Chapter 35 Li Xiao's Potential

Lin Mo noticed that Li Xiao had been acting a bit strange lately.

It wasn't the kind of strange that made people worry, but rather—she was always huddled in a corner with her computer, typing away furiously for two or three hours at a time. When asked what she was doing, she would just blink and say mysteriously, "It's a secret."

Lin Mo didn't ask further. Ever since the chef incident, this girl seemed to have had a breakthrough, handling everything with methodical precision. Since she said it was a secret, he would let her keep it.

Until the afternoon of the fifth day.

Li Xiao suddenly rushed into Lin Mo's office, clutching her computer, her eyes shining like two stars.

"Teacher Lin! It's done!"

Lin Mo looked up: "What's done?"

Li Xiao placed the computer on his desk; the screen was filled with dense code windows and a bunch of interfaces he didn't understand.

"Look!" She pointed at the screen, her voice trembling with excitement, "This is the crawler program I wrote! It's specifically for grabbing the latest research paper data from abroad!"

Lin Mo was taken aback and leaned in to look.

Li Xiao started typing furiously: "Look, this is the settings interface. I can set keywords, like 'Lithium-Sulfur Battery', 'Room-Temperature Superconductivity', 'electrode materials'... Then the program will automatically search major databases and preprint websites to grab the latest published papers."

She hit Enter, and a list immediately popped up on the screen, all papers related to Lithium-Sulfur Battery published in the last week. Titles, authors, journals, abstracts, and DOIs were neatly arranged.

"This..." Lin Mo's eyes widened, "Did you grab all these today?"

"Yep!" Li Xiao shook her head triumphantly, "And it doesn't just grab titles. Look—"

She clicked a few more times, and the screen switched to another interface. It was the full text of a paper in PDF format, clearly visible.

"As long as it has open access, it can download the full text directly. If it doesn't have permission, it will still grab the abstract and key data. Then it automatically classifies, tags, and indexes them."

She pointed to a number in the bottom right corner of the screen: "These are what I grabbed today: thirty-seven papers related to Lithium-Sulfur Battery, twelve related to Room-Temperature Superconductivity, and fifty-three related to electrode materials. A total of one hundred and two. If you searched manually, it would take a whole day, right? The program only ran for twenty minutes."

Lin Mo stared at that number, unable to speak for a long time.

One hundred and two papers. Twenty minutes.

He usually used the most traditional method to check literature—going on databases, entering keywords, and flipping through them one by one. Sometimes, at the end of the day, he could only read a dozen abstracts.

And this girl, in twenty minutes, had done several days' worth of his work.

"Li Xiao," he turned his head to look at this girl who was usually chattering away, "How did you come up with this?"

Li Xiao touched her head shyly: "Well... since we started working on Lithium-Sulfur Battery, I saw you flipping through literature every day until midnight, and I wondered if I could help. When I was in school, I did similar work for my advisor, but back then I searched manually. Later, I pondered whether I could write a program to run it automatically..."

Her voice got quieter as she spoke: "I didn't know if it would work, so I tried writing it. I messed up three versions, and this is the fourth..."

Lin Mo looked at her and suddenly smiled.

"Li Xiao," he said, "Do you know what this means?"

Li Xiao blinked: "What?"

Lin Mo pointed to the full list of papers on the screen: "It means that from now on, we will be ten times faster at checking literature than anyone else. It means that while others are still flipping through the first paper, we will have already finished reading the results for the whole week. It means—"

He paused and looked at her seriously: "You have found your own direction."

Li Xiao froze.

"My... my direction?"

Lin Mo nodded: "You studied computer science, right?"

Li Xiao nodded.

"But you've been here doing odd jobs for me, processing data, organizing literature, running errands. I've always felt that I was wronging you, but I didn't know what you could do. Now I know. You are capable of much more than just odd jobs."

Li Xiao stood there, the expression on her face complex—there was surprise, disbelief, and a little bit of wanting to cry.

"Teacher Lin," her voice trembled a little, "Are you saying... I... I can be a big help?"

Lin Mo smiled: "It's not that you can be a big help; you are already being a big help."

Li Xiao sniffled, trying hard to hold back, not letting the tears fall.

"Silly girl," Lin Mo stood up and patted her shoulder, "Why are you crying? This is a good thing."

Li Xiao nodded vigorously, but the tears still fell.

She quickly wiped them away with the back of her hand and said with a smile: "I'm just happy... really, I'm just happy..."

At seven in the evening, in the laboratory.

Lin Mo called Zhang Zhe, Academician, and Su Qing over and asked Li Xiao to demonstrate her crawler program to everyone.

Li Xiao was a bit nervous, her hands shaking while she operated it, but the program performed well and ran smoothly. Twenty minutes later, over a hundred of the latest papers were neatly arranged on the screen.

Zhang Zhe stared at the list for a long time.

Then he looked up at Li Xiao, a strange look in his eyes—it was like surprise, and also like admiration.

"You wrote this?" he asked.

Li Xiao nodded, her voice changing pitch from nervousness: "It's not written very well, there are still a lot of bugs..."

"Bugs can be fixed." Zhang Zhe interrupted her, "But this approach, this efficiency—"

He rarely said anything more: "It's much better than the way we used to manually check literature."

Li Xiao froze, looking at him in disbelief.

Zhang Zhe actually complimented someone?

Su Qing clapped from the side: "Li Xiao, you are amazing! From now on, checking literature will be up to you!"

Academician also nodded along: "Yes, yes, yes, this efficiency is too high!"

Li Xiao stood there, at a loss from the praise, her face as red as an apple.

Lin Mo looked at her with a smile: "How about it? Now you know how amazing you are, right?"

Li Xiao shook her head vigorously, then nodded vigorously, finally getting herself confused.

At nine in the evening, Lin Mo went to the security control room.

Zhao Gang was still sitting inside, with the book "Introduction to Physics" spread out in front of him, holding a pen and writing and drawing in a notebook. Seeing Lin Mo enter, he looked up.

"Dr. Lin?"

Lin Mo walked over and sat down next to him.

"Captain Zhao, let me tell you something."

Zhao Gang put down his pen: "What is it?"

Lin Mo recounted Li Xiao's story. After listening, Zhao Gang was silent for a few seconds, then a smile appeared at the corner of his mouth.

"That girl," he said, "I've always felt she was a bit different."

Lin Mo looked at him: "How did you tell?"

Zhao Gang thought for a moment: "She comes to the monitoring room every day to chat with Liu Yang and looks at the screen while she's at it. Other people look at the screen just to watch the fun, but she is actually watching. In the chef incident, others couldn't find it, but she did. This shows she is attentive."

He paused: "Attentive people can succeed at anything they do."

Lin Mo nodded and didn't speak.

Zhao Gang looked at him and suddenly asked: "Are you planning to have her specialize in this?"

Lin Mo thought for a moment: "It depends on her. If she wants to do it, I will support her. If she wants to continue following me to do experiments, that's fine too."

Zhao Gang nodded and continued looking down at his book.

Lin Mo stood up, walked to the door, and suddenly turned back to say: "Captain Zhao, do you think she is suitable?"

Zhao Gang didn't even lift his head: "Suitable."

Lin Mo smiled and walked out of the control room.

Outside the window, the moonlight was just right.

In the laboratory, Li Xiao was still sitting in front of the computer, writing and modifying the code. Su Qing was keeping her company, and the two of them occasionally said a few words, occasionally staring at the screen together.

Lin Mo stood in the hallway, looking at the window with the light on, and a strange feeling surged in his heart.

Three months ago, this girl rushed into his office rashly, carrying a huge backpack. At that time, he just hoped she wouldn't cause trouble.

Now, she had begun to handle things on her own.

He turned and walked back, a smile on his face.

The next morning, as soon as Lin Mo arrived at the laboratory, he saw Li Xiao sitting in front of the computer with two dark circles under her eyes.

"You didn't sleep last night?" Lin Mo frowned.

Li Xiao looked up, but her eyes were very bright: "Teacher Lin! I improved the program! Now it can automatically filter high-citation papers, and it can also sort based on keyword relevance!"

Lin Mo walked over and watched her demonstrate.

Sure enough, the new version of the program was smarter. It didn't just simply grab data; it could analyze the relevance of the papers, the number of citations, and the impact factor of the journals, automatically scoring and sorting each one.

"You even added machine learning?" Lin Mo asked in surprise.

Li Xiao nodded, feeling a little embarrassed: "I learned it temporarily last night, I'm not very familiar with it yet, but it's basically usable..."

Lin Mo looked at her and suddenly didn't know what to say.

This girl, to help him check literature, hadn't slept all night and had learned machine learning on the fly.

"Li Xiao," he said seriously, "From today on, you are responsible for this direction. Data mining, literature analysis, information gathering, all of it is handed over to you."

Li Xiao froze: "But... I still have to help you with experiments..."

"There are others to do experiments." Lin Mo said, "But this, only you can do."

He looked at her: "You have found your own battlefield, so don't hesitate."

Li Xiao stood there, her eyes red again.

But this time she didn't let the tears fall; instead, she nodded vigorously.

"Teacher Lin," she said, "I will definitely not let you down."

Lin Mo smiled.

"I know." he said.