The Nine Provinces World had mathematics. It even had Arabic numerals and familiar mathematical symbols for addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, equals, greater than, and less than...
That was thanks to Zhao Sheng and Wen Chao, of course. Even today, the multiplication table used to teach children their first lessons bore a special credit beneath its title: Di Jiazi. Another book, called Basic Mathematics, credited its author as Lord Wenchao.
Basic Mathematics was not a primer, but most Official Academies had a copy. There was no harm in learning some mathematics, after all. Families who could afford to educate their children hardly wanted them to know how to write but not how to count.
Pan Long had read the book too. As an introductory mathematics textbook, it was quite good. It explained addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division clearly, along with basic geometry such as the Pythagorean Theorem, parallel lines, and perpendicular lines. It also covered low-degree equations, unknowns, systems of equations, and their practical uses.
That book alone could produce people with a basic grasp of mathematics and its everyday applications. In another world, they would at least qualify as competent elementary school students.
But more advanced mathematics, and subjects such as physics and chemistry that used mathematics to study the world, remained woefully underdeveloped in the Nine Provinces World.
Zhao Sheng and Wen Chao clearly had little expertise in those fields. Zhao Sheng had left behind a scattered collection of conjectures and hypotheses, while Wen Chao had written quite a few science-fiction novels. If someone followed the paths they had laid out, perhaps they really could usher in a new scientific age.
...Unfortunately, a thousand years had passed, and no such person had appeared.
The wise people of this world were far more concerned with increasing their own martial power