Su Yaoyao picked up the wolf-hair brush, which was rather thick for her small hands.
With her little legs moving in quick steps, she walked up to the enormous upright whiteboard.
“Swish, swish, swish.”
Her wrist suspended in the air, she wielded the brush like a dancing dragon.
Under the watchful eyes of everyone present, she wrote a long string of bizarre symbols across the whiteboard.
In one smooth stroke.
Everyone in the great hall craned their necks, staring at the whiteboard curiously.
Even the envoy leader, who was still questioning his entire existence while sprawled on the floor, couldn’t help looking up.
On the enormous whiteboard was an incomprehensible equation.
It began with an elongated, S-shaped symbol.
After that came a jumble of crooked, twisted barbarian characters that no one could understand.
And in the middle was a figure eight lying on its side, bizarre to the extreme.
The Hanlin academicians of Dayuan rubbed their eyes, their faces blank with confusion.
“What is this? Is it some Daoist talisman for summoning rain?”
“I have read every classic under heaven, yet I have never seen writing like this!”
The mathematical masters from the Zhongzhou delegation crowded around as well.
They stared at the whiteboard with furrowed brows, their eyes practically bulging from their sockets, yet they couldn’t even identify a single symbol.
Su Yaoyao casually tossed the brush back into the brush washer.
It landed with a crisp “ting.”
“Such ignorance.”
Su Yaoyao clapped her little hands, her childish voice dripping with mockery.
“Listen carefully. This is advanced mathematics—calculus.”
“It contains the heavenly principles of infinity and infinitesimals.”
“It calculates the limit of the area beneath a curve.”
Then Su Yaoyao turned around and snapped her fingers at Su Jin, who was standing nearby.
“Crown Prince Brother, bring out the toy I prepared.”
“Give our honored guests from Zhongzhou a proper eye-opener!”
Su Jin still had a faint pink glow emanating from his body.
But that did not stop him from being his little sister’s number-one enforcer.
A cold smile curled across his lips as he turned and carried a heavy wooden chest out from the back of the great hall.
“Clatter, clatter.”
Su Jin dumped everything inside the chest onto the redwood table in front of the envoy leader.
They were a thousand small wooden pieces, each cut with astonishing precision.
Every piece was exactly the same size and thickness, with uneven slots along the edges.
Most maddening of all, all one thousand pieces had been painted a flawless, brilliant white.
Not a single ink spot or trace of grain marred their surfaces!
They gleamed under the candlelight!
“This is a thousand-piece, blank white jigsaw puzzle.”
Su Yaoyao folded her arms across her chest.
“Putting it together is as difficult as reconstructing a painting that has been smashed to pieces.”
“But because there are no patterns to guide you, you can only rely on the tiny differences in their shapes to make them fit.”
Su Yaoyao reached out and snatched up the jade box containing the Mystic Ice Stone.
She looked down coldly at the Zhongzhou delegation and announced her terms with unmistakable force.
“Solve the calculus formula and complete the whiteboard puzzle.”
“If you people from Zhongzhou can do it tonight, I will return this Mystic Ice Stone to you intact!”
“But if you fail, you will tuck your tails between your legs and get out of Dayuan territory immediately!”
What dominance!
What arrogance!
Giving them a taste of their own medicine!
The military commanders of Dayuan were so fired up that they practically wanted to kneel before Your Highness on the spot.
Seated on his pure-steel dragon throne, Su Zhen grinned so broadly that the corners of his mouth nearly reached his ears.
She truly was his blood!
That arrogant, overbearing spirit of hers was practically carved from the same mold as his own!
The envoy leader trembled with rage, his face shifting from green to white and back again.
He hauled himself off the floor, shrieking like a cat whose tail had been stepped on.
“You insolent brat! How dare you claim that Zhongzhou has no worthy scholars!”
“They’re nothing but cheap tricks and nonsensical scribbles. Do you really think the great nation of Zhongzhou can’t solve them?”
The envoy leader turned around and furiously roared at the scholars accompanying him.
“What are you standing around for? Get to work!”
“Solve that problem at once and complete that puzzle! Show this demoness of Dayuan who’s boss!”
Zhongzhou's foremost mathematician gritted his teeth and led several disciples over to the whiteboard.
Meanwhile, the envoy leader and several civil officials gathered around the blank white puzzle.
This concerned the dignity of their entire nation. The stakes could not have been higher!
But ideals were always plump, while reality was painfully thin.
The mathematical master stood before the whiteboard, gripping his abacus with both hands as sweat poured down his face.
He tried to use Zhongzhou’s oldest methods—the method of exhaustion and counting rods—to understand the calculus formula.
“Infinity? Does that sideways figure eight represent endlessness?”
“If it is truly endless, how could it possibly produce a definite result?”
“Clack, clack, clack, clack!”
The mathematician’s fingers flew over the abacus, moving so quickly they blurred.
He tried to divide the curve infinitely, using only the most primitive addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division to derive the limit of the integral.
But no matter how he calculated, the numbers on the abacus only grew larger and larger.
There was no end in sight.
“Impossible… This is impossible…”
“Why, when it’s divided to the very end, is it both zero and not zero?”
“If it is zero, how can it still be divided? If it isn’t zero, why call it an infinitesimal?”
The mathematician’s eyes were webbed with red veins as he muttered frantically, his mind teetering on the brink of madness.
Every time he forcibly tried to comprehend the logic of the formula, it felt as though a heavy hammer slammed into his brain.
On the other side, the envoy leader’s situation was ten times worse than the mathematician’s.
The thousand pure-white puzzle pieces reflected a blinding, despair-inducing glare under the candlelight.
With no colors or lines to guide them, the envoy leader could only compare the shapes of the edges piece by piece.
“This one fits with this one… No! The slot on the right doesn’t line up!”
“Then try this one! No, that’s wrong too—the gap is too wide!”
After less than fifteen minutes of work, the envoy leader and the civil officials were already dizzy and bleary-eyed.
The endless sea of white caused severe visual fatigue, even inducing hallucinations akin to snow blindness.
Everything they looked at seemed to be covered in a glaring white haze.
They even began to imagine that the wooden pieces had grown legs and were laughing at them.
The envoy leader clawed at his hair in a frenzy. His meticulously arranged topknot had been reduced to a bird’s nest.
Time trickled away, one moment after another.
Half an hour passed.
The officials of Dayuan leisurely drank tea and ate pastries.
Su Zhen even had a couch brought over, where he reclined half-sitting.
He watched the Zhongzhou delegation lose their minds with great enjoyment.
“If the honored guests from Zhongzhou can’t solve it, you needn’t force yourselves,” Su Zhen said, holding his wine cup and taunting them sarcastically.
“If you damage your brains, I’ll have to summon the imperial physicians to treat you. What a waste of money.”
The military commanders of Dayuan burst into laughter.
Their laughter was like steel needles, stabbing straight into the envoy leader’s ears.
Just then, an especially anguished scream erupted from before the whiteboard.
“I understand! I understand! It is the greatest infinity, yet also the tiniest infinitesimal!”
Zhongzhou's foremost mathematician threw both hands into the air, his eyes bulging from their sockets.
Every capillary in his eyes had burst, turning his eyeballs a terrifying red.
“Pfft!”
His throat went sweet, and a fountain of blood sprayed from his mouth.
The scarlet blood splashed squarely across the enormous whiteboard before him, a shocking sight.
His entire body seemed to have been drained of its bones as he rolled his eyes upward.
With a heavy thud—
he toppled backward, stiff as a board.
He fainted on the spot, completely unconscious!
“Master! Mathematician! Master!”
The Zhongzhou delegation descended into chaos, their terrified cries echoing through the great hall.
That scream became the final straw that broke the envoy leader.
He stared blankly at the white jigsaw puzzle on the table, with fewer than ten pieces even fitted together. His psychological defenses collapsed.
The blinding white light transformed into an abyss, swallowing his reason whole.
“It won’t fit… It just won’t fit!”
The envoy leader completely broke down.
Clutching his head with both hands, he dug his fingers into his hair and tore out a large handful of scalp, blood and all.
“Ahhhhh!”
His knees went weak, and with a heavy thud, he dropped to his knees before the rosewood table.
Tears and snot smeared across his formerly arrogant, imperious old face.
He pounded the floor like a madman and began to howl, his cries as shrill and miserable as a slaughtered pig.
The all-powerful Zhongzhou delegation had finally suffered a devastating defeat.
Watching the Zhongzhou delegation run wild in utter misery across the great hall, Su Yaoyao let out a cold laugh, having lost all interest.
[With mental fortitude like that, they still dare come to Dayuan and show off?]
[They really can’t take a beating.]
Su Yaoyao paid no attention to the envoy leader, who was kneeling on the floor and sobbing his eyes out.
Instead, she happily hugged the jade box containing the Dark Ice Stone tightly to her chest.
Then she turned around and scampered out of the Hall of Supreme Polarity on her little legs.
In a flash, she disappeared into the night.
[Fantastic! With this Dark Ice Stone, I can finish assembling the Gatling’s explosion-proof barrel tonight!]
[Mommy, my fear of insufficient firepower is finally cured!]
Su Yaoyao shouted excitedly in her heart as she sped toward the weapons factory in the Cold Palace.
On the other side of the Hall of Supreme Polarity, the powerful minister and great general Lin Zhenxiong sat at the head of the military officials.
He watched the Zhongzhou delegation’s farce with cold disdain.
A bunch of fools who could do nothing but run their mouths.
No wonder they could never accomplish anything.
Lin Zhenxiong silently rolled the wine cup in his hand, his venomous gaze sliding toward Su Zhen on the high platform.
Let them make a scene.
Let them make as much of a scene as they liked.
After three rounds of drinks, the five hundred heavily armored lion-dance troops he had stationed inside the palace would spring into action!
Outside the city, at Blackwind Stronghold, the weapons and ten carts of black powder he had spent a fortune preparing were already in place.
The moment he smashed his cup as the signal, the Blood Drips would join forces with the troops inside and storm the imperial palace.
Tonight, the realm of Dayuan would bear the surname Lin!
Just as Lin Zhenxiong was lost in his dream of ascending the throne, one of his trusted death warriors disguised himself as a young eunuch serving dishes and crept over to his side, his face filled with terror.
Cold sweat covered the man’s forehead, and the tray in his hands shook violently.
Using the act of pouring wine as cover, he lowered his voice and spoke in despair.
“M-My lord! Something terrible has happened!”
Lin Zhenxiong furrowed his brows and snapped in displeasure, “What are you panicking for? Follow the plan!”
“N-No, it’s not that!”
The man’s voice was thick with sobs as he leaned close to Lin Zhenxiong’s ear.
“Blackwind Stronghold… is empty!”
Lin Zhenxiong’s hand froze around his wine cup, and his eyes sharpened.
“What did you say?”
The trusted subordinate was on the verge of collapse, tears welling in his eyes.
“Just now, the sentry outside the city risked his life to deliver the message. Our armory has been cleaned out!”
“Not a single speck of gunpowder was left behind!”
“All the refined iron and weapons have vanished without a trace!”
“Even the Blood Drips unit has disappeared completely. There isn’t even a ghost left behind!”
Lin Zhenxiong stood frozen, as though struck by five bolts of thunder.
After a brief, deathly silence, the smugness on his face hardened.
Then it twisted into bottomless horror.
Crack!
The pure-gold wine cup in his hand was crushed out of shape.
Lin Zhenxiong’s eyes turned bloodshot as the last line of defense in his heart collapsed.
Amid the lively clinking of cups in the Hall of Supreme Polarity, he nearly failed to suppress the despairing roar in his throat—a howl as shrill as a slaughtered pig.
