He Took the Money and Got Things Done

"Are you nuts? Who has time to play along with your boring game?"

"If you cooperate, you'll receive five pounds."

"Let's go somewhere quiet to talk..."

It wasn't that he changed his tune quickly. The offer was simply too generous.

In Mondel Town in 1861, a skilled female spinner could work a treadle machine at the factory for an entire week and take home only nine shillings.

Five pounds came to a hundred shillings. That was enough to buy a firestone!

The two found a quiet spot.

Charles lowered his voice.

"It's quite simple. Young Master Matthew has been in a terrible mood lately, as you must know."

"He lost to you on the test in class, and he wasn't selected as Professor Bryce's assistant. You could say he lost all face in front of Miss Helen. So he came to us and paid a handsome sum, hoping we could help him restore his image in her eyes."

"His exact words were that, ideally, he would step forward and resolve a crisis at the critical moment when Miss Helen found herself in trouble. Of course, it would be best if you were there too, serving as a backdrop, utterly awestruck by his outstanding performance."

Li Mo found it a little funny. "What are you... uh, the Akatsuki?"

Charles said solemnly, "We are indeed an organization, though we're not called Akatsuki. We're the watchers in the shadows of Mondel Town, the finest underground occult organization in the area. As long as an employer can pay our price, we have the means to get anything done."

"I see... Then what if I asked you to help me get into the docks?"

"We can do that."

Li Mo was a little surprised.

Were they really that capable?

His interest piqued, he asked, "How would you do it?"

Charles said, "Sorry, Young Master Li Mo. Our rule is that we take money and get things done. As for the means we use, you needn't concern yourself."

Li Mo hated people who kept secrets and acted mysterious like this most of all.

He crossed his hands and activated his focus state.

Fixing his gaze on Charles Bowen, he began questioning him.

"Has your organization been around for a long time?"

"Of course. We've had roots in this town for a long time and witnessed many major events that could never see the light of day!"

His left brow rose, and his gaze shifted to the upper right.

A lie.

"So your organization hasn't been around long," Li Mo said. "Who founded it? Was it you?"

Charles was visibly taken aback. "No. How could I possibly..."

The truth.

Li Mo said, "But you're a fairly central figure in the organization, right?"

Charles hurriedly shook his head and gave a self-deprecating laugh. "Of course not. I'm just a low-level errand boy, responsible for contacting potential clients at school. How could a nobody like me have any say in the important decisions?"

He seemed to be making light of himself, but his chin was tucked in slightly. He was clearly doing his best to conceal his sense of superiority.

A lie.

Charles was a key member of the organization.

The fact that a key figure was only a second-year student meant the organization was definitely not as mysterious as he claimed.

Its members were most likely a group of students with full pockets and nowhere to spend their energy.

Li Mo said, "You founded this organization essentially to create the image of an underground occult power, scare people with it, and then swindle them out of their money, right?"

Charles said, "Huh?"

Li Mo nodded. "So Matthew naively thought you possessed incredible occult powers and came running to you with a pile of pounds to get something done. Little did he know that your so-called mysterious methods amounted to taking his money, coming straight to me, and giving me five pounds to put on an act with you..."

The weather wasn't hot.

But... Charles was drenched in sweat.

Li Mo continued his deduction in an even tone. "Following that line of thought, if I'd actually paid you just now and hired you to take me into the docks under military lockdown, what you'd really do would probably be to apply for a civilian visitor's permit or something like that, right?"

Charles was stunned.

He couldn't get a word out.

Sometimes silence was an answer too.

Li Mo knew he had guessed everything right.

That made the organization's business model perfectly clear.

Simply put, they were Victorian-era campus middlemen with no real business of their own.

They exploited students' fascination with the occult world and their lack of information, dressing up simple monetary transactions as proof of a mysterious organization's extraordinary powers and taking a cut from both sides.

"Interesting. Let me guess how much commission Matthew actually paid you to save face in front of Helen."

Charles shouted, "Not much!"

"Eight pounds?"

Charles looked as though he'd hit the mark!

"Nine pounds?"

Charles shook his head, seemingly suggesting that was too much.

"Ten pounds?"

Charles's eyelashes fluttered twice in quick succession. How is Li Mo not feeling the pressure?!

Li Mo raised an eyebrow. "Too low, was I?"

"Twelve pounds?"

"Fifteen pounds?"

Charles's pupils contracted, and his right hand twitched involuntarily.

"Fifteen pounds?" Li Mo said. "The Oliver Family must have made a windfall hoarding cotton lately, huh? He spent fifteen pounds in one go just to show off in front of a female classmate? What kind of Mondel Town simp is he? No, wait... at least a simp spends his money on the girl. He's just throwing it around for fun..."

Charles finally couldn't take it anymore.

Feeling deeply aggrieved, he said, "Li Mo! Will you stop going on by yourself?! Do you think you're so clever?!"

Li Mo exited his focus state and spread his hands. "All right, I won't guess anymore. You tell me."

Charles glared resentfully at Li Mo.

After nearly half a minute of silence, he seemed to resign himself and muttered,

"Then... are you going to cooperate or not? At worst... at worst, we'll give you another pound! Six pounds! We can't go any higher! Our organization has operating costs too!"

Li Mo thought it over and finally shook his head. "Forget it."

Charles was taken aback. "Not enough money? Seven pounds! That's really the limit. Any more and we'll have worked for nothing!"

"It's not about the money. It's just that Helen hasn't been doing well lately, and I'm worried putting on such a crude act in front of her would affect her mood."

Charles frowned. "Her mood is more important than seven pounds?"

"Yes."

Li Mo patted Charles on the shoulder. "Keep your money. If you stir up a mess with this nonsense and affect Helen, I don't mind finding time to tell Sheriff Sanders about your 'underground organization.' You know I helped him solve a major case just yesterday."

Charles shuddered all over and instinctively stepped back twice.

"I-I understand..."

"Good."

With that, Li Mo returned to class.

He made a point of looking at Helen.

Helen wore a neat school uniform, her head hanging low.

Although she wasn't doing particularly well, she was already much better than she had been last night.

As if faintly sensing Li Mo's gaze, Helen lowered her head even further.

Li Mo scratched his head. Helen's even afraid of me looking at her.

Yet Matthew spent all day thinking about putting on a show in front of Helen. Would she really like someone so flashy?

Although Li Mo had never been in a relationship, he knew that when pursuing a girl, you should give her what she wanted, not what you wanted.

To put it bluntly, Matthew didn't like Helen. He was just in love with himself.

He thought Helen was pretty, so he wanted to show off in front of her to make himself look impressive.

What a child.

During that time, Li Mo had also worked out the content for the first mathematics salon.

He walked up to the front and wrote on the blackboard:

[First Mondel Academic Salon: Rebuilding the Foundations of Mathematics]

"Time: four o'clock this afternoon, when the bell rings after class."

"Location: the lawn west of the academy's fountain plaza."

"Speaker: Li Mo."

"Summary: modern mathematics is built on fragile, vague intuition. What exactly is an infinitesimal? What is the true nature of derivatives and differentials?"

"This afternoon, I will put a definitive end to a century and a half of confusion and present a new set of mathematical definitions entirely independent of geometric intuition and physical motion."

"Let limits return to logic, and let arithmetic govern continuity."

The last line was a little arrogant.

But... so be it.

The empress herself had said she placed great importance on outstanding young mathematicians.

And now there were both soldiers and a special envoy at the docks.

Li Mo believed that no matter how much of a storm he stirred up, he wouldn't run into any danger.

So he would stir up the sea.

The bigger the storm, the more valuable the fish.

The students below stared in astonishment.

A moment later, they began talking in low voices.

"Has he gone mad?"

"Put an end to a century and a half of confusion? Good Lord, does he think he's a fellow of the Kingdom Mathematical Association?"

"My God, if Mr. Harrison saw this..."

Li Mo heard the student in the front row say that.

He replied evenly,

"If Mr. Harrison saw it, he'd be the first to stand up and applaud."

Because what he was going to talk about that afternoon

was an immortal monument in the history of nineteenth-century mathematics on Earth, established by Weierstrass, the father of analysis, which made the whole of calculus fully rigorous:

[Precise Language of Limits (Epsilon-Delta Definition)]