Chapter 80: The Laws of Cultivation
"Force is mass times acceleration. That is the same as momentum, which is velocity times mass. You follow?" Elder Song summarized her lengthy explanation of mortal physics.
"Yes," Paike thought he understood. "But I don't understand why you are telling me this? What does force or momentum have to do with the internal circulation?"
"Boy, you don't listen well, do you?" Elder Song scolded. "As I said, I'm working on a theory. If you are going to understand it, I need to start somewhere."
Paike nodded in defeat. The equations weren't too hard to understand. Still, he knew this was only the surface level, and he was hoping there wasn't much more that the elder considered prerequisite knowledge.
"So my theory is that qi works in a similar way. However, if you consider realm as an analog for the mass of each qi particle, the numbers don't work out. There is a third factor, and I'm trying to measure that." Elder Song said. "I think velocity and acceleration work about the same, but maybe with more dimensions... However, I'm certain there is a third factor that seems to vary from person to person. It is very slight, but it keeps mucking up my data."
"So what is it?" Paike asked, as this was starting to make a lot of sense. It was a completely different type of experimentation that he and Guan Li were getting up to. Almost in a different field. Like they were doing applied qi theory, while Elder Song was working on the core fundamentals of qi.
Elder Song let out a dramatic sigh. "I don't know. I think it is some previously unmeasured quality of qi."
She pulled out scrolls of data and started to show him her findings. Paike was pretty sure she'd forgotten who she was talking to, as she expected him to know a lot more than he already did. At least he was Topaz and could see the demonstrations she did in the air around them.
Eventually, though, it was getting to be too much, and he brought it back to the original topic. "Okay, so I think I understand your theory, but I'm not sure how that applies to internal circulation of qi."