Locke carefully read the Q1 article published in Textiles and Materials, a Q1 journal run by the Rose School Lineage, and discovered that its author was Wizard Argos.
In the article, Wizard Argos cast serious doubt on the safety of air pineapple. He argued that using magic plants as wizard shoes presented an insurmountable problem: magic plants were living things. Using them as wizard shoes was, fundamentally, still borrowing the power of other life-forms, little different from the magic creatures commanded by wizards of the Summoning School.
Ordinary wizards had no way to cultivate these magic plants properly.
Ordinary breeders found it even harder to design proper magic plant wizard shoes.
After finishing the article, Locke discovered that its arguments and experimental data came almost entirely from products sold by the Magic Plant Wizard Shoes Shop Alliances established by other wizards of the Red Dragon School Lineage. None came from him. An analysis like that certainly made things much simpler.
Right. I've attracted too much attention lately, which is why a critical article like this could get into a Q1 journal. In essence, it's upper-Q2 quality at best. But Textiles and Materials is run by the Rose School Lineage, so Argos could publish there and use the journal's influence to amplify his article.
Locke considered it. Writing articles to prove that someone else's research methods were wrong was commonplace.
His teacher and the Rose Throne still published articles in Third-Ring journals every year arguing against each other's research methods. But as the Battle of Academic Lineages intensified, these academic debates had become rarer. Or rather, without finding something to use against the other side, such arguments yielded little.
Locke used his Lingzhi Magic Plant to search for information and discovered that neither Solas Barefoot nor Argos himself had spread rumors