“Little Qi, don’t, nya~”
“No, I can still go on for three hundred rounds!”
“Hundred?! No, nya! Let me sleep!”
“Sniff, I never should’ve…”
Mao Zimiaop lay on the bed, her eyelids shuddering open and close from the marathon she was put through. She couldn’t fight the weariness and was fast asleep.
“Tch, tapping out after just a bit of fun.” Wang Qi held the Problem Series with a flat look.
Zhen Chanzi was dumbfounded. “You’re having it out for her that much for waking you up on the spirit boat?”
“Eh? The hell are you saying, old man?” Wang Qi said, “I’m keeping my image here, alright? A bookworm is a bookworm only through the dominating air of raw intellectual superiority around him! After seeing me at my lowest, I had to patch up my prestige—besides, the sheer audacity of giving me the ‘you’ll get no sleep’ innuendo begs to be taught a valuable lesson on its implications.”
“The Five Cultivation and Three Imitation Cycles is the most valuable among free books, covering every initiation in Dao. With enough perseverance to finish it, even a pig can reach Golden Core.” Wang Qi flipped through the overly thick tome. “It’s for her own good, got that?”
“Boy, you went straight for the hardest problem, and a math one on top of it. Doesn’t it all come down to your interest in the end?”
“Not entirely.” Wang Qi threw The Five Cultivation and Three Imitation Cycles in his storage bag. “It also dubs as a test to check the wounds’ influence on my thoughts.”
Wang Qi pointed at Mao Zimiao with all the smugness he could muster. “See that, the gap between she and I is as unsurmountable as ever.”
“Isn’t the written examination today? You should rest.” Zhen Chanzi asked. “I recall it weighing sixty percent. Hurt as you are, you’re better off focusing on the written part.”
Wang Qi waved him off. “No need. I’m a Qi Refining cultivator after all. As long as I don’t get in the habit of stooping at the silly cat’s level of thinking, a couple of sleepless days won’t change anything. Besides, have you ever seen me cramming in the eleventh hour?”
“You’re wounded and can’t cultivate.”
“Exactly.” Wang Qi took a porridge bowl from his storage bag and placed it on the table while taking out more paper to write on. “Time to study arithmetics. Underachievers be gone.”
“Ugh…” Zhen Chanzi had never been dissed in his entire life before becoming a spirit grandpa. But this Great Ascension cultivator still had the wits to overcome the discontent. Peering into the bowl, he got an idea of what Wang Qi was after. The ancient Store Thoughts diagram was something he could understand and grasp.
Wang Qi copied the pattern in the porridge. Unlike the flame energy cloud pattern, this image lacked details, being blurry as well. He didn’t use this excuse to slack off, focusing on making an exact copy.
Once done, he made another copy, using it to divide the pattern into different parts.
“I knew it, be it crude or fragmented, split apart, each piece still holds the appearance of a cut-down original. The most obvious resemblance is with fractals.”
Fractals, in simple terms, are self-similar patterns. Its infinite complexity fascinated countless scientists.
Wang Qi took out a third piece of paper, drawing a complete flame energy cloud pattern. He overlapped it with a part of the porridge pattern and noticed the differences.
“This part of the porridge pattern is the framework of the fractal. With it, I can assess which part of the flame energy cloud pattern is a fractal and which are extras.” The source of thɪs content is 𝘯𝘰𝘷𝘦𝘭•𝔣𝔦𝔯𝔢•𝓷𝓮𝓽
A diagram of incredible and strange mathematical beauty was unveiled before his eyes.
Wang Qi gasped. [The flame energy cloud pattern’s creator was a total genius. He hid such a sublime fractal in the dullest sect.] The idea made him realize he was incapable of doing the same feat.
Zhen Chanzi on his finger gazed with hope. He drew the researched pattern in his mind, storing it. The old man used his Great Ascension knowledge to come up with a quick decision. “It works, and it’s even better than the original—just what did you do?”
He’d held onto the flame energy cloud pattern for ten millennia by now, yet couldn’t add the slightest improvement to it.
[It does? The fractal is the real kicker?] Wang Qi paused before drawing again. This pattern included the other parts of the flame energy cloud pattern, except the fractal. “Try this one.”
Zhen Chanzi said, “No effect.”
Wang Qi exclaimed. “This explains its high fault tolerance. Ninety percent of it is props!”
[A thought-enhancing fractal?]
[The Store Thoughts fractal tempers the soul?]
Bookworm Wang’s first reaction was bafflement, then he cracked up.
[Holy shit, it is indeed it! Earth and Divine Province’s physics laws are poles apart. It’s very much possible the fractal can pull something off.]
In any case, Wang Qi decided to give Store Thoughts’ classical fractal a spin.
A fractal is made of images. Earth’s scientists researched them for a century, coming up with countless classic models.
Wang Qi began with the simplest. He visualized the Koch snowflake, one of the first proposed fractals, named for its resemblance to snowflakes.
Undeterred, Wang Qi switched to the Sierpinski triangle. The endless self-similar triangle commonly seen in Chinese primary school winter vacation homework, Recreational Mathematics, was another relatively simple fractal.
The youth picked up on the hints and tried the Cantor set with equally unimpressive results.
“This is a special fractal, for lack of a better term.” Wang Qi stared at it. “I’ll just call you the Upper Clarity Fractal.”