Chapter 360 Beads and Ropes

"This statement is not easy to accept. In other words, our era is not real... You are the only one who exists?" Chen Ke was a little skeptical.

He could feel his body and the agitation of the air in the room. The killer instinct even kept reminding him how dangerous the situation around him was.

There was a smell of gunpowder in the wind. The people from the Administration were nearby. They were waiting for the final result of the conversation in this room. Time was passing by.

And the woman in front of him told himself that all this no longer existed, just like a phantom of the past, a long-finished drama.

"You can think of the universe as a super-large hard drive. It is repeatedly written and erased every moment. The erased part constitutes the written part. The way you are now determines the way we are now." Xu Jing explained.

"This sounds difficult to understand... or there is a logical loophole. The subjective reality represents the past, and the objective reality represents the present, but time is passing! Aren't you also slowly becoming subjective reality?" Chen Ke asked.

"Chen Ke, I repeat, there is no time... only the process of material birth and annihilation, subjective reality and objective reality are separate... do you understand? If we use the human concept of time to explain, this period of human existence is a glass necklace made of countless small steel beads, each of which represents a year." Xu Jing said.

"And I am on one of the small steel beads, and you are on the last one?" Chen Ke asked.

"You are half right, but I am not on the last one, I am on the rope." Xu Jing said.

Chen Ke suddenly realized... He finally understood what Xu Jing meant by the two realities. The 4,000 years of human civilization have all been beads on the rope, and the time Xu Jing is in is the rope.

"Each bead has its own color, and they are strung together to form a necklace. People living on the rope have different opinions on the appearance of the necklace, so they want to change the color of the necklace." Xu Jing said slowly.

"Is this the so-called... going back to the past and changing the future?" Chen Ke said.

"According to your thinking inertia, it is indeed correct." Xu Jing said.

"This doesn't make sense. This year is 2009. We are standing here talking peacefully, but the 2006 I have been to..." Chen Ke didn't want to say too much.

"This is your uniqueness, Chen Ke. You have been to 2006 and seen Van Hede, but you don't know the significance of these two time and space." Xu Jing smiled.

"What is that? A parallel world?" Chen Ke asked.

"There is no parallel world, Chen Ke. There is only one necklace, and each bead is irreplaceable. They form a complete necklace. But you know that the necklace can be disassembled and reassembled..." Xu Jing reminded.

"That is to say... 2006 is..." Chen Ke couldn't find the right words to describe it.

"It is a broken, modified, and abandoned bead." Xu Jing said.

"This is... what does it mean to modify the timeline..." Chen Ke said in surprise.

"That's right. The modified bead will be torn off the necklace by the universe and replaced with a bead that conforms to the logic before and after. This is the self-repair ability of the universe. And the bead that was torn off will be abandoned." Xu Jing said.

"That is to say... our 2006 has been replaced... that 2006 is..." Chen Ke suddenly realized that this makes sense...

"Yes, because the necklace is unique. That 2006, in the words of the foundation, is called the death world." Xu Jing nodded.

"What happened in that world...?" Chen Ke asked.

"You have been there, Chen Ke, tell me, what did you see?" Xu Jing asked back.

"Big black pillars... red dust... maggots... the daughter of sorrow..." Chen Ke recalled.

"That was a Zhang Heng-level doomsday, Chen Ke... a maggot-shaped deity we named Nayuk transformed 90% of the world's population into a clan... From 2006, the subjective reality no longer existed, and the objective reality also suffered a devastating blow." Xu Jing said, sighing.

Chen Ke was shocked...

"The Foundation had to use memetic weapons to completely remove the bead from the necklace." Xu Jing continued.

"Wait... you just rewrote 2006, so won't the future continue with the ending of annihilation in 2006?" Chen Ke asked puzzledly.

The timeline is unique, so the further you modify it, the greater the impact will be. In 2006, all mankind became a clan, and all mankind was wiped out by the memetic weapons of the future Foundation. Aren't they both the end of the world?

"It is very difficult to have one bead influence other beads. And it is not a simple thing to influence the appearance of a necklace by changing the color of a bead. Chen Ke, there is no butterfly effect. Every time the Foundation reshapes the beads, it has to fight against the self-repair ability of the universe. If you want to change a person's mind, you have to change the minds of his previous generations. If you want to change an era, you have to change several eras... The universe has its own set of logical systems. It will correct beads that are illogical. If you really want to destroy a certain bead, you will have to modify a lot of things..." Xu Jing said with a smile.

"Without parallel universes, how do we explain the grandfather paradox? If I go back to before I was born and kill my grandfather, how will the universe correct such a thing?" Chen Ke insisted.

"This is your limitation, Chen Ke. In fact, the moment you travel through time, the universe begins to correct itself... You still don't understand how serious and complicated time travel, or in the words of the Foundation, inter-bead jumping is..." Xu Jing shook her head.

"Inter-bead jumping..." Chen Ke frowned, this is a new term.

"A person who is destined to experience inter-bead jumping will first show some symptoms a few months, days, or weeks before the first time he travels... These symptoms are relatively fixed, such as vomiting, nosebleeds, and sudden hallucinations of seeing scenes that you can't explain... This is the first sign of a traveler. Tell me, Chen Ke, have you ever experienced such a thing?" Xu Jing smiled.

Chen Ke remembered what happened at Lucina's residence that time... He saw a strange gun and six green holy diamonds in his hand...

That gun looked like HCP0001...

"This stage is called the inter-bead observation stage by the Foundation. It is a prelude, and then the inter-bead jump stage. Whether you jump passively or actively, from that moment on, you are no longer an ordinary human. We use the old-fashioned term and call it a time primitive." Xu Jing said.

"Time primitive..." Chen Ke repeated.

"Yes, this is why there is no grandfather paradox. When you jump out of the bead, the position that originally belonged to you in that bead will be replaced by someone else in the universe. Watt invented the steam engine. If you go back and kill Watt, the steam engine will still be created by another person. Pete? Pat? Jet? Who knows?" Xu Jing smiled.