Spoiled by Mr Russell

even after adding all those things. Listen to me. It's impossible to cover the scent. What do you have to

say for yourself now?"

Austin looked at Lily with a relaxed expression, as if he were waiting for her to explain why she failed

after bragging about her skills.

On the contrary, Lily was a lot calmer. She was not surprised or disappointed and removed her mask to

ask, "What should I say?"

"Now that you failed the experiment, what else do you have to brag about?"

'When did I ever brag about anything?" Lily threw him a sideways glance and said seriously, "It's usual

for an experiment to fail. I'm sure that the people here have failed hundreds, perhaps even thousands,

of times when conducting experiments in the past. Have I ever said that I would succeed on the first

try?"

"You...” Austin was taken aback, not expecting that she would retort this way.

'Now that I think about it, she never said such a thing. I just assumed she'd succeed, seeing that so

many trusted her blindly. It seems to be a common thing for an experiment to fail. Wait, that doesn't

seem right. Since she failed, why are they still trusting her so much?'

"Since you can't guarantee success, you shouldn't act like you're the only one who can do this."

Austin was dissatisfied with her. Everyone respected him as Dominic's secret student wherever he

went, and many would seek his medical advice. When the institute invited him to join the team, he

thought he would be the most important and respected member.

After joining the team and conducting a few experiments, he realized that it would not work, but to his

surprise, none of them listened to his opinion. They had even assigned him a task-to find Lily and

convince her to stay on the team.

At that moment, he realized that he was just Lily's replacement when she was not around, and it was

obvious that Thompson was not satisfied with him being her replacement. Everyone in the lab believed

Lily was better than Austin, but why? He could not understand that.

'I am Mr. Dominic’s secret disciple, or at least that’s how the outsiders see it! No matter what, I'm a

student of a reputable teacher, and I received proper training for this. How could that woman, who

knows nothing about the field, compare to me? Adding essential oil to medicinal herbs was already

ridiculous, but these people let her keep doing it. Are they crazy?'

Furious, Austin glared at Lily as if she had done something heinous. Lily did not avoid his gaze and met

his eyes calmly as she approached him.

Austin was taken aback and puzzled, and without knowing why, he took a few steps back.

Whenever Lily got closer to him, he would back away, and after a few times, he realized something was

wrong and stood still in his spot, his back erect. "What are you doing?"

Lily's red lips curled into a smile. "Mr. Fike, you seem confident. Why don't you do it if you're so good?”

Austin was stunned for a moment before scowling. "What makes you think you can do it while I can’t? I

think that the direction of the entire project is wrong. Now is not the time to change the proportions of

the ingredients used. What we should do is correct the direction of our plan instead."

Upon hearing that, Thompson rubbed his temples and went forward to pull the two apart. "That’s

enough. It’s useless to argue about these pointless things now. Science and society can only progress

with different points of view and arguments from their practitioners, not with such pointless

competitions.

"Lily, we need to pick up the pace for this project. You’ve delayed the progress for quite some time

before this, so you must work harder for it to succeed. We’ve spent way too many resources and effort

on this, and as Austin said, we spent a lot of money on it, too."

He turned around and was about to address Austin when Lily interrupted, saying, "If you think that too

much money has already been spent on this and it's not worth doing so, you can stop right now to

prevent further losses."

'That’s right! stop it now!" Austin added.

That gave Thompson a headache, and he was beginning to regret listening to his superior and bringing

Austin on board. At first, he thought Austin would know a lot about medicinal herbs or that he and Lily

would make a great team because they were both experts in different fields, which could help their

project go faster.

However, the two were surprisingly similar regarding their thoughts on the project.

"Cut that out. We're already this far down the road, so how could we stop now? What do you guys take

the institute for? Do you even care about how much effort everyone has put into the project?"

Thompson reprimanded them sternly.

"You should do your work well and reflect on why the experiments keep failing. Stop waiting for others

to get the job done! Remember that all of you here are experts in this field, and that's why you were

recruited into the institute. No ordinary person would've made it into this place!"

"Yes, Professor Thompson!" The others said in unison, and Lily raised a brow at that.

She had known how serious they were about this research since she joined the project. She was just

saying it casually when she asked them to stop earlier.

Then Thompson turned to say to Austin, "Austin, I know you're young, and you achieved the fame

many people could never achieve in their lives. It's normal for you to have your own ideas and all, but

many experienced researchers and experts in this field have discussed the project and concluded that

it was feasible, so I'd like you to stop doubting it. What we need to do now is persevere and succeed.

Do you understand me?"

Austin just pursed his lips and looked at Lily with narrowed eyes. "I got it, Professor Thompson!"