Hidden Meridians

Before dinner, Huang Ji had already made it back to the bookstore beneath the apartment building.

By the time Zheng Xuan came downstairs to find him, he had picked out more than a dozen books he wanted to buy.

Mechanical Drawing and Mechanical Basics covered the most fundamental knowledge. He had to master them.

Materials and Metal Technology was essential too. Every mechanical component was made of materials, so he had no choice but to study it.

Mechanics basics were also important. Mechanical products had to be designed in accordance with the fundamental principles of mechanics. Although he had learned a little physics in middle school, that knowledge was far too rudimentary. Hungry for knowledge, Huang Ji also bought Mechanical Design Basics.

Finally, machinery and electricity were inseparable in modern society. To study machinery, he had to study electricity too. On the sales assistant's recommendation, Huang Ji bought Electrical and Electronic Basics as well.

"Well, look at you, already planning to teach yourself? They'll teach you all this once you're in school. There's no need to buy these now." Zheng Xuan looked over Huang Ji's book list and smiled.

"But they're pretty interesting," Huang Ji said blankly.

"..." Zheng Xuan shrugged and paid.

When they brought Huang Ji into the city, his grandfather had given them a substantial amount of money to hold on his behalf.

So whatever Huang Ji wanted, Zheng Xuan simply bought it for him.

The two went upstairs and ate. Then Huang Ji returned to his room to read. Happy that he was so well behaved, Zheng Xuan buried himself in coding in his own room.

Rustle, rustle... Huang Ji turned the pages.

Learning had become a pleasure for Huang Ji.

First, he had to expand his knowledge to gain greater control over his ability.

That was also the foundation for breaking through Earth's predicament, so his enthusiasm for studying was immense.

He had never properly studied in his life. Now that his intelligence was finally normal, he was ravenous for knowledge.

Second, with his Information Sense, his memory was unbeatable.

It could no longer even be called memory. It was "the universe keeping records for him"!

Even if he himself forgot something he had seen, his "personal information" would not.

As long as his mind was clear, he could search his personal information. Even details he had neither noticed nor remembered at the time were as clear as a movie when he reviewed them afterward.

It was like photographic memory, only even more stable and clear.

Even if Huang Ji lost his memory and his mind went completely blank, nothing he had seen or heard could disappear. Those information records, stored in some unknown place beyond his understanding, would always objectively exist...

His enthusiasm and memory were not problems. That left his ability to comprehend.

In that respect, Huang Ji was merely an ordinary person, with above-average intelligence and aptitude.

However, his ability to put what he learned into practice far surpassed everyone else's.

For example, he understood the concept of gravitational force. He knew that a kilogram of mass and a kilogram of weight were different: one measured mass, the other weight.

Once he grasped that concept, he could unlock an entirely new piece of information—gravitational force data—even without the formula G = mg.

With a glance at the wardrobe, Huang Ji immediately perceived that the gravitational force acting on it was "2905.251... N."

If he moved the wardrobe somewhere else, then, sure enough, the gravitational force changed.

The difference might be minuscule, but a change was a change. The value Huang Ji perceived would visibly shift, even if only in its decimal places.

An ultraprecise observational eye!

People generally recorded gravitational acceleration at Earth's surface as 9.8. Sometimes, they even rounded it to 10.

Yet after Huang Ji unlocked this concept, the result he received was not simply something multiplied by 10 or 9.8. It was the actual gravitational force acting on that object at that precise moment!

Information Sense was not a computer. The answers he perceived were different from answers calculated with pen and paper!

Real information, utterly true and free of falsehood!

Superbly objective information, precise to who knew how many decimal places.

He knew exactly what gravitational force acted on him while he stood on the bed or the floor, how much acted on his head, how much acted on his waist...

He also unlocked the corresponding values for "weight," as well as gravitational acceleration in different regions...

Wherever Huang Ji went, underground or in the sky, at the North Pole or the equator, he could provide extraordinarily detailed data for even the slightest difference in gravity.

Of course, gravitational force data was not the point.

The point was that, with such precise objective facts available to test things against, Huang Ji was effectively the world's most powerful detector, doubling as a formula-verification machine.

Was a formula correct? Were existing theories complete? Did the constants provided by the scientific community contain errors? As long as he understood the relevant knowledge, and its direction—or rather, its foundations—was sound, Huang Ji could unlock the true answer.

Learning brought immediate rewards. Learning could immediately be put to use.

This greatly strengthened Huang Ji's comprehension, deepening his understanding of gravity and giving him an incredibly solid foundation.

When he then returned to studying more advanced knowledge, he achieved twice the results with half the effort. Everything flowed smoothly, like water pouring down from a great height.

As a result, his learning speed kept accelerating.

Starting with the fundamentals and advancing step by step, once Huang Ji acquired enough basic knowledge, he would accelerate into fields of extraordinarily advanced, cutting-edge knowledge.

Late into the quiet night, the only sound in the room was Huang Ji turning pages.

Word problems? Test papers? Those things were meaningless. After studying for a while, Huang Ji would get up to gaze into the distance, admire the moon, or walk around the room and perceive the objects around him.

In this way, he constantly reinforced his basic knowledge. Once he learned something, it truly became his.

He put learning into practice, then used practice to support his learning.

Huang Ji immersed himself wholeheartedly in an ocean of knowledge.

Early the next morning, before Zheng Xuan got out of bed, Huang Ji secretly went out and bought more books with his own money.

Most were medical books, along with some covering fundamental subjects.

Physiology, Medical Microbiology, Human Parasitology, Medical Immunology, Medical Higher Mathematics, Medical Physics, Basic Chemistry, Organic Chemistry, Medical Biology, Systemic Anatomy, Regional Anatomy, Histology and Embryology...

Besides modern medicine, Huang Ji had also taken an interest in traditional Chinese medicine. His grandfather had told him that it could treat some illnesses Western medicine could not.

So he specifically sought out Human Acupoints and Meridians, Basic Theory of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Traditional Chinese Medicine...

Some of these books were particularly expensive. Altogether, Huang Ji spent a hundred thousand yuan.

But to study medicine, cure his grandfather, and make himself stronger, these were necessary expenses.

Deep down, Huang Ji did not care about money at all. As far as he was concerned, being able to buy knowledge with money was an incredible bargain.

And so Huang Ji crammed mechanical engineering, mathematics, physics, and chemistry during the day, then studied medicine and the human body at night, lest Zheng Xuan notice and ask too many questions.

As his basic knowledge grew and he understood more concepts, he unlocked a great deal more information.

He immersed himself in this information every day, though he devoted most of his energy to information about the human body.

The more Huang Ji learned, the more unknowns he discovered.

Meridians... acupoints... they're only the tip of the iceberg of the body's nodes.

After studying the subject in depth, Huang Ji soon knew the locations of the body's acupoints like the back of his hand.

He could easily see the locations of other people's acupoints, without the slightest possibility of error. Every one was clearly marked.

Many of the nodes he had searched out when defeating the kidnappers now displayed names. They were acupoints.

But even more remained unnamed.

Without a doubt, these were feedback points in the human body that no one had discovered yet.

The 409 acupoints of traditional Chinese medicine accounted for only half of them.

Meridians, meanwhile, connected some of the feedback points hidden inside the body that were associated with the internal organs. Traditional Chinese medicine had identified relatively few: only the twelve principal meridians, fifteen collateral meridians, and eight extraordinary meridians.

I feel like the remaining feedback points could form another nine meridians, plus fifteen or twenty branching channels.

This one is the easiest to distinguish. These dozens of unnamed acupoints are all connected to the internal organs, yet traditional Chinese medicine has never discovered them.

This should be a principal meridian. It's just that ten of its acupoints constantly change position, so no one throughout history has managed to map it out.

The twelve principal meridians were all associated with the internal organs, and Huang Ji had already learned some basic medical principles.

Using existing meridian theory as a model, Huang Ji quickly mapped out a hidden meridian from the remaining feedback points associated with the internal organs.

Unlike the twelve principal meridians, this hidden meridian did not involve the circulation of qi and blood. If it did, some renowned physician would surely have discovered it long ago.

It was a hidden meridian that influenced, and even governed, the other twelve principal meridians. Its primary role was transmitting neural electrochemical signals through the internal organs.

What did that mean? It meant this meridian managed communication between the "internal organs" and the "brain"!

The human heart, intestines, and other internal organs could influence the brain's judgment, and even personality and emotions.

They constantly affected neurotransmitters such as serotonin and endorphins in the brain, raising or lowering their concentrations.

In turn, the brain controlled every organ in the body. But electrochemical information was so complex that a person's conscious self remained unaware of it. The brain simply controlled things in the background, constantly directing the various organs—what people called bodily instinct.

This hidden meridian was precisely the circuit linking the multiple physiological systems of the brain, heart, intestines, and microbial communities within the body. The feedback points it involved, or hidden acupoints, were its valves.

If the twelve principal meridians were responsible for circulating qi and blood, this hidden meridian was responsible for circulating neurotransmitters.

Communication between the brain and internal organs such as the heart and intestines all depended on it.

For example, stimulating one of these hidden acupoints could affect a person's appetite.

It could make someone unable to eat, with everything tasting unappealing. That was the result of neurotransmitters influencing the brain's judgment and causing an aversion to food.

If stimulated in combination with other acupoints along the same meridian, however, it could increase appetite. The underlying principle was merely the difference between rising and falling hormone concentrations.

This was the intestines influencing the brain, so the resulting changes affected mood and desire.

Conversely, adjusting the neural signals the brain sent to the intestines would produce physiological changes!

When signals from the brain reached the intestines, the hormones secreted would alter the intestinal microbial environment, thereby affecting its microbial communities.

It was like a flood sweeping through a forest. The forest's ecosystem would inevitably change.

Changes in the microbial communities would directly affect the intestines' digestive capacity.

If digestive capacity decreased, the person would rapidly lose weight. If it ceased functioning altogether, the person could be starved to death by their own digestive tract...

Unless glucose infusions kept them alive.

By the same principle, altering food preferences and accelerating digestion were also possible.

In theory, with the right technique, he could turn the intestines from a little workshop into a high-powered furnace, digesting food completely at a speed beyond ordinary limits.

And these were only the feedback points associated with the intestines. The heart, kidneys, and liver each had their own remarkable applications.

Used together, they could rapidly strengthen and stimulate every aspect of the body's functions.

Oxygen supply, blood supply, detoxification, blood formation, immunity, growth, reproduction... regulation of bodily fluids, temperature, pressure...

What made elite athletes stronger than ordinary people was not their muscles, but their internal organs.

Muscles had some influence, but that was a minor detail. The internal organs were the key.

Increasing muscle mass without a plan would not make someone stronger. Instead, it would burden the body.

Upgrading a machine did not mean making its casing bulkier. It meant improving its power and computing systems.

True strength came from within.

The first hidden meridian Huang Ji mapped out was the platform controlling the functions of the body's internal organs. The so-called twelve principal meridians were merely supporting branches.

Yet across thousands of years, not a single physician had discovered it. Huang Ji was the first.

"But the question is, how do I coordinate and control them? Do I have to use needles every time?" Huang Ji pondered.

P.S. Sorry.