Aspire to Great Heights

"Your company was unexpectedly professional..." Zhou Qi looked at the vehicle they had sent out, carrying four people.

Including the three people in his own car, they had actually dispatched eight people in total!

Yes, Yan Yun was sitting in their car.

"Two financial auditors, one lawyer, and one of my supervisors..." Yan Yun smiled. "That's a standard arrangement!"

Zhou Qi nodded, but he still felt that something was off.

Right, it was because of the world.

It was not because Earth lacked Spiritual Energy. Rather, when he had been in the One Piece World, he had been eloquent and brilliantly persuasive, leaving Smoker speechless. He had gotten Tannis to accept his price outright, and even Koshiro had been talked into a daze before teaching him everything he knew.

But in the modern world, there were simply too many talented people. Yan Yun was merely an employee at a consulting firm, yet she could handle every one of his problems. The professionalism, intelligence, and emotional intelligence she displayed all seemed to faintly surpass his own...

"What degree do you have, Yan Yun?" Zhou Qi asked curiously.

"Oh, I have a PhD in theoretical economics from South China University..." Yan Yun replied casually.

Holy shit...

"You have a PhD?" Zhou Qi's eyes widened. "A doctor working in sales?"

"Uh..." Yan Yun was speechless. "Although my business card says client manager, our profession should be called information consultants. There's still quite a big difference between that and sales..."

"But..." Zhou Qi glanced into the rearview mirror and saw that Zhou Yibing, who was driving, looked equally stunned. Only then did he feel a little better. So you were shocked too.

Yeah. Online, it seemed like anyone without a master's or PhD was too embarrassed to even speak, but in reality, Zhou Qi had never met a single person with a master's degree in his daily life, much less a PhD.

He had actually always assumed Yan Yun was some vocational college graduate and Linlang Consulting was some tiny middleman agency. Thinking about it now, he realized something had been wrong.

What kind of small agency could wield enough influence to communicate with a pharmaceutical company worth over a hundred million while also contacting the local government?

This company even employed certified public accountants and lawyers!

"My degree isn't anything special at the company. Our founder, Li Can, graduated from the Chinese University of Hong Kong and earned dual degrees in economics and business administration from Stanford University. After graduation, he joined DeBilter Consulting and worked his way up to become the overall head of DeBilter's Greater China division..."

"Wait, wasn't that some old Singaporean guy?" Zhou Qi asked. "What was his name, Li Shanghe?"

"Uh..." Yan Yun's voice caught. "Well, that company really is a shell company we sold. You see, in the information consulting industry, clients trust old established brands. They think those brands have experience, connections, and influence. But this is China. Even if a foreign brand has been around for a century, how much more of an advantage can it really have over us?"

Zhou Qi nodded. He understood that perfectly.

Traders claimed they had factories, factories claimed they were old established brands, and old established brands claimed their heritage dated back to the Ming and Qing dynasties. Everyone did it.

"But please rest assured about our capabilities. Since our company was founded, we have worked with thousands of companies across Dongguang. We have handled company acquisitions like this many times and have extensive experience!"

Zhou Qi continued nodding.

"Our goal is to become the miHoYo of the information consulting industry..."

"Wait?" Zhou Qi suddenly felt something was wrong. "The what of the industry?"

"MiHoYo?" Seeing Zhou Qi's baffled expression, Yan Yun explained, "Oh, if you don't play games, you might not know them. They're a game company, but their business model, corporate culture, and even their internal employee management have been recognized by many information consulting firms."

"If you don't know miHoYo, then you should know Tencent and NetEase. Ten years ago, if someone said a company could beat both of them in gaming, I don't think anyone would have believed it. But now, that company has appeared. In the gaming industry, talented people have reached the point where they choose miHoYo if they can, and only choose other companies if they can't..." Yan Yun sighed. "That kind of appeal to talent is like Huawei's appeal to mathematics and electronics experts. Just imagine it: the very best talent in the entire industry gathered in one company. How terrifying would that be..."

"So our goal is to make Linlang the first choice for every information consulting professional in China when they look for a job, with other companies coming only second!"

Actually, bringing up miHoYo in China could lower one's prestige, since the company did not have a very good online reputation. Yan Yun only dared to say it because Zhou Qi seemed rational and relatively young.

With someone older, she would have said they wanted to become the Huawei of the industry.

There was plenty to learn from miHoYo, and they had even developed dedicated internal courses for it, but there was no need to tell Zhou Qi that. If Zhou Qi really went and learned it, who would Linlang do business with?

"Then tell me, how should an industry like pharmaceuticals develop?" Of course Zhou Qi knew miHoYo, but only through Genshin Impact. He truly did not know much about its influence on the industry.

But there did not seem to be anything a pharmaceutical company and a two-dimensional anime game company could learn from each other.

They could not exactly print anime girls on medicine bottles to make themselves seem emotionally intelligent, could they?

"In the pharmaceutical industry, developing new drugs is naturally the most profitable path. But because it requires enormous investments of capital and talent, pharmaceutical companies in our country have achieved little in that area. Overall, everyone still focuses on generic drugs, and even the top-ranked pharmaceutical companies are no exception..." Yan Yun said. "But generic drugs are not simple either. Even after a drug's patent expires, perfectly reproducing it while ensuring its efficacy and minimizing side effects still requires a great deal of talent..."

"With Baofeng's scale and number of personnel, you should primarily acquire generic drug technology from major manufacturers, gradually expand your own scale, absorb talent, and then move toward becoming a first-tier generic drug manufacturer..."

Zhou Qi understood. Yan Yun had put it politely. Translated plainly, it meant: Baofeng Pharmaceutical Factory had no talent and was too small, so they should stop dreaming about developing their own drugs. They did not even have the capability to replicate first-line medicines. They should obediently buy obsolete technology and production lines from major manufacturers...

Scratching his head, Zhou Qi felt rather unwilling to accept that. Although opening a pharmaceutical factory meant easy money for him, he had not actually intended to simply lie flat. Otherwise, would he not become another Tencent or Alibaba?

Besides, no matter how much money such low-end manufacturers made, they would still be regarded as inferior companies in the eyes of the country and its people.

Like miHoYo and Lenovo.

No matter how much money they made, without their own core technologies, they would never earn everyone's recognition. The Americans next door would not even bother sanctioning them!

Zhou Qi did not want to build that kind of company.

He had learned it in primary school: aspire to great heights!

No talent? He could not recruit academicians or the like, but surely he could recruit professors and PhDs. He would offer them generous salaries.

What would they research?

They would research the exotic flowers and herbs of the One Piece World, or its medicinal formulas.

Traditional Chinese medicine formulas were no longer much use. The Japanese had already registered all the patents. But no one had registered the medicinal formulas from the One Piece World.

Besides, there were two miraculous doctors over there, both currently unemployed. One was Crocus, the ship's doctor of One Piece, and the other was Doriel, a miraculous doctor who had lived for nearly two hundred years. Once he recruited them, how could they fail to develop new drugs?

In the future, he would become the miHoYo of the pharmaceutical industry!

"Hmph!" Zhou Qi glanced at Yan Yun. "Brother Bing, play a song!"

"The world is vast, let it stretch as wide as it wishes."

After listening for a while, Yan Yun remarked, "Brother Bing, your playlist is really full of grassland flavor!"

"Right? My favorite singer is Dao Lang. Here, I'll put on 'Love Song of the Western Sea' for you."