121 – Nice Guy

Reward: Qi Visualization to a large perfection. 

Li Yun walked out of his laboratory, and randomly shook hands with the workers in the factory, and asked them about their families.

"How are your kids?" Li Yun asked a worker.

"They are at the age where it's impossible to talk to them," complained the worker. "I try to be a good mom, but they don't listen to me."

Li Yun nodded."Do they understand what sort of work you do?"

"I talk to them briefly about it, but they don't seem that interested. You know kids with their video games and groupchat."

"Why don't you explain to them what you do at work? Bring them here sometimes?"

"I'm allowed to do that?"

Li Yun nodded. "Just sign them in the guest area. The upper mezzanine area isn't just used for supervisors. It's one of the safer areas, so you can bring your children up there to show them how the factory works. If they are bored, they can stay in the office area. There is a security guard there all the time, so just treat it as temporary daycare."

The worker brightened up. She had always wanted to explain to her children what sort of work she did, but for safety reasons, many places didn't allow children.

"Dr. Li, I heard there is an inspector coming?" asked another worker.

Li Yun nodded.

"All right, we will be on our best behavior!" Another worker joked.

Most tasks were automated, but there were certain things that had to be done by hand. For those types of work, Ju De had simple local workers and provided them with hands-on training. The vast majority of them were high school graduates and dropouts, but the willingness to learn was more important than an education. Finding hard-working workers was difficult, but the company paid well and had a strict overtime policy.

After working for some time, the workers had formed a sense of camaraderie with each other. They were also wary about the higher-ups. The company rewarded workers well, but there was a three-strikes policy. Anyone caught slacking off or breaking the rules was let go after three repeated warnings.

They see the CEO around often, but he wasn’t a personable person, so they stayed away from him. The manager was friendly, but his sheer size was threatening. The head researcher, however, was a very nice guy.

Other than the white coat, he dressed casually and shook hands with everyone. He also gave everyone advice about their health. 

“Dr. Li is really a nice guy!” They all thought.

Li Yun returned to the laboratory after his usual round of hand-shaking. He prioritized his workers’ health, but this time, he was checking out their dantian.

The upgraded Qivi allowed him to view directly into their dantian, consuming very little of his energy.

After looking through all the workers, he was able to create a baseline for what was considered normal. He was never able to figure out the exact scale of his dantian in comparison to others, but now, he had a general idea. His dantian was more than twice the size of everyone else. 

Mission: 

Comprehend Feng Shui to Small Perfection.    

Comprehend Meridians to Large Perfection.

Gather the following items.

Tool: Cauldron with 1000 qi, jade trigrams with 1000 qi, and wood with 1000 qi.

Items: 9 different items with 1000 qi.

Medicinal: 9 different medicinal with 1000 qi

None of these were simple missions. It was also the first time the system had tasked him with a mission to collect materials.

There were 9 varieties of medicinals may look simple, but the 1000 qi requirement… He only knew how much qi he had, but he wasn’t able to see how much qi from objects. 

"How the heck am I supposed to know how many qi an object has?" Li Yun couldn't figure out a way to measure qi.

He tested using Qivi on his pen, table, and items in his laboratory, but he couldn't sense anything. When he was in the greenhouse, he also tested the plants and insects, but he couldn't sense anything in them. In theory, everything on Earth had qi, but he was only able to sense qi in humans.

"Maybe I'm not using it on the correct items," he thought.

He needed to visit the temple as it was one of the few places that allowed visitors to touch the antiques.

Unfortunately, the CFDA inspector, Mr. Chu, was arriving soon.

A tall and skinny man with a stern look appeared in front of a factory with a greenhouse on the outskirts of Yide. It was the first time he was assigned to inspect the factory in the city; it wasn’t a known destination for pharmaceutical companies and he regularly sent his employees to inspect the smaller companies.

From his report, the old company used to sell herbal supplements. After a corruption and bribery scandal, it was forced to shut down. When the new owner, Shennong Pharmaceutical took over, it was completely renovated.

Mr. Chu was instructed by his boss to be thorough and report everything back. Mr. Chu was known as one of the toughest inspectors in CFDA and highly respected for his critical eye. Many factories were forced to close down after his inspection. He had seen too many attempts by small companies to cut corners, although he was also well aware that it was due to limited funding

The inspector was also well aware that political power plays were involved, but he was simply doing his job. The government wanted to squeeze out small companies. It wasn’t because they didn’t want to encourage businesses, but because there were too many poorly operated companies in the past. In an attempt to restore its reputation, the government passed many new and stringent regulations. 

For a small company to succeed, they needed to seek a partnership with a large pharmaceutical company.

Mr. Chu walked inside the front lobby of the factory, followed by an assistant who took pictures of everything.

Inside the clean and brightly lit lobby was a middle-aged man. He looked like a security guard, but he was sitting in a reception-style cubicle. Upon seeing the unfamiliar faces, he asked Mr. Chu and his assistant to sign in while he called the CEO.

Within minutes, Ju De, dressed in a simple dress shirt appeared and shook Mr. Chu’s hand, introducing himself and the two men beside him. From Mr. Chu's perspective, the Ju De was average-looking and possessed no charisma, so it was difficult to tell that he was the CEO, Mr. Ning. The doctor by his side and the large man looked even more impressive.

The only problem with the doctor was that he was reading something on his phone the entire time. Since he wasn’t the one giving the tour, Mr. Chu didn’t think anything of it.

Mr. Chu walked through a short passageway that was part of the administrative wing. Upon exiting, they arrived at the factory portion. Using his ID card on a reader, a glass door clicked to unlock, and Ju De led everyone inside. 

The factory was large and wide, but divided up into three different areas by temperature zones. Mr. Chu took the stairs to the mezzanine area that had the overhead view of the factory. It was so impressive how clean everything was.

“We hired a lot of maintenance staff,” said Ju De.

Robots could clean the floors, but there were many devices and machines that should be cleaned by hand. Many people from the rural area didn’t know how to work the machinery, but they knew how to clean.

They continued walking down the mezzanine, passing several engineers keeping watch of the humidity, temperature, and pressure.

At the end of the mezzanine, Mr. Chu saw the final production area where the pill was formed. Once the production was finished, it entered the pneumatic tube and into the adjacent building for packaging and storage.

Mr. Chu’s assistant was surprised that his boss had barely made any comments or written any notes. Usually, there were all sorts of flaws. However, even the assistant could tell that the CEO had spent a lot of money on the factory and no expenses were spared.

“Mr. Ning by any chance related to Governor Ning?” Mr. Chu asked.

“Ah yes, father,” Ju De replied.

Mr. Chu nodded. It was beginning to make more sense. Someone in Imperial City wanted to cause the new company a hard time, but at the same time, they couldn't use the usual tactics like hiring local ruffians to destroy the property.

“Should I thank your father for making this an easy process?” asked Li Yun after the inspector left.

“He doesn’t even know I’m working, so best to ignore him,” Ju De responded.

Li Yun wondered if it was Song Taiji.