“Archimedes will be remembered when Aeschylus is forgotten, because languages die and mathematical ideas do not. ‘Immortality’ may be a silly word, but probably a mathematician has the best chance of whatever it may mean.”

Godfrey Harold Hardy (1877 - 1947)

-x-x-x-

It was only a week into my new life as a cultivator, and I was already starting to think that the experience was overrated.

I sighed as I swept the leaves that littered the courtyard I’d been assigned to. Couldn’t the powers that be at least have transmigrated me into the body of someone of a higher station?

Now, don’t get me wrong. Like many others on Earth, I used to believe that if I were to be transmigrated into a world of cultivation, I’d dive right in guns blazing. I was in for the long haul, and I would do it all: dedicate myself fully into comprehension of otherworldly laws, study just how it was that cultivation worked, break through the realms, defy the Heavens.

Unfortunately, if you weren’t born to a life of privilege, you could forget even rivalries with young masters. More than likely, the boredom would get you first.

Part of that could be put down to my risk-averse nature, I knew. For an outer disciple with no connections like Ling Yao – whose body I now inhabited – sect contribution points were the primary resource for both cultivation advancement and sustenance. Unfortunately, I highly doubted recovery of precious resources or executing the sect’s contracts were within the scope of one firmly in the Qi Gathering stage, and that meant that all I could do were menial duties.

Seriously – and pardon my vernacular – but how much copium had Ling Yao huffed? What sort of insanity did it take for someone to willingly act as a glorified servant in the vain hopes of finding a master to teach him or earning enough contribution points to purchase a decent cultivation manual? He’d been found to have five impure spiritual roots, considered in this world to be of the lowest possible quality. For five years he’d toiled in the sect, scrimping and saving for inferior manuals with which to advance his cultivation.

Almost as soon as I’d been let out of the infirmary that had been my home upon my transmigration here, I’d been told by the senior clerk to have a look at the roster of outer disciples’ sect duties. I jabbed at the floor with my broom, muttering unpleasantries under my breath as I glared at the palace-like estates visible in the distance along the mountainside, past the long bridges that spanned the mountain peaks. The Zhu were one of the more influential clans within the Empyreal Sword Sect, and I could only wish that I’d transmigrated into one of their number instead.

At least then I wouldn’t be stuck doing mindless labour. Though all the glitz and glamour of battling through the heavens had dissipated, at least then I could pursue the one thing I swore I would do given a second chance at life, that a cultivator’s lifestyle still held countless advantages for.

Mathematics!

All my life, I’d gone the safe route. Went to university, studied biomedical sciences as an undergraduate, stayed on in academia, completed my doctorate. Published a few papers – nothing groundbreaking, merely some incremental advances in immunology – and lived a generally unassuming but comfortable life. That was the way it had been all the way up till age thirty, and how I’d envisioned the rest of my life would continue.

Waking up in a xianxia world hadn’t been part of my expectations, but I’d taken it as a sign that I’d make sure I lived without regrets this time. Though evidence now indicated that life as a hot-heated cultivator who battled through the Heavens was most decidedly not for me, that didn’t mean that I couldn’t revisit the things I never had the time or opportunity to do back on Earth.

I’d been alright at mathematics back in high school, but that was about as far I ever got with the subject. At age eighteen, faced with the dilemma of whether to choose the subject I was interested in but would likely face plenty of struggles and never achieve much at all, or pursue a field that I’d performed well in at school with ever-expanding research directions and new discoveries to be had, I’d went for the safe option.

Don’t get me wrong. I loved biology, and there was little that thrilled me more than the buzz of making fresh discoveries at the limits of humanity’s collective knowledge, but still I always wondered: what if?

Now, I didn’t have to wonder. Biology was all sort of screwed in this world – so I reckoned, because what in the hells could explain the way that a cultivator could punch a mountain into dust – but that was precisely the reason why mathematics so enraptured the mind. Prime numbers were prime, no matter where you were in the universe, no matter which numerical base you used, no matter whether you used a positional numeral system at all or something more esoteric.

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Though, I was still holding out hope that Awakened Beasts that gained sapience and transitioned to a humanoid form was some form of Lamarckian evolution, the so-called transmutation of species. That’d be something that fit more with my existing skill set.

That tangential thought aside, this was a world where nigh-immortal cultivators at the absolute highest stages measured time not in days or weeks, not even in years or decades, but epochs. The top dogs spent literal eons locked up in caves engorged with energies mythical and mystical, immersing themselves in deep meditation about the timeless secrets of the universe that they may one day comprehend the truths of the world and achieve truest enlightenment.

It needn’t be said that such a society doubtlessly had mathematics the likes mere mortals could only dream of.

Yes, surely Yao just had to be a particularly dull ignoramus of the first class. Surely they’d have gone beyond fifteenth century mathematics. The physician who had tended to me after I’d woken up bruised and bloodied must have been equally ignorant of mathematics, for it was not the focus of his studies.

Surely, surely they’d have at least invented the logarithm, what with the absurd power scales that this world had.

“Maybe it’s a trade secret,” I mumbled distractedly, still sweeping the same section of floor. “Someone out there is cultivating mathematical theorems, and doesn’t want to let slip their secrets…”

This was, after all, a xianxia world, one of cultivation and masters who jealously hoarded their secrets. This was Francis Bacon’s wet dream, because here knowledge was power.

Even the mathematicians of Earth had once treated their formulae as trade secrets, as the tale of Tartaglia and Cardano with their solutions to cubic polynomials demonstrated. Whatever power one who comprehended the deepest mathematical truths in this world had was certain to be legendary. I wouldn’t be surprised if there was some hermit living in the middle of nowhere who held these condensed pearls of the universe’s truths close to heart.

Yes, that would fit one of those fabled hidden masters from the xianxia stories.

I shivered. Old ‘Monster’ indeed. What kind of ridiculous power would someone who pondered the simple finite groups and reached the zenith of the Monster group achieve? Perhaps he even had a secret disciple nicknamed the Baby Monster? Maybe he also masqueraded under the moniker of the Friendly Giant, and together they formed a sect they called the Happy Family?

I snickered to myself. God, group theorists were weird.

Alas, the joke did little to lift my spirits. If – and that was a big if – mathematical ideas were truly treated as treasured possessions, how was I supposed to get my hands on any of them? Sure, I could cultivate and advance through the stages to increase my lifespan and thereby spend more time on mathematics, but I didn’t have much in the way of pre-existing understanding. An infinite number of monkeys banging away at typewriters could almost certainly produce any manuscript in existence given an infinite amount of time; that didn’t mean they could get it done before the heat death of the universe.

In terms of mathematical insight and intuition, I might as well be the equivalent of a monkey.

No, what I needed was people. Proper prodigies and geniuses. If I could sway someone who actually knew what they were doing over to my side, and persuade them that math was cooler and much more fun than boring old cultivation – or at least a valuable side gig – and they in turn bring yet others more to our cause…

Yes, now that was an idea. Operation Math Empire, I’d call it. Still, that required me successfully convincing others that mathematics was the real deal, which meant that I’d need to progress my cultivation anyway. That all just sounded like creating a sect with extra steps, and dealing with bureaucracy was something I abhorred.

Or, I thought with narrowed eyes, staring at the Zhu family pavilion that rose in the distance. Could I ingratiate my way into power? Slowly work my way up the sect, and then seize the leader position and convert the sect’s focus to mathematical study? I did play plenty of Crusader Kings…

At the very least, I’d need to provide a demonstration that the truths revealed by mathematics were a suitable substrate for cultivation. Because God forbid the people of this world be interested in knowledge for knowledge’s own sake.

With broom in hand, this rubbish plan of mine just sounded isomorphic to the plot of a low-budget B movie. A janitor with a heart of gold and a mathematical mind working a dead-end job in a university, only for his talent to be recognised by some faculty member. Others would vehemently oppose his appointment to a tenure track position, but he’d overcome those trials one after the other, and eventually end up as head of department.

I sighed wistfully. A man could dream. At present, I didn’t even have mathematical talent.

Leaving the sect was always an option, but I really didn’t have much in the way of transferable skills. Alas, I didn’t know the first thing about setting up a farm.

Besides, it wasn’t all that bad in a sect. Outer disciples had a surprisingly reasonable amount of free time for other pursuits outside of their quota of compulsory sect duties, so long as they didn’t mind being dirt poor. All I needed to do was keep out of trouble’s way and try my best not to end up in the infirmary again. Simple!

Yes, that was the plan. I was going to cultivate – for the glory of mathematics!