Chương 58: Information path!
Wen Bao Acedemy, Lingering Mountains Grotto
Qinyang's heart was pounding with anticipation as she delved into the gu master inheritances, eager to uncover the profundities of these paths. She hoped that she would find a path that resonated with her and that she could cultivate to great heights.
Qinyang studied the wisdom path inheritance with great focus, but she soon found herself struggling to comprehend even its basic concepts. Wills, thoughts, and emotions were too abstract and elusive, and she found herself unable to relate them to her knowledge from Earth.
"What exactly is a thought? A thought is a process that happens in your brain when you think about something. It involves different parts of your brain working together and sending signals to each other. Thoughts can be triggered by things you see, hear, or remember. They create patterns of activity in your brain..." - She recalled what she knew on the subject.
"But here a thought is a physical thing that exists on its own, not just a process or an abstract concept! Thoughts can collide and form new thoughts." - She recalled wisdom path's basic principles from the novel she read.
The two explanations were incompatible to her.
"Don't even get me started on wills! They are even harder to understand. Wills are aware of themselves and can think on their own. They are like a copy of the user's consciousness. It includes everything you experience in your mind, like what you see, hear, and feel, as well as what you think. But at the same time, they aren't just copies, they know they aren't the real one and know how they are just a will, even though they hold the same identity. Ugh!" - She muttered, shaking her head in frustration.
She felt the sudden urge to just open up someone's skull and see it for herself how the thing worked.
Her confusion and frustration grew with each passing moment, and her inner monologue reflected her exasperation and circled back every time to the same problem: "What do wills and thoughts even mean? How can they be used as the basis of killer moves? This is too difficult, too abstract. I cannot understand it."
Qinyang's head began to ache, and she rubbed her temples, trying to dispel the pounding pain. Despite her best efforts, she could not make sense of the wisdom path inheritance, she could not merge the two kinds of knowledge in a comprehensive manner.
"Maybe my knowledge from Earth is hindering me instead of helping. It wasn't even understood on Earth how the mind works and what exactly is the consciousness... Maybe I should just try another path."
Finally, with a heavy heart, she set the wisdom path inheritance aside, realizing that this discipline was not for her.
"Ah, I guess I'm not cut out to be a wisdom path gu master. They are rare for a reason." - She sighed.
Undeterred, Qinyang turned her attention to the rule path, hoping that its more straightforward concepts would be more accessible.
"Rule path's concepts are very straight forward. Everyone intuitively understands what big and small, tall and short, far and close, strong and weak mean. The number sequence gu are also self-explanatory; one, two, three, four..." - She mused.
However, she soon discovered that the Rule Path's simplicity was a double-edged sword.
"But the problem is that these concepts are too simple. It is easy to understand, but it is also too basic. How can I create powerful killer moves from just these concepts?"
She continued to read the inheritance as it detailed how rule path was very suitable to extend and modify non-rule path killer moves with the inclusion of rule path gu.
"Because the concepts are simple, they can easily fit into other paths' killer moves. When you have an effect, with rule path you can make it bigger or smaller, stronger or weaker..."
Qinyang nodded as she understood the concept, this lined up with what she knew beforehand.
"In a way, rule path is much easier to understand than wisdom path. Plus, you can use it to boost the power of other paths."
"But the problem is if I want to cultivate only rule path, my techniques have to be constructed from the ground up from these simple concepts. The result is that I need a lot of different gu worms and that has its own bag of issues..."
The need for many gu to achieve a meaningful effect was daunting, and she realized that pursuing rule path alone would require a vast investment of time and resources for her gu worms.
Qinyang's thoughts reflected her growing frustration: "This is the opposite of the wisdom path. It is too simple, yet in the end, also too complicated. How can I master all these gu? My killer moves would be made of many gu worms, activating them quickly would be a problem too." - She lamented.
Qinyang's countenance was heavy with disappointment as she set aside the rule path inheritance, finding herself unable to overcome the difficulties of this path. But her spirit remained resolute, and with hope still flickering within her, she turned to the information path inheritances.
Here she found a spark of familiarity that ignited a fire within her heart.
The information path inheritance dealt with the manipulation and collection of data and knowledge, and Qinyang found the concepts to be familiar and logical, drawing upon her background in the fields of both computer science and literature. As she delved deeper into the inheritance, she discovered techniques for gathering, analyzing, and manipulating information, including the ability to distill new information and knowledge.
Her heart was filled with wonder and excitement as she realized the potential of this discipline, and her mind was buzzing with newfound confidence and determination.
"This is the path for me!" - She thought.
"With these techniques, I can create powerful killer moves." - She exclaimed.
"Knowledge is the universal basis. What are killer moves? It is knowledge of combining gu. What are the gu? They are the essence of the dao, the information of the universe!" - Qinyang realized.
"Hehehe, what wisdom path? Even wisdom path needs reliable information to work with!" - She thought to herself in glee.
With renewed vigor, Qinyang continued to study the Information Path inheritance, piecing together the puzzle with the skill and focus of an academic. She was determined to understand this path, and to master its techniques.
Eventually, she completed her readings and her excitement was palpable. Qinyang had found her path.
There were two information path inheritances she noted down. She continued to read the inheritance of the rank four gu master Zhong Shu.
Zhong Shu's information path inheritance was most focused on recording the events and organizing them. It wasn't a complete inheritance, there were no offensive or defensive techniques in it, but what was written in it was comprehensive and well thought out.
"This guy was a true book-worm." - She thought.
Through years of experience and dedication, Zhong Shu has developed a systematic approach to managing and recording information that helped him achieve greater clarity and efficiency in work.
"Firstly, this Zhong Shu believed that accurate record-keeping is essential for success in any field. He taught how to use the gu for counting and to keep track of numbers and statistics. This enabled him to have a clear understanding of his progress and performance over time, and made informed decisions based on this data."
"Secondly, Zhong Shu stressed the importance of punctuality and precision in all aspects of his work. He provides practical examples for managing time effectively and meeting his goals, as well as techniques for improving attention to detail and ensuring accuracy in his work."
Qinyang nodded as she read along, the contents were easy to comprehend.
"In addition, Zhong Shu provides guidance on how to organize the information and data in a logical and accessible way. He teaches how to create clear and concise reports of findings and make them easy to understand." - She summarized the contents to herself.
In the inheritance Zhong Shu explained how he used the gu for administrative work and recorded time and events in writing. He took great pride in his work.
She turned the page and continued with the next inheritance. This was left behind by the rank five gu master Shou Xin.
Shou Xin was a wandering gu master who made her living with setting agreements and helping to resolve ones set by others. Thus, her inheritance's essence was about the intricacies of creating and removing oaths.
Qinyang continued reading through the inheritance of the rank five gu master Shou Xin. The pages were filled with detailed explanations of how to craft agreements with various conditions and consequences.
As Qinyang delved deeper into the text, the next section of the inheritance explained the various conditions that could be set within an agreement. These conditions ranged from simple requirements, such as meeting at a specific time and place, to more complex clauses, such as penalties for breach of contract.
Shou Xin's teachings also included methods for removing oaths, which were just as important as setting them. Qinyang learned that removing an oath required just as much care and attention as creating one, as even the slightest mistake could have disastrous consequences.
"These two inheritances represent the two main branches of information path... Information gathering and agreement setting."
"Oh right, there is also the less known third branch that focuses on literature."
Qinyang continued on, reading about how to set the different conditions of an agreement.
But as these were only mortal inheritances. Zhong Shu's and Shou Xin's understanding of the great dao was too shallow to know about the existence of dao marks.
"When a party would breach an agreement the dao marks on their body would be triggered and an adverse effect would be set off." - Qinyang was clear of the underlying cause, the dao marks on the body.
Qinyang paused for a moment.
"Wait a moment..." - A sudden realization hit her.
"This is just like the if-then constructs of code. The breach of agreement is the condition, while the negative effect is the executed code-path. This could be used to create a program!"
Qinyang was excited now. She was already making connections between these inheritances and the coding language she already knew.
"This is interesting. I think I have the building blocks to create a Turing machine!"
"There is the storage gu from Zhong Shu's inheritance, the Ribbon Text gu, that will be the tape of the machine. The text on the ribbon will be the symbols. Then the agreement methods from Shou Xin's inheritance can be used to set the conditions and trigger the state transitions of the machine..."
Qinyang was deep in thought, and the possibilities kept coming up in her mind.
"A Turing machine is formally a seven-tuple of Q: the set of states, Gamma: the tape symbols, the empty symbol, Sigma: the set of input symbols..." - She started to note her knowledge on the margin of the paper.
"Oh, and the transition function..."
"I never actually thought I would get any use out of these dry definitions." - She smiled to herself.
"Wait, that means..."
"If I'm able to construct a universal Turing machine by using the methods of agreements, what's stopping me from creating any kind of program I want?" - She thought to herself as she jumped up with excitement. The possibilities seemed never-ending.
"Calm down, Qinyang! Take it easy." - She told herself, taking a deep breath to steady her racing thoughts.
She had just made a huge breakthrough, and she needed to take the time to process it. She sat back down and opened the next page of the information path inheritance. As she read, she made more connections between her existing knowledge and the techniques contained in the inheritance.
Qinyang continued reading the inheritances over and over with a newfound determination. If she could make something like this work, she could have a distinct edge in this world.
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