Shen Yu and Xu Juan had endless things to talk about.

Jiang He quietly made a gesture to Shen Yu.

Shen Yu nodded and mouthed, "Go on."

He slipped out of the hospital room and went to find Xu Wenpei in his office.

"Director Xu."

"Have a seat." Xu Wenpei poured a glass of warm water and handed it to Jiang He personally.

"Juanzi’s doing well. Her spirits are good," Jiang He said, accepting the glass with both hands.

Xu Wenpei sat across from Jiang He and nodded. "I saw her during my rounds this morning. All her key indicators are trending down. This time, I really have you to thank."

"I just happened to notice it, that’s all. You’re giving me too much credit," Jiang He replied.

Xu Wenpei shook his head. "There are no ’just happened to’s in medicine. The fact that you could see it shows how solid your fundamentals are."

As he spoke, he turned around, took a black portable hard drive from his desk drawer, and pushed it in front of Jiang He.

"This contains all of the classic surgical videos for cancer of the pancreatic head and bile duct from the Peking Union Medical College Hospital General Surgery Department over the past few years, along with post-operative pathology tracking and detailed complication data."

Jiang He’s gaze sharpened.

This kind of core clinical data was an absolutely priceless treasure. It was impossible to find in public journals, all of it hard-won from countless surgeries.

"I’ve already redacted all personal patient information, making this data fully compliant for academic exchange. For your future pancreatic cancer research, the Peking Union Medical College Hospital General Surgery Department can provide clinical data support. If you ever need joint cross-hospital supervision, I, Xu Wenpei, will personally lend my name and vouch for you."

This was an immense gain.

With Xu Wenpei’s co-signed endorsement, publishing in core journals and applying for the National Natural Science Foundation would be a green light all the way.

Jiang He accepted the hard drive without hesitation. "Thank you, Director Xu. With this, my progress will be much faster."

Xu Wenpei then took a desk calendar, wrote a string of numbers on the back of a page, tore it off, and handed it over.

"Your ideas for improving the Whipple procedure are excellent. Here are the direct lines for the Northern China regional distributors of Karl Storz from Germany and Johnson & Johnson from the United States. When you’re setting up your lab and purchasing equipment, contact them directly and mention my name. If you go through the corporate channels, you’ll get the lowest prices and the best after-sales service."

"This is a huge help." Jiang He carefully put the slip of paper away.

Xu Wenpei nodded and said, "Next June, the Chinese Medical Association Surgery Branch is holding a national pancreatic academic summit in the Capital City. I have a nomination slot for a young scholar. Go back and work hard. As long as you can generate the core data to verify your theory before then, I’ll get you onto the main stage next year."

He added, "In this circle, once you’ve stood up there and spoken for ten minutes, your projects will never lack funding again."

Jiang He stood up, his tone solemn. "I will not disappoint you, Director Xu."

...

In the afternoon, Shen Yu stayed at the hospital to keep her company, while Jiang He went to Zhongguan Village alone.

In ’08, Zhongguan Village was the largest electronics distribution center in the country.

The E-plaza, Hailong, and Kemao buildings were draped with massive posters, and the streets were filled with salespeople handing out flyers to attract customers.

Jiang He walked into the Hailong Electronics Market and took the escalator to the fourth floor.

In his pocket was the Golden Sunflower Card that Wang Kuan had given him.

Two hundred thousand yuan was a substantial sum of money. He now needed to turn this money into a productive force for his research.

He walked into a ThinkPad specialty store.

"I’ll take a T61, top-spec model." Jiang He had already done his research.

The clerk was taken aback for a moment. "A top-spec T61? That one is eighteen thousand five hundred. Are you sure...?"

"A new, sealed one." Jiang He took out the Golden Sunflower Card and placed it on the glass counter.

The clerk’s expression immediately shifted to an ingratiating smile.

’I never would have guessed... he looks so unassuming, but he’s actually rich! You really can’t judge a book by its cover!’

Unboxing, inspection.

The classic black matte case, with a red TrackPoint nub in the center of the keyboard.

This little thing would help him process medical data more efficiently.

After swiping the card and signing, Jiang He headed downstairs with the laptop bag.

He stopped as he passed a Sony specialty store. 𝚏𝕣𝐞𝗲𝐰𝕖𝐛𝐧𝕠𝕧𝚎𝚕.𝐜𝚘𝗺

On display was a pink VAIO series laptop. Its body was thin and light, with a gorgeous design—perfect for a girl.

Jiang He stood there for a moment.

Shen Yu didn’t have a computer in her dorm room right now.

To write her exchange student application materials, she had to go to the library’s electronic reading room and wait in line for a computer.

If he bought this computer for her, it would make her life so much more convenient.

’I’ll get it!’

However, if he just gave her a laptop worth over ten thousand yuan, she would definitely refuse it.

Jiang He wasn’t worried. ’I’ve got a trick up my sleeve.’

’All I have to do is use the Zodiac Little Witch account, create some kind of "fan appreciation lottery," and I can give the gift to my girl, all fair and square.’

Just as he was leaving Zhongguan Village, the phone in his pocket vibrated.

Chen Hao’s voice was excited. "Old Jiang! It’s done!"

"All of them? The hundreds of case files are all finished?"

"All entered! We pulled an all-nighter yesterday, checked all the data one more time, and just saved the final version of the Excel sheet!"

"Nice work," Jiang He said with a smile. "I’m heading back tomorrow. The celebration dinner is on me. You guys pick the place."

"That’s what I was waiting to hear! Hurry back. I’ll pick you up at the airport. And remember to take pictures!"

"Don’t worry. Oh, right, send the spreadsheet to my email first."

"No problem. It’s all up to you now, Old Jiang."

He hung up the phone.

The data had been processed, which meant he could start writing the paper.

Jiang He glanced at the post office across the street, and one last thing came to mind.

Teacher Shen’s student exchange in Southern China.

Shen Yu was definitely capable of securing a spot, but he had to take care of the six or seven thousand yuan self-funded fee for the cross-province exchange.

Jiang He had already laid the groundwork for this.

Teacher Shen was an excellent writer.

While they were out and about these past couple of days, Jiang He had mentioned submitting the essays from her blog to a publisher to see what would happen.

Shen Yu was very unconfident at first, only agreeing after a great deal of encouragement from Jiang He.

Now it was time for those efforts to bear fruit.

Jiang He opened his chat window with Shen Yu and typed on the keyboard.

[Teacher Shen! Great news! Remember my friend at the publishing house? Guess what? Your manuscript was accepted!]

Message sent.

Jiang He crossed the street into the post office and filled out a money order form.

In the memo section, he wrote: "Payment for commissioned article for Dahe Digest."

Done.

In a few days, this money would become a green postal money order, knocking on the door of Shen Yu’s dorm room under a perfectly legitimate pretext.

Stepping out of the post office, Jiang He stood on a street in the Capital City and felt the heavy items in his backpack.

A Golden Sunflower Card with over a hundred thousand yuan on it, a hard drive containing years of core data from the Peking Union Medical College Hospital General Surgery Department, a brand-new ThinkPad laptop, and an express lane to next year’s top national medical summit.

With all this, his trip to the Capital City was a complete success.

He swiped his keycard and opened the door to his budget hotel room.

He drew the curtains and turned on his computer.

Jiang He grabbed a coiled ethernet cable from the desk and plugged it into the network port on the side of the T61.

As the local area connection icon lit up in the bottom-right corner of the screen, he plugged in the hard drive and downloaded the file Chen Hao and his team had sent to his email.

He quickly installed the SPSS 16.0 statistical software and then opened two windows.

On the left was the spreadsheet of local case files from Southern Medical University, which Chen Hao and his team had pulled several all-nighters to manually input and clean up.

On the right was years of core surgical tracking and detailed prognostic data from the Peking Union Medical College Hospital General Surgery, representing the highest level of medical care in the country.

Jiang He stared at the two columns of data on the screen, his gaze growing increasingly calm and focused.

Previously, while the data sample from Southern Medical University was large enough, it lacked long-term, high-quality tracking of post-operative survival rates.

The data from Peking Union Medical College Hospital perfectly filled this final gap.

Once the two datasets were run through a multivariate Cox regression analysis to generate a survival curve, the clinical pattern, still unknown at this stage, would be statistically undeniable, with nowhere left to hide.

New document, rename:

"Analysis of Postoperative Lymph Node Ratio (LNR) and Prognostic Evaluation in Pancreatoduodenectomy Based on a Large, Multicenter Sample"

Jiang He typed the opening line of the abstract: "Objective: To investigate the independent predictive value of the lymph node ratio on the overall survival (OS) of patients after radical surgery for pancreatic cancer, and to attempt to supplement and revise the current TNM staging system..."

After writing that paragraph, he started a new one on the next line, typing:

"Data Source: Nanshan Medical University Affiliated First Hospital and Peking Union Medical College Hospital multi-center joint cohort."

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P.S. Please give me your guaranteed monthly votes, everyone! For every 200 votes, I’ll add an extra Chapter after the book goes on sale, no upper limit.