After much hesitation, Anji finally pointed out that she had no idea. It was ultimately impossible for anyone to finish breathing all the air in the world. Even if this room’s air were finished, the forest would continue to supply it with new air. If the forest ran out of air, the sea would continue to bring in new air with the wind. The wind will never stop coming in, and in a way, there will never be a shortage of air.
When Yan Ping heard her reply, she agreed.
"That’s right," she confird. "It would be completely impossible for anyone to finish the air. That’s why we have a symbol representing infinite, which ans endless. Once you understand this, you’ll understand the reason why zero exists. If sothing is endless, it has no number. If sothing doesn’t exist, it also has no number. However, when creating spells, they have to be represented by sothing. That’s what zero is. It’s the representation of nothing."
Sharing a little history of the Mystical Qilin Sect, Yan Ping confird that the placeholder of nothing was usually left as a blank. However, students in her sect always drew sothing in a rune represented by a circle. Hence, many students tried to draw a circle in a circle when the picture in the textbook only depicted a blank rune. The circle was a null rune symbol as it did not have ends or points, making it invalid for qi activation. However, due to the popular mistake, Yan Ping’s teacher decided to add the character and make that an actual rune symbol.
"Why is it called zero (ling) then?" Anji couldn’t help but ask.
Here, Yan Ping humd. The reason wasn’t anything profound. It was sothing her shifu created, and the sect went along with it.
"No particular reason," she sighed. "My shifu thought the circle looked like a soul (ling hun) and decided to call it that after making it official. She did not have the best naming sense. That is why my na is only one character. It was straightforward enough, but it wasn’t the worst thing she could have co up with."
The Ping in Yan Ping’s na ant peaceful. However, it could also an justice or flat. It sotis ant average, and Anji wondered why her teacher’s na had been chosen.
"Did grand shifu want you to walk a peaceful or righteous path of justice?"
Recalling so terrible mories, Yan Ping’s mood dulled.
"Neither," she replied. "The Ping in my na was because my teacher thought I was calm. It did not matter what she did. I wouldn’t give her the reaction she wanted. In other words, she gave this na because she thought I was boring."
...
Anji had no words.
Returning to the subject of counters, Yan Ping told Anji to collect the twenty pebbles she collected previously. Excitedly, the girl hopped off her stool and gathered the pebbles on the other side of the table. Then, Yan Ping passed Anji a charcoal pencil. It was from the Celestial Dragon Sect.
"Write down the numbers from zero to nine on the pebbles. You should have two sets of counters."
After clarifying that her teacher wanted her to write on the pebbles, Anji wondered what Yan Ping was up to. She already knew how to count to ten and maybe even twenty with the lessons she had been having. The only problem ca from finding the difference between numbers. Anji knew how to add. However, subtracting was a different issue. Counting backwards was difficult!
While Anji wrote on the pebbles, Yan Ping wondered if she would have enough ti to cram basic arithtic knowledge into Anji before dinner. According to her father, Anji failed to grasp the concept of changing a number from nine to zero when counting backwards. They’ve tried with the abacus, but Anji could only go from right to left, not left to right. Her brain seed fixated on only one direction. Everyone tried explaining the concept using various thods. The Zhaos were at their wits end. Their only hope was Yan Ping.
Thankfully, it wasn’t Yan Ping’s first ti teaching such students. The concept of zero was more powerful than one might expect. Back then, many students failed to understand the difference between qi-converted values. However, after the invention of zero, with the help of physical counting charts that novice students refer to, the rate of mistakes was reduced drastically. Any mistakes made in spell calculations were caused by carelessness and not misunderstanding.
"Shifu, I’m done!"
Nodding, Yan Ping told Anji to collect all the special pebbles and follow her to the front garden. She grabbed her staff as Anji led the way, doing her best not to smudge the writing.
In the garden, Yan Ping got to work. Using her walking staff, she slowly drew a table with ten rows at the top and ten columns at the side. Instructing Anji to place the first set of pebbles from right to left, starting from the smallest number.
Anji placed the pebble with the number one on the rightmost column, but it was quickly corrected.
"Leave the first column on the right from zero. The last column towards the left should be nine."
Puzzled by the new position, Anji corrected her mistake and reported back to her teacher once it was done. Yan Ping checked the sequence of the changing digit placeholders and imdiately nodded. When they returned, she would ask Mingfeng to help her create the counting chart so Anji could practice in her free ti. Today, she would only explain the counter concept using zero.
"Where is the zero pebble not in the placeholder column?" Yan Ping asked.
Anji quickly sorted through her pebbles and found it in the remaining pile.
"Here," she handed it over to Yan Ping’s outstretched hand.
With the small girl’s help, she navigated to the start of the matrix table. Every column was a difference of one pace. She made sure it was the right asurent for this very demonstration. After all, most children learn better by moving around instead of morising characters in books.
Holding onto the zero pebble, Yan Ping reminded that zero indicates nothing as a placeholder.
"We don’t write zero in front of a number. We simply ignore its existence and write a number. For this row, you will count with ."
The number that is zero and zero is zero. Hence, Anji did not count it. Yan Ping nodded in approval. Her student already understood the basic concept.
Moving one step to the right, Yan Ping waited for Anji to figure out what number zero and one made.
"One?"
Smiling a little, Yan Ping confird it was the right answer. Up until the last column, Anji answered correctly.
"Now, what happens when I reach nine? To indicate that it is more than nine, I’ll have to replace this pebble in my hand with a number greater than it."
Getting the hint, Anji passed her teacher a new pebble from her pile with the number one written on it.
"As no single number is greater than nine, we cannot proceed this way. Hence, we return to the beginning and start from zero on the left."
Demonstrating the cycle, Yan Ping stepped out of the boxes and walked behind the row of pebbles, returning to the beginning line. However, this ti, she left the pebble with zero at her original spot and moved down by one step, holding onto the pebble with the number one.
Repeating the process, Anji counted the number combination aloud as her teacher walked on the counting board. When she reached nineteen, Yan Ping repeated her progress again, walking out of the board and returning to the starting point with a new pebble, leaving the old one where she started previously. She repeated this until they used the last pebble with the number nine.
"After ninety-nine, it’s one hundred. However, at that point, you should already be familiar with how the shifting of numbers works. You can ask the people in your sect for help if you need it. We will stop at one hundred. This is the general idea of how to shift numbers moving forward. Now, it’s ti to go backwards."
Confident that she would get all her answers correct, even in reverse order, Anji eagerly stepped onto the matrix board on the ground as Yan Ping took a break.
"We start from ninety-nine," she instructed, and Anji ran to the farthest end of the board.
"Move sixteen steps backwards."
...
Suddenly, the difficulty seed to spike, and she missed several steps to learning Math. Staring at the board blankly, Anji wondered if her teacher was doing this intentionally.
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