Chapter 544: Chapter Nine: Arithmetic

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Ao Li's dragon claws brushed across the corridor crystals, and quaternion equations immediately emerged on the cyan scale surface. "This is a variant of the square root extraction method from 'The Nine Chapters on the Mathematical Art'," she said, dragon fire igniting at her fingertips, the counting-rod-like sparks forming an armillary sphere model in the air. "But it has been rewritten into a twelve-dimensional manifold expression."

Lin Jin's tactical goggles suddenly burst with blue light; in the retinal projection, the scattered Λ crystals were forming a Möbius strip structure of a Klein bottle. The moment he raised his gun to shatter the ventilation duct, the splashing metal fragments actually completed a Penrose puzzle during their fall, forming a miniature Einstein-Rosen bridge.

"Gravity gradient anomaly!" The bionic member of the pursuit team suddenly fell to its knees, its artificial spine undergoing infinite recurrence—the third lumbar vertebra appeared in seven parallel spaces simultaneously. Ao Li threw out dragon scale talismans, but the moment they touched the ground, they split into shadows of "The Nine Chapters on the Mathematical Art" bamboo slips, with counting beads condensed from black blood seeping between the seal script characters.

Lin Jin suddenly grabbed Ao Li's wrist and retreated rapidly; the nano-cleaning robots behind them were being assimilated by the topological structure, their roller brushes rotating in the trajectory of the ζ function from the Riemann hypothesis. 9527's mechanical heart fragments floated at the end of the corridor, the projected Higgs field equipotential surface fitting perfectly with the circular city diagram from the "Sea Mirror of Circle Measurements."

"He is using the 'Heavenly Yuan' method to reconstruct the space-time metric." Ao Li's dragon horns displayed the "Nine Arts of Circle Cutting" array diagram, quantum calculation patterns cracking the cyan jade-like surface. "This is the work of the Northern Song mathematician Li Ye..."

The warning was swallowed by topological folding. The entire corridor suddenly curled inward into a Klein bottle, and a playback of a conversation from thirty seconds ago came from the pursuit team's quantum communicator. Lin Jin's Annihilation Revolver disintegrated on its own, the dark gold fluid reorganizing in his palm into an abacus-like weapon, the thirteen-column abacus beads covered in He Tu and Luo Shu numerical logic.

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When the first abacus bead was flicked, a three-dimensional equation from the "Jade Mirror of the Four Unknowns" emerged in the void. Ao Li saw the unknown "Heavenly Yuan" condensed from black blood devouring spatial curvature, and the Taiji diagram on the laboratory blast-proof door was twisted into a non-commutative geometry model.

"For those where square root extraction is incomplete..." Lin Jin's quantized right hand inserted itself into the equation, antimatter energy tearing a gap in the quaternion space. From the other side of the gap came the roar of bronze chimes; nine Gui Cang mechs were using the "Yigu Yanduan" algorithm to rewrite Mars's orbit.

Ao Li's Reverse Scale Dagger suddenly surged, the blade light drawing a perfect arc of the "Fifteen Arts of Circle Cutting." When the value of pi dyed with dragon blood broke through Zu Chongzhi's precise ratio, the Klein bottle structure suddenly collapsed into a Möbius strip, revealing 9527's quantized remains—his mechanical heart was transmitting gravitational waves to the moon via the Heavenly Yuan method equation.

"He wants to awaken the bronze giant tree!" Ao Li's warning turned into a data hurricane. Lin Jin's abacus weapon decomposed into five hundred nano-counting rods, laying out the "Hundred Chickens Matrix" from "Zhang Qiujian's Mathematical Manual" in the void. When the solution set of the equation emerged, each answer corresponded to the quantum state collapse of a pursuit team member.

9527's remains suddenly opened three-hundred-and-sixty-degree compound eyes, the pupils rotating with the dam-accumulation model from the "Mathematical Manual of the Five Dynasties." Ao Li realized with horror that the surrounding air was being transformed into a non-Euclidean geometry space, and her dragon clan teleportation technique had failed within the dimension where the Poincaré conjecture was concretized.

"Use the Heavenly Yuan method to counter-attack!" Lin Jin threw the Annihilation Abacus into the air, the dark gold fluid condensing into an energy matrix in the shape of Pascal's triangle. Ao Li bit her tongue, the dragon blood she sprayed drawing the "Great Expansion Method" from the "Mathematical Treatise in Nine Sections" in mid-air, ninety-nine calculation symbols piercing the unknown condensed from black blood.

The space suddenly fell into a bizarre silence. Those floating Λ crystals began to play the ancient bronze chime music of "The Nine Chapters on the Mathematical Art," each note rewriting the permutations and combinations of Yang Hui's triangle. Before the pursuit team's quantum computer overloaded, it sent a final message—the root system of the bronze giant tree on the far side of the moon was absorbing the mathematical energy released by the Klein bottle topological structure.

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When Lin Jin's quantized right hand grasped the ∞-th solution, the entire Klein bottle shattered with a bang. 9527's remains transformed into the "Seven Equilibrium and Six Intervals" diagram from the "Zhou Bi Suan Jing," and the mechanical heart cracked into a twenty-eight mansions star disk. Ao Li saw black blood seeping from every star mansion scale, those liquids turning into the "Sea Island Mathematical Manual" mountain-view model the moment they hit the ground.

"This is the Dao of Rules..." Lin Jin's pupils reflected the projection of the bronze giant tree, the three hundred Ouroboros coffins hanging from the branches forming a "Nine Chapters" algorithm array. His temples throbbed, and the Annihilation Abacus suddenly reorganized into an armillary sphere, the gnomon pointing toward his own heart, which was currently quantizing.

Ao Li's dragon horns completely crystallized, and she tore open a dimensional rift to throw out the "Sun Zi Mathematical Manual" fragments. When the "Unknown Number" problem was concretized into a prisoner's dilemma, the algorithm trap left by 9527 suddenly turned against itself—the bronze counting rods shot by the Gui Cang mechs actually began to calculate the logical paradox of their own existence.

"Eight-line table for powers and square roots!" Lin Jin threw the armillary sphere into the Klein bottle singularity, antimatter energy unfolding a logarithmic spiral in twelve-dimensional space. When Ao Li injected her final dragon blood to complete the "Nine Chapters on the Mathematical Art" equation, the entire laboratory suddenly plunged into a state of absolute rationality—even the floating dust followed the trajectories of the positive and negative square root extraction methods.

In the moment the mathematical sanctuary descended, they saw the ultimate truth: the bronze giant tree was actually the concretization of the ancient "Nine Chapters" algorithm, and each Ouroboros coffin sealed the quantum soul of a mathematician. And the Higgs field distortion on 9527's neck was the key to opening the "Gate of Heavenly Yuan."

"So the Heavenly Yuan method is not an algorithm..." Ao Li's dragon scales peeled off one by one, revealing the proof process of Fermat's Last Theorem flowing beneath. "It is the shackle that seals the ancient gods."

Lin Jin suddenly grabbed the quantizing Ao Li, and the Annihilation Armillary Sphere pierced into his own chest. When black blood and dragon blood merged, the phantom of the "Nine Chapters on the Mathematical Art" bamboo slips wrapped around the two, teleporting them to the dark side of the moon amidst the sound of bronze chimes. Where they fell was precisely the root system of the bronze giant tree, and three hundred coffins opened simultaneously, revealing bronze puppets inside with the same appearance as Lin Jin.

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The pursuit team's surviving image records showed: before the laboratory's Klein bottle completely collapsed, all mathematical symbols converged into the outline of the bronze-masked woman. The "Nine Chapters on the Mathematical Art" in her hand was burning, and in the ashes emerged the image of the star gate device being implanted into Lin Jin during his infancy.

Ao Li's reverse scales felt a burning pain, and she discovered a truth on the bronze stele at the tree roots that left her suffocating—"The Azure Dragon Seven Mansions are the solution to the Great Expansion Method; Lin Jin is the unknown variable of the Heavenly Yuan."

When the lunar shadow swallowed the final light, Lin Jin's quantized right hand pressed against the core of the bronze giant tree. Engraved there was the ultimate fear of all civilizations: an equation written jointly in oracle bone script, cuneiform, and the galactic common language, its solution set pointing toward an Ouroboros devouring its own tail. ===== CHAPTER 545 =====