He opened a door with a sign shows 'staff only '. The room was filled with all kinds of weird stuff. Seeing that, Fang Tang was not shocked at all, because he had been here many times.
Just after they stepped in, there came a buzzing alert.
"Ha, perfect timing!" Luo Feng walked to the electric cooker and turned off the reminder button.
"Beta 1.57 version of Nine-turns Golden Medicinal Pill is finished." Luo Feng said this with great excitement.
Fang Tang put his hand on his forehead and said: "use an electric cooker to refine elixir…that's really…I thought that's just one of your jokes, now I know you mean it."
This is why Luo Feng became a straight-A student all of a sudden. It's not because he gave up on cultivation, he realized the significance of science and believed that cultivation has to advance with the times. As science and technology develop rapidly in this new era, Luo Feng believes that only through modern way of cultivation, can he really make it.
"It is said that elixirs are crucial for cultivation, the degree of your cultivation greatly depends on the elixir you have. Unlike ancient times, we don't have medicines like millennium ginseng or ten-thousand-year Ganoderma, even the turtles couldn't manage to live ten years before being cooked. If we want to work on cultivation, the first thing is to learn how to make medicine in a scientific way, then we can extract the essence and refine the most effective ingredients."
"Ancient way on elixirs refining wastes a lot of materials, and the toxic element in some ingredients can not be removed effectively. At that time, if someone took Five Minerals Powder, they have to run around naked so as to remove the body heat caused by it. In the end, there will still be some sequelae from heavy metal poisoning."
"What I'm doing is quite different. I would improve the formula through scientific analysis in order to increase the content of effective component and reduce its side effects." Luo Feng explained.
In Luo Feng's opinion, environmental change and backward technology are the main reasons to explain why there are only a few people who can finally become immortal through cultivation in the past centuries. It is recorded that the earliest cultivators would practice Breatharianism Method, so they would absorb the energy from the heavens and the Earth, the sun and moon to cultivate themselves.
In The Verse of Chu—Far Off Journey, Qu Yuan says: "take the six natural factors as food and drink night dews, immerse the noon energy and absorb energy from the light of dawn."
From that, we can see that people at that time can easily absorb energy directly from their natural environment.
But with the changes in the environment, the spiritual energy of the heavens and the earth is changing, too. Therefore, it is getting more and more difficult for cultivators to directly get energy through breatharianism. That's also why most cultivators would come up with the idea of the Golden Elixir Method. They tried to refine medicinal plants and animals as well as some minerals for the spiritual energy they contain, in order to provide themselves indirect cultivation energy supply.
Only through lifespan cultivation, body refinement and soul condensation, can Essence, Qi and Spirits turn into one, and this one will never ruin. The cultivation formula, firstly, cultivate Essence and refine Qi; then, cultivate Qi and refine spirits; finally, refine spirits and become immortal, is familiar to everyone. What cultivators pursue is to take golden elixirs helping them master their destiny.
The ancient cultivation methods write, cultivators have taken the universe as a pill furnaces, Nature as the worker, Yin and Yang as the fuel, and everything on the earth as the materials to cultivate themselves into a saint. This has excellently talked about the unity of body and spirit. However, some ancient books recommend True Man, Perfect man, Divine man, true Sage these four cultivation realms, which are even more fabulous.
The immortal cultivators after the pre-Qin Dynasty relied more and more on alchemy, and gradually gave up the physical immortality. They took their mortal body as the pill furnace, their spirits as the worker, the elixirs as the fuel and the three treasures as the ingredients, in order to refine the vital pill and become an immortal.
Later, Corpse Release Cultivation Method became popular, which means cultivators would completely abandon their mortal body and pursue the immortal primordial spirit. This is also because of the increasing difficulty of immortal cultivation that many cultivators fail to balance both their primordial spirit and mortal body within the limited life.
In the past century, almost no one that practiced Corpse Release Cultivation Method, has finally turned out to be an immortal. However, most cultivators do not think it's because of the changing environment. After all, changes in the environment are imperceptibly going on, and it usually takes tens of thousands of years to produce a quality change. Besides, there are not enough evidence to prove that the current natural environment is no longer suitable for cultivation.
Therefore, most cultivators attribute their failure to the loss of cultivation methods. They believe that the ancients can cultivate into immortals because they have the correct method, and the inheritance passed down by the ancient immortals is now incomplete. So, they drilled the mountains, dug the ground, uncovered tombs and studied the history in order to complement the cultivation methods used by the ancients and the recipes of various elixirs.
To those cultivators that blindly trust the ancient cultivation methods and believe that the older these methods are, the more effective they will be, Luo Feng called them Ancients Worship Party.
What's ridiculous is that these people even trying to find the Tao of the heavens and the earth through the Oracle strokes. What they are doing is far away from immortal cultivation now.
Luo Feng never felt that the ancients were cleverer than us. It is clear that people in this era are smarter than the ancients, because we have richer and more advanced knowledge. So, there is no reason for him to be convinced that the methods used by the ancients will be better than ours. Maybe someday they will get atavism and become apes instead of immortals.
"Cultivation is a kind of evolution of life level. Throughout the ages, those who finally became an immortal through cultivation are basically from the royalty and noble families, or at least a scholar. It shows that the method of immortal cultivation has always been in the hands of intellectuals. Therefore, the methods of immortal cultivation, since ancient times, have been created by those who are almost at the level of scientists. As for illiterates, becoming an immortal can only be achieved in their dream. "
Luo Feng thinks that the ancient alchemists or Taoists were actually the philosophers and scientists at that time. Except that their purpose of scientific research is not for social development but for their own immortality. Although the research purpose is different, the process is quite similar to what current scientists are doing. And even the four great inventions have an important connection with those cultivators.
The six arts for cultivation are alchemy, Making Magic Tools, invocation, formation, divination, and reining beasts. In fact, these are no different from biochemical pharmaceuticals, metallurgical processing, rune programming, astronomical geography, Zhou Yi arithmetic and biological engineering.
Due to the limitations of ancient technology, the cultivation methods at that time are of significant drawbacks and loopholes in Luo Feng's view. Take alchemy. For an example, ancient alchemy is all about empiricism. People at that time would do a large number of experiments to test the effectiveness of drugs, and their research method is based on yin and yang, as well as the five elements theory, lacking a more detailed theoretical foundation of medicine and ergonomics. So, there are a lot of mistakes and errors in it.
For instance, in history, many emperors who were obsessed with immortal cultivation died from taking medicinal pills and elixirs. Are the alchemists who refine the elixir for him unprofessional? Or do these people try to murder the emperor on purpose?
That is little possibility. As is said, kings and bears always worry about their keepers, those who can be trusted by the emperor are basically the most outstanding people among their peers. That's why they could get the chance to serve the emperor. Once they helped the emperor become an immortal, they will benefit from that and be worshiped by people too. And unprofessional alchemists couldn't even have the chance to stand on the emperor's side by using its tricks. Even if they managed to be trusted by the emperor, other mortal cultivators will disclose them, too.
So, the medicinal pills and elixirs refined by those ancient alchemists are what they think are the best and most safe ones. It's a great fortune for them to refine elixirs with the national-level ingredients, they will certainly do their best to get the emperor's favor. What's more, a change of sovereign brings a change of ministers, since they took this position, their life was tied together with the emperor, they rose and fell together.
Then why would some emperors die from those medicinal pills and elixirs? Luo Feng believes it's the strong side effects of the elixirs at that time that kill those emperors. Even the modern pharmaceutical industry can not completely avoid the side effects of drugs, not to mention those ancient alchemists who did things from empiricism.
It is also because of the side effects of the medicinal pills and elixirs that cultivation sects later rose their admission requirements on apprentices' qualification. If the apprentices' physical condition is not good enough, they might die after taking the elixirs, then what's the meaning of taking them?
Only those with strong immunity and detoxification capability are promising to overcome the side effects of the elixirs and make achievements on cultivation. And the cultivation methods will gradually strengthen their physical resistance, self-healing ability and detoxification function. In this way, they can take even more poisonous and powerful elixirs. Therefore, the higher those cultivators' level is, the greater the death chance would be. This kind of cultivation doesn't really fit the general population.
"But nowadays, science and technology are really advanced. Besides, science and technology in biology, chemistry and medicine are also under rapid development. If we don't apply it to the immortal cultivation, it would be a huge waste. And that also violates the inevitable law of how things develop." Luo Feng said this with excitement.
About Luo Feng's theory, Fang Tang did not find anything improper, and he totally agreed with him. Besides, he even became Luo Feng's assistant. Because of his pursuit, Luo Feng applied for biomedical science as his major in college. Moreover, he also took a course in mechanical and electrical engineering because he was determined to stick onto his modern cultivation method.
And he named himself 'Innovated Cultivation Sect'.
"In our world, the spiritual energy of heavens and earth is in the ice age now. The worsening environment is telling us to innovate. The reason why human beings are the spirit of all things is because we have the ambition to overcome any kind of obstacles and to conquer nature. To achieve this ambition, we must depend on science and technology, the primary productive force!"
In order to perform his theory, science is the best way for cultivation, Luo Feng set up a laboratory in the office building of his father's funeral parlor. That's why you could see him using the rice cooker to refine golden medicinal pills and elixirs.
This rice cooker was not an ordinary one, it had been transformed by Luo Feng. Moreover, there is also Fang Tang's contribution. At first, Luo Feng was refining elixirs by putting an elixir furnace on the gas stove. As a chef, Fang Tang pointed out the deficiencies: "It is true that the heat could be better controlled by using a gas stove, but this would cause a lot of heat being wasted, too. Besides, there is a temperature limit, which requires you to sit here and watch it all the time."
"Compared with the gas stove, you can control the temperature and heating time more accurately by using a rice cooker, electric pressure cooker or electric oven. And these are fully-automatic, which is more convenient." In fact, this was just a chef's sense of humor, Fang Tang was purely joking. As a result, Luo Feng was greatly inspired from that. There were many procedures in ancient alchemy that needed to use spells, but the cultivators nowadays barely have enough power to make a small flame out of the air. If anyone can do that, he would be marvelous and regarded as a master.
Luo Feng knows a man that can make palm thunder. Actually, that man would rub some white phosphorus powder, which has a low ignition point, on his hands ahead of time, and then uses Qigong to raise his palm temperature. As long as his palms temperature reaches 40 degree, the white phosphorus powder would be self-ignited. Then, all he needs to do is to swing his hand with force so that it looks like the fire thunder was generated from his palm. With this one trick, he became a so-called guru and the guest of many high officials and nobles. Some people even donate money to him, showing their respect.
Even though Luo Feng doesn't know any spells, he could use technology to help him refine elixirs. For example, an electric oven, rice cooker and electric pressure cooker can be used for heating and pressuring, a refrigerator for freezing and condensation, high speed blender for processing the medicine, a centrifuge machine for separating the extracts, and many other instruments to process and extract the active ingredients. Besides, he would also use a sterile and constant temperature console to prevent chemical property changes of the materials while they are being processed.
Finally, it was time to open the rice cooker and see the result.
He uncovered the lid, and the inner pot was separated into many dependent areas. In each area, there is a pill of elixir, and 24 pills in total.
"These golden pills and elixirs were the result of the second-time improvement of Black Loong Trimeresurus Wine's formula after being improved by Fu Qingzhu. And the previous 56 experiments have confirmed that these elixirs are mild and have no obvious side effects. This improvement is mainly to increase the effective elixirs rate."
Fu Qingzhu was a genius four hundred years ago, and was given the reputation of "knowledge tank". He was skilled at calligraphy and painting, and had read almost all kinds of books. He had made an intensive study on Confucian classics, literature, poetry, calligraphy, painting, bronze inscription as well as medicine, and obtained great achievements. He is indeed a versatile talent.
He is not only proficient at Buddhism and Taoism cultivation, but also an expert on food and wine. And he has high achievements on winemaking and medicated diet. What's more, he is also a man of moral integrity. Because of his justice and noble medical ethics, both Luo Feng and Fang Tang admire and respect him. They had spent a lot of time collecting and studying his classical works.
In an incomplete volume, Fang Tang found a recipe for winemaking and showed Luo Feng. Luo Feng found this recipe was very similar to that of old Black Loong elixirs, so they believed Fu Qingzhu improved Black Loong's elixir recipe and used it to make medicinal liquor.
The original version of Black Loong's elixir was from the ancestor Chen Yu, and it was inscribed on one tablet of Mt. Hua. As is said, this is also a rejuvenation recipe. It contains 28 kinds of medicinal materials, which need to be processed separately, and the process is extremely complicated. There are many versions of this recipe in the later ages, and different changes have been made on it. Due to the changes people made, master Fu's recipe on medicinal liquor now only has 18 original medicinal herbs left.
Luo Feng studied the medicinal properties of that recipe then further improved it from the perspective of medicinal chemistry and effective ingredients. He would also send the finished product to his university senior, who works in the Drug Administration, and let him help to do a test on these elixirs to ensure that they are non-toxic, harmless, and with fewer side effects.
He took the newly made 24 pills, checked their color and smell. Then he weighed them and excluded 8 defectives.
"Good job, your yield rate has exceeded 60%." Fang Tang said. He never expected that refining elixirs with an electric rice cooker would help him so much. He could still remember that Luo Feng's yield rate was less than 30% before.
"Well…since I started using the rice cooker, the problem of uneven heating was greatly solved. Now that they are from the same cooker, then why would there still be over 30% defectives?" Luo Feng frowned. He picked up the marker and put down some symbols and equations on the whiteboard and fell into deep thoughts. All these things he wrote down are alien to Fang Tang.
In Fang Tang's view, what Luo Feng is doing is more like a scientific research than immortal cultivation. But he is used to Luo Feng's Einstein-like contemplation. Knowing that it would take quite a while for Luo Feng to end his deep thought, Fang Tang stepped out the lab, put the notice sign 'Don't Disturb' on the door and walked toward the kitchen.