Illusion Immortal Technology (Bonus Chapter for Paomian Jun's Generous Tip)

Shen Bing gave Sun Li a job: meet with the workers. They were all from the same town, so talking to them should be easy.

Shen Bing drove to Tangjin County with Boss Wu and found a professional accounting agency to handle the factory's ownership transfer.

At the same time, Shen Bing registered a company: Illusion Immortal Technology Company.

Shiqiao Glass Factory became a subsidiary of Illusion Immortal Technology Company and was renamed Illusion Immortal Glass Factory.

All right, Shen Bing admitted he had little talent for naming things. But it was his name, and he liked it.

"Illusion" commemorated Fantasy Westward Journey, the mobile game that had become the Gate to the Immortal Realm. "Immortal" needed no explanation: the technology in his hands came from the Immortal Realm.

When Boss Wu heard the company's name, he was devastated. It was just a glass factory—why call it a technology company? He knew his little factory well enough. Producing a few tons of glass sheets a day would be doing well.

After all, its small crucible furnace could melt only so much glass.

But Boss Wu's view was limited. Why couldn't glass be high-tech?

Almost no high-tech industry in the world today could do without glass.

Glass substrates for LCD panels, lenses for chipmaking lithography machines, specialty glass used in aerospace—which of those wasn't a high-tech product?

The bigger the dream, the bigger the world.

From the moment Shen Bing obtained the Over-the-Horizon Telescope Manufacturing Technology, he had decided that the glass industry would be the first step toward his business empire.

With the Gate to the Immortal Realm in his hands, Shen Bing could look down on any company in the world—as long as he had enough money.

Of course, Shen Bing wasn't going to tell Boss Wu that. He could hardly say he planned to make lithography lenses in that little workshop.

"Running a factory and a business is such a hassle," Shen Bing lamented.

It might have been a tiny Glass Factory, but it still needed all the usual work done.

The factory needed workers and technicians to operate. Someone had to purchase raw materials and sell the products, too.

Shen Bing felt as though he needed to be in several places at once.

Of the five workers Boss Wu had recommended, two could just about be considered technicians and could oversee glass production. But their skills fell far short of what Shen Bing needed for the glass he intended to make.

Selling the products was another matter entirely. The five workers weren't exactly tongue-tied, but none had a salesperson's gift of the gab.

Purchasing raw materials was easier. As long as he had the money, quartz sand and the other materials were readily available.

Finding someone to manage the business was the biggest problem.

Shen Bing knew his limits. Even with his superhuman brain, he couldn't handle every aspect of the company himself. He needed a professional manager.

Fortunately, that market was well established. Major headhunting firms had plenty of professional managers for Shen Bing to choose from, including highly capable senior candidates with impeccable character.

The catch was that he had to be able to pay them enough.

Trying to recruit someone like that for the little workshop he had now would be a joke.

Shen Bing wasn't in a hurry. After sending Sun Li on his way, he signed employment contracts with the five workers, along with confidentiality clauses.

Other people might scoff at those clauses. What could a shabby little Glass Factory possibly have to keep secret?

But Shen Bing was planning ahead. His goal was to turn this little glass factory into a top-tier glass manufacturer. A leak was out of the question.

He wasn't relying entirely on contracts to protect his secrets, either. They were merely his outermost line of defense. The real protection lay in the technology itself, and he was confident no one could crack what he brought to the table.

That confidence came from his understanding of the glass industry and the knowledge he had accumulated. It also came from his brain, which no one else could replicate.

Next, Shen Bing began tuning the equipment and drafting the production process.

Debugging the equipment was highly technical work. Product quality depended on it.

After his adjustments, the equipment was still the same equipment, but the products it made would differ in subtle ways. Combined with the proportions of raw materials fed into it and precise control over firing time and temperature, those differences would fundamentally change certain properties of the finished glass.

The adjustments were so precise that even someone watching Shen Bing work could not reproduce them exactly.

Since its transformation, Shen Bing's brain had gained control over his body down to the nanometer.

In other words, when he nudged, adjusted, or corrected a component with his fingers, he could do so with nanometer-level precision.

The grade-eight master craftsmen once regarded as national treasures couldn't hold a candle to Shen Bing's lightning-fast brain and extraordinarily nimble hands.

Shen Bing spent the entire day at the factory before leaving, covered in grease.

Before he went, he told one worker to stay and keep an eye on the place. There were hundreds of thousands of yuan at stake, after all.

Once home, Shen Bing took a thorough shower, then looked up raw-material suppliers online and placed an order.

He kept the first order small: only seven or eight tons.

Glass was made primarily from quartz sand, soda ash, limestone, and similar materials. Several cities around Rongcheng had deposits of them, making transport convenient. The supplier promised delivery the next day.

As for the other metallic ingredients, he needed so little that he ordered them directly from an online store.

By the time he finished, it was already ten at night.

Shen Bing finally had time to take out his phone and check the Gate to the Immortal Realm.

Busy as he had been, Shen Bing had still made time every day to enter the Gate to the Immortal Realm and look for suitable tasks.

The results had been disappointing. Tasks in the Immortal Realm really weren't easy to complete. With only one teleportation opportunity left, Shen Bing had all the more reason to use it carefully.

This time was no different. Every task required the powers of an immortal, and Shen Bing had no way to accomplish any of them yet.

I guess I shouldn't be greedy. The technology in the Over-the-Horizon Telescope Manufacturing Technology alone will keep me busy for a long time. Shen Bing sighed and set his phone aside.

Then Shen Bing turned on his computer and went straight to an online digital library to study, as he did every day.

Looking things up online was much less efficient than reading in a library, but Shen Bing had no other choice.

For now, Shen Bing was mainly studying advanced glass processing and electronic information technology. Those were the fields Illusion Immortal Technology Company would focus on developing.

Thanks to Naide de Paomian for the generous tip—here's an extra chapter! I'll post two more chapters today. Thanks as well to Leiyin Xiaohao for the tip. Starting a new book isn't easy, so please support it. Thank you all...