Hidden Meridians : Part 2
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 medicine.
He'd heard his grandfather mention before that, traditional medicine had methods to cure illnesses which Western medicine couldn't. As a result, he also bought books such as: Pressure points of the Human Body, Fundamental Theory of traditional Medicine, Science of traditional 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.
"Pressure points... 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 pressure points in the human body like the back of his hand. He could easily identify the pressure point 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 pressure points.
But the majority of them were still unnamed. Without a question, these were all feedback points that had yet to be discovered. The 409 pressure points in the books 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.
Traditional medicine hadn't found many of these, 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 pressure points are all related to the internal organs, but they haven't been discovered yet by traditional medicine. It should be one of the major meridians, but positions of ten of the pressure points 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 identify 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 pipeline 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 pressure points--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?"