Dansha smelts mercury and mercury and sulfide to return dansa, which is actually a chemical reduction and oxidation reaction.

Ge Hong, a famous Taoist priest of the Jin Dynasty, said in "Hug Puzi Jindan Chapter": "All plants and trees are burned to be embers, and dansha is refined into mercury, and the accumulation changes into dansha, and its plants and trees are far away, so it can make people live forever." ”

The drugs and tools used in alchemy are related to the production of chemistry, and the historian of chemistry Yuan Hanqing (1905-1994) has made an incomplete statistics based on alchemy literature, including inorganic and organic substances, a total of about 60 kinds of drugs.

Of course, this statistics is not complete, because not only plant and animal drugs are not included, but even from the perspective of gold and stone medicine alone, I am afraid that there are more than 60 kinds of them. However, from here, we can get a general impression of the common medicines used in ancient alchemy.

Required equipment......

Alchemy is extremely mysterious and strange in the cultivation activities or processes.

If you think that the choice of Dan place should be in the famous mountain and scenic spot that is inaccessible and there are immortals, otherwise "the evil spirit can enter, and the medicine will not succeed." "When the tripod is opened, the warlock must fast and clean the crown, kneel to hold the medicine furnace, and face the south to pray to the great road Tianzun;

And so on, all of which are filled with extremely strong superstitions.

However, the ancient alchemists were personally engaged in collecting and dispensing medicines, and through repeated large number of chemical experiments, they consciously or unintentionally developed the primitive chemical industry, which can be regarded as the ancestor of modern chemistry. Dr. Joseph Needham of the United Kingdom said in "The History of Science and Technology in China" that Chinese alchemists are "one of the most important sources of chemistry in the whole world." ”

Regarding tools and equipment, there are about ten kinds of tools and equipment found in alchemy literature, namely Dan furnace, Danding, Shuihai, pomegranate jar, sweet snail, mercury extractor, Huachi, grinder, silk sieve, horsetail luo, etc.

Dan furnace is also called Dan stove.

Wu Xi of the Southern Song Dynasty "Danfang Instructions" (written in 1163 AD) has "both Ji furnace" and "Wei Ji furnace". The reaction room placed inside the Dan furnace is Danding, also known as "God Room", "Kui", "Danhe", some are like gourds, some are like crucibles, some are made of metal (gold, silver, copper), and some are made of porcelain.

"Jindan Dayao" has a "suspended fetus tripod", which is divided into three layers, "hanging in the stove and not touching the ground". The "Essence of the Jinhua Chong Bi Dan Sutra" says that there is a silver "sea of water" placed on the top of the shrine to cool down. There is another kind of "water and fire tripod" in the "Essentials of Cultivating the Great Dan", which may be the part of the tripod itself that holds water.

In short, these things are the main tools of alchemy, which can be placed in a furnace to heat up the medicine to melt and react inside, or to sublimate it.

In addition to Danding, the Danjia also has a distiller dedicated to drawing mercury from Dansha, which can be called "mercury extractor". The gist of the Jinhua Chong Bi Dan Sutra contains a simple one, divided into two parts, the upper part is shaped like a round-bottomed flask, called "pomegranate pot", and the lower part is barrel-shaped, called "sweet pot".

When it is used, it is heated so that the mercury vapor generated in the jar becomes liquid mercury in the cold water of the sweet man. Although it does not explain what materials are made of, the size, and usage, etc., it can be clearly seen from the diagram that the lower part is a heated furnace, and the upper part is a closed container for drugs such as Sheng Dansha, and a tube is passed next to it, so that the mercury vapor generated in the container can flow into the condensation tank placed next to it. Such distillation equipment, even today, seems to be quite perfect, of course, it is the product of gradual improvement in long-term alchemy practice, and its formation was before Wu Xi.

Western historians of science have always believed that the distiller was invented by the Arabs, but in fact, the ancient alchemists in China have long had a tradition of manufacturing this equipment.

As far as Han Xiao knows, there were really many famous alchemists in ancient China.

For example, Ge Hong. Ge Hong, alias Bao Puzi, a native of the Jin Dynasty, a native of Danyang Jurong, is the author of "Behind the Elbow to Save the Pawn", "Hug Puzi" and other hand-me-down works.

Among them, the book "Hug Puzi" is divided into two parts, inner and outer, and 20 volumes, involving alchemy in the fourth Jindan, the eleventh immortal medicine, and the sixteenth in Huangbai.

Ge Hong believes that all substances can be changed, and as long as there are appropriate conditions and the spirit of persistent pursuit, some substances may become precious elixir and gold through smelting.

Therefore, he has an unwavering belief in alchemy and is unswervingly engaged in the practice of alchemy. In the specific process of alchemy, he made many new discoveries. For example, Ge Hong had already discovered at that time: the red mercury sulfide (that is, the commonly known dansha) was heated.

mercury can be separated, and mercury and sulfur can be combined to form mercury sulfide. This shows that Ge Hong discovered the reversible reaction phenomenon of precipitating mercury from mercury sulfide and synthesizing mercury sulfide with mercury and sulfur in alchemy practice.

There is another person, this person is Tao Hongjing, who was once called the prime minister of the mountain.

When Tao Hongjing was a teenager, he liked to read Ge Hong's "The Legend of the Immortals", and was quite influenced by his "learning immortals to maintain health", and he has always paid attention to it. In 492 A.D., when he was thirty-seven years old, he resigned from his fixed position, lived in seclusion in Jurong Maoshan Mountain, searched for immortal medicine, cultivated alchemy, traveled all over the famous mountains and rivers, developed alchemy in his many years of furnace fire Danding career, and wrote the alchemy book "Hedan French Style", which made more significant progress in the identification of drugs and alchemy methods than in the Ge Hong era.

Through long-term practice, Tao Hongjing has accumulated a lot of knowledge of inorganic chemistry, and he realized that "mercury is raw and cooked", and its raw refers to naturally produced mercury, and the cooked one is obtained by smelting cinnabar.

He also concluded that mercury can be alloyed with other metals, such as gold and silver, and that items can be plated with gold and silver. For the important raw materials of alchemy, Huang Dan and Hu powder, can be artificially made, "made of boiled lead" to obtain Huang Dan, "made of lead" can be obtained Hu powder, so as to open up the source of medicine, promote the further development of alchemy.

There is another one, the medicine king Sun Simiao.

Sun Simiao is a native of Jingzhaohua in the Tang Dynasty (now Yaoxian, Shaanxi), born in 581 A.D., died in 682 A.D., he is a well-known folk doctor in the history of Chinese medicine, has a very rich clinical practice experience in various disciplines, he has not sought a career in his life, believes in Taoism, Buddhism and religion, opposes serving stones, advocating alchemy; often goes up the mountain to collect medicines, and personally carries out the cultivation and refining of medicines.

In the process of alchemy, the alchemy prescriptions and conventional methods of the predecessors were summarized.

In order to reduce the toxicity of Jinshi drugs, Sun Simiao once summed up the method of "ambushing fire". When he used sulfur, arsenic and other golden stones, in order to reduce the toxicity of these drugs, he deliberately caused the drugs to burn themselves to remove their toxicity.

According to a "Thousand Golden Fang" Sun Simiao's "sulfur method, it is to use sulfur and saltpeter two taels each, grind into powder and put it in the pot; Jiang uses three soaphorns to ignite the fire, and after the fire is extinguished, the raw and cooked charcoal orchid is mixed and fried until the charcoal is eliminated by one. At that time, the alchemists' "fire method" for gold and stone drugs was basically the same.

In the many "fire ambush methods", through a number of combinations and compatibility, repeated experiments, from countless blood lessons, it is summed up that saltpeter, sulfur, charcoal mixed together, it is very easy to catch fire and explode, blow up the Dan house, and injure the crowd, after several improvements and perfections, black gunpowder will come to the fore.

Sun Simiao recorded this recipe in the text of "Dan Jing Neifu Sulfur Method".

Alchemy is also related to alchemy......

Alchemists not only refine the elixir that can make people "immortal" through the fire method, but also use the elixir to "turn iron into gold".

Ge Hong's "Hug Puzi Jindan Chapter" said: "When the divine pill is completed, it can not only live forever, but also be used as gold. Wei Boyang said in "Zhou Yi Shen Tong Deed": "Gold is invincible, so it is a treasure." ”

Gold, silver, jade and other minerals in nature are stable in nature and are not easy to decay, so alchemists believe that human beings can transfer their properties to the human body by taking gold, silver, jade and other "immortal" substances, which can make the flesh and blood also "immortal", and then lead to the alchemy method to refine gold and silver, that is, mercury (mercury) and base metals such as lead, copper, iron and other base metals are smelted into yellow or white gold or silver in different proportions.

Therefore, the Chinese Wai Dan Shu is also known as the Jin Dan Shu or the Yellow and White Arts.

The Waidanshu ignition of gold and silver belongs to a metaphysical viewpoint in terms of ideological understanding, which is fully reflected in Ge Hong's "Hug Puzi: Huang Bai Chapter": "The one who changes is the nature of the land, so why should gold and silver not be made of foreign objects?"

He cites the occasional mule and donkey (donkey) intersecting with each other, and the molten lead turning into huangdan and hu powder, and puts forward the view that all kinds of substances in nature can not only change, but also that they change infinitely, but he completely ignores the conditions for the transformation of things and absolutizes change.

Well, everyone has the limit of their wisdom.

Zhuangzi said well, my life has an end and there is no end to it...... No one can say they are omniscient......

In fact, although the color of the gold and silver made by the alchemist through the mercury smelting method of flying sand is similar to that of gold and silver, they are not real gold and silver, but are used as medicinal alloys, called medicinal gold and medicinal silver.

This kind of medicinal gold and medicinal silver were still relatively valuable in ancient times.

The so-called "gold into the medicine." "In the eyes of ancient alchemists, whether or not the refined divine pill can be lit into gold and silver is regarded as an important indicator of the success of cultivation;

Because of its partial effect, it is also called "Danmu".

Alchemy and gunpowder......

Gunpowder was first invented by the Chinese, and there is a record of sulfur, one of the components of gunpowder, in the Taoist classic "Huainanzi" in the Western Han Dynasty.

In the Shennong Classic of Materia Medica, sulfur and saltpeter are listed as high-grade medicines that can cure diseases. Saltpeter is also a mineral, produced in Sichuan and Gansu.

It is a strong oxidizing agent, which can release oxygen when heated, and is easy to smoke and fire, so it is also called smoke or fire nitrate. Due to the active chemical properties of saltpeter, it can interact with many substances, so alchemists often use saltpeter to change the properties of other medicines in alchemy.

In the Western Han Dynasty, Chun Yuyi used saltpeter to treat Wang Meiren's disease.

In their long-term alchemy practice, alchemists constantly mixed and calcined saltpeter, sulfur, realgar and pine resin, grease, charcoal and other materials, which made the invention of gunpowder inevitable.

Alchemists also conducted "experimental" observations and studies on the various properties of sulfur, and they found that sulfur can not only react with copper and iron, but also subdue the miraculous mercury (mercury).

Sulfur is chemically very reactive, easily igniting and reacting with oxygen in the air, which makes it difficult for people to subdue it. In order to tame its violent nature, the ancients tried to "ambush" the sulfur.

The so-called "Fu Huo" was originally a method of treating diseases, and alchemists believed that saltpeter and sulfur were both ** (because they can catch fire), and there would be the poison of yang fire, which could corrupt people's five internal organs.

In order to make people not only have no toxicity after ingestion, but also moisturize the five internal organs, so that the five internal organs in the human body can be harmoniously blended, and help longevity, it is necessary to try to subdue the fire poison, which is the "ambush fire". The specific method of "ambushing the fire" is also very simple, that is, "fighting poison with poison", burning it with fire, and the fire poison will be naturally eliminated.

In the practice of alchemy, the monks gradually discovered that sulfur, saltpeter, and charcoal were mixed together, and if they were not done well, they would cause combustion or even explosion. This happened a lot, and naturally attracted the attention of the alchemist.

As a result, there are people who specialize in these kinds of experiments, constantly accumulating experience and improving the formula. Since sulfur and saltpeter are both curing medicines, and because they can be combined with charcoal to cause fire, people call the mixture of these three things gunpowder, which means "fire medicine".

Because the color of this mixture is close to black, it is often referred to as black powder.

The earliest record of the formula and combustion of black powder comes from the book "The Sulfur Method of the Dan Jing" written by Sun Simiao, a famous Chinese medicine practitioner, "medicine king", health practitioner and alchemist in the early Tang Dynasty. This is also the world's earliest record of the original formula of gunpowder for light industry.

It describes the method of ambushing sulfur: bury a sand pot or a silver pot in the soil, the mouth of the jar or pot is flush with the ground, and the surrounding area should be compacted with soil, and two taels of nitrate and sulfur should be put into it. Then burn the three canes of soaphorn with fire, not to ashes, but to charcoal, and then put them into a pot or pot one by one.

At this time, the freshly burned soaphorn comes into contact with saltpeter and sulfur with the embers, and the nitrate and sulfur will automatically burn. After waiting for the smoke to rise, he piled charcoal on the mouth of the jar and heated it, and the recipe for a servage of black powder was obtained.

Here, the three main components of black powder are ready: nitrate, sulfur and charcoal.

Just because the charcoal is not crushed and not fully and evenly mixed with nitrate and sulfur, the reaction is not violent enough. In addition, the purpose of "ambush fire" is to prevent and avoid violent combustion and explosion, and some measures only cause the reaction to appear as a result of purple and blue fireworks.

......

......

Compared with the immortal cultivation civilization, the alchemy of the earth obviously does not need the maturity of the immortal cultivation civilization, not that the wisdom of the earthlings is not enough, this is a matter of resources.

In a small planet where there is no aura, and even the air has been polluted to the point of chaos, people's lifespan is too short to have enough time to invent alchemy civilization.

However, ancient Chinese alchemy is not useless, and there are many means and experiences that are very inspiring and useful for Han Xiao.

Also, what Han Xiao learned from Han Peng is that the alchemy that belongs to this new continent is still very different from the alchemy on the earth.

Because, the alchemy of cultivating immortal civilization has no distinction between inner and outer pills.

The pill that Han Xiao is refining now, if it is according to the standards of ancient Chinese Taoist priests, belongs to the outer pill. However, to speak in conscience, the elixir of cultivating immortal civilization is much better than the elixir that ancient Chinese Taoist priests on the earth have explored.