"It's really strange. I can understand only using natural crystals and not artificial ones; there might be some difference between artificial and natural.
But between hand-carving and machine-carving.
Why is there such a big difference?
This isn't something that emphasizes artistic conception or emotion, is it? Wait, it's not like this energy crystal needs emotional input and artistic conception to be useful, right?"
Looking at the large pile in front of her, energy chips carved by various machines, experimental equipment, and even the most precise equipment she could find, which were indistinguishable from hand-carvings to the naked eye.
Even magnified, they were more refined than her own micro-carvings, yet they were useless.
Ding Yun couldn't figure out the mystery.
If it's said that activating the chips requires emotion.
That's unlikely.
After all, Ding Yun knew what she was thinking when she carved those chips. She didn't dare to let her mind wander while carving; she was solely focused on the carving and didn't think about anything else.
Because her skill was limited.
She could only complete the carving by being serious.
Emotions like passion were nonexistent; she was purely carving the chips as a task.
"No, there's absolutely nothing in this world that happens without reason. There must be some difference between machine-carving and hand-carving; what is it that I haven't thought of?
It definitely has nothing to do with the patterns or the fineness.
Because the patterns are the same, and the fineness of machine-carving is even higher than my hand-carving.
Ah, this is so frustrating!
No matter how I think about it, the only possibility is emotion, but I didn't pour any emotion into it. It couldn't be just being serious, serious, and focused..."
As Ding Yun scratched her head in frustration, unable to figure things out, a flash of inspiration suddenly struck her. If there was a difference between hand-carved and machine-carved items, it was likely related to the person themselves.
Coupled with the difficulty of micro-carving without intense focus.
Ding Yun then thought of spirit.
The spirit of mental energy, the spirit of essence, energy, and spirit.
As soon as she thought of this, she immediately picked up the chip carved by the machine, injected her mental energy into it, and then placed the chip with injected mental energy into the chip slot of the basic spirit ball sample next to it.
The next second, the spirit ball activated.
"It worked, it worked! I knew there had to be a difference between hand-carving and machine-carving. I never imagined the difference would be in human mental energy.
But thinking about it carefully, it makes some sense. Machine-carving would never be able to imbue mental energy into a chip. For a person carving, it's reasonable to disperse some mental energy into the chip while being focused.
Even if my micro-carving wasn't perfect.
It still successfully activated the chip.
It's likely because my mental energy is strong, not because the micro-carving requirements of the chip are low. Da Feng Novel Network.
My heavens, such a simple thing, and I never thought of it. It's truly a blind spot in my perception!"
Although the problem was found, in the end, it was still impossible to completely get rid of the human element, or even Ding Yun herself, because ordinary people don't have powerful enough mental energy to leave their bodies and inject it into chips.
To allow ordinary people to participate in chip manufacturing, they could only be made to micro-carve, relying on prolonged focus to inject their mental energy into the chips to activate them.
But this was clearly very troublesome. It would be easier for Ding Yun to do it herself, using machine-carved chips and then activating them in batches, which was simpler.
Because through the recent experiment, Ding Yun discovered that the mental energy required to activate a micro-carved energy chip was very little, just a wisp was enough. The difficulty was mainly how to infuse the mental energy into the chip.
It was very difficult for ordinary people to achieve this, but Ding Yun's mental energy could freely leave her body, enter the crystal energy chip, and recover quickly. Activating hundreds of millions of chips a day might be difficult, but activating tens of millions was quite simple.
She could recover by sleeping more.
And tens of millions were enough for sale.
Thus, at this stage, Ding Yun's plan was complete, lacking only the crucial element, investment.
The funds from the dozen or so storage balls she had previously sold had been used up during her experiments. Now she only had a pile of chips and a small batch of experimental samples of varying quality.
The mass production of basic spirit balls.
Undoubtedly required large-scale capital investment.
Even if Ding Yun didn't build her own factory or assembly line and only mastered the core energy chip manufacturing process and activation technology, it would still require significant funds to place orders and purchase raw materials.
She couldn't possibly get a contract manufacturer to produce them for free.
She would have to pay a 30% deposit at the very least.
Therefore, Ding Yun still needed money. She either had to find investors and give up some shares, or find partners, or find a way to get a loan.
Among these options, loans were undoubtedly the most difficult.
After all, she had no assets to mortgage, and the money from the student startup loan was like a drop in the bucket.
So Ding Yun first dismissed the idea of a loan.
Then she began to contact some large companies, hoping to seek cooperation or angel investment.
Unfortunately, their negotiations quickly broke down.
Because Ding Yun's bottom line was to retain more than 60% of her shares and maintain control, while those large companies either wanted to buy her out for hundreds of millions, or offer tens of millions.
To acquire 51% of the shares.
Some even hinted that they could crack Ding Yun's secret formula within a short period, and cooperating with them now would still yield some profit. If she was greedy, she would gain nothing in the end.
Facing their arrogance, Ding Yun didn't argue, because she knew arguing would be useless. They would only think she was being stubborn. It was better to let facts speak for themselves later.
However, in this case.
The funding problem still couldn't be solved.
Later, a senior postgraduate student in the lab saw Ding Yun looking troubled, asked about it, and suggested.
She could do a full pre-sale online.
He also mentioned that many shopping platforms already had similar projects, with pre-sales of novel products, various merchandise, and even fruits. Sellers would typically present concept art, then collect money through pre-sales to fund production.
And then ship them out.
The shortest delivery time was thirty days, the longest could be two to three months, or even half a year later. Except for the funds needing to be supervised by the shopping platform, there were basically no other problems.
It was just uncertain how many could be pre-sold.
If too few were sold, then there would likely be no solution, because no matter how much of a full pre-sale it was, if not many people bought, it would still be impossible to raise the huge deposit in a short period.
Then, it would be impossible to quickly stock up on products.
She could only proceed slowly, selling slowly...