He Wufa emerged from the table he was sitting at with his paper in hand.
"I've got a bunch of theories! Now to test them!"
Li Minglüe was very confused for a split second.
Those words reminded him a scary amount of those previous science classes he had taken at school.
He had acquired a great deal of PTSD from those classes. Despite being fairly intelligent, all his teachers turned out to be absolute hot garbage, because he was from a rural area that did not have much of a selection available.
Consequently, he'd do great on the tests that were actually well-made, but then fail because the teacher forgot to announce the homework or typo'd a number on a question.
Without realizing, Li had instinctively backed away from He and had a very scared look on his face.
Wufa was very confused at Li's confusion.
'Am I doing something wrong?!?!?'
He backed away from there and sat back down at the table, relentlessly trashing every bit of theory he had conjured up in an attempt to see if he had went wrong somewhere.
The more of the wrongs he found, the more convinced he became of Li's might!
'What? He saw that one?'
'How did he spot that one too?'
'Is it possible Sectmaster Li is a god?'
Li was now even more confused. Why in the world did Wufa come up to him, present a piece of paper with a bunch of unintelligible gibberish on it, then act like he was just electrocuted and retreat back?
Not bothering to ponder these details, Li went back to sit down and do... something, surely.
Truth be told Li was quite bored.
Since he was so bored, he randomly took a bit of the wood that was there, a screw, and began carving something.
***
5 hours later.
Wufa stood back up from the table, with visibly more sweat and baggy eyes than the last time he had performed the trick.
Li had now gotten very involved with his carving and was too focused on that to heed Wufa any attention.
He Wufa took this as a sign that Li Minglüe found his theories very valid and great and nice and clever and such. He was very ecstatic of getting Divine God Sectmaster Li's (that's how he referred to him in his mind now) approval.
With only care for the piece of paper in his hand not being destroyed, Wufa began running to the gate, then out, then to a jutted out piece of rock that was moderately chest-height which seemed perfect for his testing.
A stick which he had previously procured he transported over to his side, alongside a ruler, and a compass[1].
Then he began experimenting rapidly, to tweak the values and whatnot of his theorems.
***
bonk
"This coefficient is actually one fifths smaller."
bonk
"Actually it was only nine out of fiftieths smaller."
bonk bonk bonk
clunk
splot
"Shit! My stick bounced too hard and flew away!"
"Where is that? It fell in some mud?"
tap tap tap
stick-getting-achievement-sound.mp3
tap tap tap
"It's all soft now! My stick won't get hard!"
"I'll try putting it over a flame."
whoomph
crackle crackle crackle
boop
"There now."
whoosh
"Seems harder."
bonk
snap
"It broke..."
***
There was one coefficient He Wufa got really stuck on. He was trying to figure out how strong a stick is by the radius of its cross-section. This necessitated him to get the area of the cross-section using the radius. He figured out all the scaling parts- by what ratio the area changed when he changed the radius- but it was all multiplied by this mysterious constant that he couldn't puzzle out.
Every time he computed it, it changed slightly. That was expected, but the next bit was not.
The more digits he tried to compute of it, it just gave more digits! The number never seemed to end. It just ate more and more of his precision tools and always he was trying to tweak it a bit more.
Eventually he gave up and just decided to ask Divine God Sectmaster Li. Surely he would know the solution to this parable.
"Oh. That number. It doesn't end. Let's just say it's three for now."
This answer shattered He Wufa's three views. He felt an itchy sensation in his scalp that was only mildly pleasant and entirely annoying.
What did Li mean it doesn't end???
What number doesn't end???
How is that possible???
Does every circle have an infinite amount of information in it???
Li saw the incredibly puzzled look on Wufa's face.
"It's just like the length of the diagonal of an unit square, or the constant by which you multiply to get continuous compounding."
The fact of irrational numbers was known to mathematicians at that point, but Wufa had never touched a book with proper text on it.
He Wufa sat in shock for a bit.
He had never once considered what those numbers might be. He had just assumed the length of the diagonal of a square was 1.5. And how would you compound something continuously? He wasn't a banker.
This was Wufa's first glimpse into eternity.
And the first of many times he would be broken by math.
***
Ten disciples of Ku Xuanji, under the banner of the Twelve Swords Demon Sect, were gathering near Heihua.
The tallest one, also happening to be wearing an oh-so-slightly fancier robe pulled out a scroll, which when inspected, would reveal absolutely nothing of note.
This was because the message in the scroll was secretly encoded with Qi instead of ink!
For some reason, no one had thought to do this with anything other than scrolls. The entrepreneurial spirit in the state of Qi was quite lacking.
The tall one was surnamed Wei, and had a cultivation base in the lower half of the Qixi[2] realm.
The other nine were total newbs with realms in the Lianti, and not a very high level at that. They formed a three by three grid behind Wei, and followed around him. Their heads were down and were covered by hoods, whereas Wei's head was out in the open. They marched rhythmically, as if their walk cycle was preprogrammed by an artist.
Wei himself stood quite haughtily, protruding out his chest and exposing a smug look on his face every single time he encountered someone he thought had lower cultivation base than him, including his own teammates.
Clutched in his arms existed an amulet, azure in color, that pulsed now and then with light. A similar smug face, but this one with more paternal affections, he exposed whenever he looked at it.
Wei chided the last member for arriving late, insulting his family, lineage, previous occupation, ethnic group, generation, caste, eye color, culture, nationality, nose size, looks, vices, belief system, and personality, in a tirade that lasted long enough to make the other members too bored to listen.
They then slowly marched into the city, in an attempt to appear dignified and disciplined, and dispersed in an information-gathering operation.
One of the newbie cultivators, not the one chided, asked a local merchant:
Newb: "Have you seen a new sect recruiting here recently?"
Merchant: "I was out of town at the time, but yes I-"
Newb: "Out of town? Out of town!? Are you lying to me?"
Merchant: "N-no! Why- Why would I do that?"
Newb: "Are you with this new sect? I demand tribute to prove your allegiance lies with the Twelve Swords Demon Sect, and not with that other barbaric clan!"
Merchant: "Aren't you the demonic se-"
Newb: thump "Silence! Give it!"
Merchant: "I... alright."
The merchant gave the cultivator a random worthless trinket. Some merchants kept such random worthless trinkets exactly for these kinds of occasions.
At receiving this, the newbie cultivator was overcome with joy and glee, and did not hesitate in equipping the trinket on themselves, under the impression it was something worth something.
[1] The mathematical compass, not the navigational compass.
[2] One above Lianti.