And now it is time to return to the other side.  What a conversation that was; she can tell Diamant's head is spinning as much as hers.

Thier return to thier rooms is uneventful - they meet a few wandering family members or retainers who congratulate them, but nobody has anything substantial to keep them from returning to contemplate or rest (or waste the rest of the night tinkering, if the mood has taken them).

They are starting to cultivate properly tomorrow, and no sooner.  She's putting her foot down about it.  Yes, Diamant, it is exciting; qi deviations are not exciting, they are dangerous.  They can skim the texts tonight; that is all.

Diamant can finish her equation/graphy plotty thing, though.

Mmhmm; alright, she'll take the distraction with grace.

X: t-factor: (time saved/duration * 1/avg.-recurrence-period)

Y: work-factor: -log(time-to-learn)

Z: cost-factor: meridians (new required?) * expected resource expenditure

A: effort-factor: effect-out/effort-in.

There we go, a nicely plottable measurement of technique efficiency!

As long as she cares to do the calculations by hand to plot, sure. Or she could go bother one of the house accountants about it, several of them are high enough in realm to be able to just run spreadsheeting software on thier brains.

Whether she attempts to do so, or sleeps properly, or some combination of both, dawn will arrive in a flash, the sun setting the entire mirror-strewn landscape aglitter. 

Or think about how to artifice it!  She doesn't actually have the data for it, anyway.

But she does, eventually, sleep.

Ophelia spent the evening blocking out a schedule of cultivation based on her manual, and cajoles Diamant into filling out an equivalent one - not in more detail than "time, task, location", so as to avoid breaching the strictures laid upon them, but enough that the sisters will know where their twins are and the sorts of things they are doing.

And meet for meals, Diamant.

Sure; she's going to run this not-an-equation-really over to the big number-heads and see what they think of it as a way to categorize things?  But then she'll come down to breakfast!