27: Chapter 27 What? A casual doodle is the core algorithm?

Lu Li looked at her expression, which was like she had seen a ghost, and smiled.

He had looked up their alma mater using the names of the core team members of her company.

Northwestern Polytechnical University, Class of '05 PhDs, specializing in neural networks.

He had thoroughly exposed everything about these people online.

Naturally, he knew exactly what their main research direction was.

He glanced at a few low-quality papers they had published on IEEE and got a general idea of their technical approach—their direction was wrong from the start, still stubbornly clinging to the old-school 3D convolution. No wonder they burned through all their money and still couldn't produce a commercial version.

In his previous life, he had even hand-crafted 'Tech Director Dou Bao', a strong artificial intelligence with self-awareness. Solving a rigid, single-minded visual recognition AI was child's play to him.

He bent down, fished out a pen and paper from under the coffee table, and casually placed the paper on the marble tabletop.

*Scribble, scribble, scribble—*

The sound of the pen tip scratching against the paper was exceptionally clear in the quiet living room.

This time it wasn't writing code, but rather a few complex mathematical formulas and a network topology diagram that had never been seen before.

Two minutes later, Lu Li slapped the paper down in front of Qin Ya.

"An improved version of YOLO v3, integrated with skeletal keypoint detection."

Lu Li tossed the pen aside and slumped back onto the sofa. "Scrap your original 3D convolution and replace it with this lightweight architecture. Add an illumination adaptive layer, then crawl some open-source sign language datasets on GitHub to do transfer learning."

He yawned, as if saying all this had exhausted all his energy.

"Take it back and have your team modify it. Within four days, the accuracy rate will hit 98%. And..."

Lu Li pointed to the paper. "This algorithm can run locally on mobile devices. No need to upload to the cloud, and the latency is under 80 milliseconds."

Qin Ya stared at the piece of paper.

The paper was very thin, the ink on it wasn't even fully dry yet, and the handwriting was extremely sloppy.

With her technical background, she could understand some of it, but the more she read, the more shocked she became. This kind of closed-loop logic, this kind of leaping way of thinking... This wasn't patching a bug at all; this was a dimensional reduction strike!

But she didn't dare to believe it completely.

This was too ridiculous. Right here on this coffee table, hand-crafting a core algorithm in two minutes?

Qin Ya's hands trembled slightly. She pulled out her phone and took a high-definition photo of the paper.

"Hello? Director Zhao." Qin Ya dialed the number of Zhao Wei, the CTO of Wisdom Vision, and turned on the speakerphone.

Zhao Wei's tired and irritated voice came from the other end of the line: "President Qin, if you're calling to rush us, please don't. The current algorithm is stuck at a bottleneck. Recognition in such highly dynamic environments is simply impossible..."

"Check WeChat," Qin Ya interrupted him. "I sent you a picture. See if this logic works."

"A picture? What kind of picture can solve an algorithm problem? President Qin, we are doing scientific research, not feng shui..."

Zhao Wei muttered, clearly opening the image.

The living room was dead silent; one could hear a pin drop.

Meanwhile, Lu Li was watching a video on his phone—it seemed to be a minecraft gameplay video—which was making funny noises.

Ten seconds later.

A loud crash suddenly came from the other end of the phone, sounding like something had been knocked over.

Immediately after, Zhao Wei's voice cracked into a high-pitched shriek, sounding like a cat that had its tail stepped on. "Holy shit!!!"

Qin Ya shuddered.

"President Qin! Where did this picture come from? Where the hell did this come from?!" Zhao Wei's voice was trembling, even cracking slightly.

"This topology... integrating the residual network into the feature extraction layer? And it's inverted? What the hell! How can this formula be written like this? But this derivation result... perfect! It's absolutely perfect!"

The sound of rapid keyboard clacking came from the other end of the line. Zhao Wei had clearly fallen into a brief state of obsession.

"President Qin! Where are you? Who drew this? I must meet him! He's a god! This is at least two... no, three years ahead of those guys abroad! If these few lines of parameters are real, we can push our recognition latency below 80 milliseconds! Running in real-time on mobile devices is no longer a dream!"

"And it's not just action recognition—object recognition and environmental recognition will all step into a whole new level!!"

Qin Ya felt her head buzzing.

Zhao Wei was a typical tech fanatic, arrogant and proud. He didn't even care for the consultants Su Qingxue had spent a fortune to hire.

But now, he had gone crazy over a photo of a mere scribble made with a gel pen.

"Director Zhao, are you sure... this can be used?" Qin Ya's voice was dry.

"Can be used? This is fucking equivalent to a nuclear weapon!" Zhao Wei roared on the other end.

"President Qin, who drew this diagram? We must keep him! Even if we have to sell half of the company's shares, we have to poach him! For you to run into him is a godsend!"

Lu Li frowned impatiently. "So noisy. Hang up."

Qin Ya hurriedly hung up the phone.

The air seemed to freeze.

She slowly raised her head and looked at the man opposite her, who was engrossed in watching his video.

He was dressed casually, holding a cola in his hand—the kind of guy who would be ridiculed in Su Qingxue's Moments.

It was exactly such a person.

A scrap of paper casually scribbled on had become a nuclear weapon in Zhao Wei's mouth.

What gigolo?

This was clearly an peerless genius!!

Just a tiny bit of what leaked from the cracks of his fingernails was enough to save her AI company, and might even turn Wisdom Vision Technology into an industry unicorn!

"This is the hush money."

Lu Li picked up his cola and took another sip. "This time I'm not giving money, I'm giving technology. Is this piece of paper enough to buy your silence?"

Qin Ya felt her throat go dry, as if she had swallowed a piece of red-hot coal.

How was this hush money?

This was life-saving medicine, a ticket to a hundred-billion-dollar market!

"It's not enough."

Qin Ya suddenly spoke.

Lu Li's hand jerked, and his phone almost fell into his cup of cola. Phones these days hadn't popularized IP69-grade dust and water resistance yet.

He looked up in surprise. "Don't be too greedy. This piece of paper is enough for your company to enjoy dividends for three years."

"Precisely because it's too valuable, I don't dare to take it." Qin Ya stared intently at Lu Li. She pulled a document out of her bag, which was a draft of the company's shareholding structure.

Because of Su Qingxue's recent investment, she had kept a duplicate copy in her bag.

She grabbed the gel pen Lu Li had just tossed aside and quickly wrote a line on the back of the document.

"Wisdom Vision Technology, 10% dry shares."

Qin Ya pushed the document in front of Lu Li, her tone resolute. "This 10% stake is yours. I don't require you to join the company, nor do I require you to reveal your identity. This is simply... respect for your technology."

Lu Li glanced at the line of words.

10%?

This woman was certainly generous. If it followed the trajectory of the visual AI company he knew from his previous life, it could indeed easily reach a market value of ten billion. This 10% would be one billion.

However...

"No thanks." Lu Li pushed the document back. "I told you, taking shares means having to worry about things. What if Qingxue audits the accounts one day and finds out I own shares? How would I explain that?"

Qin Ya was stunned.

You're rejecting one billion because you're afraid your wife will find out?

What kind of logic is this?

"Then... we can use a proxy holding," Qin Ya reacted extremely quickly. "The shares can be registered under an offshore company, or we can find an agent you trust. The dividends will only go into an overseas account you specify. Senior Sister Qingxue will absolutely never find out."

She paused, her tone becoming extremely sincere, even carrying a hint of pleading. "Lu Li, if you don't accept this, I won't dare to use this paper. There's no such thing as a free lunch. I can't bear such a heavy karmic debt."

Lu Li stroked his chin.

That is indeed a way.

And since his wife was the controlling shareholder of this company anyway, helping Qin Ya was helping his wife make money, and he could still get dividends. This was a win-win.

"Alright then." Lu Li nodded reluctantly. "Set up an overseas account, and don't use my real name. Also, if a single word of this leaks out..."

He narrowed his eyes. In that instant, Qin Ya felt as if she were being stared down by a sleeping giant beast.

A genius like him could probably just optimize something else and crush her company with a competing product, right?

"Rest assured." Qin Ya immediately raised her hand. "Even if the company goes bankrupt, I will never reveal the source of this algorithm. In the eyes of the public, this will still be a breakthrough independently developed by our team."

"That's more like it." Lu Li nodded.

Qin Ya took a few deep breaths, carefully folded the paper, and placed it inside her personal bag.

Her movements were incredibly cautious, as if she were holding some priceless treasure.

After putting the paper away, she looked at Lu Li again, her tone more solemn than ever before. "Lu... Lu Li, as for what happened this morning, I also promise you that I will never mention it to anyone, including Senior Sister Qingxue."

"Mm!" Lu Li nodded nonchalantly and continued watching the funny video on his phone.

Qin Ya stood up, smoothed out her skirt, and prepared to leave.

She felt that perhaps Lu Li didn't need her to teach him how to be a product manager at all.

Just as her hand touched the doorknob, Lu Li's lazy voice suddenly came from behind her:

"Hey, wait a minute. Don't leave yet."

Qin Ya's heart tightened. Did he regret it?

She turned back, a bit nervous. "What's wrong?"

"Sit down for a bit longer. Do me a small favor and wait until Su Qingxue arrives before you leave."

Lu Li spoke in a serious tone.

As if something terrifying was about to happen.

Until a red Audi A6L slowly pulled into the parking space.

"She's here. I need your help!"

At this moment, Lu Li felt very much like he was about to face a final boss.

This contrasting scene left Qin Ya dumbfounded. Was this really the same technical god who had just casually solved the core algorithm for visual recognition?