Chapter 279: Corporate Empire

A few days later, Chen Chen sat in the conference room and quickly flipped through a planner sent over by Xia Yin.

“Project Xingtian?”

After turning to the last page of the planner, Chen Chen could not hold back a smile. With his mouse, he clicked on a checkbox on the computer.

At this moment, the company’s new website style and the name of the bionic prosthetic project had been formally confirmed.

Next, it was time for the head office to begin selling and promoting.

However, in the planner sent by the head office, Xia Yin expressed the hope that Chen Chen could make more public appearances. It would be best if he could become a symbol, an emblem, of Blacklight Biotechnology, just like Tencent’s Ma Huateng, Alibaba’s Jack Ma, and JD.com’s Liu Qiangdong.

After all, Chen Chen did have the qualifications to become a “symbol”— he had developed an age-reversal treatment project at the age of eighteen, then dropped out of college and started his own business. After only three years, he became the boss of a corporation with a market value of tens of billions.

Youth, career success, countless triumphs and accolades — these were all part of Chen Chen’s “symbol”.

Xia Yin hoped that Chen Chen could attend TED to give a speech for this reason.

TED, an acronym of the three words “technology”, “entertainment”, and “design”, was a private non-profit organization in North America. The organization was known for its TED conference, with the objective of “ideas worth spreading”.

Those who qualified for the TED conference were also preeminent talents from various fields such as Nobel Prize winners or billionaires like Bill Gates and Musk who had created new legends or scientists, philosophers, artists, explorers, psychologists, linguists, religious leaders, philanthropists, and so on.

Since 2006, the TED Talks had been posted online and quickly gained worldwide attention. It had become one of the most prestigious speech platforms in the world. If Chen Chen could get on this stage, Blacklight Biotechnology’s Project Xingtian would swiftly spread throughout the world. The effect of this would be much better than spending hundreds of millions or even billions of dollars on global advertising.

Seeing this, Chen Chen thought for a while and finally agreed to this proposal.

With the increasing influence of the company, Chen Chen’s name was destined to be known to even more people. As he was the first to create the Blacklight virus vaccine, Chen Chen was even nominated last September in the list of candidates for this year’s Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.

If there was no unexpected plot twist, Chen Chen’s Nobel Prize this year was guaranteed. This was something the North American government had no choice but to do because if Chen Chen lost the nomination, it would affect the perceived authority and fairness of the Nobel Prize.

After all, in the field of medicine in 2023, there would be no one who had performed better than Chen Chen.

As Chen Chen closed the webpage, he started to ponder silently.

Now, the company had almost reached its peak in the development of biopharmaceuticals, owning several patents and also the trump card that was the Eco Science City. As long as the three anti-cancer drugs passed clinical trials in a few years and they released the AD-001 drug that could completely cure Alzheimer’s, not even companies like Pfizer and Novartis would be able to compete with them.

At that point, Blacklight Biotechnology would officially become an unprecedented world-class pharmaceutical monopoly. It would be immensely difficult for even one or two continents or countries to do anything against them.

However, as a rule, when Blacklight Biotechnology had developed to that extent, it had reached its limit. It was impossible to continue expanding, for instance, reaching the level of the Umbrella Corporation.

After all, the potential of a single industry was limited. Even if the global pharmaceutical industry was united, there was no power that could equal the Earth Federation. If Chen Chen wanted to go further, he had only one option —

Horizontal cross-border development!

If a group wanted to achieve long-term development, it must actively expand into other fields and reach the top in all walks of life. This was the path of development for the corporate empire.

What was a corporate empire?

It was a corporation with the characteristics of “imperialism”. It did not act in full accordance with economic laws and had its unique means of doing things such as private armed forces that answered only to the company, a unique economic monopoly system, and top-secret projects in cooperation with the government that were hidden from the public.

Even the average country would be somewhat wary of such a corporation. Any of its actions could cause a global sensation and its political influence was no less than that of a nation.

Even for continents, their control over this sort of corporate super monopoly was very limited. Chen Chen’s goal was to become an enterprise like this or even stronger!

Still, cross-border development was not that easy. One would have no connections, technology or talents. Everything must begin from scratch, just like starting a business with nothing in hand.

Therefore, for ordinary companies, cross-border expansion was indeed a very dangerous move and might even lead to bankruptcy. However, for Chen Chen, it was not a problem at all.

After all, Chen Chen had a key that could open the door to various worlds.

Through that key, he could obtain any advanced technology that he wanted. These technologies would allow him to stand at the forefront of any field including energy, electronics, network, industry, even aerospace and military.

As long as he had enough time, Chen Chen would be able to create a real-life Umbrella Corporation sooner or later...

...

Three days later, a major change suddenly occurred on the official website of Blacklight Biotechnology Ltd.

Previously, there were only four sections on the homepage of Blacklight Biotechnology’s official website, namely the biopharmaceutical section, the medical project section, the infectious disease section, and the electronic technology section.

The four major sections were represented by the colors green, white, gray, and black, so they were clearly distinct at a glance.

The biopharmaceutical section, naturally, listed the three anti-cancer drugs that had entered the clinical trial stage while the medical project section included the “age-reversal treatment” project, the “Alzheimer’s disease reversal treatment” project, and so on.

As for the infectious disease section, the research materials on the Blacklight virus and vaccine were publicly shared for anyone in the world to browse through and learn from.

Each section had its own independent forum. Due to Blacklight Biotechnology’s prestige, these forums had gradually attracted the attention of countless scholars. Many experts in the medical field had registered accounts on the official website of Blacklight Biotechnology, which had become a professional website similar to an academic network.

Under the management of Little X, the forums under the official website of Blacklight Biotechnology had been managed in an orderly manner, thus winning the favor of those academic experts who now regarded it as a permanent haunt.

However, just this morning, some academic experts and editors of various journals were surprised by Blacklight Biotechnology’s new official website when they opened it up to search for materials as usual.

Among the four sections that were once arranged in a square, a new section had suddenly appeared.

The color representing that section was gold and there was a new name on the section — tissue engineering.

If someone clicked in curiously, they would be greeted with a large blank page. In the center of the blank screen, there was a big “question mark” and behind the question mark was a human figure.

This figure was shadowy and vague, and one could just about tell that it was a human figure. Still, the peculiar thing was that this figure did not have a head...

When they saw this new additional section, many people who were silently watching the company now understood that Blacklight Biotechnology had new products.

As a newly emerging pharmaceutical giant in the field of biopharmaceuticals, Blacklight Biotechnology did not have a very high profile, but its every move still roused the attention of countless people. After this information was released, many international media competed to make the first report:

[Blacklight Biotechnology Is Suspected to Be Releasing a New Product. This Time It May Expand Into Tissue Engineering!]—Wall Street Journal.

[Boom! According to Industry Sources, Blacklight Biotechnology Is Suspected to Be Joining Forces With Musk!]—Tencent News.

[Blacklight Biotechnology’s New Venture Is Confirmed to Be Related to Tissue Engineering. Its Emblem Is Suspected to Be the Ancient Chinese Figure Xingtian!]—Sina Express.

[When People Opened the Main Page of Blacklight Biotechnology’s Official Website, the Entire Earth Federation Was Stunned!]—UC Subscription.

With the exposure from major media, Blacklight Biotechnology had publicly announced the release date of the new product and also announced that on 1 April, the founder and chairman of Blacklight Biotechnology would give a TED Talk. The venue of the talk was arranged by the TED officials, in a rare exception, to be in Blacklight Biotechnology’s Eco Science City!

This gesture greatly boosted Blacklight Biotechnology’s reputation. Once again, Blacklight Biotechnology had become a discussion topic among the biotechnology crowd. Some netizens who were more invested in the biological field had even more enthusiastic discussions.

“The project is in the field of tissue engineering. If you consider this along with the headless horseman, it’s very easy to guess. It must be related to head replacement surgery!”

Under the new section of Blacklight Biotechnology, some netizens speculated.

“My *ss! If it’s head replacement surgery, do you think the International Bioethics Committees would agree? Not to mention that stem cells still haven’t solved the problem of reconnecting the spinal cord and nerves!”

Someone more knowledgeable quickly refuted this.

“Maybe it’s cloning. Recently, wasn’t there news circulating online that many wealthy people are cloning their bodies privately for future organ transplantations? Maybe this silhouette of a figure without a head is a clone without a head, who can say?”

Someone else guessed again.

“Impossible, any human cloning is prohibited by the international law of the Earth Federation. So, all of you saying that it’s human cloning and head replacement surgery can give it a rest.”

...