore's laboratories. It can accurately measure the tensile strength, elastic modulus, and tear threshold of tissue materials, with an error within one-thousandth of a gram."

Parker chimed in, "Dr. Ye, since you're so confident in your autologous pericardium transplantation protocol, why don't we do a real-time monitoring?"

He glanced at his watch.

"It's 2:45 now."

"Bring a physical sample during the surgery. Right here, for testing." Parker's gaze was extremely aggressive. "As long as its tensile strength reaches half that of the Gore-Tex polyester patch... no, sixty percent, I will represent the evaluation team in acknowledging the clinical feasibility of your proposal."

Dean Zhou Hai frowned. This requirement was too demanding. Taking samples for testing during surgery, if the data were inaccurate, would cause the entire Chinese cardiothoracic surgery department to lose face internationally if reported by foreign media.

Just as he was about to refuse, Gu Zheng, who had been silent in the front row, suddenly coughed.

Gu Zheng was fiddling with a lighter in his hand. He wasn't looking at Parker, but at Ye Zhen.

Ye Zhen was staring at the gleaming silver tension testing machine.

Gu Zheng was all too familiar with that look in her eyes.

"Dr. Ye, do you dare to take the test?" Parker pressed closer.

Ye Zhen finally looked away from the instruments and turned to look at Parker.

"Testing is fine," Ye Zhen said, her tone as calm as someone buying cabbage at the market. "But I have one condition."

"What are the conditions?"

Ye Zhen stepped forward and gently tapped the edge of the aluminum alloy combination lock case twice with her slender, fair fingers.

"This machine is good. It's accurate enough and small in size. Our lab just happens to need one."

She raised her eyes, her cool gaze revealing no hint of a joke.

"If my autologous pericardium test data reaches the absolute strength of your Gore-Tex patch," she said, emphasizing each word, "then keep this testing machine."

Translator Xu Wenqiang gasped and translated the words verbatim into English.

The people at Gore were all stunned.

Green and Van der Hearst exchanged bewildered glances. Williams, meanwhile, covered his face in anguish in the back row.

It's here again. That familiar, terrifying feeling of having your flesh ripped off, skin and bones removed, is back.

Parker stared at Ye Zhen as if he had heard an utterly absurd joke. A self-made membrane soaked at a concentration of 0.6% with the strength of expanded polytetrafluoroethylene (ePTFE) patches representing the world's top industrial standards? This was a dream!

"And what if you lose?" Parker asked coldly.

"If I lose, I will personally publish a statement in a top global journal, acknowledging that the autologous pericardium regimen is not worth promoting, and publicly apologize to Gore."

Ye Zhen answered without hesitation.

A flicker of elation flashed in Parker's eyes. This was exactly what he wanted! With this statement, the two thousand pounds profit would be guaranteed. As for the testing equipment, although it cost forty thousand US dollars, he couldn't afford to lose it.

"It's a deal!" Parker shouted, afraid that Ye Zhen would go back on her word.