Chapter Seventeen: Language and Mathematics

Willy felt somewhat flustered. Only after he saw that the brat from Julia’s household had truly wandered off did he begin to run.

When that kid had bumped into him earlier, Willy had been genuinely terrified. He had exerted every ounce of effort to control himself.

“This can’t go on like this…”

Thinking this, Willy sprinted quickly, soon leaving the village outskirts behind, and crouched beside the main road. A cloud of dust billowed toward him. Willy stood up and waved his hands.

The whistle blared. Amid the screeching brakes and explosive dust clouds, a shadow halted before Willy. Then came the sound of a camera lens adjusting focus. After a moment, a rough voice spoke: “Willy? Why are you here?”

“Enoch…” Willy’s voice trembled. “I’m so scared, Enoch.”

Living off the heavy laborers, Willy naturally knew their routines. He was aware that Enoch would likely pass by this road at this time.

“Hey! What’s there to be scared of?” Enoch said, unconcerned.

Willy screamed, “Yesterday you made me shove that guy out! It was you! You can’t just ignore me! Otherwise… otherwise…” His voice broke into sobs. “Brother Enoch! I…”

At first, Willy had intended to curry favor with Enoch, which was why he agreed to “deal with Yorg.” Among the heavy machinery workers, Enoch was the most generous. Most importantly, Enoch was lazy and often hired other workers for loading and unloading. As long as Willy stayed on good terms with Enoch, he wouldn’t have to worry about work.

But Willy hadn’t expected that “Yorg”… no, that “Mountain” was truly formidable.

He actually managed to defeat a martial artist!

Enoch’s tone grew slightly tense. “Did he find out about you? That can’t be right. At the time, everyone around was on our side… they all took part; there’s no way they’d betray us.”

“That brat from Julia’s!” Willy screamed.

“Yuki? He saw?” Enoch hesitated. He found Yuki annoying. If it weren’t for Yuki, maybe Julia would have accepted him—and even the Mountain was uncovered by Yuki.

“He just bumped into me on the street! He bumped into me!” Willy shouted. “That brat definitely saw! Otherwise… otherwise…”

“Come on, it was just a bump?” Enoch chuckled. “Such a trivial thing?”

“What do you mean ‘trivial’? I shoved that monster!” Willy yelled. “Even that dog lost; there’s no way I could win!”

“That was just luck!” Enoch said fiercely. “The old lord was just being kind! Bah, winning? Didn’t he lie there saying ‘I lost, I lost’? Such a coward… bah!”

“You can’t ignore me!” Willy screamed. “Let’s lure that kid out! Whether we crush him or dismantle him and sell the parts…”

“Hey! Are you crazy?” Enoch was startled. He truly intended to be with Julia. He knew his own character—he couldn’t keep secrets. If he harmed Yuki, he would lose any chance with Julia.

Enoch was already somewhat annoyed by this fool’s pestering. But he also felt that if this guy acted recklessly and something happened to Yuki, he might be implicated. So Enoch said, “It’s not a big deal… how about this, I was planning to have some fun in the city today anyway. I’ll treat you to something exciting, how about that?”

“Something exciting?” Willy looked puzzled. “What? A competition? A new game?”

“More thrilling than that… Come on, get in!”

Enoch had no driver’s seat. He tilted the cargo bed slightly, letting Willy climb up by himself.

Dust flew everywhere.

…

“A true programmer begins coding from the bare machine!”

…

“A true programmer knows no division between object-oriented and procedural programming, no distinction between strong typing and type unsafety. From machine language to assembler to compiler to countless high-level applications, they understand it all!”

Certain memories shimmered faintly. Xiangshan couldn’t recall exactly who had told him this. However, some fragments of “knowledge” reminded him that the person was a renowned programmer from history—someone who had once shaped the course of history.

Xiangshan had a deep friendship with “this person,” through whom he had learned “everything” about programming.

The essence of this craft is “mathematics.”

Programming is both linguistics and mathematics.

Or rather, linguistics itself is a form of mathematics.

Around the end of World War II, mathematicians opened a new field called “the word problem.” In this domain, certain mathematical concepts were cloaked in “words” and expressed naturally through algebraic structures. Mathematicians tried using linguistic rules to manipulate mathematics.

In 1944, Emil Post, an American logician and AI pioneer, proved that the word problem was undecidable.

Then in 1947, Anatoly Markov, unaware of Post’s work, independently arrived at the same conclusion.

Within “language” lies the problem of “undecidability.” This was the first undecidability problem not posed by humans and not emerging from computer science.

Meanwhile, linguists approached the same frontier from the opposite direction.

If modern linguistics originated with Ferdinand de Saussure, then Noam Chomsky was its pinnacle afterward. Besides being a linguist, philosopher, and sociologist, Chomsky could also be considered a mathematician.

His linguistic research was even recorded in the history of mathematics.

The fields of “context-free grammar” and “regular grammar” created by Chomsky hold significant status in theoretical computer science.

Geneticists also respect Chomsky, believing his research on language might hold the key to decoding the genetic code—they could reverse-engineer the “language of the Creator” hidden in genetic information.

Or rather, the “program” that genetic chemistry follows.

With sufficiently deep mathematical study in relevant fields, creating a unique language is not overly difficult.

The real challenge lies in ensuring the language remains obscure to humans while simple and clear to machines.

The more obscure the language, the greater its internal strength advantage. Martial artists rely on internal energy to conceal themselves within the network, within this world. “Language” is the root of all their defenses. Their brain’s linguistic functions collaborate closely with their internal energy.

The more obscure the language their brains are familiar with, the more undetectable their internal energy.

But if this secrecy comes at the cost of reduced computer performance, that would be counterproductive.

Lisp cannot achieve this obscurity. It is too close to mathematics—once you learn the basics, a skilled mathematician can grasp its use.

C is a “high-level language with natural language features,” widely used, and thus exhibits “wild growth.” It even experiences “language drift” phenomena in short periods—this closely resembles natural language evolution. If two relatively isolated network regions existed, C could even develop “dialects.”

Xiangshan was well-versed in all of this.

In the realm of internal energy, this meant “one method understood, all methods understood.”

Xiangshan felt he should know another person. This individual might not be as famous but stood at the frontier of human knowledge.

He had learned much from his friends—at least, it seemed so.

Yet upon reflection, this defied common sense. In Xiangshan’s impression, a person could deeply master only one field at most, and only skim others. Human knowledge had expanded beyond what an individual could grasp in its entirety.

He shouldn’t be versed in engineering, programming, and advanced mathematics all at once. Even if he was friends with such talented people, it wouldn’t mean he could inherit their strengths.

Einstein’s closest friend late in life was the top mathematician Gödel. Yet this friendship didn’t elevate Einstein’s mathematical ability to Gödel’s level—at least in the eyes of true mathematicians, Albert Einstein’s math was “sufficient for physics.”

But… strangely, this was exactly what happened.

Xiangshan disassembled the terminal’s operating system. He replaced the original compiler with his own.

None of the popular languages—be it the common Java, foundational C, the poetic and lonely Perl, the passionate modern poetry of Ruby, the easy-to-learn yet masterful Python, the most math-like and creator-near Lisp, or even their successors—were suitable for sustaining internal energy.

Simply put, they were all created for “others to use.”

These languages inherently exist to be understood by people.

The only thing preventing others from understanding them is intelligence.

Even though C had developed “dialects,” they were still insufficient for secrecy.

For martial artists, a good language can hide their intentions, and even after firewalls are breached, encryption cracked, encapsulation torn open, and internal energy disrupted, it can provide a last chance to strike back.

You cannot hope your enemy is a fool—you must devise a way so that even a smart enemy, lacking key information, cannot access the code flowing endlessly inside your program with their consciousness.

Each internal energy style corresponds to a special compiler, with unique syntax and naming conventions. The high-level languages they compile differ vastly in design philosophy from traditional high-level languages.

They were created “to be difficult to understand.”

If past programmers sought to create “the best language,” so good that everyone would want to use it, then the languages created by martial artists were the exact opposite—the “worst languages.”

What’s more remarkable is that you must ensure machines can still accept this “poor” language.

In this, Xiangshan held absolute confidence. At first, he did not know where this confidence came from.

After spending two hours rewriting the compiler, he recalled more knowledge.

His internal energy’s foundation was a nameless language, passed down only within a tiny circle.

Few knew of this language; it had never been widely disseminated. Only a handful had even seen it, and fewer still could learn and use it. Merely learning this language demanded more effort than learning a foreign tongue. Programming in it was akin to composing top-tier poetry in a foreign language, one from a completely different linguistic family than your mother tongue.

“Come to think of it, if it’s really this difficult… how did I learn it?” Xiangshan muttered. “Who exactly am I? How am I so capable?”

After completing the compiler rewrite, it felt as if he had unlocked even more knowledge. Data streamed rapidly from the chip directly connected to his brain. Code overlapped code; irregular color blocks appeared on the terminal screen before it abruptly shut down and rebooted.

This was not creation from nothing. Xiangshan seemed to have experienced this scene long ago, something very similar.

Perhaps due to fragmented memories, he couldn’t fully replicate that past technology. But even so, he likely had the foundation for his destiny.

The fusion language was undoubtedly the most damnably difficult language in the world.

But from the martial artist’s perspective, it was also among the strongest.