This was a tough chapter for me to translate. Also, there's a lot of pseudoscience in this book. I don't think it's necessary, but I'd just like to put out a disclaimer that this is a work of fiction, don't take any of the science/pseudoscience in this book too seriously. Yes, I know I had that Chapter 10 rant...
Huang Ji had already returned to the bookstore below the apartment before dinner.
When Zheng Xuan came down to find him, he had already picked out a dozen books he wanted to buy. Technical Drawing and The Fundamentals of Machinery were both foundational knowledge that he needed to have a firm grasp of. Materials Science and Technology was something he had to study because all machine components were made of raw materials. Fundamentals of Mechanics was also very important. The design of mechanical products had to conform to the basic principles of mechanics. Even though he'd learnt a bit of physics in middle school, that bit of knowledge barely scratched the surface of what he need to know.
In his thirst for knowledge, Huang Ji also bought a book titled Fundamentals of Mechanical Design. Finally, based on the salesman's recommendation, the last book he bought was Fundamentals of Electrical and Electronic Engineering. The machines of modern society were inseparable from electricity. To study machinery, he had to study electricity.
"What have we got here? Starting to study by yourself already? This stuff will all be taught once you enter the school. There's no need to buy them now." Zheng Xuan chuckled as he looked over Huang Ji's list of books.
Huang Ji answered woodenly, "But they're pretty interesting."
Zheng Xuan shrugged his shoulders and paid the bill. Huang Ji's grandfather had prepared a large sum of money for Huang Ji's stay in the city. It was all placed with Zheng Xuan and Fan Lingli for safekeeping. As a result, Zheng Xuan simply paid for whatever Huang Ji wanted to buy with that money.
The two of them returned to the apartment and had dinner. Once they were finished, Huang Ji promptly returned to his room to read. Zheng Xuan was content with how well-behaved he was and delved into his coding in his own room.
At his apartment, Huang Ji was flipping through the pages of a book.
For him, learning was a joy, not a chore. To begin with, he had to
increase his level of knowledge to improve his control over his ability.
This was simultaneously the basis for his plan to solve Earth's
predicament, resulting in Huang Ji's passion for learning. He was never able to properly study in school. Now that his intelligence had finally recovered, his thirst for knowledge could not be quenched.
The other reason he enjoyed learning was due to the impeccable memory that data perception bestowed him. It couldn't even be called memory anymore, you could say that the universe was helping him record everything! Anything he'd every witnessed, even if he forgot, his "Personal Data" wouldn't.
As long as he was clear of mind, he could search his own personal data. Details that he hadn't even noticed or remembered at the time would be as clear to him as watching a movie when he went back to search his memories. It was like having photographic memory, but even clearer and more stable. Even if he lost his memories and his mind was completely empty, his experiences wouldn't disappear. His personal data record, stored in whatever unknown form, would always exist...
Since his passion for learning and his memory were all perfect, all that was left was his comprehension ability. In this regard, Huang Ji was just a normal person. His comprehension and intelligence were only slightly above average. On the other hand, his ability to utilize the knowledge he'd acquired couldn't even be compared to a normal person.
An example of this was him grasping
the concept of gravity. He understood the difference between 1000 grams
and one kilogram, or more accurately, one kilogram-force; one was a measure of mass, while the other was a
measure of weight. With this concept in mind, he didn't even need to now the formula--Force=mass x gravity--to unlock a completely new piece of information, Gravitational Force.
With one look at a closet, Huang Ji could directly see that it was experiencing 2905.251...newtons of gravitational force. If the closet was moved, the gravitational force it experienced would also be different. While it would only be an extremely negligible change, a difference was a difference. This decimal change in force would be clearly reflected in the data Huang Ji perceived. His eyes had become an ultra precise scale!
Earth's surface gravity was commonly expressed simply as 9.8 m/s2, at times it was even rounded roughly to 10. However, once Huang Ji had unlocked the concept of gravity, the result that he saw wasn't a simple multiple of 10 or 9.8, it was the precise gravitational force that object was experiencing at that exact moment!
Data perception wasn't a calculator or computer. The answer that he perceived was different from an answer calculated by pen and paper! What he saw was the raw, unfiltered data that was accurate up to the nth unknown decimal place!
The gravitational force he experienced while standing on his bed, or while standing on the ground, at his head, at his waist...this was all clear as day to Huang Ji.
Other than that, he had also unlocked related information such as weight and the speed of gravitational acceleration at different regions. Regardless of where Huang Ji was, whether he was on the ground or in the air, at the South Pole or the Equator, he would be able to provide data of the utmost precision on even the slightest shifts in gravity.
Of course, gravitational data wasn't the main point. With such an accurate and unbiased tool to provide support, Huang Ji was, as a matter of fact, the worlds most powerful detector and formula tester.
Was a formula wrong? Was the current theory incomplete? Was there an error in any scientific constants? All Huang Ji had to do was grasp the relevant knowledge, and as long as he was on the right track or there was no problem with the underlying knowledge, he would be able to unlock the true answer.
When he studied, he would never walk away empty handed. When he studied, he could immediately put to use the knowledge he'd acquired.
This greatly improved Huang Ji's
comprehension ability, giving him a deeper understanding of gravity and
providing him with an incredibly sound foundation. Then, when he went on to
study more advanced knowledge, the entire process would be as smooth as
butter, allowing him to achieve twice the results with half the effort.
These factors culminated in the acceleration of his learning speed. Starting from the very beginning and steadily acquiring knowledge, once Huang Ji had acquired a sufficient foundation, his learning speed would accelerate and he would shoot up towards an extremely advanced and sophisticated realm of knowledge.
In the quiet night, all that remained in Huang Ji's room was the sound of turning pages.
Word problems? Test questions? These were all completely meaningless to him. Huang Ji simply took breaks from time to time, standing up to stare at the distance and admire the Moon, or walking around in his room and perceiving the objects around him.
As he continued to consolidate the basics, this knowledge would truly belong to him once he fully grasped it. Learning to apply the knowledge, and then using that knowledge to further improve his studying. Like this, Huang Ji immersed himself in the sea of knowledge.
……
The next morning, while Zheng Xuan had yet to wake up, Huang Ji secretly used his own money to buy more books. They were mainly related to medicine and other basic knowledge.
Physiology, Medical Microbiology, Human Parasitology, Medical Immunology, Advanced Mathematics in Medicine, Medical Physics, Fundamentals of Chemistry, Organic Chemistry, Medical Biology, Systemic Anatomy, Topographic Anatomy, Histology and Embryology...
Besides modern medicine, Huang Ji had
also set his sights on traditional Chinese medicine. He'd heard his
grandfather mention before that Chinese medicine had methods to cure
illnesses which Western medicine couldn't. As a result, he also bought books such as: Acupoints and Meridians of the Human Body, Fundamental Theory of Chinese Medicine, Science of Chinese Pharmacology...
These books were extremely expensive. In total, they costed Huang Ji 100 thousand RMB. But this was all a necessary expense; all to study medicine, to cure his grandfather, and to strength his body. Huang Ji really did not care about money. From the bottom of his heart, he believed that any knowledge that could be bought with cash was a great bargain.
In this manner, Huang Ji caught up on his mechanical engineering and mathematics during the day while studying medicine and the human body at night. He did this to avoid Zheng Xuan finding out and asking questions.
With the growth of his fundamental knowledge and grasp of numerous concepts, he unlocked a plethora of new information. Everyday he immersed himself in this data, but the majority of his attention was focused on the data of the human body. The more he learned, the more he realized how much had yet to be discovered.
"Meridians...acupoints...they're just the tip of the iceberg of junctions in the human body."
After a deep dive, Huang Ji soon knew all of the acupoints in the human body like the back of his hand. He could easily identify the acupoint locations on other people without any error. It was all clearly labelled in his eyes.
Many of the junctions that he'd found while fighting the kidnappers now had names attached to them; they were all acupoints. But the majority of them were still unnamed. Without a question, these were all feedback points that had yet to be discovered. The 409 acupoints in Chinese medicine only made up half of them.
As for meridians, their role was to connect certain feedback points that were related to the internal organs and hidden within the body. Chinese medicine hadn't found very many, only coming up with the 12 major meridians, the 15 collaterals, and the 8 extraordinary meridians.
"I can sense that the remaining feedback points can connect to form nine more meridians, plus a dozen other collateral branches. This meridian is the easiest to identify. These few dozen unnamed acupoints are all related to the internal organs, but they haven't been discovered yet by Chinese medicine. It should belong to the major meridians, but positions of ten of the acupoints are constantly shifting around; that's why nobody's every been able to identify it."
The twelve major meridians were all related to the internal organs. With his basic knowledge of medical theory, Huang Ji was able use the existing theory of meridians to rapidly idenitfy a hidden meridian from the remaining feedback points connected to the internal organs.
Different from the twelve major meridians, this hidden meridian had nothing to do with the circulation of blood and vital energy. Otherwise, it would have already been discovered by some famous doctor. Instead, it was a hidden meridian that linked, or maybe even commanded the other twelve major meridians. Its primary function was the transmission of electrochemical signals and neurotransmitters to and from the internal organs.
What did this mean? It meant that this meridian was responsible for the communication between the internal organs and the brain! The human heart, intestines, and other organs were all capable of affecting the brain's judgements, and even a person's personality and emotions. They had a constant effect on the production of neurotransmitters that affected the brain such as serotonin and endorphins.
On the other hand, the brain also controlled all of the organs in the body. The problem was, the electrochemical signals were too complicated. Therefore, the human conscious was unaware of this process. It was all controlled by the brain in the background, our so-called natural response, always manipulating our organs.
This hidden meridian was the pipline that connected the brain with the heart and intestines, along with the diverse ecosystem of bacteria and microorganisms in our bodies. The feedbacks points--or the hidden acupoints--that it involved, were the valves.
If the twelve major meridians were responsible for the circulation of blood and vital energy, then this hidden meridian was responsible for the transmission of neurotransmitters. The communication between the brain and the internal organs such as the heart and intestines all relied on this meridian.
For example, the stimulation of one of the hidden acupoints could affect a person's appetite, causing them to not want to eat and making all food seem tasteless. This was the result of neurotransmitters affecting the brain's judgement, causing an anorexic reaction.
On the flip side, with the combination of other acupoints on the same meridian, it could instead increase appetite. The principle behind it was simply the increase or decrease in hormonal concentrations. It was the result of the intestines influencing the brain and affecting mood and desire.
In a reverse manner, adjustments in the neural signals sent by the brain to the intestines would result in a physiological change! If the brain sent a signal to the intestinal tract, the hormones secreted would alter the microbial environment of the intestines, thus affecting the bacteria within. It was equivalent to a flood washing over a forest. A change in the forest's ecosystem would be inevitable.
The change in bacteria would directly affect the digestive power of the intestines. Decreased digestive power would result in a person rapidly slimming down. If a person's digestive ability collapsed, that person might be starved to death by their own belly...unless they were being kept alive by glucose injections.
By the same principle, adjusting a person's dietary preferences and accelerating their digestive ability were also achievable feats. In theory, with the right method, he could stimulate the intestinal tract to go from being a small workshop to a high-powered furnace, accelerating the digestion of food to extraordinary speeds.
And this was just the feedback points related to the intestines. The heart, kidney, and liver all had their own applications. Together, they could rapidly strengthen and stimulate all sorts of bodily functions such as: oxygen supply, blood supply, detoxification, blood production, the immune system, reproduction...humoral regulation, body temperature regulation, blood pressure regulation...
The main distinction between a top athlete and a normal person wasn't their muscles, it was their internal organs. Obviously their muscles played a role, but that was just an minor factor. The internal organs were what truly mattered.
If the muscles were able to develop without any constraints, not only would that not make a person stronger, they would instead increase the burden on the human body. Upgrading a machine didn't mean cramming its case full to the brim. It was about upgrading its power and computing system. Inner strength was what made a person truly powerful.
The very first hidden meridian that Huang Ji identified was a platform for controlling the functions of the internal organs. The so-called twelve major meridians were merely its supporting branches. And in these thousands of years, not a single doctor had discovered it. Huang Ji was the first.
"The problem now is, how do I coordinate and control them? Do I have to stab myself with needles every time?"
......
Thanks for the chapter!
ReplyDeleteI hope Huang Ji doesn't get in trouble/problems wrong by using his ultra precise answers to physics problems...(• ▽ •;)
He probably knows better, right?
And why was my first thought of Huang Ji finding that neurotransmitter meridian, "oh, he can kill people by cutting the connection to the heart".
I've been reading too many dark/revenge novels lately... Huang Ji is too pure lol