godfather of surgery

Chapter 1415 Only concerned with climbing, ignoring the height of the mountain!

Chapter 1415 Only concerned with climbing, ignoring the height of the mountain!

After Mannstein returned to Germany, Yang Ping thought the matter would slow down.

Moving is a huge undertaking, especially moving a laboratory across borders. Equipment approvals, animal transport, personnel visas... any one of these could take three to five months. Yang Ping was prepared for a long haul, and even silently gave himself a conservative estimate: at least six months.

On the fourth day, Mannstein's email arrived.

"Professor, the equipment list is complete. There are 47 pieces/sets of core equipment in total, of which 23 will be shipped by sea, 15 will be carried on board (including a low-temperature centrifuge and a PCR instrument; I have confirmed with Lufthansa that they can occupy seats), and the remaining 9 will be sold in Germany. Regarding the animals, M7 and the other 5 experimental monkeys will relocate with me; the German Animal Welfare Committee has approved this, and the procedures in China are underway. The personnel visa materials have been submitted, and visas are expected to be issued in 2-3 weeks."

Yang Ping stared at the email in silence for a long time.

I am carrying a cryogenic centrifuge, which occupies a seat, and I have confirmed this with Lufthansa.

He turned to Tang Shun and said, "Could you check for me whether Germans don't need to sleep?"

Tang Shun searched for three minutes and answered very seriously: "Professor Yang, the search engine says that Germans sleep an average of 6.8 hours, which is 0.3 hours less than Chinese people."

"?"

"!"

Three weeks later, one morning, Mainstein arrived in Nandu with his team.

Yang Ping had assumed that only Mainstein, and perhaps two or three core members, would be arriving. However, eight people emerged from the arrival gate – seven Germans and one Swiss. Each person was pushing at least two suitcases, and three of them were pushing wheeled instrument cases covered in labels such as "Precision Instruments," "Shockproof," and "Upright."

"Professor!" Mainstein walked at the front, wearing a dark gray windbreaker, looking much better than three weeks ago. "We're here!"

Behind him, his assistant pushed a huge instrument case and waved to Yang Ping. Behind them were six faces Yang Ping had only seen in video conferences: technician Clara, a young woman with a ponytail and round-framed glasses; postdoctoral researcher Hans, bald and as strong as a fitness instructor, but supposedly an extremely introverted socially anxious person; and animal keeper Fritz, with gray hair and a serious expression, holding a cat in his arms—no, not a cat, but a monkey in a specially made flight case.

"Is this an M7?" Yang Ping pointed to the flight case.

Fritz nodded, opened the ventilation window of the flight case a crack, and a pair of brown eyes blinked, looking at Yang Ping.

“It got airsick!” Fritz said in heavily accented English. “It flew for ten hours and threw up twice, but it’s very resilient.”

Yang Ping squatted down and leaned closer to the ventilation window: "It's okay, we'll be fine once we get here. It's warmer here than in Germany, you'll like it."

M7 peered around through the ventilation window, trying to get a good sense of its surroundings.

“Let’s go,” Yang Ping stood up. “Let’s go back to the research institute first. The dormitory has been arranged. It’s in a neighborhood near the institute, a five-minute walk away. We’ll put the equipment in the lab for now and unpack and install it tomorrow.”

The laboratory was located in the former animal experiment department of Sanbo Hospital.

“Professor,” Mainstein said, “we can begin today.”

Yang Ping glanced at him.

"Not today."

"why?"

"You all go and settle in first. I'll treat you to dinner tonight. Get some rest tonight, and we'll get back to work tomorrow."

Mannstein opened his mouth, glanced at the team behind him: eight people, a ten-hour flight, a centrifuge he carried, a monkey suffering from motion sickness, and everyone was waiting for his decision.

He said, "Okay, today is a day off, but Professor..."

"But what?"

"No, I'll talk to you when I've thought it through."

The welcome dinner that evening was at a Cantonese restaurant.

Yang Ping had deliberately chosen a menu that included no Mapo Tofu, no Boiled Fish, and nothing red, suspicious, or that would make the Germans blush. Instead, there was poached chicken, steamed sea bass, garlic broccoli, boiled shrimp, roast goose, char siu… a table full of mild, friendly dishes that would absolutely not trigger any alarms.

Mannstein was very satisfied with the meal. Before the meal began, he carefully raised his phone and took pictures of each dish.

“Professor,” Mainstein said, “I’d like to offer you a toast.”

He raised his teacup.

Everyone raised their teacups.

The teacups clinked together gently under the dim lights of the Cantonese restaurant, making a crisp sound.

The next morning at seven o'clock, when Yang Ping arrived at the research institute, he found that the lights in the west laboratory were already on, so he went over to take a look.

He pushed open the door and saw a scene that made him wonder if he was still dreaming.

Mainstein, wearing a white lab coat, was disassembling an instrument case; Clara was setting up a computer, the data analysis software already open on the screen. Hans was moving test kits, stacking them one box at a time into the refrigerator. Fritz was in the animal room, squatting in front of M7's cage, speaking softly to it in German. Someone else was assembling a low-temperature centrifuge.

It's only 7:30.

"What time did you arrive?" Yang Ping asked, standing at the door.

Mainstein looked up: "Six o'clock."

"Six o'clock?" Yang Ping glanced at his watch. "They don't open here until six, do they?"

"We waited until six o'clock at the main gate."

Yang Ping didn't know what to say. He wanted to say, "You've just arrived, you need to adjust to the time difference," he wanted to say, "Don't work so hard, your health is important," he wanted to say, "Today is Saturday." But looking at Mainstein's enthusiasm, he said nothing.

He simply went inside, rolled up his sleeves, and started helping to move the boxes.

At eight o'clock, Tang Shun arrived, bringing a large bag of steamed buns and soy milk. It was the first time the Germans had eaten steamed buns. Clara took a bite, and the soup splashed onto her white coat. She looked down and said something in German.

“She said, ‘It’s delicious, but hard to control.’” Mainstein translated.

At noon, the instruments were mostly back in place. Mainstein stood in the middle of the laboratory, looking around with an expression as if he were watching his child being born.

He said, "Professor, the animal labs here are better than the ones I had in Germany."

Yang Ping said, "Your German laboratory is equipped with the most advanced facilities in the world."

“The equipment isn’t as good as there,” Mainstein said. “But here, the windows face south, so the monkeys can see the sun. Germany is too gloomy, and the animals are prone to depression. This is very important.”

Yang Ping followed his gaze to the window. Sunlight from Nandu streamed through the glass, falling on M7's cage. M7 lay in the sunlight, squinting, looking quite content.

“It’s really sunbathing,” Yang Ping said.

“Animals need sunlight,” Fritz said, unusually adding, as he walked over. “It’s not just a physiological need, it’s a psychological one. It’s been proven that depressed monkeys recover slowly.”

Yang Ping looked at the monkey that had gotten airsick, vomited twice, and flown halfway around the world from Germany to China. It was sunbathing. Its eyes were squinting, and the corners of its mouth, if monkeys had corners of their mouths, were now slightly upturned.

Yang Ping asked, "Fritz, which laboratory did you work in before?" "Heidelberg University, for twenty-two years," he replied.

Why did you come here?

Fritz was silent for a moment, then he pointed to M7.

"Because of it, I've been in this line of work for 22 years and have seen many monkeys. Paralyzed ones, those with tumors, those used for experiments and then euthanized. Every morning when I go into the animal room, they all look at me with the same fear. But M7 is different. Starting in the eighth week after the surgery, its eyes changed. It wasn't fear, it was expectation. It expected to stand up, to walk, to live."

He paused.

"I want to see a paralyzed monkey run again in my lifetime, not for a thesis, but for the look in their eyes."

Yang Ping looked at Fritz, the gray-haired German man who had been an animal keeper for twenty-two years. He came to Nandu from Heidelberg, not for a professional title, not for funding, not for anything written on paper, but for a single glance.

Yang Ping said, "Yes, it will! It will run."

In the afternoon, Mainstein called everyone together for a short meeting.

“There’s a lot to do next, we don’t have time to adapt to life in China,” he wrote on the whiteboard. “First, long-term follow-up of M7 and other experimental monkeys, recording behavioral data daily, electrophysiological data weekly, and imaging data every two weeks. Second, designing the second batch of primate experiments, expanding the sample size to twenty-four, and increasing the different injury segments and degrees. Third—”

He wrote down a large number: 50% → 70%.

"We need to raise this number. 62% isn't enough; 70% is the next target. How do we achieve that? Let's discuss it!"

The laboratory fell silent.

Then Hans raised his hand.

"We've changed the dosing window. Currently, the window is 48 hours after injury, but in our mouse experiments, we've found that different types of injury have different optimal windows. Complete injuries require earlier intervention, while incomplete injuries can be addressed later. If we could individualize the window..."

“The individualized window means that we need to make an accurate judgment on the type of injury before surgery.” Mainstein interrupted him. “This is feasible in primates, but in the future, in clinical practice, the average time from injury to hospital admission is 6 to 8 hours. The 48-hour window is feasible, but going further back, there is not enough time. We must start now to study and fit clinical reality.”

“Then let’s develop a rapid diagnostic tool,” Clara said. “A biomarker that can quickly determine the type of injury and the optimal intervention window in the emergency room. I’ve reviewed the literature, and there are three candidate molecules…”

"Wait a minute," Yang Ping said, and everyone looked at him.

"On your very first day here, you started discussing how to increase the accuracy rate from 50% to 70%, how to develop rapid diagnostic tools, and how to personalize the diagnostic window," Yang Ping said. "Don't you plan to adapt to the environment first?"

Mainstein laughed: "Professor, we've already gotten used to it for ten hours on the plane, so we don't need to spend any more time getting used to China. Behind closed doors, I don't think there's much difference between China and Germany, so there's no need to get used to it."

"What about jet lag?"

"You can adjust to time zones in the lab."

Looking at this group of Germans, Yang Ping suddenly understood why Mannstein was called a genius scientist—exceptionally intelligent, with an almost obsessive focus. This kind of focus wasn't something that could be trained; it was ingrained in his very being.

“Okay,” Yang Ping said, “the discussion can continue, but I have one condition.”

"What conditions?"

"You should rest at least one day a week. This doesn't mean you should lie in bed, but rather go out and explore the city. You moved here from Germany not to replicate a German lab in China, but to conduct experiments that couldn't be done in Germany, and to add more possibilities to your lives."

Mannstein thought for a moment: "Saturday is a rest day."

"Saturday won't do. I'm taking you guys to eat Sichuan food on Saturday."

Mannstein looked as if he had heard a death sentence.

"Just kidding," Yang Ping said. "We're having Hunan cuisine on Saturday."

The entire lab erupted in laughter. Mainstein shook his head, a wry smile on his face, and added another line to the whiteboard:

"Article 4: Professor Yang will treat us to a meal every Saturday."

Yang Ping looked at the line of text but did not refute it.

At six o'clock in the evening, when Yang Ping was about to leave work, he passed by the west side of the research institute and the lights were still on.

He pushed open the door and found Mainstein sitting alone in front of the computer, a microscopic image of a spinal cord slice on the screen. He was so engrossed in looking at it that he didn't even notice Yang Ping coming in.

"Aren't you leaving yet?" Yang Ping asked.

Mainstein turned around, took off his glasses, and rubbed his eyes: "Professor, I'm looking at the slides from week sixteen of M7. Look here—"

He pointed to a spot on the screen.

"The axon density in this area has increased threefold compared to week eight, which may explain why there is still gait abnormality in M7. Neural connections have been reconstructed, but the distribution of connections is uneven."

Yang Ping leaned closer to the screen and stared at it for a long time.

"This is the difference between 14% and 62%. At 14%, we only care about 'whether there is a connection'. At 62%, we start to care about 'whether the connection is uniform'. When we reach 70%, 80%, and 90%, we care about 'whether the connection is perfect'. With each step forward, the standard rises, and the problem deepens. This is the truth of science. You think you're almost at the end, but you've only seen the foot of the next mountain."

Mannstein leaned back in his chair, looking at the ceiling.

"Professor, do you think we'll ever see 100% in our lifetime?"

"100% of what?"

"100% recovery, a person with a completely damaged spinal cord, running, jumping high, and playing basketball again—will we ever see that in our lifetime?"

Yang Ping remained silent for a long time.

"To be honest, I don't know, but I'm sure of one thing."

"what?"

"If we don't do it, we certainly won't see it. If we do it, perhaps someone will see it in their lifetime. That person may not be you, may not be me, may be a child who hasn't been born yet. But every step is in that direction, and no one's steps are wasted."

Mannstein looked at Yang Ping and remained silent for a long while.

"Professor, you are more patient than I am."

"Focus only on climbing, without asking how high the mountain is!"

"How evocative!"

Yang Ping stood up and patted Mainstein on the shoulder.

"Let's stop here for today. We'll continue tomorrow."

Mannstein turned off his computer, stood up, and picked up his coat.

The two walked out of the laboratory together, down the corridor, past the rhythmic switching of motion-activated lights. By the time they reached the institute's gate, it was already dark, the streetlights were on, and the lively sounds unique to the Southern Metropolis at night could be heard in the distance.