Chapter 280 — Warmth to the Heart

"Apparently Master Kamael brought it to the Rune Institute," Rebecca said, scratching her hair, which was somewhat disheveled from sleep (an ungraceful gesture that earned her a glare from Hetty). "It's the fluctuation frequencies and attenuation data of the surrounding magic field after the magical energy obelisk was activated, plus the frequencies of magic in a normal natural environment, plus a lot of parameters from the regions where two magic fields overlap. Jenny wants to find the patterns in all this—to find a... method that, once the known parameters are fixed, can accurately describe the intensity, attenuation, frequency, and other data of a magic field at any given point... and also accurately calculate the distribution after the distortion produced when magic fields overlap... ah, and she still has to derive a distribution model for magic fields in three-dimensional space... To be honest, right now neither she nor I has the faintest clue."

The more Gao Yang listened, the more astonished he became, until at last he could not help murmuring to himself, "She's already come this far..."

"Ancestor, this problem is really, really hard!" Rebecca, not having heard Gao Song's murmur, exclaimed in her own wonder. "Unlike the fixed data of interference nodes and rune nodes, a magic field is something that's always changing! The frequency can change, the intensity attenuates with distance, it interacts with the primal magic in the natural environment, and once two magic fields overlap the situation gets several times more complicated—it simply can't be calculated... But Jenny says these things absolutely have to be figured out, or else when this technology hits a bottleneck in the future, we won't even know what's going on..."

Gao Yang could not help rubbing the space between his brows. He noticed that among the copied manuscripts there was a special sheet of calculation paper, on which were drawn a series of curves and the formulas related to those curves. Something like that made him pause slightly. "Is this you and Jenny..."

"Ah, no, not this one—Master Kamael taught us this," Rebecca hurried to explain. "Master Kamael says this is the calculation method the mages of the ancient Gondor Empire used when computing the 'arcane distortion effect' of similar magic fields. It can use numbers to describe change. Master Kamael says it will help solve the magic field problem, but Jenny and I still aren't very..."

Gao Yang stared in astonishment at the contents of that sheet. He did not hear the latter half of Rebecca's sentence; instead he murmured to himself, "So the mages of the Gondor era... already knew how to use functions?"

"Func... what?" Rebecca blanked for a moment. Clearly, that was not the word Kamael had told her. "Master Kamael says this is called a 'dependent-variable variation formula'..."

"Ah, no, never mind. Dependent-variable variation formula it is, then." Gao Yun let out a soft breath and slowly calmed the astonishment in his heart.

He shouldn't be so astonished. There was no need to be so astonished—this was only natural. True, the mages of this world had gone astray in their study of the mysteries of magic, blindly pursuing personal power and the refinement of magical technique, but that did not mean they could only cast spells by brute force. In fact, even for the most traditional classical mages, mathematical tools were indispensable: they needed mathematics to help them draw spell arrays and adjust their spell models, or to brew potions and craft magical items. "Calculation" had always been a required course for mages—so it was in the present age, and all the more so in the days of the ancient Gondor Empire.

Only, "calculation" had never been popularized, nor had it ever developed to a higher level. For the mages of today, the current mathematical tools were already entirely sufficient.

The Gondor Empire had once had the chance to raise the great edifice of mathematics, yet that mighty empire ultimately failed to break through the shackles of "the transcendent belongs to the transcendent." The stale transcendent system had, in its later years, fettered the development of many disciplines and caused these precious pieces of knowledge to perish with the wholesale annihilation of the empire's elite—a thing truly worthy of a sigh of regret.

But it did not matter. No need to fear that it had never developed—having this foundation was already far better than what Gao Yang had expected.

This silly... clever doe's skull, it seemed, was quite adequate for the job.

Gao Yang looked at his great-great-...-great-granddaughter and suddenly wore a smile that warmed the heart. Faced with a young girl so hungry for knowledge, he decided to be a generous, good grandfather:

"Rebecca, have you ever heard of a wonderful thing that falls from the sky... ah, no—a wonderful thing called calculus?"