229: Chapter 229 Eight Levels

When the encrypted call was dialed to Tianmen Base, it was 3:00 PM on the Main World side.

Zhou Peide happened to be in the laboratory.

"Professor Zhou, how is the Root Bone detector coming along?"

"Your call came right on time." There was a kind of excitement in Zhou Peide's voice that Su Mingyuan didn't hear very often, "The prototype was assembled early yesterday morning."

"Can it be used?"

"The hardware is usable, but we lack data," Zhou Peide said. "You know the principle of the Root Bone detector: sending Spiritual Qi pulses into the Meridians and measuring the echoes. The problem is that we don't have enough samples on hand to calibrate it — people on the Main World side haven't Cultivated, and their Meridians' reaction to Spiritual Qi is too weak. The instrument reads nothing but background noise, making it impossible to distinguish between high and low levels."

Su Mingyuan understood.

"You need people who have absorbed Spiritual Qi as samples."

"Right. The more, the better. With these samples, the AI can perform cluster analysis and draw accurate Rank lines."

Su Mingyuan thought for a moment: "The Forward Base in Yaowu World currently stations over 300,000 people, who have stayed here for one to two weeks. They haven't Cultivated, but having soaked in the Spiritual Qi environment for so long, their Meridians will react to some extent — I just had a physical examination, and various indicators have improved by about ten percentage points."

The other end of the phone fell silent for two seconds.

"Ten percent? One week?"

"One week."

Zhou Peide's breathing grew a beat heavier.

"...Then hurry up and send people over to me. No need for too many, start with five hundred. They must cover all positions: technical staff, logistics personnel, and those who have been to the battlefield. Scatter the ages, and include both genders. Five hundred samples are enough for the AI to run the first round."

Su Mingyuan signed the transfer order that very day.

Five hundred officers and soldiers returned to the Main World through the portal in batches and were directly sent to the laboratory at Tianmen Base.

The Root Bone detector looked inconspicuous.

It was a chair with two metal hemispheres welded onto the armrests, and behind the backrest was a host computer about the size of a suitcase.

Sit on it, place both hands on the metal spheres, close your eyes, and wait for thirty seconds.

The host buzzed for a while, and three sets of data popped up on the screen.

Meridian width.

Meridian wall permeability.

Acupoint node response speed.

One hundred points for each of the three items.

The first person to sit on it was a twenty-three-year-old signal soldier who had stayed in Yaowu World for eleven days.

The numbers that popped up on the screen were: 47, 52, 39, with a total score of 138.

Zhou Peide wrote it down without making any comments.

The second, thirty-one years old, an engineer, who had stayed for ten days: 61, 44, 55, total score 160.

The third, twenty-seven years old, a special operations team member, Nine Heavens: 78, 71, 82, total score 231.

Zhou Peide raised an eyebrow.

Five hundred people took two days to finish testing.

All the data was fed into Tianheng.

Zhou Peide sat in the main control room, looking at Tianheng's calculation progress bar on the screen.

It didn't take long for the AI to run the cluster analysis — five hundred samples, three dimensions, which was just an elementary school arithmetic problem for Tianheng.

The progress bar reached the end.

The screen refreshed.

A scatter plot filled the entire screen.

Five hundred points were distributed in three-dimensional space, automatically clustered into several distinct groups by the AI with different colors.

At the very bottom was a large gray cluster, accounting for nearly half.

In the middle were several blue, green, and yellow clusters with varying densities.

At the very top were a few scattered red dots, like the brightest stars in the night sky, far away from the other clusters.

Zhou Peide projected the scatter plot onto the big screen, surrounded by a circle of people behind him.

"The optimal classification scheme given by Tianheng is eight Ranks."

He pointed at the screen and counted from bottom to top, "I have given them code names according to convention, from low to high — F, D, C, B, A, S, SS, SSS."

The assistant was taking notes nearby, muttering: "It's just like game ratings."

Zhou Peide ignored him and continued.

"F Rank, total score 0 to 74. They account for 237 out of five hundred people, nearly half. The Meridians of these people basically have no reaction to Spiritual Qi; the pulses scatter as soon as they are hit in, just like pouring water into sand. They are not suitable to Cultivate."

His finger moved to the second cluster.

"D Rank, 75 to 114. Accounting for 198. There is a weak Spiritual Qi induction, but the efficiency is extremely low. If you practice hard, you can also feel a trace of Qi, but the speed is too slow to have practical significance."

"C Rank, 115 to 154. Thirty-five people. Can get started, can Cultivate, the progress is not fast, but it's viable. Most ordinary Martial Artists in Cang City should be in this tier."

"B Rank, 155 to 194. Twenty people. Good. The Spiritual Qi conduction efficiency is a step higher than C Rank, and the Cultivation speed is significantly faster."

"A Rank, 195 to 229. Eight people, excellent."

Zhou Peide's speech slowed down a little.

"For people in this tier, if they are equipped with optimized Cultivation Techniques and the Spiritual Qi environment of Yaowu World, the time to achieve a Breakthrough to the first Rank — I estimated it, is about one to two months."

Someone in the laboratory drew a sharp breath.

Martial Artists in Cang City took an average of three years to go from zero to the first Rank.

"S Rank, 230 to 259." Zhou Peide tapped the screen twice. "Out of five hundred people, two. Superior Root Bone. The Cultivation speed is fifteen to twenty times that of C Rank. Placed in a place like Cang City, this is a Genius seed that doesn't appear once in a century."

He paused.

"Going further up — SS Rank, 260 to 284."

Zhou Peide's finger pointed at the blank area above the scatter plot.

There was nothing.

"Zero."

No one spoke in the laboratory.

"SSS Rank, 285 to 300."

His finger moved up another section, to the very top of the scatter plot.

It was even emptier there.

"Also zero."

Zhou Peide turned around, faced everyone, and placed the laser pointer in his hand on the table.

"Let me do the math for you."

He walked to the front of the whiteboard and unscrewed the cap of the marker.

"Where were these five hundred people drawn from? The stationed troops in Yaowu World. What kind of people? Retired soldiers. What kind of retired soldiers? The first batch recruited, screened through physical examinations, whose physical fitness belongs to the top tier nationwide."

He wrote a line of text on the whiteboard: Sample Bias — Upward Shift.

"In other words, the average Root Bone level of these five hundred people was already higher than that of ordinary people. Under this premise, not even a single SS Rank appeared among five hundred people — think about it, what does this mean for how rare SS Rank is among the ordinary population?"

The assistant pressed the calculator a few times: "If the proportion of S Rank in the elite sample is two out of five hundred, converted to the ordinary population... there are probably hundreds of thousands of S Ranks nationwide. SS Rank..."

"SS Rank is zero in the elite sample," Zhou Peide finished for him. "Tianheng made an extrapolation model, estimating based on the tail probability of the existing data distribution — the proportion of SS Rank in the entire populace is approximately two to five in a million."

"Out of 1.4 billion people, probably a few thousand."

He wrote a number on the whiteboard: Approximately 3000-7000 people.