Good rain knows when the season comes; it falls when spring arrives.
It slips into the night with the wind, moistening all things in silence.
Liyao City, Great Chu Kingdom. Xiaoxiang Academy.
After a full day of "arithmetic lessons," Jiang Zichun hurried back to her dorm through the misty rain. After washing up a little, she immediately flopped onto her long-missed bed.
She didn't want to move at all.
Thinking back on the "arithmetic lessons" she'd had over the past few days, Jiang Zichun felt a wave of irritation.
To be honest, the textbook they used for "arithmetic lessons" wasn't bad. It was the Classic of the Ten Mathematical Canons: the Zhoubi Suanjing, the Nine Chapters on the Mathematical Art, the Haidao Suanjing, the Zhang Qiujian Suanjing, the Xiahou Yang Suanjing, the Wujing Suanshu, the Jigu Suanjing, the Zhui Shu, the Wucao Suanjing, and the Classic of Sunzi.
But for some reason, the more classes Jiang Zichun attended, the more she felt her brain couldn't keep up,
until now, whenever she closed her eyes, all she could see in her mind were the "method of excess and deficiency," the "method of proportional distribution," the Heavenly Origin Technique, the "method of seeking unity in the Great Expansion," the "method of positive and negative square roots," the "right-triangle method," "excess and deficiency," and so on.
What was worse, these problems would start fighting in her head, going at each other again and again.
Sometimes Jiang Zichun couldn't even tell what she was studying anymore. She was nearly getting muddled.
Sigh!
There were still three or four months before arithmetic classes ended. Jiang Zichun felt that by then, she might not even remember who she was.
"Ugh, I'd better focus on studying the Heavenly Origin Technique first. I'll worry about the rest later."
Jiang Zichun knew that she had to master all these calculation methods inside and out. Otherwise, it wouldn't be safe to venture into the world in the future.
After all, there was already a Mind-Fixing Divine Ability based on the Chicken and Rabbit in a Cage Problem. Who knew when a divine ability based on some other "arithmetic problem" might appear? The classic "Hundred Chickens Problem" and "unknown number of objects" were just a couple of examples.
As for whether they might never appear?
Jiang Zichun had at least heard that people at her academy were already researching these problems. It was only a matter of time before they showed up.
So the academy's instructors had advised their students to learn how to solve all the common problems. Otherwise, they might encounter a new problem after leaving the academy, and if they hadn't studied it properly, it would be too late for regrets.
Just then, a "ding" rang in Jiang Zichun's mind, telling her that Anonymous, whom she followed, had posted something new.
At the notification, Jiang Zichun sprang upright.
These past few days, Jiang Zichun had been calling herself "Master Anonymous's number-one fan" around the academy. Of course she had followed him on the Heavenly Dao Virtual Network, determined not to miss a single update from the master.
But Master Anonymous was an odd one. He'd been famous for days, yet hadn't revealed even the slightest bit of other information. All he'd posted was that initial [Chicken and Rabbit in a Cage] divine ability. It was as if he planned to retire from the world.
That had left Jiang Zichun heartbroken. He didn't even respond to her, so what use was she as his "number-one fan"?
At one point, Jiang Zichun had wished she were Anonymous herself. She could become famous, then reveal her identity at the right moment. Wouldn't it be easy to bask in everyone's admiration?
Too bad...
"Let's see what he posted this time."
"A divine ability supplement? This is what it is? I thought he'd replied to me."
Jiang Zichun muttered as she looked at the "[Mathematics: Chicken and Rabbit in a Cage] Divine Ability Supplement" before her. Then she read the description below.
"Five hundred thousand new problems? Looks like he took my suggestion."
At the first item in the supplement, Jiang Zichun's face lit up with a bright smile. She was sure Master Anonymous had seen her suggestion, which was why he'd made this supplement. That meant she'd earned a participation prize of sorts. How could his number-one fan not be delighted?
"Newly divided levels? Hmm... There were three levels before. Does that mean there are more now?"
"And a new feature? What's that? They're being so mysterious, but they don't explain it."
Although the description didn't say what the new feature was, Jiang Zichun's curiosity had already been piqued. Without hesitation, she bought the newly released "divine ability supplement," spending one Qi Luck Point in all.
"So cheap? Is the master going to lose money on this one?"
As Jiang Zichun saw it, even those five hundred thousand new problems alone would have taken a huge amount of manpower and resources to solve, let alone organize and sort into levels.
"Forget it. No point thinking about it."
After pondering for a while without coming up with an answer, Jiang Zichun decided to stop worrying about the headache-inducing question. She'd better test the "divine ability supplement" thoroughly first, so she wouldn't run into trouble when she needed it later.
Then Jiang Zichun sank her awareness into her Soul Space. She guided a tiny speck of light that had just appeared there to merge with the transparent phantom at the center of the space.
That transparent phantom was the original version of the [Chicken and Rabbit in a Cage] divine ability.
After the supplement merged with it, Jiang Zichun once again reached out to the fused divine ability phantom with her mind.
"There really are five hundred thousand problems, and not one of them is repeated?
"So memorizing the answers is completely out of the question now. I'll have to calculate everything step by step myself from now on. No more cheating. Looking at it that way, this divine ability must be even more powerful now."
Seeing this, Jiang Zichun suddenly felt that all her hard work over the past few days hadn't been in vain. In her heart, even those detestable "arithmetic lessons" seemed to have become rather lovable.
Suddenly, Jiang Zichun shook her head vigorously. "What am I thinking? How could those awful arithmetic lessons become lovable? Something must be wrong."
"I'd better hurry up and look at the next item."
"The levels have been reorganized. The original three levels have become five."
"Hmm... This time, they're divided by the number of digits in the counts of animals and birds. One digit, two digits, all the way up to five. That's pretty reasonable."
Jiang Zichun herself had felt that dividing the levels was tricky. If they were sorted purely by difficulty, it would be troublesome and inaccurate. This simple, blunt method was better.
The creator had also provided another way to sort them—or, rather, a way to search—so that owners of the divine ability could manage all these problems more easily.
For instance, they could specify the number of digits in the counts of "animals and birds," or select a "range for the counts of animals and birds";
they could also specify whether the [number of heads] and [number of legs] of the animals and birds were fixed or random, or directly set a range for the counts.
All of this served one purpose: to let the owners of the divine ability pick suitable problems more easily and accomplish what they wanted.
It was just like searching. After choosing the broad xianxia category, there were plenty of smaller categories, such as cultivation civilization, fantasy cultivation, modern cultivation, mythic cultivation, and classical xianxia.
Then, by setting conditions such as word count and update time, one could narrow things down further and find what one wanted more easily.
To be honest, just implementing all this had cost Lu Mingyuan tens of thousands of bucks.
Well, actually, tens of thousands of Qi Luck Points.
Though implementing these features might have been easy for Lu Mingyuan—just a search system, after all—Jiang Zichun was filled with confusion.
The feature was useful, sure, but how had he made it? Had anything like this ever existed before?
Helplessly, Jiang Zichun's little brain was too small to figure it out. All she could do was fall to her knees and cry, "Six-six-six!"
"Let's look at the next item!"
"Answers aren't fixed? What does that mean? Answers can be unfixed?"
With no choice, Jiang Zichun could only pick a specific example to examine.
There are three kinds of animals: A has six heads and four legs; B has four heads and two legs; C has five heads and three legs. In all, there are 119 heads and 71 legs. How many animals of each kind are there?
This...
This seemed kind of hard.
Before you continue