After five hours, Shuxue got up, yawning. This entire time, Zhujiao was fighting off the horde of mathematical monsters around Shuxue, so that he wouldn’t be killed.

“All right, I feel much better! Let me brush my teeth, use the restroom, and go!” Shuxue walked into the house, slamming the door behind him.

“Wait, big bro…” Zhujiao had a haggard look on his face. “It’s my turn to rest!”

No response came out of the closed door. Zhujiao could only continue smashing his forehead against the mathematical monsters jumping around this floor of the tomb. Occasionally, Daoli would solve an equation, but they usually took her a very long time.

The door blasted open after an hour. Shuxue majestically strode out, wearing a fresh set of robes. “That was a magnificent bath, Zhujiao. You really know how to choose a good house to buy.” Shuxue slicked his hair back as Zhujiao collapsed onto the ground from sheer exhaustion.

“Hey, why are you sleeping? It’s a new day, let’s go to the next floor!” Shuxue’s eyes shined as he thought about what possibilities lay in the next floor. After a few slaps to Zhujiao’s face, the house was sucked back into his forehead and the three made their way to the staircase to the next floor.

BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!

Shuxue lifted up a single finger. It vibrated, shooting out countless finger strikes that cut a swathe through the horde of mathematical equations. With every finger strike, a function’s degree would lower by one and an Algebra pearl would fall out. They could’ve walked straight to the stairs within 2 minutes, but Zhujiao found his second wind and scrabbled around on the floor picking them all up, so the journey actually took 10 minutes.

“2 hours ago, disciples from the Ji Clan and Argent Heaven flew up to the next level.” Daoli said to Shuxue, a look of worry on her face. “The Ji Clan and Argent Heaven are two of the top Sectors in our Weakest Plane! We cannot possibly offend them.”

Shuxue laughed. “Zhujiao and I are warriors of justice! If they don’t do anything dastardly, then they have nothing to worry about. Otherwise, they can’t blame us for being ruthless.”

The next floor came into view. The first thing Shuxue saw was two old men playing Connect 4 at the entrance.

“Hold up, give me some time to think. This is an extremely complicated game!” One of them shouted, twirling an Arithmetic pearl in his hands. He had eyebrows reaching down to his cheeks.

“Just drop it in the damn slot already.” The other man growled, stroking his eyebrows that reached down to his mouth. He was tapping his hand on the ground, staring intently at the pearl containers that served as the suspended grid for their game. “My eyebrows droop lower than yours, so I was already more senior to you, and therefore more intelligent than you, from the very beginning. No need to prolong the inevitable!”

Shuxue squinted at the pearls. “Calculus pearls! How impressive!”

“What did you say!” Zhujiao shouted. “Calculus pearls? Where?!”

Calculus pearls! Zhujiao had never even seen any in his life. The mathforce in the Weakest Continent was too sparse to form Calculus dungeons. The highest order pearl Zhujiao had ever seen was a Trigonometry pearl, which was worth 3,020 Arithmetic pearls, but Calculus pearls were worth 5,000 Arithmetic pearls!

Shuxue paid Zhujiao no mind, staring off into the distance at the equations. “What… what are these?” Shuxue was highly bemused. In front of him were nearly a hundred Mathivators, fighting desperately against strange mathematical equations Shuxue had never seen.

“Quick, shoot a 32! We haven’t tried 32 yet!” A middle-aged man in silver robes yelled hoarsely as he shot a 40 at a (4,5,2)*[4,1,2] equation. The equation blew apart, but instantly reformed. A wave of 32s shot into it, achieving the same effect.

Solera stared blankly at a (24,65,24,3),(52,35,67,120),(2,3,4,7)*(5,2,6,2) behemoth standing guard over a pile of treasure chests and mathematical pearls in the center. In the previous 2 floors, there had been treasure chests as well, but they had long been ransacked of their jade slips. Though Solera felt this was an injustice of the highest order, there was nothing he could do about it. Here, on the third floor, however, there were actually untouched treasure chests!

Nobody had ever been able to perceive the mysteries of this floor, despite an entire 50 years passing since the tomb’s inception.

“25! The answer was 25!” The middle-aged man shouted as the (4,5,2)*[4,1,2] monster burst into a shower of Algebra pearls. “Quick, record it! The answer to (4,5,2)*[4,1,2] is 25!”

He began to fire random numbers off at a (6,2,3)*[9,9,9]. Another silver-robed disciple ran up, shouting towards the middle-aged man. “Inner disciple Bendan (meaning: Idiot), we already fought a (6,2,3)*[9,9,9]! The records say 99 is the answer to this monster!”

“Right!” Bendan shouted, shooting a 99 into it. “How about that (40,2,2)*[3,-6,20]?”

“No, Inner disciple Bendan!”

“Then let’s get started!” Completely random numbers began to fly out of the man’s hands towards this particular monster.

Shuxue watched Bendan, a sneer on his lips. “He’s using the least profound technique in all of math, plugging in random values! What a brute!”

“32! The answer to (4,2,3)*[5,3,2] is 32!” A black-robed disciple yelled to another black-robed disciple, who was recording all the answers next to the silver-robed disciple next to him.

“Haha, our Ji Clan has beaten 15 more monsters than your trash Argent Heaven Sector!” The black-robed recorder snickered towards the silver-robed recorder.

“It was just luck.” The silver-robed recorder snorted.

“Luck is its own form of talent.” The black-robed recorder smiled smugly. Then, he began screaming as a parabola pincer cut him in half. Shuxue kicked the corpse away to pick up the paper the black-robed recorder was recording the answers to the problems on.

“Ahh, whoops.” Shuxue sighed as the silver-robed recorder looked at him, horrified. “Looks like this man was rather untalented at being unlucky.” Shuxue’s eyes scanned the paper. There had to be a pattern to solve these alien problems!

“M-m-murderer!” The silver-robed recorder screamed, backing away. “This man just murdered disciple Siwang (meaning: Corpse)!”

The old man with the eyebrows that drooped down to his mouth turned and saw Siwang’s dead body.

“You are courting death!” He roared, standing up from his Connect 4 game. “How dare you kill one of the children of my Ji Clan?”

“Hey now, it’s still your turn in Connect 4.” The elder with eyebrows that hung down to his cheeks spoke, grabbing the other elder by the shoulder and looking on with some amusement.

“To hell with your Connect 4 game! This boy is courting death!” The old man flung his Calculus pearl into a random slot in the suspended grid and stood up, coalescing Calculus mathforce around him that formed into an illusory blade, 20 meters long.

Shuxue didn’t even look at the old man. He casually snatched the other paper out of the hands of the silver-robed recorder before shredding him to pieces with a quadratics dragon.

“You are courting death!” The elder with eyebrows reaching his cheeks shouted. “You dare slay one of the disciples of my Argent Heaven Sector! Have your eyes grown to the top of your head?”

The Ji Clan elder put a hand on the Argent Heaven elder’s shoulder. “It’s your turn in Connect 4. You had better make your move.”

“To hell with the Connect 4 game!” The Argent Heaven elder emitted flames from his eyes. “This impudent brat is courting death!”

Shuxue sighed, turning to Zhujiao. “Zhujiao, these 2 old men are trying to rape me. You have to stop them!”

Zhujiao, who was still looking for the Calculus pearls, shrugged indifferently. “I don’t care. You’re a man. Even though you’re my friend, if you die, you can only blame yourself for being too weak! Don’t worry though, in my righteous rage after your death, I’ll take revenge for you.”

Shuxue threw up an ellipse shield that blocked the attack of a nearby Argent Heaven disciple, fuming to himself. “That damn Plot is talking to Zhujiao again, that’s why he’s using so many big words. It just wants to make me fight against those 2 old men because it would be better for the Plot! Dammit, I’m not going to do something that stupid!”

Raising his voice, Shuxue yelled again. “Zhujiao, those 2 old men are trying to rape me, and they even have Calculus pearls right there! Who knows what poor souls were robbed by them, for them to have Calculus pearls! They definitely didn’t get them through any honest means!”

“What!” Zhujiao shouted. “They have Calculus pearls? They are courting death!”

Lady Daoli began to spout some peave-loving nonsense, so Shuxue called out to Zhujiao again. “Don’t listen to Daoli, she’s a woman!”

“Duh! Why would I ever listen to Daoli? She’s just a member of my harem!” Zhujiao sniffed. “I already knew that listening to Daoli was bad! You don’t have to say something I already knew!”

“You’re courting death!” Both elders shouted at the same time, moving forward to attack. Zhujiao’s Plot Armor, the illusory grid, appeared to block the mathforce sword that shot towards Shuxue.

Shuxue, for his part, turned to face the oncoming disciples of both Sectors. All of them were above the Arithmetic stage, with most at the middle Algebra stage. Shuxue could even discern several high Algebra stages, and even a peak Algebra stage!

But who was Shuxue? He was at the peak peak Algebra stage! The peak peak Algebra stage was an entire order of magnitude above the peak Algebra stage! It would be easier to thread a camel through the eye of a needle than for these lowly disciples to overcome Shuxue’s grasp of the profound mysteries of Quadratics. Actually, comparing their respective skills was akin to comparing a single hair to the furred bodies of nine bulls! It would also be like comparing apples to oranges; it wouldn’t work, because apples are just so many times better than oranges.

Simply said, Shuxue was the number 1 expert on Algebra within this tomb. There was nobody more knowledgeable than Shuxue on Algebra here. The gulf between his knowledge of quadratics equations and theirs was like the distance between heaven and earth! Like the distance between the Weakest Plane and the second weakest plane!

These disciples had eyes, yet they could not see Mount Tai!

The battle between Zhujiao and 2 elders of the Calculus stage and the battle between Shuxue and 100 disciples of the Algebra stage had begun!

Author note: “You are courting death” comes from Against the Gods Chapter 198.

In case you’ve forgotten, Daoli means reason/logic in Chinese.