Today's six thousand words, offered up.
When Xiang Qi found Wang Qi, she was startled. Following her tracking artifact, she found him wandering the streets with lifeless eyes!
"Were you... drained of your vital essence?"
It took Wang Qi a second or two to react. He slowly turned toward Xiang Qi and smiled. "Senior Sister, with that one sentence, you've practically thrown all your moral integrity away."
"Huh?" Xiang Qi was baffled.
In Divine Land, there were quite a few wicked arts that absorbed another person's essence and true yuan. Thus, to the ears of Divine Land cultivators, Xiang Qi's words just now could not possibly have any other meaning.
Such wicked arts were not widely spread, and Xiang Qi had only asked casually. Zhen Chanzi swiftly recounted on Wang Qi's behalf what had happened at the White Horse Teahouse.
The girl wore a strange expression. "You actually played Wuding Card with a Myriad Dharma Sect disciple who specialized in Bai Ze Calculation? And that person was even a Foundation Establishment Cultivator?"
Wang Qi nodded stupidly. "Yeah, yeah."
Zhen Chanzi added, "And he stubbornly refused to admit defeat."
Xiang Qi shook her head, deciding to overlook this matter. "A monster... Seeing how exhausted you are, forget it. I'll take you to rest. I'll send you to register tomorrow."
As she spoke, the girl released her artifact, supporting the unsteady Wang Qi as they headed for the Immortal Alliance inn.
Midnight. Immortal Alliance inn.
Wang Qi lay on his bed, breathing evenly, seemingly fast asleep. Yet his spiritual sense quietly touched the ring. "Old man, old man. Is anyone still watching this place?"
Zhen Chanzi said, "At the very least, I cannot sense anyone."
"Ha!" Wang Qi flung aside the sheet covering him and leapt out of bed. "At last, I can do something that can't see the light of day!"
As he spoke, he picked up his clothes from beside the window and took out two stacks of paper.
One stack was Improper Taoist Haishenbao's manuscript. The other was blank paper he had bought today. Wang Qi then took out an ink stick, an inkstone, and a brush. He had bought all of these today as well.
"But this stuff is really cheap." Wang Qi ground the ink as he sighed. "Even buying a full set only cost one-hundredth of a shi of spiritual energy."
Shi was the standard unit for measuring spiritual energy. It was the average spiritual energy content of several hundred million low-grade Spirit Stones.
One-hundredth of a shi was considered the minimum spending standard in an immortal city. The Suran Laboratory could measure the smallest unit of spiritual energy, something akin to the Planck constant, but portable spiritual-energy pools—the POS-machine-and-credit-card sort of thing used for transactions—obviously did not need that degree of precision. One-hundredth of a shi was the highest precision a portable spiritual-energy pool could manage.
"Ordinary objects rarely intersect with immortal cultivators. Even when cultivators truly need ordinary goods, it is a hundred times easier for them to earn silver than it is for common folk. As for Spirit Stones and the like, mortals have no use for them at all. Thus, since ancient times, the immortal path and the mortal world have never shared a common currency," Zhen Chanzi said. "It is already quite good that a place like Xinyue sells ordinary paper and brushes."
Wang Qi suddenly laughed. "Right, old man, you used to have the title 'Reverend Luotian,' didn't you? It sounds pretty cool—majestic and awe-inspiring."
Zhen Chanzi replied irritably, "What does it matter how mighty I was ten thousand years ago? Today, am I not still merely a card in a game?"
In the illustrated guide Su Junyu had lent Wang Qi, several famous cultivators of Mount Luofu Mystic Clarity Palace, along with most of its spells, had been made into cards in the "World-Encompassing Heavenly Net" expansion pack.
"Right, according to that Lu Renjia weighted algorithm, how high could your weighted value rank?"
Zhen Chanzi calculated carefully. "This algorithm probably does not look at what spells one knows, but what spells one can use in battle. In my day... around six to eight. If only my peak condition is considered, with the Daluo Hundiantianjing and all my various spells brought to their utmost, I should have reached ten."
Wang Qi shook his head. "The theoretical limit of the Mahayana Stage is only a weighted value of ten. You have to know, the higher a cultivator's cultivation, the higher their weighted value."
The higher a cultivator's cultivation, the stronger their mana and the more profound the spells they could employ. Furthermore, cultivation was tied to lifespan. The longer one lived, the more time one had to practice sword arts and spells, and the richer one's combat experience became.
"This is already an achievement rarely seen. Under this algorithm, many ancient-method spells even deduct weighted value." Zhen Chanzi was somewhat annoyed.
"Misty Unfixed Cloud Sword, Twin Spiral Strange Force, Great Phase Wave Palm, Great Matrix Diagram of Heaven, and Heavenly Sword—each one alone is a supreme wondrous art and heavy weapon with a weighted value of ten. Unforgiving Electric Sword, Split Electric Spiral Force, Unfathomable Body Technique, and the seven-circulation Heavenly Order Sword Disc would each score nine on their own."
Zhen Chanzi sighed. "Even now, I find it difficult to believe..."
After a while, Wang Qi finished grinding the ink. "All right, old man, be quiet. I'm starting."
With that, Wang Qi began writing rapidly across the blank sheets.
Zhen Chanzi could not help asking, "These strange symbols again. I wanted to ask back in Dabai Village—where exactly did you learn this?"
This question was truly difficult to answer, so Wang Qi simply pretended to be wholly absorbed in his analysis and ignored him.
The calculation symbols unique to Divine Land in Improper Taoist Haishenbao's manuscript gradually transformed entirely into the symbols commonly used on Earth.
One familiar formula after another gradually appeared before Wang Qi.
"This symbol keeps appearing... It should be a constant. This one too..."
"One should be the Planck constant. What is the other one?"
"The data recorded in this portion of the manuscript is insufficient... Makes sense. Old Man Hai was wanted all along, so he probably did not dare conduct experiments openly and without restraint."
"There isn't enough data. For now, I lack the conditions to carry out a blackbody radiation experiment, so there's no way to confirm this world's Planck constant."
"The other constant... Wait, this symbol often appears together with three other formulas."
"These three formulas are used quite frequently, but I've never seen them at all. Could they be unique to this world?"
As the analysis continued, Wang Qi began chewing on the end of his brush.
The meanings of these three formulas were unclear, yet they were used so frequently. They posed a challenge to his analysis.
"Don't think about what they represent first. If I analyze them purely with mathematical methods..."
Wang Qi cast aside the copied manuscript, took several more sheets of blank paper, and began calculating.
Because of his transmigration, Wang Qi's soul was much stronger than that of an ordinary person. And as a top student who had possessed expertise in both mathematics and physics in his previous life, his advanced calculation methods were extraordinarily effective. Even so, this step took him an entire hour.
"These three formulas are equivalent..."
"Then all three can be replaced by a single symbol."
After substituting the "formula whose meaning Wang Qi did not know" and the "constant whose meaning Wang Qi did not know" into the familiar formulas...
"Mm, as expected, matrix algorithms are needed here."
The greatly simplified equations invigorated Wang Qi, while also making him groan inwardly.
Matrix algorithms were extremely complex and tedious, something every scholar of quantum physics despised.
"Matrix mechanics and wave mechanics are equivalent... No, there are too many missing conditions right now, and unknown conditions have been introduced as well. I can't rashly convert them..."
Wang Qi chewed on his brush and thought, "And Old Man Hai's ultimate art is the Unfathomable Body Technique, said to make it impossible to see through her speed and distance simultaneously. Without question, that incorporates the uncertainty principle into movement techniques. Schrödinger's wave function does not intuitively embody this point..."
What should he do?
What should he do?
Wang Qi looked at the sky and felt there was far too little time.
"The advantage of matrix mechanics lies in its description of discrete spectral lines, in handling massive quantities of data... There isn't much data here..."
Suddenly, inspiration flashed through his mind. "Right, Dirac's algorithm! Simplify it with Poisson brackets. If the core here really is the uncertainty principle, then Poisson brackets, which likewise do not obey the commutative law of multiplication, should work too! That will simplify the calculations enormously!"
Zhen Chanzi had long since entered meditation within the ring. To him, these equations he could not understand even by looking at them were sheer torture!
At last, before dawn, Wang Qi completed his calculations!
After casually picking up a sheet of paper to wipe away his sweat, Wang Qi gathered the manuscript he had copied the first time, the scratch paper, and the remaining ink, brush, paper, and inkstone together. Then, with utmost care, he formed a fireball. He tightly wrapped the flames in mana, keeping them from going out while also preventing them from burning the room.
After finishing all this, he finally could not resist throwing back his head in laughter. "Wahahahaha! From now on, I can play however I want!"
Zhen Chanzi was startled awake and shouted, "What madness are you spouting!"
Wang Qi laughed wildly. "Take a guess. What was in Old Man Hai's manuscript?"
Zhen Chanzi was somewhat curious. "Did you analyze something?"
"At the very least, it contains Misty Unfixed Cloud Sword and Unfathomable Body Technique. If I can supplement the experimental data, I might even be able to analyze the method for refining the Great Matrix Diagram of Heaven!"
"Furthermore, the Misty Palace lineage comes from the same school. Thus, it may not be impossible to comprehend Unforgiving Electric Sword and Split Electric Spiral Force as well!"
Old Man Hai was truly generous! Even after being greatly simplified, this manuscript still ran to over twenty pages. It contained the secrets of incorporating theories such as the uncertainty principle, probability clouds, and matrix mechanics into cultivation methods!
Zhen Chanzi had originally wanted to laugh twice to show his disbelief, but Wang Qi's tone was exceedingly certain. His voice turned slightly hoarse. "You... have already learned them?"
Without changing expression, Wang Qi answered decisively, "No."
Zhen Chanzi hesitated. "Then... do you know how to cultivate them?"
"No."
Zhen Chanzi snapped angrily, "Are you toying with me?"
Wang Qi spread his hands. "You can't practice a sword art without the general outline either! The corresponding cultivation method, the introductory sword arts and spells of Misty Palace—those are the foundations of these techniques."
"In other words, you merely might be able to learn these someday?"
Wang Qi shook his head. "Not might. Definitely—but these methods are far too advanced. I cannot cultivate them in a single step."
After saying that, he stretched and pushed open the window. The slightly cool morning breeze, mixed with the faint light of dawn, rushed toward Wang Qi.
The youth murmured, "Now, I'm looking forward to the Immortal Alliance even more."
Before you continue