Chapter 65 - Punishment (1/2)
Ch65 - Punishment
Xiong Ye’s arithmetic wasn’t bad. He could correctly count how many people were in the tribe and wouldn’t get it wrong when he split things up amongst others.
But when it came to adding all the numbers one to ninety-nine…
He had never calculated anything like this before.
However, this really needed to be practiced. It might come in handy someday?
With that in mind, Xiong Ye began to count: “1, 2, 3…”
Grandpa Priest had taught him how to count up to one hundred, but it was easy to lose count that way, so he had divided it up into ten groups of ten. He made little piles of ten, and when he had ten piles, he would push them together to make a pile of one hundred before going on to count out the next hundred…
After finally achieving the answer, Xiong Ye immediately went to look for Zhou Ji and share his results, but he discovered that Zhou Ji had already fallen asleep.
He felt an itch in his heart, but Zhou Ji wasn’t feeling well after all…
Xiong Ye simply lay down in bed and helped himself. He had done this for himself before, and it had only changed to having Zhou Ji help him after he had become mates with Zhou Ji.
Zhou Ji, who hadn’t actually gone to sleep, “……”
He had gotten halfway there when Xiong Ye saw Zhou Ji open his eyes. He leaned over to give him a kiss and said, “Zhou Ji, help me!”
Zhou Ji glanced over and reached out a hand. Xiong Ye embraced him and moaned softly.
After it was finally over, Xiong Ye felt so comfortable that he didn’t want to get up, but Zhou Ji pinched his face, “Did you finish calculating the number I asked you for?”
“I figured it out!” Xiong Ye replied.
“How much is it?”
Xiong Ye got out of bed to look at his pile of wooden bits. He finally said, “It’s forty nine one hundreds plus forty nine!”
“Wrong. It should be forty nine one hundreds plus fifty.” Zhou Ji replied. The people of the tribe generally didn’t come into contact with numbers much, so they could only count up to one hundred and would count how many hundreds there were from there on out.
Modern people might find this a bit troublesome and annoying, but it was already pretty good for these people to be able to count to one hundred smoothly. Zhou Ji seemed to remember that ninety-nine in French roughly translated to four twenties plus ten plus nine…
“Why?” Xiong Ye looked at Zhou Ji in confusion, “You’ve counted it before? I haven’t seen you count anything before!”
This was such a difficult question. If Zhou Ji had calculated it, he definitely should’ve seen a lot of sticks around.
“I don’t need to count, I just have to think about it in my head to know the answer.” Zhou Ji replied.
Think about it and know the answer? Xiong Ye was shocked as he looked at Zhou Ji. “Did the Beast God tell you?”
Xiong Ye suddenly understood. He rearranged his pile and realized that it really was forty nine one hundreds plus fifty.
As for why he had been wrong before, it was probably because he had miscounted one of the pieces.
After answering the question, Xiong Ye was very sincere as he said, “Zhou Ji, you’re really too smart!”
“Do you want me to teach you?” Zhou Ji asked.
Xiong Ye didn’t think twice before saying, “Yes! But haven’t I learnt it already?” He had already learned this topic and could go and explain it to the priest!
“You’ve only learned one method. I’ll give you another question… I caught eight dinosaurs, and amongst these dinosaurs, some have two legs while others have four legs. There are a total of twenty two legs. How many of those dinosaurs have two legs, and how many of them have four?” Zhou Ji asked. This was another classic Olympiad mathematics training class question.
Xiong Ye didn’t know about Olympiad mathematics. He took out twenty two sticks and began to place them around…
Answering this question wasn’t difficult when sticks were being used so straightforwardly. After giving each of the eight dinosaurs two legs and matching up the remaining sticks to make four legged dinosaur piles, it was easy to calculate.
Xiong Ye felt a little proud, yet as a result…
Zhou Ji asked, “If I caught a total of one hundred dinosaurs, and there are a total of three hundred and twenty legs?”
Xiong Ye had been fiddling with the sticks to calculate everything and felt that it was quite interesting, but now that Zhou Ji asked the question like this, he felt very confused––how could he count that? Also… “You can’t catch that many dinosaurs! Our entire tribe couldn’t catch that many dinosaurs.”
Zhou Ji laughed, “If I give you fish soup to drink, and after you finish half, I fill it up for you, then fill it up again after you’ve finished half again, and then fill it up again when you’ve finished half of that, and this time you finish it all, how many bowls of soup did you drink in total?”
Xiong Ye couldn’t figure it out at all. “Why does this need to be calculated?”
“A dinosaur can eat half of the grass on the ground every year. How many years will it take for it to finish eating all the grass?”
“I know this one!” Xiong Ye said, “Two years!”
“Wrong!” Zhou Ji said, “Grass will regrow, so it’s impossible for it to be finished in two years.”
That was true! Xiong Ye looked at Zhou Ji in admiration. Zhou Ji was really too impressive, too smart.
Seeing this situation, Zhou Ji, who had used his Olympiad mathematics training class and acuity to toy with a person from the primitive era, was satisfied and said, “Come, I’ll teach you arithmetic. If you want to become a qualified tribal chief, you’ll need to learn more things.”
“Good! Should the priest learn this as well?” Xiong Ye no longer dared to say that he had already learned these things this time, but he thought of the priest––the priest had always loved learning these kinds of things.
“I’m not feeling that good and can’t teach too many people.” Zhou Ji said.