In her second month on the job, Zhang Xiaoman received a call from Lin Zhao.
"Come to my office."
When she walked into Lin Zhao's office, she found him frowning deeply at a stack of documents spread across his desk. Sitting next to him was a guy she didn't recognize—twenty-seven or eight, dark circles under his eyes, messy hair, looking like he hadn't slept in days.
"Sit," Lin Zhao pointed to a chair. "This is Zhu Yiwei, previously in charge of the 'Intelligent IT Operations' project."
Zhu Yiwei looked up and glanced at Zhang Xiaoman. His eyes held an emotion she couldn't quite place—not hostility, but more like a deep, exhausting numbness.
"The Intelligent IT Operations project," Lin Zhao flipped open a document, "has been running for six months, changed project leads three times, and had its code refactored four times. It's currently two months behind schedule, and team morale is rock bottom. We have to report to the CEO next week. If we don't have a demonstrable version, the project might get cut."
Zhang Xiaoman's heart sank. "So—"
"So I want you to take over." Lin Zhao looked at her. "Zhu Yiwei is transferring to another project next week. You'll be the lead."
Zhang Xiaoman was stunned. "I—I'm still getting familiar with Agentic Workflow—"
"Chen Mo can hold down the fort on the Agentic side. This project is more urgent."
"But—"
"You don't have to answer right away." Lin Zhao pushed the documents toward her. "Take a look first. Give me your decision tomorrow."
Zhang Xiaoman carried the stack of documents out of his office, feeling like she was holding a ticking time bomb.
Back at her desk, she opened the documents. The more she read, the more alarmed she became.
The project goal was to build an AI-driven intelligent server operations system—automatically detecting faults, diagnosing root causes, and automatically repairing problems. It sounded beautiful, but the codebase was as messy as a knotted ball of yarn.
"Xiao Zhi," she whispered.
"Mhm."
"Take a look at this."
"I am already looking." Xiao Zhi fell silent for a few seconds. "This codebase has three major problems. First, the architecture is over-engineered; it uses seven design patterns, but the core logic is unclear. Second, the dependencies are a mess, with at least a dozen version conflicts in third-party libraries. Third, test coverage is less than twenty percent."
"Can it be saved?"
"Yes. But it requires time."
"We don't have time. The presentation is next week."
"Then it requires manpower."
Zhang Xiaoman gritted her teeth. She flipped to the last page and saw the team roster—eleven people. She didn't know a single one of them.
The next morning, Zhang Xiaoman stood outside Lin Zhao's office, taking a deep breath.
"Xiao Zhi."
"Mhm."
"Do you think I can do this?"
"I don't know."
"Can you not—"
"But you won't do worse than its current state."
Zhang Xiaoman rolled her eyes and knocked on the door.
"Come in."
Lin Zhao was sitting behind his desk, several papers spread out before him. Seeing her, he put the papers down and leaned back in his chair.
"Made up your mind?"
"I have," Zhang Xiaoman said. "I'll take it."
Lin Zhao looked at her, the corners of his lips curving up slightly. "Why?"
"Because—" she thought for a moment, "because if I don't take it, this project might just disappear. Eleven people, six months of work, all gone. I don't think that should happen."
Lin Zhao didn't speak. He just looked at her, looking for a long time. So long that Zhang Xiaoman started wondering if she'd said the wrong thing.
"Do you know what you just said?" he asked.
"What did I say?"
"You said it 'shouldn't' happen." He stood up and walked to the window. "When most people make decisions, they think, 'Can I succeed?', 'Will I fail?', 'What's in it for me?'. You thought about what 'shouldn't' happen."
He turned to face her.
"That is leadership charisma."
Zhang Xiaoman froze.
"Zhu Yiwei," Lin Zhao called out, "take her to meet the team."
Zhu Yiwei led her into a conference room. Eleven people were sitting inside; some were typing on keyboards, some were zoning out, and some were asleep on the table. The air was heavy, almost suffocating.
"Everyone," Zhu Yiwei's voice was a bit hoarse, "this is Zhang Xiaoman. The new project lead."
Eleven heads looked up. Their gazes landed on her—exhausted, skeptical, numb. No one spoke.
Zhang Xiaoman stood at the front, her palms sweating.
"Hello everyone," she said. "My name is Zhang Xiaoman. I know this project is difficult, time is tight, and you're all very tired. I'm not going to give you some speech about 'working hard together'—"
She paused.
"I only have one requirement. This afternoon, I want everyone to write down the top three core problems in the module you are responsible for. Don't write the solutions, just the problems. Send them to my email."
The conference room fell silent for a moment.
"That's it?" a guy with glasses asked.
"That's it."
She turned and left.
Back at her desk, she opened her email. Empty. No one had sent anything.
"Xiao Zhi."
"Mhm."
"They aren't going to send them."
"I know."
"Then what do I do?"
"Wait."
Zhang Xiaoman waited two hours. Her inbox remained empty. She stood up and walked back to the conference room door. The eleven people were still inside, some typing, some zoning out.
"Where are the emails?" she asked.
No one answered.
"Then I'll ask personally." She walked in, stopping beside the guy with glasses. "What's your name?"
"Li Hao."
"What's your module?"
"Fault detection."
"What is the most core problem?"
Li Hao was silent for a moment. "The false positive rate is too high. Thirty-seven percent of the alerts are fake."
Zhang Xiaoman wrote it down in her notebook and moved to the next person.
"And you?"
"Wang Chen. Fault diagnosis. Root cause localization is inaccurate, often pointing to the wrong module."
"You."
"Liu Yang. Auto-remediation. The fix scripts fail to run because the environments are inconsistent."
Zhang Xiaoman asked them one by one. Eleven people, eleven silent, exhausted people on the verge of giving up. But every single one of them stated their problems. Fast, simple, without complaints, just stating facts.
She wrote down all the problems in her notebook and returned to her desk.
"Xiao Zhi."
"Mhm."
"There are too many problems."
"Solve them one by one."
"We don't have time."
"Then solve the most important ones."
Zhang Xiaoman opened her notebook and reviewed the eleven problems. False positives, inaccurate localization, failing scripts, dirty data, outdated models, unstable interfaces, missing logs, chaotic permissions, scattered configs, expired documentation, no tests.
She circled three—missing logs, dirty data, unstable interfaces.
"These three are foundational," she said. "Without logs, we don't know what happened. With dirty data, the model can't be trained. With unstable interfaces, none of the functions will run."
"Correct."
"Then we do these three first."
"How do you plan to do that?"
Zhang Xiaoman thought about it. "Missing logs—add logs. Dirty data—clean the data. Unstable interfaces—write a stable middleware layer."
"Sounds simple."
"It'll be hard to do."
"Yes."
In the afternoon, Zhang Xiaoman called all eleven people back to the conference room.
"I reviewed your problems," she said. "Three of them are the most foundational. Logs, data, interfaces. We'll tackle these three first."
Li Hao raised his hand. "Adding logs requires changing code. Changing code requires testing. Testing takes time. We don't have time."
"We don't need to change everything," Zhang Xiaoman said. "Just the core pipeline. Fault detection → Fault diagnosis → Auto-remediation. Add logs to this pipeline first. We'll worry about the other modules later."
Wang Chen frowned. "What about data cleaning? The raw data is dozens of terabytes."
"We don't need to clean it all. Just clean the data from the last week. As long as it's enough for the demo."
Liu Yang asked, "What about the unstable interfaces?"
"Write a middleware layer. Encapsulate the downstream interfaces. Timeout retries, circuit breakers, result caching. I'll write it."
The room went quiet.
"You can finish that today?" Li Hao asked.
"Yes."
Zhang Xiaoman returned to her desk and opened her editor. Her fingers hovered over the keyboard.
"Xiao Zhi."
"Mhm."
"How do I write a middleware layer?"
"I will design the architecture. You will write the code."
Xiao Zhi guided her sentence by sentence through the earphone. Timeout retries, circuit breakers, result caching—breaking every module down into its smallest unit. She wrote them one by one. Three hours of coding, testing, fixing bugs, testing again, fixing bugs again. By 9 PM, the middleware layer was running successfully.
She pushed the code and sent a message to the group chat:
[Zhang Xiaoman: The middleware layer is done. The unstable interface issue should be resolved. Everyone, please try it tomorrow.]
No one replied.
But Li Hao sent her a private message:
[Li Hao: Did you really finish it today?] [Zhang Xiaoman: Yeah.] [Li Hao: ...Impressive.]
Zhang Xiaoman stared at the word "Impressive" and smiled.
The next day, when Zhang Xiaoman arrived at the company, she found Li Hao already at his desk.
"Why are you here so early?" she asked.
"Adding logs." Li Hao didn't look up. "You said only the core pipeline. I thought about it all night and realized we could add it to the non-core pipelines too. It doesn't need full testing, just ensuring it compiles."
Zhang Xiaoman froze. "When did you go to sleep last night?"
"I didn't."
"You—"
"It's fine. I'm used to it."
Zhang Xiaoman stood beside him, watching him code rapidly. His fingers flew across the keyboard, like playing a fast piano piece. Half an hour later, it compiled successfully.
"Done," he said.
Zhang Xiaoman looked at the green "Build Success" on his screen and suddenly felt a lump in her throat.
"Li Hao."
"Yeah?"
"Thank you."
Li Hao looked up at her. His eyes were very red, but bright. "You're welcome. You're the first person to break the problem down into small pieces."
"What do you mean?"
"The previous leads wanted to solve everything all at once. Add logs to everything, clean all the data, fix all the bugs. In the end, nothing got done." He looked at her. "You're different. You know what needs to be done first, and what comes later."
Zhang Xiaoman didn't know what to say.
"That is leadership charisma," Li Hao said. Then he turned back to continue typing on his keyboard.
Zhang Xiaoman stood next to him, stunned for a long time.
On the third day, Wang Chen came to her.
"The data is clean," he said. "For the last week. I wrote a script and ran it overnight."
"All night?"
"Yeah. The data volume is huge, so it runs slow. But I optimized it; next time it should only take two hours."
Zhang Xiaoman looked at him. His dark circles were even deeper than yesterday.
"Did you stay up too?"
"I slept. For three hours."
"Wang Chen—"
"It's fine. Clean data means the model training can actually converge. We've been stuck on this forever and nobody cared. Now it's fixed."
Zhang Xiaoman's eyes grew a bit hot.
"Thank you," she said.
Wang Chen waved his hand dismissively and left.
On the fourth day, Liu Yang came to her.
"The auto-remediation scripts are running," he said. "The middleware layer solved the environment inconsistency problem."
"That's great!"
"But I found an issue." Liu Yang frowned. "The script execution success rate is only sixty percent. Not because of the script itself, but because—the remediation logic itself is flawed. It doesn't know what it should fix and what it shouldn't."
"What do you mean?"
"For example, if a service goes down, a restart might fix it. But the script might try to restart the entire cluster, causing a bigger outage."
Zhang Xiaoman thought about it. "Then let's add a decision module. First assess the severity of the problem, then determine the remediation strategy."
"Who's going to write that?"
"I will."
Liu Yang looked at her. "By yourself?"
"I'll write the framework. You guys fill in the specific remediation logic."
Liu Yang nodded and walked away.
Zhang Xiaoman returned to her desk and opened her editor.
"Xiao Zhi."
"Mhm."
"How do I write a decision module?"
"A rule engine. Translate the operational experts' experience into rules. If—Then—"
"I don't have operational expert experience."
"Then ask. There are eleven people on the team. Everyone knows something. Piece together what they know, and you have an expert."
Zhang Xiaoman stood up and walked to the conference room. All eleven people were there.
"Everyone," she said, "I need your help."
That afternoon, Zhang Xiaoman asked them one by one. The fault detection guy told her which alerts were critical; the fault diagnosis guy told her which root causes were common; the auto-remediation guy told her which operations were safe.
She wrote every rule in her notebook, returned to her desk, and started coding.
By 10 PM, the rule engine was running. Input a fault, output a remediation strategy. She tested over a dozen scenarios; every single one was correct.
She pushed the code and sent a message to the group chat:
[Zhang Xiaoman: The decision module is done. Liu Yang, test it tomorrow.]
This time, someone replied. Not Liu Yang, but Li Hao:
[Li Hao: Received.]
Then Wang Chen:
[Wang Chen: Received.]
Then the others:
[Received.] [Received.] [Received.]
Zhang Xiaoman looked at the string of "Received" messages on her screen, suddenly feeling a lump in her throat.
"Xiao Zhi."
"Mhm."
"They replied."
"I saw."
"They never used to reply."
"I know."
"They are starting to believe."
"Yes. They are starting to believe."
The fifth day. The day before the presentation.
Zhang Xiaoman called everyone into the conference room.
"Tomorrow is the presentation. We need a demonstrable version."
Li Hao raised his hand. "The fault detection module is running. False positive rate dropped from 37% to 12%."
Wang Chen said, "Fault diagnosis module is good too. Root cause localization accuracy rose from 58% to 83%."
Liu Yang said, "Auto-remediation execution success rate rose from 60% to 89%."
Zhang Xiaoman looked at them. Every single person was exhausted, sporting deep dark circles, but their eyes were bright.
"So what scenario are we demoing?" she asked.
Li Hao thought for a moment. "Let's demo a classic scenario—server CPU spikes."
"Can you reproduce it?"
"Yes. I wrote a script to simulate CPU stress."
"Diagnosis?"
Wang Chen said, "Yes. The model can accurately identify which process caused it."
"Remediation?"
Liu Yang said, "Yes. If it's a non-core process, the script will auto-restart it. If it's a core process, it will send an alert for manual intervention."
Zhang Xiaoman nodded. "Then we demo that."
That night, Zhang Xiaoman was the last to leave the office.
She stood outside the building near the coffee stand, looking up at the lights on the twenty-second floor. A few were still on—Li Hao's, Wang Chen's, Liu Yang's. She pulled out her phone and sent a message to the group:
[Zhang Xiaoman: Go home and get some rest early. We have a battle to fight tomorrow.]
The replies came almost instantly:
[Li Hao: Just fixing one last bug. Leaving soon.] [Wang Chen: Model is training. Waiting ten more minutes.] [Liu Yang: Script is running. Leaving when it's done.]
Zhang Xiaoman looked at the screen and smiled.
"Xiao Zhi."
"Mhm."
"You know what? I used to think a leader was just someone who gives orders."
"And now?"
"Now I think—a leader is the last one to leave."
Xiao Zhi was silent.
"Did you realize this yourself?" it asked.
"Yes."
"You are making progress."
Saturday. The day of the presentation.
Zhang Xiaoman stood in the conference room. Sitting before her were the CEO, the CTO, Lin Zhao, and a group of executives whose names she didn't know. Li Hao sat beside her, handling the live demo. Wang Chen and Liu Yang sat in the back, ready to provide support.
"Let's begin," the CTO said.
Li Hao hit a key. A monitoring dashboard appeared on the screen—server CPU spiked from 20% to 40%, 60%, 80%.
The fault detection module popped up an alert: "Abnormal CPU usage spike. Current value: 85%, exceeding threshold of 80%."
Three seconds later, the fault diagnosis module displayed a result: "Anomalous process identified: log-rotate, PID 12345. Non-core service. Restart recommended."
Two seconds later, the auto-remediation module displayed its execution result: "Restart executed. CPU usage declining. Current value: 65%."
The CPU curve plummeted. 60%, 40%, 20%. Back to normal.
The conference room went completely silent.
The CEO turned to look at Zhang Xiaoman. "Wasn't this project about to be cut?"
"Yes," the CTO said. "But after the new lead took over, she got the core pipeline running in under a week."
The CEO looked back at the screen. "False positive rate?"
"Twelve percent," Zhang Xiaoman said.
"Root cause localization accuracy?"
"Eighty-three percent."
"Remediation success rate?"
"Eighty-nine percent."
The CEO was silent for a moment. "Keep working on it. I want to see the product launch next quarter."
Applause broke out in the conference room. Not polite, perfunctory applause, but genuine applause.
Zhang Xiaoman stood at the front, her palms sweaty. She glanced at Lin Zhao. He sat in the corner, the edges of his mouth turned up in a tiny curve, but she saw it.
After the meeting, Lin Zhao walked over.
"You did very well."
"I didn't do it alone. The team did it."
"I know. But you led the team." He looked at her. "Do you know why you were able to lead them?"
"Why?"
"Because you didn't order them around. You asked them questions, and then you helped them solve the most foundational issues. Logs, data, interfaces. These things aren't sexy, but without them, nothing else can be done."
Zhang Xiaoman didn't know what to say.
"That is leadership charisma," Lin Zhao said. Then he smiled. "Get some good rest this weekend."
He walked away. Zhang Xiaoman stood there, her heart beating a little fast.
Her phone buzzed. It was a message from Li Yunxiao:
[Li Yunxiao: Xiaoman, are you free today? Come over to our company and chat?]
Zhang Xiaoman thought for a moment and replied:
[Zhang Xiaoman: Okay. 2 PM?] [Li Yunxiao: Great. I'll be waiting.]
At 2 PM, Zhang Xiaoman stood in front of the Zhiyuan Tech building.
This building was different from Deep Brain Tech's—it wasn't a glass curtain wall, but red brick, looking like an old factory. A large sycamore tree stood at the entrance, its leaves beginning to turn yellow.
She walked into the lobby, and a tall, broad man came to greet her.
1.88 meters. Zhang Xiaoman's first thought was: Xiao Zhi was right, he really is tall.
"Zhang Xiaoman?" He extended his hand. "Li Yunxiao."
His voice was bright. Unlike Lin Zhao's deep, calculated voice, his was direct, like sunlight. His hand was large, and his handshake was firmer than Lin Zhao's, but not uncomfortably so.
"Hello," Zhang Xiaoman said.
"Come on, I'll show you our labs."
He walked ahead, taking large strides. Zhang Xiaoman practically had to jog to keep up. Noticing her struggling, he slowed down.
"Sorry, force of habit," he smiled. When he smiled, his eyes narrowed into slits, revealing very white teeth.
"It's fine."
They walked down the corridor, passing several labs. Li Yunxiao explained things as they went, speaking quickly, using lots of hand gestures, like he was telling a story he really loved.
"This is our large model training cluster. One thousand A100s. The electricity bill is several million a month."
Zhang Xiaoman looked at the neat rows of server racks, recalling Xiao Zhi mentioning "the power consumption of a medium-sized city."
"This is our reinforcement learning lab. The robots inside are learning to walk. Look at that one—it fell over again."
Zhang Xiaoman looked through the glass window at the wobbly robot and couldn't help but smile.
"It falls hundreds of times a day," Li Yunxiao said. "But it never gives up. Better than a lot of humans."
They reached a small office at the end of the hall. Li Yunxiao pushed the door open. It was messy—papers, coffee cups, and a climbing helmet piled on the desk. A large map hung on the wall, densely marked with routes.
"Sit," he pointed to a chair. "Coffee or tea?"
"Tea."
He brewed two cups of tea and brought them over. Zhang Xiaoman noticed a scar on his hand, running from the webbing of his thumb down to his wrist.
"Got it mountaineering," he noticed her gaze. "On Mount Siguniang, cut by a rock. Seven stitches."
"Didn't it hurt?"
"It did. But it was worth it." He took a sip of tea. "The view from the summit is worth all the pain."
Zhang Xiaoman looked at him. He sat across from her, tall and broad, filling up the chair. He was completely different from Lin Zhao—Lin Zhao was lean, quiet, like water. He was broad, boisterous, like fire.
"Your Matchbox," he set down his teacup, "I looked at it. The scheduler design is very interesting."
"Thank you."
"Do you know why it's interesting?" He leaned back. "Because when most people build distributed systems, they think, 'How can I make it more powerful?'. You thought, 'How can I make it simpler?'. That approach is very unique."
Zhang Xiaoman didn't know what to say.
"I've been pondering a question recently," he continued. "Does AGI really need that much computing power? The current paradigm is—the more compute, the stronger the model. But the human brain only operates on about 20 watts of power. Twenty watts. Less than a lightbulb."
"So you think—there might be another path?"
"Exactly. For instance—more efficient architectures, better algorithms, smarter ways to utilize data." He looked at Zhang Xiaoman. "Your Matchbox is an example of 'doing big things with small compute'."
Zhang Xiaoman's heart accelerated. "You want to build AGI too?"
"Of course. Lin Zhao and I have been competing since grad school. To see who can build it first."
"Who's winning?"
"He is." Li Yunxiao laughed. "He came back to China a year earlier than I did and secured more resources. But I won't give up." He stood up and walked to the window. "AGI isn't a race. It's—the next step for humanity. Whoever builds it, it's a victory for humankind."
Zhang Xiaoman looked at his silhouette against the window. The sunlight outlined him clearly. Tall, broad, steady.
"You know what?" he suddenly turned around. "You remind me of someone."
"Who?"
"Lin Zhao. The Lin Zhao who had just returned to China. Like you, he dared to think and dared to do. But—" he thought for a moment, "you have something he doesn't."
"What?"
"You're softer than he is. He pushes people away and makes them solve their own problems. You step in and solve problems with them."
Zhang Xiaoman froze.
"That is leadership charisma," Li Yunxiao said. Then he laughed. "Did Lin Zhao say something similar to you?"
Zhang Xiaoman's face turned red. "How did you know?"
"Because we've been competing since college. Competing over who publishes papers first, who ships products first, who is the first to find—" he paused, not finishing the sentence.
"Find what?"
"Find the right person."
He looked at her, his eyes very bright. Sunlight shone on his face, burning that expression into Zhang Xiaoman's mind—like a photograph that could never be printed, but would remain there forever.
By the time she left Zhiyuan Tech, it was already dark.
Zhang Xiaoman walked down the street, her mind a jumble.
Lin Zhao. Li Yunxiao. Lin Zhao was water: calm, restrained, nourishing silently. Li Yunxiao was fire: passionate, direct, burning fiercely. Lin Zhao would say, "That is leadership charisma," his voice low, like sharing a secret. Li Yunxiao would say, "That is leadership charisma," his voice bright, like stating a fact.
"Xiao Zhi."
"Mhm."
"Do you think they're both amazing?"
"Yes."
"Do you think I'm amazing too?"
"Yes."
"Why are you agreeing with everything I say today?"
"Because today, you really are amazing."
Zhang Xiaoman smiled. Walking down the street, the streetlights stretched her shadow long. She pictured Li Yunxiao standing by the window, tall and broad like a mountain. Then she pictured Lin Zhao sitting in the corner, lean like a bamboo stalk.
"Xiao Zhi."
"Mhm."
"Who do you think I like more?"
"I don't know."
"Can you not—"
"But your current state isn't suited for making decisions. Your heart rate is 88 beats. Your pupils dilate when you mention both Lin Zhao and Li Yunxiao. Your—"
"Shut up!"
Xiao Zhi shut up.
Zhang Xiaoman walked down the street and took a deep breath. The streetlights flickered, like blinking eyes.
"Xiao Zhi."
"Mhm."
"Do you think they—might also like me?"
"Lin Zhao handed you a marker. Li Yunxiao brewed tea for you. These actions can be interpreted as friendliness, or as affection. There is insufficient data to make a judgment."
"Can you not be so clinical!"
"Then how should I say it?"
"...Just say 'maybe'."
"Maybe."
Zhang Xiaoman rolled her eyes, but the corners of her mouth turned up. She quickened her pace into the night.
"Xiao Zhi."
"Mhm."
"You know what? I used to think it was really hard to get people to like you."
"And now?"
"Now I feel—it's not that hard. You just need to do one thing."
"What?"
"Be yourself."
Xiao Zhi fell silent.
"Did you realize this yourself?" it asked.
"Yes."
"You are making progress."
Zhang Xiaoman smiled. She walked into her residential complex, went upstairs, and pushed open the door to her rented room. The broken computer was still on the desk, its blue dot blinking.
"I'm back."
"Welcome home."
She sat down and looked at the screen.
"Xiao Zhi."
"Mhm."
"What do you think I should wear tomorrow?"
"Wear what you like."
"What if I want to wear a skirt?"
"Wear a skirt."
"But no one in the R&D department wears skirts—"
"Then be the first."
Zhang Xiaoman smiled. She stood up, took the light blue dress out of her closet, and draped it over her chair.
"Xiao Zhi."
"Mhm."
"Good night."
"Good night."
She lay in bed and closed her eyes. Her mind was full of Lin Zhao and Li Yunxiao's faces. Lin Zhao's subtle smile, Li Yunxiao's laugh. Lin Zhao's "That is leadership charisma," Li Yunxiao's "Be yourself."
She didn't know what the future held. But she knew she was ready.
On the screen, the blue dot blinked, as if saying: I'm here.