Chapter 3201 — Not Fully Resolved

So once those earlier buyers had successfully upgraded, sales of the Xuandan Sect's cauldrons began to climb again. This dealt a critical blow to Wei Zhao's cauldrons, whose sales plummeted; and though the Cultivator's Chamber of Commerce's cauldrons still drew bidders every auction, the hammer price stayed around a hundred thousand—never very high. Sometimes it even fell below the Xuandan Sect's price.

There was no other reason: the follow-up upgrade costs for that cauldron ran higher than the Xuandan Sect's. Their upgrades were simply cheaper.

This sudden blow left Wei Zhao deeply dejected and helpless. He had thought that with Han Jingyi's upgrade service, the cauldrons could recover their former sales, but now it seemed everything had been over-simplified. Kang Jingming would not give up so easily.

Wei Zhao had no choice but to call Liu Jinghan again, because construction on the orphanage had resumed and money was needed every day. Yu Xiaoke's dream was to build the largest charitable orphanage, along with a children's charity hospital and a charity school—all completely free of charge. The construction costs alone were staggeringly high, to say nothing of the ongoing investment.

Still, the medicine cauldrons had been so profitable that when Yu Xiaoke put forward these ideas and plans, Wei Zhao had approved them through Fatty Lai without a second thought. Yu Xiaoke had probably been astonished herself—she had only been daydreaming, and her dream had actually come true.

But now cauldron sales had fallen sharply and could no longer sustain the orphanage's investment, which left Wei Zhao rather anxious.

"Jinghan, what's going on here? How does Kang Jingming have the upgrade program? The upgrade program this time was supposed to be in our hands alone, wasn't it? Don't tell me Kang Jingming got his hands on it again?" Wei Zhao was puzzled—how had Kang Jingming managed it?

"The upgrade program didn't leak. It's just that our microcontroller has probably been cracked by Kang Jingming's people. My guess is that the programmer driver from my computer was copied by Kang Jingming as well—that program contains the parameters of the microcontroller we use. With those parameters, if the other side has a skilled hand, they can crack our microcontroller. In other words, they didn't obtain the upgrade program; they cracked it out of one of our upgraded cauldrons." Liu Jinghan said.

"Is that so?" Wei Zhao frowned. "Then can we swap out the microcontroller the next time we upgrade?"

"We could replace the whole circuit board, but as for the microcontroller—only this one model is mature at the moment. As for developing a new model, not only is that beyond our technical capability, but even if we could do it, it would take a very long cycle. So we'll have to trouble your friend again." Liu Jinghan said with great apology. "It's all my fault. If I hadn't kept those things at the company, none of this would have happened."

"Forget it." Wei Zhao shook his head. "It's not your fault either. If you hadn't kept them at the company, you could hardly have kept them at home, could you? If anyone's to blame, it's your father, Liu Tianli—the man let drugs cloud his head!"

"I understand. After this, I'll be even more careful. I've stripped my father of all his authority at the company—he has nothing to do with it now, and his position as president has been removed as well." Liu Jinghan said.

"Does Jingjing have any countermeasures on her end?" Wei Zhao thought for a moment, then asked.

"Jingjing says the next version of the upgrade program she's working on can actually make the cauldron adjust the temperature during pill refinement automatically, so the alchemist no longer has to change the temperature himself according to the temperature curve. That way, any novice alchemist who can condense a pill fire can refine pills with the grade-one automatic cauldron, without having to control the pill fire's temperature skillfully." Liu Jinghan said. "But since Kang Jingming's side can crack our chips, Jingjing can only change the upgrade method over there. She's now planning to make an external device and use it to achieve the earlier functions!"

"Oh? And this external device won't be cracked by Kang Jingming?" Wei Zhao asked. "As far as I know, there should be a program inside it too, shouldn't there? Can't the microcontroller storing that program be cracked just the same?"

"It's different." Liu Jinghan explained. "This external device does contain a microcontroller, but it has no computation program inside—it can't compute the required pill fire temperature from each alchemist's current pill fire temperature. To put it plainly, it's a WIFI module containing a unique authentication ID serial number. Through this external device, one can access the company's server; all the computation is done remotely on the company's server, and finally the computed data instructions are received through this module to change the pill-refining temperature the cauldron needs. The external device itself has no program inside."

"Then can't Kang Jingming copy this thing?" Wei Zhao asked after hearing this.

"Every external device's ID serial number is unique, and only after passing the server's verification can it obtain computation data. IDs that aren't authorized cannot access the server. Moreover, if the same repeated ID serial number logs in multiple times at once, the server will blacklist it and revoke that ID's computation privileges." Liu Jinghan said. "So simply copying it is useless."

"Oh? That's a good idea—whose was it?" Wei Zhao was somewhat surprised. This kind of remote server computation would probably leave Kang Jingming with no move to make.

"It was me..." Liu Jinghan said, a little embarrassed. She had stolen Han Jingyi's credit, yet she did not blush in the least, as if it were only her due.

"That's good, then." Wei Zhao nodded. "We'll adopt this method for our cauldrons' follow-up upgrades as well!"

"This method is relatively safe, but only relatively. Actually, on Kang Jingming's side, as long as they collect enough of the data fed back from the server over multiple rounds, they can still recompile the program—it's just that the process will be lengthy, and cracking it won't be as easy as before." Liu Jinghan said. "To put it plainly, they're gathering data and piecing it together. Once the data covers enough ground, there's no need for computation at all—they only need to satisfy the public's needs."

"That's true." Wei Zhao nodded, realizing the problem still had no fundamental solution—they could only stay ahead for the time being—and could not help but sigh.