Repeated application of narcissistic function

Question

Over on Code Golf.SE, I've asked this challenge about the looping behaviour of a function related to narcissistic numbers. In the question, I define the function as, for a natural number $x = d_1d_2...d_n$ where $d_i$ is a single digit between $0$ and $9$ and $x$ has $n$ digits:

$$f(x) = \sum_{i=1}^n d_i^n$$

In this case, a number is narcissistic if it is a fixed point of $f(x)$ i.e. $f(x) = x$. However, the question is about repeated application of this function. For example, repeatedly applying $f$ to $x = 127$ leads to the following chain of numbers:

$$127,352,160,217,352,160,217,...$$

and the triplet $352, 160, 217$ repeats ad infinitum from here. I have two hypotheses which I believe to be correct but have no idea how to prove:

1. For all natural numbers $x > 0$, repeated application of $f$ eventually leads to a repeating loop (counting a fixed point as a "loop" of 1 element).
2. The length of this loop is always less than or equal to $14$. For example, $x = 147$ is the lowest number that yields $14$, with a loop of

$$537059, 681069, 886898, 1626673, 1665667, 2021413, 18829, 124618, 312962, 578955, 958109, 1340652, 376761, 329340$$

My brute forcing attempts have shown that this is true for all $x < 10^5$, and is currently (at time or writing) at around $x = 64000$ without having found a counter example to either hypothesis.

This is a program which takes an input $x$ and outputs the repeated application of $f$ to $x$ until a repeated value is found, the loop of $x$ and the length of said loop, if you'd like to test out some other numbers.

Answer 1

After checking (hopefully) all possibilities, for number bases 3 to 10, I have found the following loops:

Base-3: https://pastebin.com/H6pZtJC1

Base-4: https://pastebin.com/rK7LVnZB

Base-5: https://pastebin.com/XYTXuA4k

Base-6: https://pastebin.com/vFL1hdjs

Base-7: https://pastebin.com/75g0bWP0

Base-8: https://pastebin.com/2MTqi6q5

Base-9: https://pastebin.com/055Kw8dC

Base-10: https://pastebin.com/8extqeGy

Count of narcissistic loops in
different number bases:

                          Base
        3  4  5  6  7  8  9 10
    + ------------------------
  1 |   6 12 18 31 60 63 59 89
  2 |   -  -  2  6 17 11 14 16
  3 |   -  -  -  -  7  4 11  7
  4 |   -  -  1  2  6  5  8  5
  5 |   -  -  -  1  -  1  5  4
  6 |   -  -  1  1  3  2  1  5
  7 |   -  -  -  -  2  2  2  3
  8 |   -  -  -  -  2  -  1  -
  9 |   -  -  -  -  2  -  -  2
 10 |   -  -  -  -  -  1  -  2
 11 |   -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -
 12 |   -  -  -  -  -  -  1  2
 13 |   -  -  -  -  -  1  -  1
 14 |   -  -  -  -  -  -  -  2
 15 |   -  -  -  -  -  1  -  -
 16 |   -  -  -  -  -  -  1  -
 17 |   -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -
 18 |   -  -  -  -  -  -  -  1
 19 |   -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -
 ...| 
 31 |   -  -  -  -  1  -  -  -
  ^ Loop length

The largest singleton is in base-10:

$115132219018763992565095597973971522401=1^{39}+1^{39}+5^{39}+1^{39}+3^{39}+2^{39}+2^{39}+1^{39}+9^{39}+0^{39}+1^{39}+8^{39}+7^{39}+6^{39}+3^{39}+9^{39}+9^{39}+2^{39}+5^{39}+6^{39}+5^{39}+0^{39}+9^{39}+5^{39}+5^{39}+9^{39}+7^{39}+9^{39}+7^{39}+3^{39}+9^{39}+7^{39}+1^{39}+5^{39}+2^{39}+2^{39}+4^{39}+0^{39}+1^{39}$

Here's the loop of 18 in base-10:

10074069541108119620821,18935428129475061827932,28415252997720554102092,
27233895488449729771663,28470768372157693427350,10181976920394277400584,
27852314084047558510219,10688610940325001073897,19553092616993382187366,
36662895609794210663524,27211241280778321507795,10180397389391156436853,
28388673910517178592951,29032929335610790615729,44371031395529147765128,
18399103996082548276483,37841895989779904859691,64484670033935168320603

Here's the loop of 31 in base-7:

105343,115515,253446,414526,412436,321136,260316,541235,210236,255345,
303626,543325,212326,255466,1044166,5015551,2441041,263452,400006,300652,
351614,366436,1144156,3215311,462622,554356,556516,1122466,4620541,3215551,
2004031