Exploring Immortality Cultivation

Ai Qinglan finally managed to stop laughing, but Wang Qi, feeling somewhat embarrassed, lowered his head, inwardly chastising himself for making the same old empirical errors, for being too presumptuous, and for seriously lacking the qualities a scientist should possess.

"Does that mean the fundamental mechanism of biological aging still lies within the organism itself?"

"But the weakening of Life Fire and the decay of the soul do occur with aging…"

Seeing Wang Qi still confused, Ai Qinglan gestured with her fingers and said, "Tianling Ridge has also researched this. Take the Human Clan as an example, the 'Life Fire' starts when the fetus has a heartbeat, which is after the eighth week of the mother's pregnancy, and the soul appears when the brain forms, which is six months later. However, the process of 'aging' exists even before conception. You need to be clear about the cause and effect, Wang Qi, life exists first, then comes Life Fire, not the other way around."

Wang Qi pondered. Spiritual Energy is an exponent of energy, automatically congregating towards orderly, complex systems. Since life is such a highly orderly and complex system, humans possess Innate Power, Life Fire, and a soul… Thus, the mystery of aging should still be searched for in the physical body…

Free radicals, somatic cell mutations, natural biomolecular connections, and telomeres are all hypotheses existing on Earth, of which Wang Qi was aware and understood their pros and cons.

The hypotheses of free radicals and natural biomolecular connections could not be seen as fundamental mechanisms of aging, but since Ai Qinglan had specifically pointed out they were accelerators, there might be more to them…

The main problem with somatic cell mutation is that the mutation rate in human cells is actually very low; even after a century, it's insufficient to cause massive cell death or internal rejection reactions…

As for telomeres, they could be seen as the "restraint devices" of chromosomes. If chromosomes are likened to three thousand strands of silk, then telomeres are the hair tie that binds them into a ponytail. The depletion of telomeres leads to chromosomal collapse and cell apoptosis. It's worth mentioning that telomere depletion is reversible and can be replenished with telomerase. This is also among the more promising methods of immortality researched by Earth scientists. It's not unreasonable to say that 'Longevity' might be due to vigorous secretion of telomerase, but…

Moreover, the secret technique of burning Life Span indeed exists. Generating a mass of free radicals or inducing bloodline mutations in one breath does not bring strength but instead consumes mana. In this regard, the telomere theory is a bit more plausible… but burning telomeres and telomerase? That's just absurd!

Physical body… burning Life Span…

Seeing Wang Qi silent for a long time, Ai Qinglan shook her head, "A friendly tip from your Senior Sister! You need to look at this from the system level."

System?

Wang Qi's brows furrowed tightly as he rapidly calculated countless possibilities, quickly dismissing them one after another. Suddenly, a light bulb went off in his head, "Entropy?"

"Exactly! It's entropy!" Ai Qinglan clapped, "Life is a system, and what is the foundation of this system? It's the continuation of bloodlines! And what role do bloodlines play in the process of cell division? What are we discussing when we talk about bloodlines?"

Before Wang Qi could answer, Ai Qinglan continued, "Editing, proofreading, transcription, redundancy."

Editing! Proofreading! Transcription! Redundancy! All of these are undoubtedly methods of handling information.

But once biology reaches the microscopic level,

"And what's truly related to Life Span is the 'redundancy' part. You should know that in the bloodlines of the Human Clan, many Bloodline Roots are meaningless, exhibiting no dominant traits."

"But the purpose of redundancy is…" Ai Qinglan paused here, trying to tease, but Wang Qi, as if dreaming, voiced the correct conclusion, "Error tolerance…"

Redundancy represents the error tolerance of mutations.

Viruses, which can hardly be considered biological, have very simple genetic materials with little to no tolerance for mutations, hence new strains appear every few years. However, the more advanced the animal, the higher the tolerance their genetic material has for mutations.

And error tolerance symbolizes

Hmm? Wang Qi then discovered another blind spot, "If so, under equal conditions of Spiritual Energy, the Life Span of the Human Clan should be much greater than that of other races…"

Ai Qinglan explained, "There is also metabolism. 'System redundancy' only determines the basic life span, whereas the rate of life span consumption is determined by metabolism."

Suppose the human clan has a life span of one hundred years, consuming one year of life span each year. If there is a turtle demon whose innate life span is only one-fifth that of the human clan but whose metabolic rate is only one-twentieth that of the human clan, then it could actually live for four hundred years.

"And let me remind you again, the definition of metabolism is the exchange of matter and energy between the organism and the external environment, as well as the self-renewal process of matter and energy within the organism. This is the process of absorption exchanged by the 'physical body,' an isolated system, with the outside world, and it is also the process of consumption within the physical body..."

"It's both entropy reduction and entropy increase!" Wang Qi, realizing the connection, immediately responded.

Indeed, how could I forget the theorem that "life is a negative entropy phenomenon"?

Entropy is a measure of the system's level of disorder. Entropy increase is the process by which a system goes from ordered to disordered.

Once you extend the law that is known as the Second Law of Thermodynamics on Earth and the Third Law of Burning Heaven in Shenzhou, you come to an easy realization—in an isolated system, an increase in entropy is inevitable.

The cosmos is precisely the largest isolated system, which reveals the ultimate theorem on how the universe will die.

If even the universe is so, how could anything within the universe escape? Yet, there is one phenomenon that can locally resist this trend.

That is life.

The human body is a complex system, and each breath taken by every cell increases the entropy of this system. The act of "living" counters the entropy increase in the body. When entropy causes the systems of the body to turn to disorder, a person will die.

Therefore, from the perspectives of physics and systems theory, the essence of aging is entropy increase.

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

Free radicals damage the cells themselves, somatic mutations are the accumulation of random errors in cell replication, and telomere exhaustion means chromosomes lose their constraints… These all represent ordered regions becoming disordered!

Ai Qinglan nodded, "Exactly, you learn quickly! Now, let's move on to the next question—why does the life span of a cultivator increase?"

"The life span of a cultivator increases because there is an added system within him—the system obtained through cultivation."

"This system is directly connected to your 'life.' Because of this system, your body has a higher fault tolerance, which is what increases your innate life span; on the other hand, all cultivation methods involve communicating with heaven and earth and exchanging spiritual power, which makes our 'bodies' more open systems, countering entropy increase—this is akin to slowing down metabolism!"

Wang Qi nodded in understanding. The so-called methods of "Nourishing Life" involve a series of measures to reduce physical damage and thus slow metabolism.

"Does that mean, the principle of longevity is actually about making the body a thoroughly open system, achieving a 'Unity of Heaven and Man,' and sharing the same life span as the heavens?"

Entropy increase only has meaning in isolated systems, and becoming an open system can avoid the death of the physical body.

"Exactly," Ai Qinglan nodded and said, "As for secret techniques that burn life span, they don't act on the physical body but on the mana system—eradicating the 'order' within the mana in the body to exchange for powerful strength. Conversely, if the entropy of your mana system is too high, it will reduce your innate life span."

Wang Qi asked, "But... why does eradicating 'order' produce strength? It feels a bit illogical."

Ai Qinglan spread her hands, "Heaven knows. Just to reach this conclusion, Tianling Ridge recruited over four thousand volunteers in succession. On average, each person used secret techniques burning fifteen years of life span, totaling sixty thousand years—Tianling Ridge almost had to sell some of the sect's estates just to gather the elixirs needed to compensate for those sixty thousand years, you know!"