Tic was utterly confused, he had thought that with two months of advanced study in Olympiad mathematics, his knowledge reserve would suffice, and he would handle Olympiad problems with ease.
But he was stumped right at the first question.
If the sequence had stopped at a few hundred or thousand, he could have gritted his teeth and slowly worked out the result, however, the last number was ninety-nine million, nine hundred ninety thousand...
No, there must be a pattern!
Tic quickly realized when back at Yiyeta Harbor, Lynn had once done a power sum ga on a chessboard, which was equally complex in computation, but through a magical formula, he streamlined what was originally a complex computational process to sothing so simplified that an apprentice could work it out after spending so ti.
With this thought, Tic grabbed a feather quill and started calculating rapidly on his draft paper, listing the product of the first ten powers and then summing them up, scrutinizing the commonalities and differences between each value.
[1, 4, 9, 16, 25...]
[5, 14, 30, 76...]
Biting the end of his feather pen in deep thought, Tic watched the numbers flash through his mind. He tried substituting the power sum formulas he had learned in Olympiad math classes, comparing the computed values with the results, and continually modifying the formula to seek a correct answer.
No good, ten numbers are too few, nowhere near enough to confirm a pattern...
Tic’s feather pen trembled ceaselessly on the draft paper, writing out numbers and symbols one after the other, only to be crossed out quickly and the calculation started anew.
Page after page was discarded on the floor, slowly covering his ankles.
Unknowingly, the sky had already faintly brightened, Tic had been calculating for an entire afternoon and night, his eyes bloodshot, yet his spirit beca even more excited, and finally, he stood up abruptly, too agitated to contain himself.
"So that’s how it is, so that’s how it is!"
Like a person walking in the desert, parched and desperate, who suddenly sees an oasis, Tic picked up another sheet of paper with renewed zest and matched the previously computed values with answers calculated using the formula.
"They’re all correct, my formula is right!"
Elated beyond asure, Tic emulated Lynn’s power sum formula and solemnly wrote down row after row of formulas on the page.
[Sn=1/6(n 1)(2n 1)n]
After writing, Tic sat down again, feeling extrely content. He reveled in the sensation of discovering an unknown pattern and summarizing it—a feeling utterly addictive.
Eagerly, Tic turned to the next problem.
[There were 5 monkeys by the seashore who found a pile of peaches and decided to split them the following morning. The first monkey arrived earliest, but it couldn’t split the peaches equally, so it ate the extra one, leaving the remainder exactly divisible by five, and it took its share and left.
The second monkey arrived later, unaware that another monkey had been there, also ate one, and then split the remaining peaches into five equal parts, stowing away its own portion.
The third, fourth, and fifth monkeys did the sa, each eating a peach and splitting the rest into five equal parts. How many peaches were there in total?]
Upon seeing the problem for the first ti, Tic breathed a sigh of relief. Wasn’t this just a simple equation problem?
All those questions about frogs jumping into wells and snails sliding, he had seen the apprentices at Yiyeta Harbor work on them many tis. All that was needed was to set a few unknown variables and plug them into formulas for computation.
However, it was not until Tic picked up his pen and prepared for computation that he abruptly realized sothing was amiss, for Lynn had given far too few conditions this ti.
The only known condition was that the peaches had been split five tis, and before each division, one had to be subtracted. As for the number of peaches divided each ti and how many peaches were left after the last monkey finished, they were all damned unknowns.
Find adventures at .Côm
Tic wrote down the conditions he had and pondered for a long while, losing several strands of hair in the process. For a mont, he felt a sense of helplessness and couldn’t help the urge to beat up the person who had set the problem.
Could a human even solve this problem?
Out of options, Tic could only estimate a number, assu it represented the total amount of peaches, and try plugging it into the computation, slowly searching for a pattern.
That night, many wizards like Tic were tornted by these brain-burning math problems. Most of the wizards fell on the first three questions, tearing their draft papers in half in a rage or smashing tables and chairs to pieces. However, true warriors were able to go against the current and relish this feeling of pain mingled with pleasure.
...
anwhile, Lynn, who was being begrudgingly rembered by hundreds of wizards wishing they could beat him up, was in the Magic Domain building a new scene.
The second eting place was styled into a library by Lynn, filled with all sorts of math books. Afterwards, Lynn began contemplating what to use as bait to attract the wizards to stay in the Magic Domain for extended periods.
Unraveling a formal wizard’s ntal frequency to tap into their computing power was not an easy task.
The "Faceless Assembly" Helram had devised took one or two years to complete the ntal frequency unraveling of a dozen third-rank wizards.
Lynn didn’t have that much ti to wait, so he thought of a way to expedite the process: have the wizards stay in the Magic Domain, frantically solving problems and consuming spiritual power, thus accelerating the decryption of their minds.
Calculus might be a good choice, sufficiently brain-burning. His previously presented long-standing theories and formulas still left many wizards in a state of confusion, not understanding the processes behind them. Learning calculus would also help these wizards understand the derivation of those formulas and theories.
Of course, Green’s wizards were not completely ignorant of calculus. For example, the thod they used for calculating pi, which involved continually approximating the circumference using the periter of an inscribed polygon, incorporated knowledge of calculus.
So wizards even successfully used thods similar to those of squaring the circle to derive algorithms for calculating the volu of spheres with very accurate results.
One could only say that there are intelligent people everywhere; it’s just that there weren’t many wizards who were willing to focus on seriously studying mathematics before.
Most wizards still preferred subjects related to elents and Shaping Science, disciplines that gave them direct power and mastery over magic, with only alchemists typically taking the ti to delve deep into the subject.
As Lynn was contemplating this, an unexpected palpitation suddenly erged in his heart…
Almost instantly, Lynn broke free from the Magic Domain, his eyes snapping open to find nothing before him, but an invisible magical barrier had already been fortified around him.
Then ca a slight sound, like a blade slicing through fabric, followed by a strange dagger, covered in complex runes, slowly erging from the air and slashing directly towards his neck.
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