The jade abacus has seen wide usage among both the government and common folks in general.
I once asked a diviner who used to work for the Divination Commission this question — "What exactly is this Matrix of Prescience Ultima?"
"It's nothing special, to be honest. Just countless jade abaci linked together to form a matrix." the former diviner replied.
"It's nothing special, to be honest." This sentence has a showiness that could be considered revolting by outworlders. But my time on the Xianzhou ship allowed me to know that this diviner is telling the truth. Looking at the jade pendants and bracelets the people of Xianzhou wear, I can tell that their gorgeous jade jewelry is just the civilian version of jade abaci.
And based on my observations, these jade abaci that are in the form of jewelry have a powerful level of performance that is on par with any other commonly available personal computer.
I am not an expert in computer science, and so I sent some jade abaci over to a colleague in the Intelligentsia Guild who specializes in that field. Later, they sent me a response, "Todd, all I see are some pieces of jade. Where are those computers you were talking about?" If I knew, then I wouldn't have needed to bother him.
After doing some investigating, he finally unearthed the secret of the jade abacus. In principle, the jade abacus is a type of crystal computer.
If you were to take apart a jade abacus and do a close inspection, you would find that there are lines similar to semiconductor chips. This kind of technique is known as "carving" in Xianzhou. Even though we found the lines carved into the jade contained executable programs, my colleague at the Intelligentsia Guild could not find any signals being transmitted.
This is what he said:
"I have seen many liquid-based and even gas-based computers that simply lack the structure that computers are supposed to have. But they are capable of performing powerful computations at scale because liquids and gases have a relatively flexible molecular structure, meaning they can be translocated in any way by design. I haven't discovered any similar physical properties in the structure of this jade ore. It is as if this jade was just a dumb rock that has suddenly been transformed into something heavenly by the forces of nature."
My colleague was more than eager to continue dissecting the jade's structure, but I had a new stroke of inspiration. Since we cannot find any components that are supplying computing power, then that must mean the jade abacus is incomplete. It needs other elements to become whole.
With this revelation, I made a wild guess (I just realized that I love using the phrase "wild guess")... The jade abacus itself is a certain type of quantum communication component. There was a force that existed among the tens of millions of jade abaci throughout the Xianzhou Alliance. The question is, what is supplying the computing power to all these jade abaci with?
Perhaps there are many people who don't know that mammalian brains are one of the universe's most perfect computers. Herta of the Genius Society has a powerful brain with computing abilities that are only limited by the blob of proteins between her ears. She can't advance beyond the constraints of her hardware.
But if there were a way that millions of brains could be linked together to create a complex and refined communications network like a nervous system that stretched across space, it would allow the intelligence and knowledge of those millions of people to converge together like surging rivers rushing out to sea. These millions of minds linked together would not just mean millions of minds' worth of information stored on this neural network. It would also mean that there is computing power that is at a level equal to the combined power of all these brains. A thought that once was a ripple on a lake would now be an enormous wave, every single drop of which contains hundreds of millions of synapses, releasing electronic currents and transmitting information, observations, memories, calculations...
Yes. I believe that Xianzhou utilizes jade abaci to directly link people together. They use this kind of method to observe all of Xianzhou and record every creation. They can even calculate every moment in history. Everything is clear to them. In other words, the jade abacus isn't a kind of crystal computer. Rather, it is a type of bio-quantum computer.
After my Intelligentsia Guild colleague from the computer science field heard my conjecture, he burst into laughter, like I was some kind of brainless reptile. I just hope that he can ultimately unearth the secrets of this technology... If bio-quantum computers could be applied to the Intelligentsia Guild, then this massive academic association would become a single scholar whose wisdom would be worthy of an audience with the Erudition of the Aeons.
The Intelligentsia Guild has always believed that "All knowledge must flow like currency." This would be the most efficient way to make that happen.