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

Next to the Beicheng Military Region General Hospital, there is a state-run restaurant with a small wooden sign hanging at the door of the private room on the second floor that reads "For Reception Only".

There were about ten dishes on the table. The braised pork was stewed until tender, and the stir-fried vegetables were green and steaming. In the middle, a large casserole was bubbling and boiling, containing pork rib and lotus root soup.

Zhou Hai personally ordered the dishes; they were affordable and filling, without any fancy gimmicks.

Ye Zhen was ten minutes late for the agreed time.

When she pushed the door open, her hair was tied back with a black hair tie, stray hairs were stuck to her forehead, and she smelled of disinfectant. She looked like she had just come from the clinic.

Anderson was the first to stand up.

He was about ten years younger than Williams, tall and thin, with silver-rimmed glasses perched on his nose. When he smiled, the corners of his mouth turned up in a wide arc, and he exuded the warm and lively spirit characteristic of the British middle class.

"Hello! Dr. Ye!"

Anderson shouted these words in Chinese, his pronunciation was crooked and his tones were all twisted together, but he shouted them with great force.

Ye Zhen glanced at him.

"You've learned Chinese?"

Xu Wenqiang translated from the side, and Anderson nodded repeatedly, taking out a crumpled piece of paper from his suit pocket with a few words marked in pinyin on it.

"I learned it on the plane; I learned five words in total."

He held up the note and read it aloud, word by word.

"Hello, thank you, doctor, heart, teacher."

The word "teacher" was pronounced as "Lao Shi," but none of the five words were omitted.

Ye Zhen pulled out a chair and sat down, taking the chopsticks that Gu Zheng handed her.

"The pronunciation is subpar, but the word choice is skillful."

After Xu Wenqiang finished reading, Anderson was so happy that he slapped the table.

"Arthur, did you hear that? Doctor Ye praised me!"

Williams sat opposite Ye Zhen, upright and proper, with his hands neatly placed on the edge of the table.

"Anderson, she's saying your pronunciation is terrible."

"But the choice of words is skillful—the second half of the sentence is the key."

Anderson waved his hand dismissively, his gaze never leaving Ye Zhen.

Parker sat at the other end of the table, surrounded by four people from Gore.

He started looking Ye Zhen up and down the moment he entered.

She was in her early twenties, thin, with wrists so slender that one hand could easily grasp them.

This is the person who made Williams willingly throw in two boxes of equipment.

Parker picked up his teacup, took a sip, and didn't speak.

Zhou Hai raised his teacup, said a few welcoming words, and that marked the start of the meal.

Williams clumsily picked up his chopsticks, took a piece of braised pork and put it in his bowl. He took a bite and his brow relaxed.

"Dr. Ye, I received the copy of the Chinese Journal of Surgery that you sent me."

He put down his chopsticks, his tone carrying a sincere tone that had been carefully considered.

"I read the English abstract of that paper repeatedly, and then asked someone to translate all the figure captions."

Ye Zhen chewed on a piece of lotus root without looking up.

"Finished watching?"

"I've finished watching it."

Williams' gaze fell on the pair of chopsticks beside Ye Zhen and paused for a moment.

"Then I had Anderson call all the Corey people together for an emergency meeting."

Anderson then delivered the final blow.

"Afternoon tea was cancelled that day, and the seven of us discussed things in the conference room from 3 p.m. to 6:30 p.m."

Ye Zhen swallowed the lotus root and wiped her mouth with a stack of coarse napkins on the table.

"and then?"

"And then, we sat here."

Gu Zheng sat next to Ye Zhen, with a bowl piled high with peeled shrimp in front of him. He rested one hand on the back of the chair. Hearing this, the corners of his mouth curved upwards, but he didn't say anything.

Parker put down his teacup and spoke at the opportune moment.

"Sir Williams' words were very moving."

His English pronunciation is clear, and every vowel is so smooth that there is no flaw in it, which shows his background in professional sales.

"However, Dr. Ye, we have come here today with sincerity."

"Academic exchanges always require a thorough process of argumentation."

"This man next to me is Dr. Van der Hearst, head of the Cardiac Surgery Materials Laboratory at KU Leuven, who specializes in the mechanical properties of biological tissue valves."

Parker pointed to the tall, thin man with gold-rimmed glasses next to him.

"And there's Dr. Clark, Professor of Pathology at the University of Edinburgh, whose expertise lies in long-term follow-up data analysis."

He introduced each of the four people one by one, speaking at a moderate pace.

"We hope to have an in-depth discussion with Dr. Ye about several key technical details in the paper."

Parker smiled and picked up his teacup with an elegant and graceful gesture.

"This is purely an academic discussion, with no commercial intent whatsoever."

Ye Zhen spat the pork rib bones into the dish, then used the tip of her chopsticks to pick up a grain of rice and put it in her mouth.

"Mr. Parker, how much does one Gore-Tex pericardial patch cost at your company?"

Parker's smile faltered for a moment.

"Well... pricing varies from country to country, so it's not convenient to discuss the figures at the dinner table."

Two thousand pounds.

Ye Zhen placed her chopsticks on the rim of the bowl and looked at Parker's face.

"The cost of production is £80, the retail price is £2,000, and the profit margin is 2,400 percent."

Parker tightened his grip on the cup handle slightly.

"My approach uses autologous pericardium, and the cost is a bottle of glutaraldehyde solution, which is less than half a pound."

Ye Zhen picked up the enamel mug on the table and took a sip of water.

"Mr. Parker, you brought four experts 8,000 kilometers to have an academic discussion with me—are you trying to save £1,999.50 for children with congenital heart disease all over the world, or are you trying to protect £1,999.50 in your company's financial statements?"

Suddenly, no one spoke in the private room.

Anderson had only chewed half of the braised pork in his mouth when he froze, forgetting to swallow.

Parker's smile didn't fade, but the curve of his lips visibly thinned by half a point.

"Dr. Ye, you've misunderstood."

Parker placed the teacup back on the table and clasped his hands together.

"We are never against innovation. What we oppose is innovation that is pushed to clinical use without sufficient validation."

"If your proposal is indeed reliable, we will be the first to applaud."

"But if the verification is insufficient and patients are harmed as a result—who will bear the responsibility?"

His gaze lingered on Ye Zhen's face for a moment, as if reading her reaction, before he continued speaking.

"0.6% glutaraldehyde concentration, ten-minute tanning time."

"There is no prior research to support this parameter in any of the currently published literature on pericardial cross-linking treatment."

He looked up and met Ye Zhen's gaze.

"Dr. Ye, I have no doubt that your surgery was excellent, and I trust Sir Williams' judgment."

"But surgical techniques and materials science are two different things."

"Just because a brilliant surgeon performs an operation doesn't mean that the operation can be replicated by a second person."

"What I want to know is—how was this window of concentration and time determined?"

"Is it based on experience and intuition, or is it supported by experimental data?"

All eyes in the private room were on Ye Zhen.

Gu Zheng leaned back in his chair, slowly twirling the enamel mug with his fingers, without saying a word.

Ye Zhen put down her chopsticks and wiped her fingers with a handkerchief.

The movements were neither too fast nor too slow, following the rhythm of wiping hands after handing over instruments on the operating table.

"Mr. Parker, you just said three sentences."

"Your first sentence acknowledges that my surgery was excellent. Thank you."

"Secondly, you said that just because someone achieves something doesn't mean it can be replicated. That's true."

"In the third sentence, you asked me where that parameter came from."

She folded the handkerchief and placed it on the table, then looked up.

"This is a question that cannot be answered at the dinner table."

Parker frowned slightly.

"Because the answer isn't on the paper."

Ye Zhen picked up the enamel mug, took the last sip of water, and put the mug back on the table. The enamel bottom hit the wooden tabletop with a crisp sound.

"There's a surgery scheduled for tomorrow afternoon at 3 PM. You can come and watch."