Please note that the original text contains a disclaimer about the chapter's content and some specific formatting that cannot be directly translated while adhering to the strict rules. My translation focuses on the narrative content and excludes the disclaimer and any non-narrative elements.
Jobs left Longhu Mountain with even greater piety. In his eyes, this was all the work of the great Patriarch.
Otherwise, it made no sense that as soon as he brought back the Yangping Zhidu Gong Seal, the results came, and they found that crucial compound.
The medical research institution that Jobs had been funding had been researching a new method of treating cancer, attacking cancer cells at the DNA level.
Every year, the media reported how many people died of cancer, but this statement was actually incorrect. Cancer never attacked any organ or cell of the human body. Cancer cells themselves did not originate from any virus but from the human body itself. Cancer cells, to some extent, coexisted with the human body.
However, this coexistence was extremely overbearing, cruel, and fatal.
Cancer cells were essentially normal human cells. The birth, destruction, and proliferation of normal cells were all controlled by the human body's DNA. The human body was like an extremely precise machine, with the DNA blueprint detailing which parts were needed for what.
The number of all human cells was controlled within a certain range. However, cancer cells broke through this limit and proliferated uncontrollably in a certain area, eventually growing large tumors within the body. These tumors then took nutrients from normal body cells, eventually leading to the necrosis of some organs and ultimately the death of the human body.
To put it metaphorically, the human body was like society, and each cell was like a person in society. Originally, this society was in a utopian state, where everyone worked according to the plan and obtained resources for living according to the plan. Everyone was in a very fair social environment.
But one day, for some reason, some people gained power and broke the utopian state. They could obtain wealth even without working every day.
They could even replicate a large number of their own kind, and if they didn't work, they would be responsible for harvesting wealth. However, the total amount of resources and wealth generated by society was fixed. The more wealth they seized, the less wealth others obtained, leading to extreme wealth polarization in society.
But these people still did not know restraint and only sought to exploit. Eventually, all the exploited and oppressed lower-class humans went on strike, or simply stopped working, and society collapsed. Thus, the entire world ceased to exist!
It was roughly like that.
This characteristic also made treating cancer very difficult. Previously, humans treated cancer by first performing surgery to cut out the malignant tumor. But the problem was that while the tumor could be removed, it was not always possible to remove all cancer cells. A significant portion of cancer cells would inevitably remain in the body.
These cancer cells would continue to proliferate, but humans could not withstand the damage caused by repeated surgeries. So, the next step was chemotherapy.
By irradiating the area where cancer cells gathered, a large number of cancer cells were killed. However, this also produced another terrible result: this chemotherapy was indiscriminate, killing normal cells along with cancer cells.
Therefore, this method could at best prolong life by a few months, and the patient would ultimately die of physical exhaustion.
Jobs had previously undergone this treatment method: surgery followed by chemotherapy. Unfortunately, because he had pancreatic cancer, a very specific location, chemotherapy killed too many normal cells, and Jobs' body was already depleted.
This was also why he felt that the Chinese Taoist elixirs had a strong restorative effect on his body. These elixirs were used to replenish vital energy and restore normal cells, which greatly helped Jobs' damaged normal cells recover, giving him a very significant feeling.
But this was ultimately a superficial fix, at best delaying it by two or three months.
The new therapy that Jobs fully invested in researching was a novel treatment method based on the pathological principles of cancer.
Previous methods of treating cancer were simple and crude, killing normal cells and cancer cells together. Was there a way to kill only cancer cells without killing normal cells?
Up to now, this method seemed impossible because cancer cells and normal cells were actually identical. The only difference was that a part of their DNA had been altered.
Therefore, unless humans could invent a drug that could identify DNA within cells, find those cancer cells with altered DNA, and then kill only those cancer cells without harming normal cells, cancer could be treated almost perfectly.
But it was an almost fantastical treatment plan to have a compound actively distinguish DNA differences. Yet, with long-term research, humans had indeed discovered a treatment possibility: combining targeted compounds and targeted drugs to identify and kill cancer cells.
As mentioned before, the only difference between cancer cells and normal cells was that a part of their DNA was different from that of normal cells. So, was there a way to mark this different part of the DNA in some way?
This sounded even more incredible. Was there another drug that could act like a teacher, checking each cell's DNA one by one, and marking them with crosses or checkmarks to differentiate them?
External force was not feasible, but what if cancer cells were made to expose themselves?
As everyone knows, DNA is composed of ribonucleotide bonds, and cancer cells also require external nutrients for DNA replication.
So, could special compounds be directly injected from the outside? These compounds would only be used to synthesize that altered DNA structure. Simultaneously, this compound could be recognized by another drug with an attack property.
The former would be the target, and the latter would be the bullet.
Then, during treatment, the patient would first take a large amount of these special "target" compounds. Once the cancer cells in the body were basically marked by these compounds, a large amount of "bullet" drugs would be administered to kill cancer cells in large numbers within a short period, controlling the number of cancer cells within the normal range.
Afterward, the human immune system would be greatly strengthened, and the body's normal immune capabilities would be used to control the number of cancer cells, ultimately realizing the possibility of treating cancer.
Although this method was theoretically very feasible, it was extremely difficult. This was because both the "target" and the "bullet" compounds were very challenging to research, involving too much genetic knowledge.
Before the year 2000, manufacturing such drugs was impossible because humans had not even fully compiled their own genes at that time.
It wasn't until after 2000 that humans completed a major project, the Human Genome Project, which deciphered most of the human DNA structure. This then made the research and development of targeted drugs possible.
However, the development of such drugs was still in a state where very few companies dared to venture into it. Besides the immeasurable amount of money required, it also needed a lot of luck. One had to be lucky enough to find the required compound among hundreds of millions of compounds and then validate it through experiments.
Money and luck were both indispensable. Therefore, normal companies could not invest in the research and development of such drugs. It was only Jobs who, in order to survive, poured all the wealth he had accumulated for more than half his life into this pharmaceutical research institution.
Yet, seven or eight years had passed, and the institution had still yielded no results. Jobs had basically given up hope on this research institution, otherwise, he wouldn't have turned to religion for help, hoping that Taishang Laojun would save his life.
But at this moment of immense despair, luck descended. This institution, by chance, or perhaps as an inevitable outcome of countless accumulated failures, finally found the targeted drug and the "bullet" drug specifically designed to kill this targeted drug.
Of course, this was currently only verified in the laboratory. To truly bring this drug to market, it would require at least several more years of complex experiments to ensure there were no side effects.
Naturally, none of this mattered to the dying Jobs. He was eager to be the first to test this drug.
The subsequent plot was actually made very clear in another world. Jobs held on until after the release of the iPhone 4s before passing away, which was still six years from the present. This drug helped Jobs gain an additional six years of life.
However, the researchers who worked so hard to develop these drugs did not know that Jobs, upon learning this news, did not place his gratitude on their arduous research, nor even on the billions of dollars he had invested for years.
Instead, he knelt before the statues of Taishang Laojun and Zhang Tianshi with extreme piety and excitement, kowtowing repeatedly.
It was said that Jobs knelt in the main hall for a full three hours that day, kneeling until he was somewhat exhausted before being helped up by Zhang Jintao and other Taoist priests.
Jobs then excitedly grasped his master's hand and said, "Master, I have sinned. I actually doubted my trust in Tianshi, and I worried that my merits were all in vain! I have sinned!"
"Silence!" Unexpectedly, Zhang Jintao roared, "We humans are born between the profound mysteries, without good or evil, merit or punishment. As long as we uphold a kind heart and do good deeds, how can we say we have offended heaven?"
"If doing good is a sin, then it is heaven's sin. We humans stand between heaven and earth, which is the greatest good! If a person is born with sin, it is heaven's sin!"
"Ah!" Jobs was stunned for a moment!
"Zha!" Zhang Jintao bellowed again, "Foolish child, why do you not awaken quickly?"
"Thank you, Master!" At this moment, Jobs experienced great enlightenment.