Ke-style law enforcement officers

Chapter 385 Matches
Milo didn't know why the Scarlet Witch was so confident.

"It craves a confrontation between rulers, so let it have its wish."

Even Milo, who has reached this point, does not have the confidence to believe that he has reached the same level as the Great Old Ones.

Perhaps it was because he had not yet witnessed the true power of the Great Old Ones, or perhaps it was because he had been repeatedly outmaneuvered by Imnar over the past few days.

Dominators are called dominators because they possess the power to control certain powerful rules concerning the origin.

These forces manifest in various forms in the real world, including but not limited to Glagi's undead servants, Imnar's imitations, or the colossal beast on the distant sea that Milo saw from the Church Bridge.

But all these taboo images can be traced back to their origins.

When the most fundamental knowledge is presented in written form, it is the content of those ancient and evil scriptures.

However, Imnar is not mentioned in any ancient text.

On the contrary, it is possible to find some clues related to it in the orthodox historical records of mankind, because it may have been present in many major disasters in the long river of history.

The Scarlet Witch's explanation is that the rules Imnar follows do not require explanation or interpretation in evil texts. By simplifying and subdividing their power, tracing their origins, and ultimately finding their source, the knowledge can even be found in children's textbooks.

This can be considered the Scarlet Witch's guiding words to Milo.

After saying goodbye to the Scarlet Witch, Milo had been pondering this question.

In law enforcement offices, on the streets, in rooms, and at the dining table.

Milo was so engrossed in his thoughts that he appeared absent-minded and dazed to outsiders.

At the dinner table, only Milo, Finn, and Emma were present; it seemed Kang had gone to work overtime again.

And Enid didn't come back with Milo for dinner today.

I guess he was quite frightened when he bumped into Milo in the morgue.

Yan hasn't shown up for several days now, I don't know where he's off to have some fun. The main reason is that Finn no longer needs his family to pick him up from school, so ordinary thugs probably can't handle him.

The good news is that Finn is now fully in charge of cleaning up the kitchen after meals; the bad news is that his knowledge is still at the level of an 8-year-old.

So much so that after dinner, she still needed her older sister Emma's help to finish her homework.

And so, the following scene came about.

After dinner, Milo remained seated at the table, his hands clasped in front of his chest, head bowed, lost in the sea of ​​knowledge.

After cleaning up the table, Finn spread out his homework on the table, waiting for his sister to come to his rescue.

Now he faces an ultimate problem, a problem left over from today's class.

Emma looked at Finn with a skeptical gaze several times when she saw the question.

Finn responded with a bewildered look.

He was unaware that his sister was currently questioning whether the Valrocan gene in his body was genuine.

"It's hard to imagine an 8-year-old child being stumped by such a question."

Emma looked at the math problems in her book.

This is actually a very classic and conventional geometry problem involving matchsticks: given three matchsticks, what is the maximum number of non-obtuse angles that can be formed?

To make the problem more visual, Finn even took several boxes of matches from Old Kang's cupboard and placed them on the table, rubbing his hands together and waiting for Emma to answer his questions.

Of course, because he couldn't resist striking two matches to play with fire, he was simultaneously subjected to death stares by Milo and Emma, ​​and finally lowered his head in embarrassment.

Let's go back to that simple geometry problem.

Children with less active thinking might first try to connect the three matchsticks end to end to form an isosceles triangle, thus creating three acute angles.

But this answer is clearly wrong.

"Many students submitted this answer, and Ms. Leia said they were all little idiots."

Finn's smug expression returned when he talked about it.

Clearly, he doesn't belong in the "little idiot" category.

……

A slightly smarter child would choose a point as the axis and place the midpoints of the three matchsticks on that point, offsetting them by a certain angle, thus obtaining six non-obtuse angles.

"To be honest, the correct answer should be this."

Finn took out three matches and stacked them on the table to form the above shape, that is, two matches were stacked perpendicularly to each other, and then a third match was added to form 6 non-obtuse angles.

"Given their level of knowledge at that age, this should be considered a reasonable and standard answer, right?"

Emma looked at the matches on the table, then suddenly looked up at Milo, as if asking for his opinion.

"what?"

Milo, preoccupied with Imnar's troubles, had no interest in getting involved in the kid's homework and simply gave a perfunctory reply:

"Oh, you can teach me as you see fit. It's never a bad thing to learn more."

Therefore, Emma gave a more reasonable answer.

She took the third matchstick, which was stacked on top of two perpendicularly intersecting matchsticks, stood it upright, and pressed it onto the intersection of the two horizontally intersecting matchsticks.

"Do you understand what I mean, Finn?"

This is a mantra Emma used when instructing Finn: she never explained the entire principle and process at once, and even when revealing the answer, she would only say half of it first.

Finn stared intently at the shapes that the matches on the table were taking shape.

It is obvious that the concept of spatial coordinate systems has not yet been covered in the math curriculum for an 8-year-old child, and what Emma presented to him was a spatial coordinate system formed by three matchsticks stacked together.

But Finn was a special child, and he immediately calculated the number of right angles that could be obtained.

"So that makes eight right angles, right?"

He blinked and looked tentatively at his sister.

The two matchsticks with the hammers crossed on the table form four right angles, while the vertical matchstick forms four right angles with the four half-matchsticks in each of the four directions.

Emma didn't speak; she just narrowed her eyes slightly.

Clearly, she was not satisfied with Finn's answer.

Finn then began scratching his head and brainstorming.

But as everyone said, Finn was a special child, and he quickly discovered the imperfection in the design his sister had provided. The two crossed matchsticks on the table were each split in two to provide one side of the angle, but the top matchstick was "wasted"—it was a single piece serving as one side of the angle.

Finn reached out and took the match from Emma, ​​pointing to the point where the matches met, and said:
What would happen if you stuck half of it into the table?

Emma finally showed a rare satisfied smile.

Because Finn has already provided the most perfect answer.

When a vertical matchstick divides its half below the plane, four more right angles will appear below the plane.

So the correct answer has been revealed: there are 12 angles, and they are all included angles.

……

However, Milo, whose mind was not on the dinner table at all, simply replied to Finn, "If you interfere, your old man will beat you up."

And so he successfully earned Emma's death stare.

……

It appears that the problem has been successfully solved.

The average child, the more intelligent child, and the child who could concoct nitroglycerin each gave different answers.

But as everyone knows, Finn is a special child.

When Emma asked Finn what answers he had given in class, he began his performance.

As Emma watched Finn torment the three poor matches on the table, her initial composure gradually turned into confusion.

Then, speechless...

Then came helplessness...

In the very end, it turned into contemplation.

Finn's first action was to start breaking matches.

Yes, when all the bright and not-so-bright children in the classroom started setting up their matches, the crisp sound of Finn breaking a match made Leia, who could no longer tolerate it, kick him out of the classroom and make him stand as punishment.

But Emma is relatively patient.

Finn first arranged the three matchsticks end to end into the shape that the not-so-bright child would choose, which is an equilateral triangle.

Then, with great effort, he broke a match into four equal pieces, connected them end to end in a straight line, and then raised the two middle pieces to form an angle.

By arranging the three matches in the same way, an incomplete triangle was created on the three sides of the original triangle.

Then he started struggling with the quarter-stick that was now less than a centimeter short, trying to divide it into four pieces in the same way, but it was clear that this was no longer a task that his fingers could accomplish.

Finn's face turned bright red, and after grimacing and struggling for a long time, he still couldn't break the quarter-match into four pieces. He gasped for breath and said to Emma:
"That's how it is. As long as I keep bending it, I can get a lot of angles."

Emma was silent for a few seconds before finally correcting Finn, "Not many, countless."

……

Upon reaching this point, Milo finally snapped out of his endless contemplation and was drawn to the few ordinary matchsticks on the table.

His eyes gradually became like Emma's.

Suddenly, fragments of knowledge that had been sealed away in Milo's mind were awakened. These were the crystallizations of human civilization on Earth at that stage.

As he looked at the rudimentary pattern of adding another triangle to the triangle that Finn had created, a name that didn't belong to this era popped into his mind—fractal geometry.

In that world, there was once someone who did something similar to Finn, except that the mathematician used a conceptual line, rather than breaking matches with inherent destructive properties like Finn.

The mathematician divided a line segment into three equal parts, and then continued to divide and fold it, repeating this process indefinitely. Through quantitative change, a qualitative change occurred, and eventually the plane was filled with countless line segments…

Just as Finn said, he can get a lot of angles.

This mathematician, who had nothing better to do, was named Peano.

It wasn't until nearly a century later that fractal geometry officially became part of the science.

...

"Fractals..."

Milo looked at the broken match on the table and muttered something under his breath.

He recalled the Scarlet Witch's guiding words—the ultimate destination of the rule-making power possessed by Imnar could even be found in children's textbooks.

……

The concept of fractals can be simply understood as mindless replication and superposition of the same form on the existing basis. However, this is not just a concept in mathematics, but a law that can be seen everywhere in real life.

If given unlimited conditions, the growth of tree branches, the skeletal structure of corals, and the leaves of ferns can continue to evolve infinitely, dividing into one, two, two, four, four, eight, until infinity.

Even the morphology of blood vessels and alveolar tissue in the human body is a similar fractal and bifurcated structure, which also follows the laws of fractals.

The evolution of life is similar, from the earliest single-celled organisms to the complex brains of mammals like humans today...

All these life forms are not simple coincidences, but an inevitable result of material evolution.

It's not limited to life forms; for example, the shape of snowflakes, lightning in the sky, flowing rivers, and the mountains and rivers that rivers depend on—these material forms that exist in nature all follow the simple law of fractals.

By repeating the simplest things in an infinite number of ways, you can eventually create an infinite number of complexities.

Following this logic, everything can ultimately be broken down and brought back to those initial three matches, or perhaps just one is enough...

If all life forms can be traced back to their origins in this way, then perhaps Imnar's ability to imitate and replace becomes a relatively reasonable explanation...

Why can Imnar transform into any form of life at will, even replicating the clothing, weapons, and hidden memories of the person being imitated?

……

Milo felt something surging within his still-not-strong enough brain.

His breathing was quickening...

This is a physiological reaction that only occurs when he is reading evil scriptures.

Because his spiritual vision and sanity both felt the pressure.

……

If I ever stop updating, it's definitely because my sanity level is too high, not because I'm lazy.
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(End of this chapter)