What exactly are the Five Declines of Heaven and Man?
According to the descriptions in the existing classics of the Academy, when a great cultivator reaches the end of his life, his body will be weak, smelly, tired, and impatient. At the same time, the sea of qi will be exhausted, his spiritual veins will wither, and the majestic spiritual energy will escape from the body, causing The sun and the moon shine together, mirages, green lotus come into the world and other strange phenomena in the world.
After finally sitting down, the spiritual energy disperses between heaven and earth, which is also called "the great return".
"It stands to reason that the more advanced a practitioner is, the stronger his control over his body will be. A martial arts master can accurately sense and control every muscle in the body, and a mind master can 'see' the operation of his body's organs. Even I can make adjustments at the cellular level with the help of ink silk.
Practitioners of the Linyuan Realm throughout the ages have become gods and Buddhas, and even they are unable to overcome the five declines of heaven and humans.
The previous emperors of the Sui Dynasty had the resources of an entire empire. With their enthusiasm for immortality, they would definitely secretly seek help from alienated objects.
But they also cannot seek immortality. "
Li Ang thought silently, "There are nine characteristics of aging in organisms, especially mammals. They are genome instability, telomere loss, epigenetic changes, loss of protein homeostasis, nutrient sensing disorders, mitochondrial dysfunction, cell Aging, stem cell exhaustion, and changes in intercellular communication.
These nine are both the characteristics and causes of aging, just like the chicken and the egg, the egg and the chicken.
They occur simultaneously and are interrelated, forming an exquisite and tight network. By solving one or more of them, we may be able to achieve the ultimate goal that emperors and alchemists of all ages have pursued for countless years - eternal life. "
Take epigenetics as an example. It is a branch of genetics that studies changes in gene expression levels based on changes in non-gene sequences.
Simply put, it is acquired environmental factors (diet, temperature, smoking, etc.) that change the gene expression of organisms. Silencing or awakening certain specific genes.
For example, most female bees can only eat royal jelly for the first few days during their larval stage, and then switch to ordinary honey. Therefore, their fertility is not fully developed and they can only become worker bees.
And if the female bee can continue to eat royal jelly with specific active protein components, she can continue to develop and become a queen bee with huge physiological differences from ordinary worker bees.
In other words, it is theoretically possible that there is an "elixir" that changes the way genes are expressed after being eaten.
Similarly, for many organisms, including mammals, dieting and reducing caloric intake can also extend lifespan - hunger can trigger and induce the expression of specific genes, activate them, promote the repair of damaged cells, and then delay aging.
This rule applies to everything from nematodes to mice to monkeys to humans.
It coincides with the "big grain and longevity technique" invented by some sects in the pre-Sui Dynasty.
"Thousands of spells, infinite avenues, just ask, can you live forever?"
These words flashed through Li Ang's mind, and he smiled slightly, listening to Chai Chai's cheerful humming and looking at the bustling street scene receding outside the window, feeling at peace.
The road to pursuing immortality is too long and rugged. Even figures like the Buddha and Haotian's prophets could not live for more than a hundred years. It is better to live each day well and cherish the people in front of you.
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The summer heat subsided and the autumn wind began to rise, and Li Ang's fourth year in the academy began.
In the new semester, there have been some adjustments to the curriculum.
The military science class has become an elective course. Students who are not on the physical training path no longer need to take the physical science class. The extra time is occupied by the laws of Yu, national history, and a new heterogeneous science course.
Xenozoology is similar to Zoology, but has a wider scope than the latter.
Its textbooks record many heterogeneous materials that were previously prohibited from being consulted, as well as the processes and experiences of predecessors in suppressing and sealing these heterogeneous species.
Sometimes veterans from the Zhenfu Department and seniors from the Supervision Department are invited to give lectures to the students and tell them about their legendary and bizarre experiences.
For example, there was a masked senior from the Supervision Department who once received a mission to hunt down a demon cultivator with his companions.
His companion was injured and stayed where he was. He continued to chase and successfully killed the demon cultivator somewhere on Hexi Road. However, he was also seriously injured and was washed away by a flash flood to an isolated and closed village.
All the villagers in this village believe in an evil mushroom god. They regularly kidnap business travelers, pedestrians, and beggars from the outside world and offer them as sacrifices to the mushroom god in order to obtain the bliss powder given by the god.
(In fact, it is a powerful hallucinogenic drug. If you soak it in water and take it, you can see strange and wonderful scenes and experience physical happiness)
The senior from the Supervisory Department's spine was damaged, his whole body was temporarily paralyzed, and his spiritual energy was restricted, making him unable to use any magic.
Seeing that the day of the sacrifice was approaching day by day, the other two people who were detained in the room with him were executed and killed.
The senior lay in the corner, bewitched the villagers who were guarding him with his words, and spread rumors through the villagers, falsely claiming that the village chief and his family planned to monopolize the gifts of the Mushroom God.
The success in sowing discord aroused conflicts among several families in the village, and they started to fight and kill each other on the day of the sacrifice.
He also took advantage of the chaos to let the villagers guarding him leave the village. He waited until he recovered from his injuries and then led his people over to eliminate the so-called mushroom god. The villagers arrested and imprisoned the so-called mushroom god.
There was also a senior from the Zhenfu Division. During the process of arresting the murderer, he and his companions accidentally broke into a circular treacherous building.
There are more than thirty residents in the building. They claim that the strange building has consciousness and will regularly pull away selected people from the outside world.
There are ferocious evil spirits wandering in the building. Each evil spirit has its own unique rules of action. Violation of the rules will lead to the massacre of the evil spirits.
(For example, if you see an evil spirit wearing red shoes, you must close your eyes. When sleeping at night, if you hear a dog barking outside the door, you must hide under the bed and fall asleep within a quarter of an hour.)
These rules violate each other, and some evil spirits will even disguise themselves as other evil spirits to trap and kill the residents in the building.
The residents who are killed will become new evil spirits. further increase the difficulty of survival.
According to the previous notes left in the room, when the evil spirit kills all the residents, a new cycle will begin.
The Conspiracy Tower has existed for at least three to four hundred years, and it has also absorbed many monks during this period, but no one escaped and ascended to heaven, and even the news could not be passed on.
The senior’s companion was just an ordinary government servant with no talent for cultivation.
After witnessing the residents being killed by evil spirits one by one, he knew that the cycle was about to start again, so he decided to fight back by inducing the evil spirits to violate the rules so that the evil spirits could kill the evil spirits, thus delaying the cycle of the mysterious building.
In the end, he committed suicide and was voluntarily killed by the evil spirit. He became a new ghost and used the ghost's ability to send the remaining living residents out of the mysterious building.
Afterwards, the Town Fusi and Xuegong jointly went to the local area to investigate, but could not find any trace of the mysterious building, so they had to erect a tombstone for the young government official at the original address.
