Richard soon learned the contents of the next several challenges.
Besides the Never Smooth Feather and the Eternally Dormant Seed, Richard successively received the Unrepairable Wooden Box, the Leaky Cup, the Perforated Bag... and a series of other items.
When Richard saw the final challenge, a smile finally appeared on his face. He was now certain of True God's purpose.
By a river stood three slender silver pillars over a meter tall. The right and middle pillars held nothing, while the left pillar was stacked with densely packed golden discs with holes in their centers. From bottom to top, the golden discs grew progressively smaller. The bottom disc was half a meter in diameter, while the top one was only the size of a palm.
What was the requirement?
It was extremely simple: move the golden discs with holes from the left silver pillar to the right one.
However, there were three restrictions during the process:
First, no extraordinary power could be used; they had to be moved by hand. Second, only one disc could be moved at a time. Third, a larger disc could not be placed on top of a smaller one.
Richard took one look and recognized it. This was clearly the Tower of Hanoi game from Earth, with almost no changes at all.
The Tower of Hanoi was invented on Earth in the nineteenth century by a French mathematician named Edward Lucas. Solving it was simple; even a child could figure out what to do.
However, there was a trap here: the number of golden discs on the silver pillar.
The number of discs was closely related to the number of steps required to complete the task. Expressed as a formula, it was s = (2^n) - 1.
Here, s was the number of steps, and