As the winding canal of Qujiang Pool in Chang'an drifted with the fragrance of ink, Moli's wolf-hair brush paused over an abacus-bead poetry paper. The abacus beads instantly bounced up to the tip of the brush, spelling out the character "Stop"—she had just written "The three major pharmacies are utterly unscrupulous," when the beads rolled into the character "Exquisite," changing "unscrupulous" to "beadless." "You rascals, pay attention!" she shook the poetry paper as the beads bounced into the character "Rumor" on a winding-cup wine vessel. "At today's poetry gathering, this princess shall make the abacus beads 'data poets'!"
Zhang Yifan walked over shaking his abacus-bead abacus, the beads bouncing between his sleeves to form the character "Number": "Moli, look here—" The beads leaped into the winding canal, actually arranging themselves on the water's surface into a "Medicine Price Comparison Chart," where the upper beads represented the pharmacies' prices and the lower beads represented Qingniu's prices. "Presenting data with abacus beads is much more intuitive than classical prose."
At 2:45 PM, as the poetry gathering was in full swing, a certain gifted scholar held up an abacus-bead poetry paper and exclaimed in surprise, "Qingniu Seven's medicinal efficacy is faster by thirty percent, and it can even be calculated with abacus beads!" The beads immediately jumped onto his paper, forming the character "Learn"—on the paper was drawn an abacus-bead stopwatch, annotated …
Chapter 190