บท 238: Chapter 238: Magic Cube and Inverted Pyramid (Edited)
When the cat joined the slab, the statue's eyes lit up, the slab started shaking rapidly, and the sand on top of it jumped up and down. Tom and Dr. Hunter fled from the slab and stood to the side.
The tiles on the slab trembled more and more violently and eventually spread apart. Each tile was now ten centimeters apart from each other, and then the center of the tile slowly rose to form a square space of fifty centimeters, a convex shape. The mound itself went through a series of dazzling changes: several cat statues emerged from each mound.
The number of statues varied from one mound to another, ranging from a maximum of nine to a minimum of one, some with an eerie blue glow in their eyes.
The size of the statues ranged from small to large. The small ones were thumb-sized, the medium-sized ones were palm-sized, and the largest ones were the size of an arm. The strangest thing was that there were more than one cat face on these statues.
Tom noticed that there were often more than one cat face on these elaborate statues, and that a statue had at most four faces.
"What does that mean?" Dr. Hunter looked puzzled as he put on his gloves and gently touched the floating stone, only to feel it tremble slightly.
He increased his strength and rotated the stone pillar 90 degrees: a 50 cm square block that could have weighed tens of kilos, but it changed direction with a gentle push.
The change was even more astonishing: the cat on the stone pillar that Dr. Hunter was pushing had only four non-glowing eyes, but after a small push, the eyes of the single-faced cat lit up.
Crowd: ?
This time, the eyes of the single-faced kitten went out and the eyes of the two-faced kitten lit up, and so on, from two faces to three faces, from three faces to four faces, and from four faces back to one face.
Everyone looked at the mechanism and fell into thought.
"There are still 49 stone pillars left..." Hermione murmured as she approached the edge of the platform and drew a 7 x 7 square in the sand with her finger.
"Do you guys think that the number of cat faces could represent a number?" Dr. Hunter rubbed his chin and said, "One face is one, two is two, and the bigger cats represent larger numbers."
"But what are the numbers that those big cats represent?" Alan frowned.
Tom leaned closer and noticed a detail. The four legs of the medium-sized statue, the two hind legs and one front leg, were so faintly carved that it was difficult to distinguish how many toes they had, but the other front leg was so detailed that the five toes were clearly visible.
Tom had a rough idea. To test his suspicions, he searched for the largest statue and found that indeed, the two front legs were finely carved, with all the toes extended - the proverbial "cat's paw" - while the hind legs were very faint. The hind legs were so faint that they could only be seen as cat claws, but the number of toes they had was unclear.
He shared the discovery with the expedition team.
"I'm going to take a guess and say that I believe the medium-sized statue represents the number five, and the large statue represents the number ten," Tom finally said, pointing to the stone pillar next to the one Dr. Hunter was pushing, "And this one, I believe, represents the number twelve."
The stone pillar had a large statue, and the eyes of the two-faced kitten were lit up. The large statue represented the number ten, the two-faced cat was the two, and ten plus two equaled twelve.
The crowd was lost in thought. It was Dr. Hunter who broke the silence: "Let's write down the numbers."
So the group got to work, turning the illuminated statues into numbers and filling in the squares that Hermione had drawn on the ground.
Soon, the floor squares were filled with numbers.
Hermione looked at the diagram and had a sense of déjà vu. "This looks like a variation of a mathematical puzzle I've seen before..."
"A puzzle of seventh order," Tom and Dr. Hunter said in unison.
It is a very ancient numerical game called the Magic Square, which consists of filling an N x N square with non-repeating numbers from 1 to N in sequence, requiring that the numbers in the same row, column, and diagonal add up to the same value.
"Seven rows, an odd magic square, can be solved using the Robb's method." Dr. Hunter gave the solution. Seeing that everyone, except Tom, was confused, he began patiently explaining the so-called Robb's method to everyone.
This method can only solve equations of odd order, meaning those that have an odd number of squares in each row.
"There is a recipe for this method: the number is in the center of the row, the gap is filled right after right, the table is squeezed in reverse, and the next blank space is a special case."
These four verses represent the four rules of Robb's method.
The first number must be in the center of the first row.
Write the numbers in increasing order up to the upper right corner.
If the number is outside the phantom square, place it at the end of the row or column.
If there is a special case, for example, if there is already a number in the upper right corner, then write the number downward. The upper corner outside the phantom square is also a special case.
Following these four rules, they first looked at the fourth cell of the first row of the cube and found that the sleeping stone there was nudged to wake it up, and the number was set to 1. With this, Tom had completed the cube.
By filling in all forty-nine cells, Tom made sure that the sum of the horizontal, vertical, and diagonal lines was 175. When the last number "49" was filled in, the sand changed again.
First, a dull noise was heard, then the entire area began to shake, and the level of sand dropped so quickly that a huge whirlpool formed, as if the plug had been pulled from a tank full of water.
The sand disappeared so rapidly that no one knew where it had gone, and the stone walls at the edge of the sand became gradually visible. In less than a minute, the sand vanished, and the space beneath it was a shock to everyone: they looked down and saw a blue sky.
"Oh Merlin..."
"Oh God..."
"God..."
"Holy shit..."
Different identities, different beliefs, but they all resorted to the most sincere exclamations. What they saw before them surpassed their knowledge, even that of the two present wizards.
Turning their eyes away from the blue dome, they saw a white pyramid standing beneath the dome.
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