Book Spirit's Death

"Damn brat!" As if in retaliation, the Book Spirit spoke, roughly cutting Richard off with a furious rebuke. "Damn brat, you cheated! You actually knew the riddle and its answer. You must have gotten them from someone else who passed the verification. Although you answered correctly, your behavior is despicable and shameless. I will remember you forever..."

"Wait!" Richard said. "You said I got the riddle and answer from others who passed the verification? In other words, you only test everyone with this one question?"

"..." Silence. Another long silence. After quite a while, the Book Spirit's stiff voice sounded. "Brat, stop talking nonsense. Ask your question! Complete this verification."

"Fine, my turn to ask." Richard thought for a moment before speaking. "Hmm, here's a question. Matter in the world has four and only four fundamental forces: electromagnetic force, weak interaction, strong interaction, and gravity. Do you think it is possible for there to be a systematic theory that unifies these four forces to explain all physical phenomena? If so, what is the core of that theory?"

"..." Silence, long and eerie.

"Unable to verify the grand unified theory?" Richard glanced at the page and muttered to himself, guessing, "Are these question-and-answer problems too difficult? Fine, then let's switch to an easier true-or-false question. You only need to choose between true and false. For example, the Riemann Hypothesis, one of the seven major mathematical problems: in mathematics, some numbers have special properties. They cannot be expressed as the product of two smaller numbers, such as 2, 3, 5, 7, and so on. Such numbers are called prime numbers. Prime numbers play an important role in both pure and applied mathematics, but at a glance, their distribution among all natural numbers appears to follow no pattern.

But a man named Riemann proposed this conjecture: the frequency of prime numbers is closely related to a complex function. That is: ζ(s)= 1 + 1 / 2S+ 1 / 3S+ 1 / 4S+... So, do you think this conjecture is true or false?"

"..." Silence, followed by more long and eerie silence.

Richard could not help raising an eyebrow. "Still unable to answer? So you can't provide answers beyond the limits of human thought. You don't have the 'superintelligence' attribute, right?"

"..." Still silence.

"Fine." Richard sighed softly. "Then let's switch to the simplest question. You definitely know this one. How many times is a circle's circumference its diameter? Or, more simply, how many times is the circumference of a carriage wheel the length of two spokes placed end to end?"

This was the simplest expression of pi. As Richard understood it, in the history of Modern Earth, Ancient Egypt had already calculated pi to three decimal places before 1900 AD. More than two hundred years BC, Archimedes, the great mathematician of Ancient Greece, had calculated pi to five decimal places...

As long as the Book Spirit before him possessed knowledge in this area, it should be able to answer this question. Based on the precision of its answer, he could roughly determine the mathematical level of this world, thereby gaining an indirect understanding of the entire wizard-Spell System.

After all, whether it was spells or science, as long as a complete system was established and followed normal logic, mathematics could not be absent from it. In that case...

The next moment, the Book Spirit indeed spoke, but it had lost its previous vigor, answering weakly as though it had no strength. "3."

"More precisely?" Richard pressed. "What comes after the decimal point?"

"3.1415926..." The Book Spirit's voice sounded somewhat mechanical. Hearing it give pi to seven decimal places, Richard's eyebrows rose involuntarily. This was already the peak level of Ancient China on Modern Earth, perhaps even beyond it.

And if it was beyond that, the range to be tested would instantly expand. After all, the precision of pi had developed explosively. Around 480 AD, China's Zu Chongzhi calculated pi to seven decimal places. It was nearly a thousand years before anyone surpassed him—at the beginning of the fifteenth century, the Arab mathematician Al-Kashi calculated an approximation of pi to seventeen decimal places.

After that, in 1789, a Slovenian mathematician calculated pi to 137 decimal places. In 1948, a British mathematician calculated pi to 808 decimal places. In 1949, it was calculated to 2,037 decimal places. In 1973, pi was calculated to one million decimal places. In 1989, it was calculated to 480 million decimal places. In 2010, it was calculated to five trillion decimal places...

Thinking of this, Richard spoke again, pressing the Book Spirit. "If we define this value as π, what is the 100,000th digit after π's decimal point?"

"..." The Book Spirit's answering voice abruptly stopped, as though it had never existed at all.

Richard immediately knew that he had been too hasty. His eyes flickered as he murmured, "What, it hasn't reached that degree of precision yet? Then what about 10,000 digits? 1,000 digits? 100 digits?"

"Damn brat..." The Book Spirit spoke, its voice seemingly trembling, its tone rising and falling like a machine unable to bear an excessive load. "Your damn question is too difficult... too difficult. I'll tell you, the answer is... is... is... ah!"

In the end, the Book Spirit let out a scream. The moving jawbone on the page suddenly froze, and the flames in its eye sockets instantly solidified as well. Like a machine malfunctioning, like a computer crashing, it made no more sound.

After quite a while, Richard cautiously reached toward the page where the Book Spirit was located and found it icy cold, no longer retaining its previous warmth.

"Did this... mean I passed the verification?" Richard muttered. "Or did an overloaded calculation produce an irreparable error?"

Richard carefully examined the page but found no special structure. It was merely an ordinary sheet of paper painted with a skull image. The so-called Book Spirit clearly existed within the page in a manner he did not yet understand.

The next moment, Richard shook his head. Rather than waste time trying to figure out the Book Spirit's principles, he directly turned to the following page.

Dense red writing appeared on the second page.

Written on the first line of the second page was something like a preface: Listen to me, remember me, and you will witness an entirely new world—Munro.

The second line was written in a slightly larger font. It was the book's title: Chapter of Munro!

Only the third line contained the true content: The world of wizards is mysterious and dangerous. Every reader, when you read this book, a door to an entirely new world is slowly opening before you...

Richard narrowed his eyes into slits, took a deep breath, and continued reading seriously. Then... he did not sleep for the entire night.

PS: A new author's new book is not easy. If you think this book is good, please leave some comments and recommendation votes. The author thanks you greatly!