22: Chapter 22 Confusion

The chill of the twelfth lunar month had already seeped into every corner of the Z University campus.

The bare branches of the plane trees sketched desolate lines against the gray sky.

In the Biology Building, most laboratories had entered holiday mode ahead of schedule, their lights sparse; only a few lamps in Professor Zhang Zhenhua's lab remained stubbornly lit.

Chen Youhua stood before the sterile bench in the Cell Culture Room, his movements precise yet carrying an imperceptible hint of stagnation.

He had just finished recording the morphological data for the final set of preliminary experimental cells.

There was still a gap between the results and the expected goal, but it could barely be considered a milestone node available for analysis.

Time was already approaching New Year's Eve.

His project, like wading through deep mud, had just barely reached a halfway station.

His original plan was to give up on going home.

He wanted to use this rare peace and quiet to make a full sprint, at least building the preliminary data analysis framework or even tackling that tough bone of the troublesome image analysis software.

However, this perfect plan was cleanly and decisively rejected by Professor Zhang.

“Youhua.”

Professor Zhang's voice sounded exceptionally steady and powerful in the quiet office. He put down a report and looked sharply at Chen Youhua, who was standing before his desk.

“Pause the project, pack your things, and go home for the New Year. Have you booked your ticket yet?”

Chen Youhua tried to argue his case.

“Professor, the data just came out, and the analysis framework hasn't...”

“I know the progress.”

Professor Zhang interrupted him, his tone brook no dissent.

“It is precisely because you've reached this node that you need to stop. If a string is pulled too tight, it will snap.

What you need now is detachment, complete relaxation.

The gears in your head have been turning for too long; they need some lubricant and a change of perspective.

Trust me, when you return, your thinking will be clearer and your efficiency higher.”

Professor Zhang's words were like a bucket of cold water poured over Chen Youhua's nerves, which were somewhat overheated from continuous excitement.

It was true; he hadn't stopped for a long time.

Toiling in the lab all day, even his thinking had become stagnant.

And... the phone calls from home had almost never stopped.

His mother's inquiries carried a cautious anticipation.

“Youhua, what day are you coming back? Mom has dried cured meat and sausages for you, just waiting for you to come home and eat!”

His father was more direct.

“Studying is important, but the New Year must be celebrated. Come home and rest for a few days; balance work and rest.”

They didn't understand how critical his project was, but their simple care formed a barrier of familial affection that could not be crossed with pure rationality.

So, at this moment, he pushed open the door to Dorm 307.

A scent mixed with dust and stale air rushed toward him.

His roommates Zhao Lei, Li Fan, and Wang Pengfei had already returned home days ago, leaving behind empty beds and exceptionally tidy desks, as if a pause button had been pressed.

Only his desk still had several professional books and printed literature spread across it, looking somewhat out of place amidst the tidiness.

Silence was the only background noise in the dormitory.

This silence used to be his golden time for organizing his thoughts and reviewing experiments after returning late at night over the past few months.

But today, this silence was infinitely extended, filling the entire room and even carrying a hint of oppression.

He set down his simple backpack, which contained only a change of clothes, toiletries, a laptop, and those few key pieces of literature.

He didn't turn on the main light, only twisting on the desk lamp. A dim yellow glow enveloped him.

He sat in the chair, not immediately packing his bags, but instead staring at the heavy night sky outside the window.

A strong sense of helplessness, like a cold tide, quietly surged into his heart, washing over the fatigue he had accumulated during this period.

This helplessness did not stem from any specific difficulty.

Those chip flaws, unstable cell states, and field-of-view drifts had all found paths to resolution through repeated debugging with Wang Zhe, consulting literature, and optimizing protocols.

The true helplessness came from a certain epiphany regarding the entire field.

Biological science, this grand palace he looked up to and had devoted himself to, had its basic framework built exceptionally solid and complete by countless predecessors.

In every direction, there seemed to be paths trodden by those before him for followers to walk, with mature methodologies available for selection.

However, the other side of this perfection was a massive amount of trivial details that required extreme patience and repetitive labor to fill.

It was like a massive jigsaw puzzle where the outline was already clear, but filling in the thousands of tiny internal pieces required the persistence of dripping water wearing through stone, rather than earth-shattering breakthroughs.

His super-memory, which he took pride in, seemed to have its advantages diluted by the enormous time costs in a field that required extensive hands-on practice and repetitive verification.

He finally understood how thin and idealized his initial idea of combining interests for a rapid breakthrough appeared in the face of this mature system.

He was like an ox or horse fitted with a harness, struggling forward round after round along the ridges planned by predecessors with clear solutions.

Every step had a solution, and every step required an enormous amount of energy to execute.

This realization caused a sliver of cold irony toward that silent key system prompt in his mind.

It would only be triggered when his thinking was completely stuck or when he encountered an unsolvable major predicament.

But the reality was that his predicament was a long path filled with thorns, not a lack of a path forward.

He encountered solvable problems, not unsolvable dead ends.

The system was like a cold bystander, showing zero interest in him, this beast of burden grinding away on a predetermined track.

“So, what exactly is the difference between me and those beasts of burden who just follow the rules?”

This thought clearly surfaced on the calm surface of his mind, with its characteristic self-reflection and almost cold, objective scrutiny.

Is it just learning faster and remembering more?

In a field that requires massive repetitive labor for verification, this advantage seemed insufficient to bring about a qualitative leap.

His brain, that precision instrument accustomed to high-speed information processing and logical chains, began to automatically retrieve, associate, and deduce in the silence.

Like countless invisible mental tentacles, it explored new possibilities in the starry sky of knowledge.

Biology + Chemistry? Biosynthesis?

That seemed to be just applying chemical tools more deeply to the biomolecular level; the core verification-repetition predicament still existed.

Biology + Electronics?

Neural prosthetics, biosensors? These required a strong engineering background and solved application problems rather than the exploration of underlying mechanisms he pursued.

Biology + Information? Bioinformatics! Massive omics data: genomics, proteomics, transcriptomics!

An idea struck like a match in the dark—big data models! Deep learning! Neural networks!

Yes! That's it! The AI wave that has swept through various fields in recent years.

What if... what if the complex phenomena of biology and the massive amounts of experimental data, including those headache-inducing image data, could be transformed into models that machines can learn?

What if a powerful AI could be trained to analyze the patterns that cost human researchers countless hours of time and energy to observe, count, and summarize?

What if AI could be used to simulate complex biological processes or even theoretically predict new experimental directions?

Then, researchers could be partially liberated from heavy, low-creativity repetitive labor and data analysis.

They could focus their more precious energy on higher-level thinking, asking key questions, designing more ingenious experiments, and interpreting deeper mechanisms!

This thought instantly lit up his stagnant thinking.

AI isn't omnipotent, but it could become a powerful key, helping him open the doors to those deeper rooms in the grand palace of biology that are buried under massive details.

It had the potential to greatly compress verification cycles and enhance exploration efficiency—exactly what he craved!

“Mathematics is the foundation; programming is the means of implementation.”

He murmured to himself, the logical chain instantly becoming clear.

“Mathematical modeling ability, programming ability, then deep learning frameworks, neural network principles...”

A brand-new field of knowledge to be conquered unfolded before his eyes. Far from bringing pressure, it was like opening a window in the stifling air, letting in a challenging new breeze.

“Once this phase of the project is completed and I have the first-hand data.”

He made a decision, his thinking exceptionally clear.

“The next goal. Mathematics, then programming, focusing on the application of AI in biological data analysis and modeling.”

Once the goal was established, his actions had direction.

He rose quickly and began packing his bags efficiently.

The laptop was a must; the literature... after a moment's hesitation, he stuffed it in as well.

Turning off the desk lamp, the dormitory fell back into darkness.

He picked up his backpack, took one last look at this quiet room that had witnessed months of his struggle and tonight's epiphany, and gently closed the door.