The lights in the convenience store were bright. The middle-aged woman behind the cashier was a little surprised when she saw Xia Yunian pushing the door in.

The two of them worked the night shift together and met almost every day.

But she had never seen Xia Yunian with a ponytail.

The woman had asked this question before, but Xiao Xia would always answer “I’m used to it” every time.

I don’t know what happened today.

“It’s so nice, clean and neat, and I feel refreshed.”

Aunt Sun smiled and looked at Xia Yunian for a few times, and commented sincerely:

“You have a small face to begin with, and letting your hair down will make it look even smaller. It will look much cuter if you show your face like this.”

“Thank you…”

Being praised as “cute” again, Xia Yunian still felt a little embarrassed and her little face turned slightly red.

“Why thank me? I’m telling the truth.”

Aunt Sun narrowed her eyes and joked, “Why did you suddenly think of changing your hairstyle? Is it because of your boyfriend?”

“Um……”

Xia Yunian was even more embarrassed. He lowered his head and walked quickly towards the staff lounge: “I, I’ll go change my clothes first.”

“Hahaha, go ahead.”

Aunt Sun’s face was full of kindness as she watched Xiao Xia escape into the lounge.

As an old employee who has worked in this convenience store for five years, Xia Yunian is the most hardworking young person she has ever seen.

Other college students who come to work part-time are often very serious at the beginning, but they will soon become lazy and slack off, and even call it “class struggle.”

Only Xia Yunian always maintained a diligent work attitude and never slacked off for a single day.

This made Aunt Sun, the “spiritual shareholder” of the convenience store, very satisfied.

In addition, although Xiao Xia is a little dull, she is very simple and young, so she has begun to treat this “silly girl” as her daughter.

It was for this reason that Aunt Sun was very worried about Xia Yunian’s mental health.

After all, after getting to know her for a long time, you can find that Xiao Xia’s personality is obviously somewhat negative.

Fortunately, things have been getting more cheerful recently.

It would be even better if I could go back to school.

“You still need to go to school at this age…”

Looking at the door of the lounge, Aunt Sun muttered to herself, silently thinking about how to persuade Xia Yunian to go back to school. She had even decided to help Xia Yunian pay her tuition.

At the same time, Xia Yunian in the lounge had changed into his work clothes and was preparing for work.

In accordance with the employee code of conduct, I first checked the delivery times of various suppliers tonight, then carefully cleaned the lounge, and finally washed my hands with hand sanitizer.

After doing all this, she took out her cell phone to see if there was any new message.

There is no news.

However, when I took out my phone, I accidentally took a movie ticket out of my bag.

“…”

I bent down to pick up the movie ticket from the ground and glanced at it casually before putting it back in my bag.

Probably because of a problem with the machine, the information printed on the ticket was slightly off from where they should be.

Simply put, it was printed crookedly.

This is actually a very common situation.

But this time it was a little too crooked and even “misplaced”.

On the ticket, “Ticket Collection Time” and “Screening Time” are two adjacent columns. As a result, the information was moved downward as a whole during printing, resulting in the date that should have been in the Ticket Collection Time column appearing in the Screening Time column.

The date that should have been in the screening time column was moved to the “seat number” column.

So now the ticket looks like this –

【Ticket collection time: —–】

【Screening time: 20240513/14:32】

【Seat number: 20240513/15:00】

“Da~”

After putting the movie ticket back into the bag and fastening the bag, Xia Yunian didn’t pay attention to the small printing error, turned around and walked out of the lounge, and turned off the lights in strict accordance with the “Employee Handbook”.

The door opened and closed, and the small room was soon plunged into darkness, filled with the faint smell of air freshener.

A row of iron lockers are arranged along the wall, some of the doors are half-open and some are closed, with employee name tags on them.

Xiao Xia’s locker is at the innermost and is the only one that is locked.

And if someone could open the cabinet, they would find a small sticky note on the inside of the cabinet door.

There was a strange sentence written on it.

【The crow is white】

……

……

[This experience (3): It has been verified that the future foreseen by the third-stage superpower is super-causal, and “I” is the only variable in all timelines]

[Super causation is a concept involving multiple disciplines, and its meaning and application may vary in different contexts. In the legal field, super causation means that even if the offender’s behavior causes the victim’s damage, the same damage may also occur due to other reasons independent of the offender’s behavior…]

[In the context of philosophy and scientific explanation, supercausality may involve a broader understanding of causality, that is, the belief that there is a causal relationship between different things or events, in which the cause has a decisive influence on the occurrence of the result, and the result also has a certain reverse influence on the cause…]

【…】

“How come this is like solving a case…”

At nine o’clock in the evening, in the bedroom, Lu Chen was looking at the long and confusing explanations on the screen, and his head was getting heavier and heavier.

For the past half hour, he has been thinking about why the world line rate of change has changed.

But I still couldn’t figure it out after thinking about it for a long time.

So in the end, I had to give up and turn to studying the second concept mentioned in the time travel report –

Supercausality.

Compared to “world line change rate”, there is even less information available on “supercausality”, and it feels like a made-up term.

Moreover, the explanations that can be found are all vague, or they are not talking about the same thing at all. In short, it is a great test of comprehension ability.

So after looking at it for a long time, Lu Chen decided to use “reverse thinking” and figure it out on his own.

First, the concept of “causality” is very common.

There is a universal causal relationship between things, and the cause leads to the result.

I ate bad fruit today, so I had diarrhea. It’s not difficult to understand.

And since “supercausality” has an extra “super” in it than “causality”…

So it should mean “transcend cause and effect”.

It feels like a concept from Buddhism.

Of course, it is impossible for Lu Chen to study Buddhism further just to figure this out.

However, the description in the time travel report gave him some ideas.

“It has been verified that the future foreseen by the third-stage superpowers is supercausal.”

From a certain perspective, the future can actually be seen as the “result” produced by the “cause” of the present.

Because I ate bad fruit today, I will have diarrhea tomorrow.

Even if tomorrow has not yet arrived, such an outcome is bound to happen.

Normally, if you can foresee that you will have diarrhea tomorrow and intervene by taking medicine in advance, you can avoid this result.

But because it is “supercausal”…

“Does that mean that what we see with our super powers is bound to happen no matter what?”

Frowning, Lu Chen muttered to himself, thinking that this was most likely the true meaning of “transcending cause and effect”.

In fact, he had thought about this question many times before, and even discussed with Xia Yunian the topic of “whether destiny and future can be changed.”

The final conclusion is similar to the current one.

That is, “the future seen using super powers cannot be changed.”

This is also the reason why Lu Haichuan was willing to accept the fact of his own death and why he was sure that he could crack the code.

Because in the future he saw, all this was bound to happen.

But there is a contradiction here.

So why are these things “inevitable” to happen?

If I know that I will have diarrhea tomorrow, can’t I just take a bottle of anti-diarrhea medicine today?

Or I could just commit suicide.

Although it may be a bit extreme, it is true that dead people cannot have diarrhea.

So, no matter how you look at it, the idea that “it will inevitably happen” does not seem to hold water.

unless……

Unless the word “supercausality” includes the meaning of “reversal of causality”.

If you have diarrhea tomorrow, you must eat bad fruit today, and even if you commit suicide, you will be rescued.

It sounds ridiculous, but it does have scientific basis.

Because at the quantum level, experiments have proven the existence of “causality inversion”.

Lu Chen had seen a short video explaining this experiment before, and it showed him being forced to sit on the toilet for twenty minutes.