Within Lingshu Hall, lights blazed brightly, no longer possessing the tranquility of ordinary days. Various instruments—polygraphs, high-sensitivity bioelectric sensors, infrared thermal imagers—were temporarily set up around the treatment area, cables like modern versions of "meridians" connecting to a volunteer on the central treatment bed. The air was permeated with a mixture of moxibustion's warmth and the cool scent of electronic equipment coolant. That aura was like two intertwined rivers, one from the medicinal fragrance of a thousand years ago, one from the coldness of nanometer-scale chips, converging into an invisible vortex in the interweaving light of dim yellow and deep blue. Outside the hall, the midnight drum had just struck, and the phoenix tree leaves at the alley entrance rustled, as though also holding their breath waiting for an unknown fission.
Xiuxiu wore a pristine white lab coat, her long hair neatly tied up, her eyes focused and bright. She was conducting her first controlled experiment to verify her "field coupling" hypothesis. The volunteer was a doctoral student from the physics department of the Institute of Technology, filled with curiosity about this cross-disciplinary experiment. The young man was named Gu Ran, usually studying quantum gravity, but tonight lying obediently on the ancient wooden treatment bed, wrists, ankles, back of neck, Baihui, Guanyuan, Mingmen... seventeen channels of electrodes in total, like silvery-white vines entwining his meridians. He recalled his advisor often saying "the end of physics is philosophy," but never expected the end might also be one slender golden needle after another.
The core of the experiment was to attempt using a specially modified instrument capable of generating stable extremely low frequency perturbation fields (similar in principle to transcranial magnetic stimulation, but with parameters carefully adjusted by Xiuxiu to simulate the "quantum perturbation" characteristics she hypothesized), irradiating specific meridian areas of the volunteer while monitoring changes in his meridian electrical signals and physiological indicators. The instrument casing was made of walnut wood, with superconducting coils embedded in the inner wall, emitting an extremely light "hum—" when current passed through, like a late cicada in a distant rice field on a summer night. Xiuxiu named it "Little Silence," because true silence is not the absence of sound, but all things sharing the same frequency, even heartbeats gently contained.
Xiuxiu first focused her attention on the Conception Vessel and Governor Vessel.
"The Eight Extraordinary Meridians," she explained softly while connecting sensors to the volunteer, both to him and to organize her own thoughts, "are eight channels that 'travel separately and extraordinarily,' different from the Twelve Primary Meridians. They do not directly belong to the zang-fu organs, nor do they have exterior-interior pairing relationships, like lakes and reservoirs, capable of regulating and storing the qi and blood of the primary meridians." Her voice was not loud, but carried a slight metallic quality, like the only oscilloscope lit at three in the morning in a laboratory, green light points jumping, burning tiny holes in the darkness.
Her slender fingers precisely located the acupoints on the volunteer's body. "Among them, the Conception Vessel runs along the anterior midline of the human body, governing all yin meridians, called the 'sea of yin meridians.' The Governor Vessel runs along the posterior midline of the human body, governing all yang meridians, called the 'sea of yang meridians.'" One finger pressed on the volunteer's Chengjiang point (end of Conception Vessel) below his lip, another pressed near the Dazhui point (important point of Governor Vessel) at the highest point of his spine. When her fingertips touched the skin, Gu Ran felt a subtle electric current "click," like raindrops falling on a lake surface, the ripples swallowed by the lake water before they could spread. He suddenly had an illusion: he had become a sheet of copperplate paper folded in half, the anterior and posterior midlines slowly aligning, the yin and yang shadows about to overlap.
"The Conception and Governor Vessels, one anterior and one posterior, form a circle connecting the yin and yang of the whole body, like meridians, the central axis of the human body, the foundation of qi mechanism ascending and descending." She chose these two vessels precisely because they govern yin and yang, the "main highways" of the human body's energy system, theoretically most sensitive to potential "field perturbations." When Xiuxiu said this, her peripheral vision glanced at the Ming Dynasty ancient painting on the wall—"Cloud Pivot Chart," on the yellowed silk, a red dragon wound upward from Huiyin, passing Weilü, Jiaji, Yuzhen, to Baihui, then forward through Shenting, Shanzhong, Qihai, returning to Huiyin, head and tail connected, forming a closed "O." As a child, she had secretly traced that dragon with her finger, feeling a subtle tremor from her fingertip, as if the dragon were breathing. Now at twenty-seven, standing on the blade-sharp boundary between science and metaphysics, she suddenly understood that the "O" was not a dragon, but toroidal field lines, superconducting coils, cosmic strings, ripples of dark matter yet to be named.
She activated the perturbation field generator, setting an extremely weak, specific frequency pulse mode. Everyone's eyes focused on the monitor screen. The left half of the screen showed the twelve-lead ECG, the right half showed the pseudo-color map of meridian electrical potential: Conception Vessel deep blue, Governor Vessel deep red, the Twelve Primary Meridians like twelve tributaries, green or purple, flickering uncertainly. The pulse frequency was locked at 7.83 Hertz—one-tenth of Earth's Schumann resonance fundamental frequency. Xiuxiu's reasoning was simple: if the human body is truly a small universe, it should respond to the mother planet's heartbeat.
One minute, two minutes... physiological indicators stable, meridian electrical signal baseline stable. Gu Ran even felt a bit sleepy, as though lying on a summer afternoon lawn, listening to distant classroom bells "dong—dong—," one after another, urging him into dreams. He recalled his first Young's double-slit experiment in elementary school, laser projecting alternating light and dark stripes on the wall, the teacher saying "look, light interferes with itself," he only found it magical at the time, but now suddenly realized: perhaps the human soul is also a beam of waves, passing through the slits of fate, meeting itself where no one sees, canceling or reinforcing.
Xiuxiu frowned slightly. Was the intensity too weak? Or the frequency wrong? Or was her hypothesis fundamentally wrong? She raised her eyes to look out the window, the night like a piece of dark silk repeatedly kneaded, with extremely fine neon light leaking through the cracks. She recalled her father—that traditional Chinese medicine practitioner who adhered to the Inner Canon all his life—holding her hand before death and saying: "Meridians are originally invisible channels; if you can knock on them with another 'invisible,' they will answer." At the time she didn't understand, now she still didn't seem to understand, yet had to understand.
She was not discouraged, signaling the assistant to pause. She pondered for a moment, her gaze sweeping across the meridian chart on the wall, landing on the Belt Vessel.
"The Belt Vessel," she spoke again, her voice steady, "originates from the hypochondrium, winding around the body once, like a belt. It can constrain the vertically running vessels, coordinating upper and lower qi mechanisms." Perhaps a vessel capable of "gathering" possible perturbations was needed? A formula flashed through her mind: in quantum field theory, gauge bosons are given mass by the Higgs field, just like vertically running vessels being "given" boundaries by the Belt Vessel. She didn't know if this analogy was presumptuous, but at this moment she needed all possible bridges, even if only withered vines suspended over an abyss.
She adjusted the target area of the field generator, aiming at the waist and abdomen area surrounded by the Belt Vessel. Activated again. This time, she changed the frequency to the mysterious "golden ratio" multiplied by the Schumann fundamental frequency—approximately 12.7 Hertz. Legend has it this was the brainwave frequency when Sakyamuni entered samadhi under the Bodhi tree; legend also has it this is the rotation angular velocity of spiral galaxy arms in the universe. Numbers themselves do not speak, yet like a key, gleaming faintly in the dark.
The curves on the monitor screen remained calm. Gu Ran felt his waist slightly warm, like a mint-flavored warm patch applied, but the temperature was quickly carried away by sweat, leaving nothing. He turned his head, seeing Xiuxiu's eyelashes casting fragmented shadows in the screen's cold light, like a silent snow. He suddenly felt a bit of heartache for this girl only two years older than himself—she could have stayed at CERN, continuing to chase the tail flames of superstrings, but returned to the depths of the old alley, using a handful of silver needles and a wooden box, trying to put "qi" into Maxwell's equations.
The experiment reached an impasse. The physics doctoral student even showed a barely perceptible "as expected" expression. That expression was like an extremely fine needle, gently pricking Xiuxiu's heart, no blood, yet painfully real. She recalled when she first showed her "field coupling" draft to her advisor, the advisor only replied with six words: "Too brave, also too difficult." Now she suddenly understood, between "brave" and "difficult" is a cliff, also a bridge, depending only on whether you are willing to use your flesh as stone foundation, filling the gap.
Xiuxiu closed her eyes, took a deep breath, clearing her mind of distractions. She recalled the most profound part of her family's needle technique, emphasizing "regulating the spirit" and "guarding the qi," stressing the alignment of the practitioner's intention with the patient's qi mechanism, and even the qi of heaven and earth. Could it be... this coupling is not simple physical stimulus-response, but requires a kind of "resonance"? Requires a specific energy "encoding"? A childhood scene emerged in her mind: climbing Emei Mountain at night with her grandfather, clouds and sea surging at the Golden Summit, grandfather told her to close her eyes and "listen," she only heard her own heartbeat; grandfather told her to "listen again," she suddenly heard all sounds—pine waves, distant bells, even the rustle of snowflakes falling on kasaya—like countless fine strings, plucked at the same moment. At that moment she realized "listening" is not with ears, but using every inch of membrane of the whole body to "match" the world's frequency.
She thought of the "anomalous fluctuation" mathematical pattern Mozi mentioned, and Yue'er's hypothesized "Riemann surface" structure. Was that pattern the key? She quickly walked to the console, calling up the abnormal signal spectrum characteristic graph processed by Yue'er's mathematics that Mozi had shared. That sharp peak, that specific harmonic relationship... she tried, extremely boldly, to adjust the field generator's output pattern to approximate this mathematical characteristic. This was almost translating mathematical symbols directly into physical parameters. Could this work? Her fingertips danced on the keyboard like a blind pianist, knocking unheard music into steel and silicon. The curves on the screen changed from smooth sine to steep pulses, like rows of dense teeth, ready to bite through the membrane of reality.
She turned the target back to the Conception and Governor Vessels, the central axis of the human body. This time, before activating the field generator, she gently pressed her fingers on the volunteer's Baihui point (Governor Vessel, located at the top of the head) and Qihai point (Conception Vessel, located 1.5 cun below the navel), held her breath and concentrated, trying to use her intention to "simulate" the "form" contained in that mathematical structure, attempting to guide that weak field to establish connection with the volunteer's primordial qi. This sounded nearly metaphysical. But in traditional Chinese medicine theory, "spirit" can govern qi. This is perhaps the highest form of "frequency modulation." She closed her eyes, imagining herself standing on an infinitely large Riemann surface, every "fold" a topological phase transition, she walked along the surface, must find that geodesic that allows "field" and "qi" to hold hands. Her breathing became slower and slower, heartbeat faster and faster, like two trains running in opposite directions, passing each other in her chest cavity, emitting harsh whistles.
The field generator activated again, emitting almost undetectable extremely weak pulses. At that moment, the world seemed to be muted, all background noise extracted, leaving only an extremely fine string, suspended in the center of darkness, gently—only gently—plucked once.
Suddenly!
On the monitor screen, the curve representing the volunteer's Governor Vessel (especially near Dazhui point) bioelectric signal jumped violently! Although weak, the waveform was steep, completely different from baseline noise! Almost simultaneously, the infrared thermal image showed an extremely subtle, rapidly diffusing temperature rise in the surface temperature of the Governor Vessel circulation area! That temperature rise was like ink drops in water, first a red dot the size of a needle tip, suddenly blooming into a thin line, winding upward along the spine, straight to the hairline. Gu Ran's eyes snapped open: "My back... seems to have a stream of heat rushing through, very slight, but very obvious!" His voice trembled, like someone lighting a small firework in his ear canal, "pop" exploding.
"Got it!" the assistant exclaimed softly. That exclamation was like a glass bead falling on blue brick ground, clear, rolling away, knocking over a row of silent jars.
Xiuxiu's heart beat violently. She suppressed her excitement, repeating the on-off operations of the field generator several times. The results were reproducible: only when the field pattern approximated that specific mathematical structure, and her intention was focused, could this specific meridian response be induced! She succeeded! Although only an extremely preliminary verification, this indicated that the human body's meridian system, especially the Eight Extraordinary Meridians that govern yin and yang, can indeed respond to specific structured, extremely weak non-biological source fields! This response manifested as instantaneous changes in bioelectricity and surface temperature, as well as the subject's subjective qi sensation!
The physics doctoral student's doubt disappeared, replaced by shock and curiosity. He sat up, his spine emitting slight "clicks," like a string of small firecrackers. He reached to touch Dazhui, but only touched a patch of warm sweat. He suddenly recalled using Feynman diagrams to calculate electron self-energy, infinity swallowing all certainty like a black hole; while now, that "infinity" was gently kissed by an invisible small snake, unexpectedly revealing a shy smiling face.
Xiuxiu turned off the instrument, her fingers trembling slightly from excitement. She looked at the meridian chart flowing on the luminous wall, then at the mathematical structure of that abnormal signal on the screen. A more grand, more astonishing analogy exploded in her mind.
In modern physics, superstring theory attempts to unify general relativity with quantum mechanics, believing that the basic unit of the universe is not point-like particles, but tiny one-dimensional "strings." These strings vibrate in different ways, producing different fundamental particles such as electrons, photons, neutrinos. And the universe can be understood as a symphony produced by string vibrations in higher-dimensional spacetime. Then, what about the human body? The human body's meridians, especially the Eight Extraordinary Meridians like the Conception and Governor Vessels that have core command functions, could they be similar to "cosmic strings" in this small universe of the human body? They are the main highways of energy operation, the expressways of information transmission, and their different "vibration" modes (the abundance or deficiency, smoothness or stagnation of qi and blood) determine the "physical laws" and "fundamental particles" (visceral functions, mental states) manifestations of this complex system of the human body. And that "perturbation" from the outside (whether from deep space or quantum computers) with specific mathematical structure, is it like an invisible finger, plucking these "strings" inside the human body, thereby causing small changes in local "laws" (instantaneous changes in meridian bioelectricity and temperature)?
This idea made her shudder. The wisdom of ancient medicine and the forefront conjectures of modern physics, at this moment, showed astonishing Isomorphism. She seemed to see countless tiny "strings" vibrating in the human body, weaving the maps of health and disease; while grand cosmic strings vibrated in space, weaving the maps of stars and gravity. They perhaps share some deep, mathematical harmony. And her silver needles, perhaps are the most delicate "fingers" for tuning the human body's strings.
She immediately sat down, beginning to record experimental data and her thoughts. She needed more systematic, more rigorous repeated verification. She even more needed... to share this breakthrough with those two partners studying the source "mathematical structure." She picked up the terminal, finding that contact named "Mozi." This time, she no longer hesitated.
"Mr. Mozi, sorry to disturb. I am Xiuxiu from 'Lingshu Hall.' I discovered specific responsive field perturbations to specific mathematical structures in a human body meridian induction experiment. I think this may be related to the 'anomalous fluctuation' you and Professor Yue are studying. Wonder if it's convenient to communicate?"
Message sent. Xiuxiu raised her head, her gaze seeming to penetrate the roof, seeing that boundless universe composed of string vibrations, also seeing inside the human body, that similarly vast small universe composed of qi, blood, and meridians. The Eight Extraordinary Meridians, cosmic strings. She unintentionally may have touched the key connecting them. At that moment, she suddenly recalled another sentence her grandfather said before death: "When you use a needle to pierce the darkness, the darkness will also pierce you. Don't be afraid of pain, that is where light enters."