Global Collapse-Chapter 642 - 610: Surely not, surely not, there surely can’t be writers who take a hiatus and even ask for leaves of absence, right?_1

"It's not hard to understand," Gu Mian pointed to the horizontal line. "This line can be seen as the timeline of your world, and the three points on it represent different moments in time."

The points from left to right were marked as 0, x, and y.

0 represented the time when the Evil God Statue appeared in the cave.

x represented the time when you discovered the cave.

y represented the present moment, the actual time when they were sitting here.

Gu Mian first placed his hand on point 0, saying, "Firstly, we need to understand one principle: only things that have appeared can be discovered.

"For example, let's say today, I kill Teacher Slaughter in this room..."

Even though his mouth was gagged, a big question mark still managed to appear on Teacher Slaughter's face.

Gu Mian ignored Teacher Slaughter's stunned expression. "If I leave his corpse here, then at any time after this point, if you come into this room, you will discover Teacher Slaughter's corpse.

"But, if I kill him today, and you came to this room yesterday, you wouldn't find a corpse here."

Lu Yi nodded. "I understand that."

He wasn't quite sure what Gu Mian was trying to say, so he just listened attentively.

On the other hand, Teacher Slaughter turned pale as Gu Mian's "Teacher Slaughter Corpse Theory" unnerved him, even though his face was already as white as if it had been painted that way.

"Of course, the example I just gave is the scenario under a normal timeline. But the timeline of your world is slightly different, resulting in a BUG in the 'only things that have appeared can be discovered' theory," Gu Mian said.

Gu Mian then drew another horizontal line below the previous one. This new line was much longer, stretching from the far left to the far right of the window.

After drawing the line, he marked points 0, x, and y in order on the new line.

Gu Mian pointed to the new line below. "This is an infinitely long line; it's the timeline of a normal world, which is also the timeline of the Evil God Statue you discovered. This is an infinitely long horizontal axis."

He then pointed back to the shorter line above and used an arc to connect its leftmost end to point y. "This is your world. If, at this very moment, time reloads, then this arc represents that reloading. Now, let me describe the content on your timeline. Let's assume the leftmost point is a save point…"

Since Gu Mian didn't know at what point in time this world would save, he simply made an assumption, as it wouldn't affect the conclusion of his reasoning anyway.

He then marked the small segment from the leftmost point to point 0. "This segment of time is from the save point until the Evil God Statue appeared in the cave. Let's assume this duration is '1'. Note that during this time, the Evil God Statue does not exist in the cave.

"Next, the period from point 0 to point x is the time from when the statue appeared until it was discovered. Let's assume this is '2'.

"Finally, the period from point x to point y is from when the statue was discovered until now. Let's assume this is '3'."

"We hypothesized earlier that time reloads at the present moment, that is, at point y." Gu Mian's hand traced the arc, finally returning to the leftmost end of the line segment. "Then we would reappear here, re-experiencing time periods '1', '2', and '3'. In other words, if the system reloads, your time would only repeat within this small segment, which could be considered a loop."

"But the timeline in the cave is a bit different." Gu Mian gestured towards the infinitely long line below. "From the save point to point 0 is '1', from point 0 to point x is '2', and from point x to point y is '3'. These segments are identical to the ones above."

Teacher Slaughter was dazed. He had first listened to this terrifying man from the Lower Class People expound on the "Teacher Slaughter Corpse Theory," and now he was hearing him talk about 0, 1, 2, 3, x, y, save points, reloads, and timelines. He felt like his brain was about to explode.

He felt this person's lecturing voice even drowned out the cheers of the Upper Class People below. It was an irresistible, torturous drone that made him wish he could just bang his head against something and die.

"But when it reaches point y, the world reloads," Gu Mian's hand stopped at point y on the line below. "The Evil God, however, doesn't accept this. It believes time should continue to move forward, so it attempts to break this rule and forcibly advance time. But by then, the world has already reloaded, returning to the leftmost point of the timeline. The world restarts time period '1'. Note, during this period, the Evil God Statue is not supposed to have appeared yet; this thing shouldn't exist in the world. Thus, the statue in the cave becomes Xue Ding'e's statue—a statue that is both dead and alive.

"In the world's perception, it shouldn't exist at this time. But in its own perception, it should have already existed. So it became what you saw."

It became the Evil God Statue, both dead and alive at once. It became ruins.

But at least it was somewhat successful. A world reload is supposed to erase everything existing after the save point, yet the ruins of the statue remained. It wasn't eliminated by the world. It succeeded.

"It followed its own timeline; it wasn't reloaded." Gu Mian's finger traced along the line to the right of point y. "This continues until the external world's timeline reaches point 0, the precise moment the Evil God Statue is supposed to appear. Then, a new Evil God Statue will appear in the cave, and the sequence of '1', '2', '3' will repeat along this straight line. It's worth noting that every time the external world loops back to period '1', the statue becomes Xue Ding'e's statue, an ethereal and insubstantial statue. It will turn into ruins until the next point 0 arrives."

Gu Mian repeatedly wrote '1', '2', '3' after point y on the long line below.

"I understand now," Lu Yi said, looking at the two lines on the window. "Our time is a line segment, a loop. The statue's time, however, is an infinitely long straight line. Although it's affected by our world, constantly dying and being reborn, its timeline always moves forward."

"Correct." Gu Mian nodded. "The statue has its own independent timeline. It's not affected by reloads; it doesn't disappear, nor does its location change due to a reload. And you collected all the junk... ahem, you took all the statue's fragments out of the cave the first time you found it. After that, only a complete statue remained in the cave. The statue's timeline is independent; it won't disappear due to reloads, and importantly, it won't multiply because of them. If the world reloaded to a point before you discovered the statue—after you had already found it and cleared the cave—then when you 'rediscovered' the cave, you wouldn't find scattered fragments. You'd only see one complete statue, or perhaps one statue and the fragments of a statue."

"Similarly, the statue's fragments are also unaffected by reloads. Imagine this: after you took the broken statue out of the cave, the world suddenly reloaded to a time before you discovered the Evil God Statue. You would forget all about the statue, but the fragments you removed wouldn't be affected. They would remain where they were before the reload. Then, you'd be astonished to find these unfamiliar statue fragments in your home, your laboratory, or a museum.

"You'd wonder, 'Why is this stuff here? How did it get here?' If someone were clever enough, they might deduce from this that the world had reloaded again."

"So, after the statue was discovered, has your world experienced any of the situations described above?" Gu Mian asked.

Lu Yi stared at the two timelines drawn in the dust. After a long pause, he finally found his voice. "No."

Meaning, after the statue was discovered, the world never reloaded to a point before its discovery.

"One more point," Gu Mian continued. "As long as the statue is continually moved, even small-scale world reloads would inevitably be discovered. The statue's position isn't affected by reloads. Suppose on day one, I place it in Room A. On day two, I move it to Room B. If the world suddenly reloads on day two back to day one, then on 'day one' you would find the statue in Room B, even though you'd remember putting it in Room A that day. If you're smart, you'd be able to guess what happened, right?"

Lu Yi shifted his gaze to Gu Mian's face, seemingly about to utter something along the lines of, This person is terrifyingly perceptive!

He stared at Gu Mian for a long time, then finally spoke. "You truly are a..."

Genius? Lu Yi almost blurted out.

"...ghost."

Gu Mian was speechless.

Is that supposed to be a compliment? "Terrifyingly perceptive" would have been better!