The first spell Anji encountered near the teapot’s mouth was a simple water element spell. There was nothing fancy about it. The assumed purpose was to conjure water into the teapot after activating it. Without any other gate symbols, that was all there was to it.
The spell at the bottom of the teapot was a different story. There were several gate symbols drawn around the fire spell. Assuming that her teacher used it to boil the tea in the teapot, why would the spell be so complex? She understood the need to contain the fire element. Unlike conjuring water, it would be insane to have flames spewing out from the bottom of the teapot. Instead, Anji confirmed with her book that her teacher included a logic gate to identify certain properties of fire and remove them upon activation. However, there was one other gate that she had never seen before.
Flipping through the book, Anji searched the pages very carefully, glancing over to the teapot that she had flipped upside down. It was now standing on its mouth, so Anji could easily refer to the seal on the bottom.
After what felt like an eternity, she finally managed to match the new symbol to something similar. The process was arduous, but she was determined to unravel the mystery.
"This must be the section," she rejoiced. "What’s a differentiator?"
At first, Anji thought she must be reading the wrong book. After sitting with her sister and mother for so many arithmetic lessons, she knew the characters for numbers. Checking the cover of the book to ensure it was not swapped, Anji was thoroughly bewildered by the Math explanation she was reading. Moreover, there was a new character she had never seen before.
"What’s zero?" Anji frowned. She had never seen this number before and had no idea how much that would be.
Yan Ping silently returned to her student, who hunched over the book with a deep frown on her face as she read the guidebook. The soup was simmering well, and dinner would be ready in another two hours.
"Have you figured out what runes I used in the spells?" she asked, startling Anji from her stool.
"Shifu!" she greeted in confusion, not realising that her teacher had left her chair. Was she so engrossed that she did not realise her teacher was getting up?
Embarrassed, Anji explained that she had only figured out the first seal. The second seal was more complex, and she could not understand this new gate symbol, which took up an entire Chapter in the guidebook, even if the other five basic symbols shared a single Chapter. Using a differentiator seemed complex, and Anji had never seen the character for zero before.
Unsurprised that the child had never seen the ’number’ zero, Yan Ping patted her head.
"I’m assuming you’ve figured out the general idea of how a heating seal works. Unlike the water seal, we don’t want the actual destructive properties of fire or the light it emits. Hence, the identification rune and the removal rune have been applied in the formula, along with the little indications of which fire property we wish to keep and remove. The differentiator rune is similar."
The gate runes circled the big fire elemental symbol in this heating seal. Anji noticed that the line connecting the fire elemental symbol led directly to the identification symbol. Next to the identification gate, three new symbols were connected to it, and the lines connected two of the three property symbols to a removal gate. The last symbol representing heat was now connected to the differentiator gate with two new symbols representing numbers. One of the numbers that represents ’one’ was linked to the fire element symbol. However, the number zero led to a new removal gate symbol.
This was where Anji was befuddled. What was zero? How much was zero?
"Do you know why we input a value in spell creation?" Yan Ping changed the subject for a while. She would return to explaining what zero was later.
Anji shook her head. It might be explained somewhere in the book, but she had yet to finish reading it.
"Anji doesn’t know, shifu. Sorry."
Shaking her head, Yan Ping let her student know that she wasn’t disappointed at all. Normally, the disciples of the Mystical Qilin Sect would be taught these as part of the basic spells course taught to them by their seniors. It was only natural the child did not know.
"How much air is in this room right now?" she asked.
Stunned, Anji looked around the room, unsure how to answer. How much air was in the room? Could air be counted?
"Uh... a lot?" she tried, feeling confused.
Instead of confirming or rejecting her answer, Yan Ping then pointed outside the window.
"Then how much air is in the forest outside?" she asked again.
Was there a reason why Anji was asked to count the air? The small girl could not understand her teacher’s mysterious ways. However, as much as possible, she gave a logical answer.
"A lot more than in the room?"
Now, Yan Ping pointed at Anji.
"How much air is in you?"
Stumped, Anji wondered if there was even air inside her.
Chuckling, Yan Ping asked again. Follow current novels on NoveI(F)ire.net
"Really? Not even when you breathe?"
Oh! Realising that she made a mistake, Anji quickly corrected her answer.
Nodding along, Yan Ping now pointed at herself.
"What about shifu?" she asked. "How much air is in me?"
Remembering that humans breathed, Anji replied confidently that Yan Ping had a little more air than her.
Pleased that Anji understood the concept of comparison, she finally dropped the bomb.
"Assuming that we are both breathing the same air in the room from the same forest outside this hut, how many breaths would it take for you to empty all the air in this room? And how many breaths would it take me to empty all the air in this room?"
Blinking, Anji wasn’t sure if she heard the question correctly. She had never heard anyone breathing all the air in a room until it was empty. In the first place, was such a thing possible? Yan Ping did not appear to be joking either.