Raising a Cloud Kun is So Hard -- How Much Wealth Do I Need to Make It Roam the Seven Seas?

"Mr. Shen, please do us a favor."

"Mr. Shen, you absolutely have to help us with this!"

"It won't trouble you too much. We just want you to switch your practice target from broken floor tiles to items we specify!"

"This would be extremely beneficial to our research! It could greatly advance our country's materials science! You know, materials science—"

A middle-aged scholar, two younger scholars, and five or six students—the kind who toiled away under their advisor's plans and projects, commonly known as research dogs—all looked at Shen Le with pleading eyes.

The middle-aged scholar gripped Shen Le's hands tightly, gave them a shake, then hurriedly let go.

Yet from that brief contact alone, Shen Le could feel how dry and cracked the man's skin was. Who knew how many reagents he had handled, or how many times he had washed his hands with alcohol, Acetone, and all sorts of chemicals?

Shen Le's heart softened at once. Materials science... ah, materials science. It was an eternal pain—the deepest of the four great dead-end pits: bioengineering, chemistry, environmental science, and materials science.

So many projects and so much equipment were bottlenecked by materials science. Wanted a better engine? Use materials more resistant to high temperatures and pressure.

Wanted a better lithography machine? Photoresist was also a type of material.

Wanted controllable nuclear fusion?—That really wouldn't work. At present, there was no material capable of withstanding temperatures of a hundred million degrees. Just look at how the Special Affairs Bureau pampered Alloy Master, delivering heaps of various metals to him every month and hoping he would eat them, spit them out, eat them again, so they could collect scraps for analysis. That showed just how much the country was willing to invest.

Gold prices had risen to over eight hundred per