Enter the Immortal Cultivation

Ai Qinglan finally stopped laughing, but Wang Qi lowered his head in embarrassment, secretly thinking that he had made the mistake of empiricism again. He took it too much for granted and really lacked the qualities that a scientist should have.

In other words, the fundamental mechanism of biological aging still lies in the organism itself?

"However, the weakening of the life fire and the decay of the soul indeed proceed with aging..."

Seeing that Wang Qi was still confused, Ai Qinglan waved her fingers and said: "I have also studied this in Tianling Ridge. Taking the human race as an example, the 'life fire' thing is created after the fetus has a heartbeat, which is the first time the mother is pregnant. It only appears after eight weeks, and the soul appears when the brain is formed and disappears after six months. The process of "aging" exists before fertilization. You have to understand the cause and effect first. After there is life, there is life fire, but because life fire exists, people have life.”

Wang Qi pondered. Reiki is an index of energy that automatically converges into an orderly and complex system. Life happens to be a highly ordered complex system, so people have innate power, life fire, and soul... Therefore, the mystery of aging should still be found in the physical body...

Free radicals, somatic cell mutations, natural connections of biomolecules, and telomeres are all hypotheses that exist on the earth. Wang Qi knows a thing or two about them as common sense, and he also has a certain understanding of their advantages and disadvantages.

Neither the two hypotheses of free radicals nor the natural connection of biomolecules can be regarded as the fundamental mechanism of aging, but Ai Qinglan clearly pointed out that it is an acceleration mechanism. I am afraid there is another mystery...

The main problem that cannot be solved by somatic cell mutations is that the mutation rate of human cells is actually very low. Even if it accumulates for hundreds of years, it will not cause mass death of cell groups or rejection reactions in the body...

As for telomeres, they can be regarded as the "restrictors" of chromosomes. Comparing chromosomes to three thousand blue hairs, telomeres are the hair ropes that tie them into a ponytail. When telomeres are exhausted, chromosomes collapse and cells undergo apoptosis. It is worth mentioning that telomere loss is reversible and can be replenished by telomerase. This is also the most promising method of immortality studied by earth scientists. If "immortality" means strong secretion of telomerase, it makes sense, but...

Moreover, the secret method of burning longevity does exist. Generating a large amount of free radicals in the body or promoting bloodline mutations in one breath will not bring strength but will consume mana. In this regard, the telomere theory is more reliable...but burning telomeres and telomerase? This is ridiculous!

Flesh body...burning longevity...

Seeing that Wang Qi was silent for a long time, Ai Qinglan shook her head: "Friendly reminder from senior sister! You have to find this from the system."

system?

Wang Qi frowned, quickly calculating countless possibilities, and then rejected them one by one. Suddenly, an idea flashed in his mind: "Entropy?"

"That's right! It's entropy!" Ai Qinglan clapped her hands: "Life is a system, and what is the bottom layer of this system? It is the continuation of blood! And in the process of cell division, what role does blood play? We are discussing blood What are you talking about?"

Without waiting for Wang Qi to answer, Ai Qinglan said herself: "Editing, proofreading, transcription, redundancy."

edit! Proofread! Transcribe! redundancy! These are undoubtedly means of processing information.

However, once biology reaches the microscopic level,

"What is really related to longevity is the 'redundant' part. You should know that among human bloodlines, there are many bloodline roots that are meaningless and do not show characteristics."

"But the meaning of redundancy is..." Ai Qinglan paused here for a moment, trying to get away with it, but Wang Qi, as if talking in a dream, said the correct answer: "Error tolerance..."

Redundancy represents the fault tolerance rate of mutations.

"Biological" organisms such as viruses, which are barely living things, have very simple genetic material and little tolerance for mutations, so new varieties can emerge every few years. The more advanced the animal, the higher the tolerance rate of genetic material to mutations.

The fault tolerance rate represents

Um? Wang Qi discovered another blind spot: "So, under the same aura conditions, the longevity of the human race should be much longer than that of other races..."

Ai Qinglan explained: "There is also metabolism. 'System redundancy' only determines the basic life span, and the speed of consuming life span is determined by metabolism."

Assume that the human race has a lifespan of a hundred years and consumes one year of life every year. If there is a turtle demon whose innate lifespan is only one-fifth of the human race, but its metabolic rate is only one-twentieth of the human race, then it can live for four hundred years.

"And let me remind you again, the definition of metabolism is the exchange of matter and energy between the body and the external environment and the self-renewal process of matter and energy in the organism. This is the process of exchange and absorption of the isolated system of the 'flesh' with the outside world. , is also the process of internal consumption of the physical body..."

"It's both a decrease in entropy and an increase in entropy!" Wang Qi drew inferences and immediately answered.

Yes, why have I forgotten the theorem "life is a negative entropy phenomenon"?

Entropy is a quantity that expresses the degree of disorder of a system. The increase of entropy is the process of the system moving from order to disorder.

After generalizing this law, which the Earth calls the second law of thermodynamics and China calls it the third law of Fentian, one can easily conclude that in an isolated system, entropy increases inevitably.

The universe is the largest isolated system. In other words, this is the ultimate theorem that reveals how the universe dies.

If the universe is like this, how can anything in the universe be spared? However, there is a phenomenon that can partially resist this trend.

That's life.

The human body is a complex system, and every respiration of every cell increases the entropy of the system. The act of "living" is to offset the increase in entropy of the body. When the amount of entropy causes the body's system to become disordered, people will die.

Therefore, from the perspective of physics and system theory, the essence of aging is entropy increase.

"I understand...Senior Sister Ai, the possible theories you mentioned will lead to an increase in the disorder of the 'human body' system!" Wang Qi finally figured it out, clapped his hands and laughed.

Free radicals damage the cells themselves, somatic mutations are the accumulation of random errors in cell replication, telomere depletion is the loss of chromosome constraints... these can all be regarded as disordered regions in order!

Ai Qinglan nodded: "Yes, you learn quickly! Then, we can move on to the next question - why does the life span of monks increase?"

"A monk's lifespan will increase because he has an extra system in his body - a system gained through practice."

"This system is directly connected to your 'life'. Because of this system, your body has a higher fault tolerance, which increases your innate longevity; on the other hand, every person who practices law must communicate with heaven and earth. , exchanging spiritual power, which makes our 'body' a more open system, counteracting the increase in entropy - which is equivalent to slowing down metabolism in disguise!

Wang Qi nodded to express his understanding. The so-called "health maintenance" method is to reduce physical damage through a series of means to achieve the purpose of slowing down metabolism.

"In other words, the principle of immortality is actually to make the body a completely open system, to achieve the level of 'union between man and nature', and to live as long as heaven?"

Entropy increase only makes sense in an isolated system, and becoming an open system can avoid physical death.

"Yes, that's it." Ai Qinglan nodded and said: "As for the secret method of burning longevity, it does not act on the physical body, but on the mana system - annihilating the 'sequence' of mana in the body in exchange for powerful power. On the other hand, if the entropy value of your mana system is too high, it will in turn reduce your innate lifespan."

Wang Qi asked: "But...why does the 'Prologue' of Annihilation generate power? It feels a bit unreasonable."

Ai Qinglan spread her hands: "God knows. Just to come to this conclusion, our Tianling Mountains have given signs to more than 4,000 volunteers. On average, each person burned fifteen years of life yuan using the secret method of burning life yuan, and a total of six years of life yuan were burned. Do you know that Tianlingling almost sold part of the sect’s residence in order to get the elixir to make up for the 60,000-year life span?”