Chapter 289 - 222: Steady as a Rock

Chapter 289: Chapter 222: Steady as a Rock

Before long, Chen Lin had barely sat down when a frantic-looking Bai Qian grabbed him.

"President Chen! We’re stuck! This time we’re really stuck!"

Bai Qian, sporting his trademark bird’s nest hair, his eyes more bloodshot than yesterday, pointed at the error message on the screen. His expression was as desperate as a student who had just failed their final exams.

"This adaptive weight distribution function... during backpropagation, the gradient values are extremely unstable. As soon as the network layers get deep, the gradient either vanishes or just explodes!"

Chen Lin leaned over to take a look.

On the screen, the loss curve was a roller coaster, fluctuating wildly before turning into a glaring ’NaN’ (Not a Number).

"I’ve tried three different solutions," Bai Qian said in a rush, gesturing with his hands. "I added LayerNorm, applied gradient clipping, and even tried to redesign the initialization parameters... Nothing worked! As soon as I run it on a larger dataset, it crashes instantly!"

"President Chen, I think it’s an inherent flaw in the architecture. We might need to introduce more complex residual connections to brute-force a fix..."

Bai Qian grew more pessimistic as he spoke.

Chen Lin said nothing, simply pulling up a chair and sitting down next to Bai Qian.

"Move aside. Let me take a look."

Bai Qian immediately slid the keyboard over.

Chen Lin stared at the mathematical expression of the core function on the screen.

In Bai Qian’s eyes, it was a pile of complex code logic and engineering pitfalls.

But in the eyes of Chen Lin, with his Little Mathematician title activated, it was merely a set of non-linear mathematical transformations.

’Exponential operation...’

Chen Lin muttered to himself.

He instantly pinpointed the crux of the problem.

To ensure the weights were non-negative, Bai Qian had used an exponential operation when implementing the adaptive weight distribution function.

Mathematically, this wasn’t an issue.

But in a computer’s floating-point arithmetic, exponential functions grow too quickly. The slightest fluctuation would cause the value to overflow, leading to a failure in gradient calculation.

"We don’t need residual connections, and we don’t need gradient clipping."

Chen Lin’s fingers hovered over the keyboard, a confident smile playing on his lips.

"You just need to change your ’perspective’."

CLACK CLACK CLACK—

The sound of keys clacking rang out.

Chen Lin didn’t touch the network architecture. Instead, he went straight into the core function’s computational logic and added one seemingly insignificant line—a mathematical transformation.

The LogSumExp trick.

It used a mathematical identity to map the explosive exponential operation into log space for calculation, then mapped the result back.

Though it was a change of only a few symbols, in mathematical terms, it was like caging a runaway stallion.

"And that’s... it?"

Bai Qian stared at the few lines of code Chen Lin had changed, looking utterly baffled.

"Run it and see." Chen Lin hit Enter.

The loss curve on the screen instantly became silky smooth, flowing downward like a gentle, steady stream.

No explosion. No NaN.

Rock solid.

Bai Qian’s eyes widened, his jaw agape.

He whipped his head around to look at Chen Lin, the fervent admiration in his eyes practically overflowing.

"Holy shit..."

A thousand words could be said, but they all boiled down to that single, perfect curse.

"Mapping exponential operations to log space... A mathematical trick like that... I couldn’t have come up with that in a fucking decade!"

Bai Qian grabbed his hair, looking like he was having an existential crisis.

"President Chen, I’m truly in awe now. It’s not just that you’re good at math—you’ve completely mastered it!"

"Just the usual."

Chen Lin calmly took a sip of water, the picture of humble accomplishment.

With that problem solved, their progress was unstoppable, like a hot knife through butter.

The two of them worked like partners who’d been together for years. Bai Qian laid down the engineering pipeline for the code, while Chen Lin provided mathematical corrections at critical junctures.

Line after line of code flew onto the screen, and the new architecture’s prototype grew increasingly clear.

Before they knew it, the sky outside had grown completely dark.

"Done!"

As the final module passed debugging, Bai Qian excitedly slapped his thigh.

"President Chen! The core module’s code is 60% complete! At this rate, give me three more days... No, even without working overtime, we can absolutely start the first end-to-end test run by next Wednesday!"

Chen Lin glanced at the time in the bottom-right corner of his computer screen.

18:00.

’Perfect.’

"Good. We’re ahead of schedule."

Chen Lin nodded in satisfaction, then did something Bai Qian never would have expected.

He reached out and pressed the power button on Bai Qian’s monitor.

CLICK.

The screen went black.

"Hey! President Chen? I haven’t saved—oh, right, it autosaved. But what are you doing?" Bai Qian looked confused.

"Look at the time." Chen Lin pointed to the clock on the wall. "It’s six. We’ve been here half an hour past quitting time."

"But I’m on a roll! Just let me write a few more lines!" Bai Qian pleaded.

"No. Go home. I’ll make sure you do. We’re leaving together."

Chen Lin stood up, packing his backpack as he spoke in a tone that left no room for argument.

"I told you, Yanhai Company doesn’t do the 996 or 007 work culture. Go home, take a shower, get a full night’s sleep, and come back tomorrow with a clear head."

Though Bai Qian was clearly reluctant, he had no choice but to obediently shut down his computer, pack his things, and get ready to leave under President Chen’s ’tyrannical’ authority.

Just then, the faint aroma of a hot meal suddenly drifted into the office area.

Chen Lin’s nose twitched.

He instinctively looked up and saw a graceful figure walking toward them.

It was Shen Yan.

Neither she nor Yunqing had been in the office during the day.

It was winter, so she wore an off-white down jacket with a red scarf wrapped around her neck, which made her coolly beautiful face seem especially fair and rosy.

In her hand, she carried an elegant insulated lunchbox.

Seeing Chen Lin packing up, Shen Yan paused for a moment. A faint blush rose to her cheeks, but her gaze was determined as she walked straight to his desk.

"Um..."

Shen Yan’s voice was soft, her cool, clear tone laced with an almost imperceptible tenderness.

"I’ve seen how hard you’ve been working these past few weeks, juggling school and the company."

She gently placed the insulated lunchbox on Chen Lin’s desk.

"I made this in my dorm last night. It’s braised pork ribs and stir-fried vegetables. You... you should take it home instead of ordering takeout."

The air in the office seemed to freeze for a second.

Chen Lin froze.

He looked at the pink insulated lunchbox on his desk, then back at Shen Yan. She was a little shy, but her gaze met his directly. A warm feeling spread through his chest.

Ever since they had grown closer after the modeling competition, this was the first time Shen Yan had personally cooked for him and brought it over.

’This was just like Shen Yan. Any other girl might have made an excuse like, "Oh, I just made too much."’

’But not her.’

’She genuinely thought I was working too hard and genuinely wanted to take care of me, so she genuinely cooked for me and brought it here.’

A warm smile touched Chen Lin’s lips as he naturally reached out and took the lunchbox.

"Thank you."

As he took the handle, his fingers accidentally brushed against the back of Shen Yan’s hand.

Her skin was cool and smooth to the touch.

They both froze for an instant, as if from an electric shock, but neither of them immediately pulled away.

Standing to the side, Bai Qian suddenly felt as conspicuous as a two-thousand-watt lightbulb.

Even for a socially oblivious tech guy like him, his survival instinct kicked into overdrive in this atmosphere.

"AHEM! Well... President Chen, I’ll be heading out then!"

With that, Bai Qian clutched his backpack and bolted out of the office as if his life depended on it.

The office grew even quieter after Bai Qian’s departure.

By now, almost everyone else had left, leaving it feeling as though Chen Lin and Shen Yan were the only two people in the vast space.

Shen Yan looked at Chen Lin, and after a moment’s hesitation, asked softly,

"Chen Lin..."

"Have you been too tired lately? I’ve seen you rubbing your eyes a lot these past few days. Is it from eyestrain?"

Her voice was laced with concern.

Chen Lin’s heart warmed.

He set his backpack down again, straightened up, and looked earnestly into Shen Yan’s clear eyes.

"I’m fine. It’s all mental work, so the physical toll isn’t too bad."

Chen Lin smiled, his gaze turning serious and his voice softening.

"Don’t worry. Besides..."

He paused, taking half a step closer, and said in a tone that was both teasing and intimate,

"Having you care for me like this, even bringing me delicious food... it makes all the hard work feel worth it."