The whole laboratory was in a state of despair because of the failure of the drug test.
The reason for the despair was not that they could not imitate the Jiu Xuan Recycle Pill, but that they had already imitated it on a one-to-one basis, but the result was very different.
This instantly brought everyone to a dead end.
If it was useless to imitate it exactly the same, then what the hell should they do to make it work?
He paced back and forth with the imitation pill in his hand, mumbling, “What should we do next …… What should we do next …… If making it exactly the same doesn’t work, should we try in a different direction? What’s the next step to try in a different direction?”
Several of the pharmaceutical experts were also full of frustration.
In all their years of practice, they had never encountered anything so unbelievable.
Smith pondered for a moment, remembered something and asked Rutgers, “Could it be that Jiu Xuan Pharmaceuticals has some different process in the preparation process?”
Rogers rubbed his forehead and asked, “What exactly does that mean?”
Smith said, “Like do they use boiling and then air-drying, or do they use baking, or do they expose it to the sun for seventy-nine days or something like that ……”
Rutgers was confused and asked, “Why seventy-nine days? What’s the logic?”
Smith said, “I don’t know, my daughter is reading the English version of Journey to the West, a Chinese mythology, and in that the immortals who make the pills usually use square numbers, like seven, seven, forty-nine, ninety-nine, eighty-one ……”
Rutgers said awkwardly, “That’s pretty f*cking lax, isn’t it?”
Smith said seriously, “This whole thing is becoming just metaphysical now, so we have to think about whether there’s something metaphysical that we haven’t noticed too.”
Saying that, Smith added, “By the way, I’ve heard that there is a lot to be said for Chinese medicine itself, such as how much water to add, how long to boil it for, and whether to boil it on high or low heat, it comes out differently ……”
Smith remembered something and hastily added: “By the way, it is also said in the Journey to the West that sometimes it is necessary to use rootless water to make the elixir, if you use other water it won’t achieve the desired medicinal effect!”
Logos rubbed his temples and asked him, “What is this rootless water again?”
Smith said, “The so-called rootless water, as explained above in the Journey to the West is rainwater that comes down from the sky, and because it comes from the sky, it is said to be rootless water.”
Rutgers almost fainted and blurted out, “Isn’t all water, no matter where it comes from, H2O? What makes rainwater any better than any other water? Isn’t rain water also converted from water vapour evaporating from the ocean?”
Smith spread his hands and said, “So that’s metaphysics! It would be science if it had a scientific basis, and it’s called metaphysics precisely because it doesn’t have a scientific basis.”
Rutgers asked him, “So what you’re saying is that next we’re going to have different teams, all trying to prepare this recipe in different ways? Like who cooks it on high heat and who cooks it on low heat, who uses natural air drying and who uses high temperature roasting? And then have them try different waters, like who uses rain water from the sky, who uses well water from the ground, who uses snow water from melting snow mountains?”
Smith said awkwardly, “I know, it sounds like a strange thing to say, but I really don’t think that there’s any better way to do it now, with all the fuss the White House has put us through, we can’t just declare it a failure in less than a day, can we? That way, what’s the difference between everyone and a bunch of losers in the eyes of the White House?”