40 Black

Only when she heard the city's ground temperature being announced did Yang Xiao realize how quickly the two-hour flight had flown by. It was as if, in the blink of an eye, she had been transported back to the past, transformed into the Yang Xiao with her backpack and high ponytail, once again immersing herself in a pond of mixed happiness and pain.

The surface of the pond was tranquil, with a few spring flowers brought by the wind, causing a few ripples, but the bottom of the pond was covered with stagnant black mud.

Yang Zhi fastened his seatbelt and turned to see the complicated expression on Yang Xiao's face. It wasn't an eagerness to go home, nor was it shyness from being home. Rather, it was a kind of nervousness. "What's wrong, Mr. Yang?"

"It's okay, the ear pressure is just uncomfortable." Yang Xiao certainly didn't want to expose her scars to her partners. She felt that people should get along with each other on an equal footing, and no one should be overly sympathetic or accommodating to her because of her past bad situation, especially when the communication involved economic interests.

"Well, we're both tied to the same rope now. There's nothing that Mr. Yang and I shouldn't know."

"There are so many—" Yang Xiao drawled out her words, "There are passwords alone: ​​mobile phone password, bank card password, home door password, suitcase password, oh and the password that controls my wealth."

Yang Zhi really couldn't stand her occasional cold jokes, so he had to change the subject with a forced smile: "Where are we going to eat when we land? I'm almost starving." The man who had just ordered two airplane meals was actually hungry again.

"Eating Sichuan food? I've asked Xingyang and the others, and they can handle spicy food." Yang Xiao thought for a moment, and it seemed like the only person left to ask was the biggest glutton. "Can you handle spicy food? Not the kind of spicy food downstairs in our company. Oh, I almost forgot."

"Sure, you're underestimating me, aren't you?" Yang Zhi glanced at her and saw that her hair had blown out a bit on the back of the seat, a bit like the dogtail grass growing on the side of the main road in Huairou. He couldn't help laughing, "I've arranged a car to pick you up later, so don't call me."

"good."

Yang Xiao's heart was beating fast; she was genuinely nervous. She wondered if Zhou Qi had been behind the scenes in asking Fang Qiu for help, if his injuries had healed, and if her old anxieties would resurface when she saw him in her familiar surroundings. But her biggest worry and anxiety was whether she could successfully negotiate the project.

After leaving the airport, the driver assigned by Yang Zhi had been waiting at the gate for a while. Seeing them coming, the driver hurried forward and called out "Mr. Yang". Yang Zhi and Yang Xiao responded with a "Hey". Hearing his call, Yang Xiao realized that the driver assigned by Yang Zhi was probably named Yang Zhi. How embarrassing.

Yang Zhi chuckled, "Excuse me, Uncle Yao, this is our young boss Yang, Yang Xiao."

The driver nodded and respectfully opened the door for them. "Everyone, please get in."

Yang Xiaozhen felt that she was the fox hiding behind the tiger in the fairy tale. With the help of the tiger's majesty, she felt what it meant that rich people were rich wherever they went.

Upon entering the restaurant, the aroma of spicy oil and chili peppers filled Yang Xiao's nostrils, a familiar yet unfamiliar aroma. The waiter, speaking a warm dialect, greeted them to their seats, handed each of them a thick menu, and served them a pot of buckwheat tea. Yang Xiao hesitated, fearing that these new colleagues might be embarrassed to order, and she gave Yang Zhi a look.

Yang Zhi coughed and said, "Let's have some boiled pork slices first, Xingyang, Xiaofei and Mutao, and you can order whatever you want. Don't be polite with us, you must eat a full meal when you are on a business trip." With Yang Zhi taking the lead, the other three new colleagues stopped being shy and ordered some dishes.

Seeing that the dishes were almost ready, Yang Xiao asked the waiter to take the menu.

After the meal, the group returned to the hotel in a large group. After the new colleagues had exited the elevator, Yang Zhi turned his head and asked Yang Xiaogang why he hadn't ordered anything. Yang Xiaogang shook his head and said the food was almost ready and not to waste it. Yang Zhi didn't respond. He felt bad, wondering why he had only just remembered this incident.

Yang Xiao returned to her room and lay on the bed, the question Yang Zhi had just asked her popping into her mind. Perhaps because they were now in the same city, and every little detail here was inseparable from Zhou Qi, she naturally thought of him and the scene of having dinner with him.

When Yang Xiao was in high school, Zhou Qi would take her out for dinner every Sunday before dropping her off at school for evening self-study. Sometimes it was the family restaurant at the school gate, sometimes the red oil wonton shop a little further down the street, and sometimes McDonald's. These were Yang Xiao's favorites, as long as they could afford them, and she never got tired of them.

She likes the non-greasy seaweed egg drop soup in the small restaurant, the flavorful steamed pork ribs with rice flour, the red oil wontons drizzled with sesame oil, which makes her sweat and her lips numb, the double cheeseburger without the pickles in McDonald's, and Zhou Qi, who sits opposite her, lets her order first with a smile, and then hands her a napkin after the meal.

Thinking of this, Yang Xiao subconsciously thought she was being hypocritical. He was such a grown-up, yet he still cared about whether he'd ordered the food or whether he'd ordered first. Besides, it was only natural to be like this when you're bringing a new colleague along. If she had to ask what she was really looking forward to, she thought it was perhaps the care and concern hidden behind letting her order first.

But now, she can order and pay for herself.

After lying down for a while, Yang Xiao got up again and reviewed the algorithm knowledge she had crammed in the previous meeting, and also reviewed some basic Traditional Chinese Medicine knowledge. Learning is truly a joyful thing. Every time she learns something new, she feels like she has been reborn: it turns out that this world of birdsong and flowers can be viewed from this perspective.

On Wednesday night, everyone sat in the private room, all extremely nervous. Zhao Mutao was the calmest among them, leisurely sipping tea from his cup, and occasionally whispering to Liu Xingyang, "Don't worry, believe in yourself."

Liu Xingyang replied to her, that means the knife hasn’t reached your neck yet.

Yang Xiao laughed out loud when she heard this. Indeed, this time the conversation was mainly between her, Yang Zhi and Xing Yang. Mu Tao and Xiao Fei came just to give them enough face and show their full sincerity. After all, these were all the troops their company had at the moment.

The moment the door to the private room opened, everyone stood up reflexively. Hu Yufang walked in first, followed by the science secretary, and finally Zhou Qi. It had been almost a year since I last saw him. Zhou Qi's hair had grown longer, but his eyes beneath his brows were still as clear and gentle as ever.

"Director Hu, I've heard a lot about you. I'm Yang Zhi." Yang Zhi stepped forward and shook Hu Yufang's hand. He then turned and introduced the Zhimiao team members to Hu Yufang one by one. "This is another partner of our Zhimiao, Yang Xiao. This is Liu Xingyang, the head of the technical department. The remaining two are colleagues from the technical and administrative departments, Xiao Fei and Zhao Mutao."

"Mr. Yang, I've heard a lot about you." Hu Yufang shook the hand Yang Xiao offered him, nodded, and greeted the other colleagues. "Hey, let me introduce our colleagues here at the hospital. This is our department secretary, Xiao Tang, and the one behind is Dr. Zhou Qi from the Cardiac Surgery Department."

Zhou Qi stepped forward and shook Yang Xiao's hand. The warmth from his palm moved along Yang Xiao's arm to her face and ears. Even after he released her hand, it was still slightly warm. "Hello, Zhou Qi."

Yang Xiao suddenly lost consciousness. In that moment, she was no longer his sister in name only, no longer the high school student who had suffered moral torture and harassment because of his affection for her, no longer the disheveled Yang Xiao in the damp ground.

They finally became two equal adults.

Yang Xiao walked alone for a long time and a long way.

She looked down at her fingers, which seemed still stained with red ink, which had clung to them no matter how hard she scrubbed. The same heartbeat that had filled her with excitement and joy resonated in her chest again: boom, boom, boom. Putting aside her troubled and complicated relationship with Zhou Qi, she once again felt that her chance, Yang Xiao's, was approaching with a brisk pace.

Yang Xiao sat at the table and engaged in a lively conversation, answering all the questions Hu Yufang had raised. When she remarked on Zhi Miao's ambition but also her introspective spirit, Hu Yufang was clearly moved, looking at Yang Xiao with a look of praise and admiration. Such an expression, even without words, gave one a sense of accomplishment.

"Mr. Yang, I have one last question. How can your technology diagnose a condition like a doctor?" Hu Yufang took a sip of orange juice. "Traditional Chinese Medicine's diagnoses—looking, listening, asking, and feeling—can't be surpassed by a few programming tricks."

"The issue you're concerned about, Director Hu, is fundamental. It's truly the goal our team has been pursuing and working tirelessly towards, and it's the core issue we consider and tackle every day. Our technological approach isn't to have machines create a completely new medical mindset to replace existing ones, but rather to emulate and learn from the dialectical logic and clinical experience of leading experts."

"The general steps in building our model are: knowledge introduction, pattern learning, and summarization. The initial stage of knowledge introduction refers to the formation of a structured knowledge system by importing a large amount of medical diagnosis and treatment knowledge. The mid-term pattern learning is to cooperate with excellent departments like yours professionally, and train the model based on clinical cases that have been desensitized and have clear diagnoses. Finally, through the integration of basic knowledge and basic examination information, and syndrome reasoning, relevant diagnosis and treatment recommendations are generated.

"But it must be emphasized that our AI is not intended to replace doctors, but to assist them in providing reference-based advice, thereby compensating for the limitations of human memory and energy, and improving the efficiency of medical treatment."

"For example, a patient complains of insomnia and frequent dreams. Our intelligent system might also notice details like the red tip of the tongue and a thready pulse. Combined with the patient's mention of 'irritability' during the consultation, it might link these symptoms to symptoms like 'liver depression transforming into fire.' Simultaneously, it might also retrieve cases with similar symptoms but actually suffering from 'heart-kidney disharmony.' It would then list both possibilities, providing their respective probabilities and supporting evidence, prompting the doctor to conduct further identification. This is like multiple experts simultaneously assisting our doctors with initial screening and consultation, but the final prescription is signed by a doctor with the same judgment as you."

Zhou Qi sat aside and couldn't help but look at Yang Xiao. Listening to these obscure and difficult professional terms coming out of her mouth so smoothly, he felt an inexplicable sense of pride and excitement in his heart. When he saw the bruises under her eyes, he felt a little distressed.

Yesterday, she stayed up until what time.