What is the tiline?
In the past, 24-year-old Shen Hui said this to Shen Yue:
"The tiline is just one line. When you look at it from afar, it's a straight line, but if you look closely, you'll find that the line is uneven, thick and thin in places.
The thick areas are where ti has been overwritten. This ans soone used retrospective in that segnt of the tiline and generated new ti that overwrote the original tiline, causing that segnt of the tiline to thicken.
And the more tis it's overwritten, the thicker the tiline becos.
In theory, if the tiline could be visually observed, then you could judge whether a period of this world has experienced retrospective and how many tis it was overwritten based on the thickness of the tiline.
But in reality, the tiline in the three-dinsional space that humans currently inhabit can only be cognized, not observed.
This also ans that once the tiline is restarted, aside from the one person who restarts the tiline and overwrites it, retaining mory of all that ti, no one else can perceive it."
"Xiao Yue, do you feel like you've only lived this one life?"
"But in fact, this is already your 26th tiline. Isn't that interesting?"
Shen Yue had never been interested in Shen Hui's research. After all, Shen Hui was far smarter than her. Shen Hui researched things every day that Shen Yue couldn't even understand, so she had never asked about Shen Hui's research.
But this ti, Shen Yue asked Shen Hui a question. "If the tiline can't be observed, how do you know this is the 26th tiline?"
Shen Yue knew that as long as it was a question she asked, Shen Hui would definitely answer it. So she rarely asked Shen Hui questions—she was afraid of knowing things she shouldn't, which would deprive her of the last warmth she got from being by Shen Hui's side.
But now, there was one thing she especially wanted to know, so she asked, "If this is the 26th tiline, were we also like this in the previous tilines?"
"No," Shen Hui answered. "This is the first ti I've t you. In the previous 25 tilines, I never managed to escape before age 25 or return to the Shen family."
Hearing this answer, Shen Yue felt relieved in her heart. She hoped that her and Shen Hui's encounter belonged to the shared mories of both people, rather than one person endlessly bearing the pain of mory while the other knew nothing about it all.
Possessing beautiful mories alone would be too cruel for the one who rembers.
"Sister, doesn't this seem like fate?"
"Yeah, it does a bit."
"It's as if you overwrote ti 25 tis just for our eting this ti around. Hmm...a bit cheesy..."
"It does really seem like the theory of destined fate, but the one who overwrote the tiline 25 tis isn't —it's soone else." When Shen Hui ntioned the other person, her expression was very complicated, an expression Shen Yue had never seen on Shen Hui's face before.
She beca even more curious.
"Sister, you just said tilines can't be observed. If you aren't the one who overwrote them, how do you know we're on the 26th tiline now?"
After Shen Yue asked this question, Shen Hui told her about the theory of ti retrospection...
It was a bit complex, but Shen Hui explained it very carefully without using any advanced theories. She used established facts as examples, which also allowed Shen Yue to understand what this so-called ti travel was all about.
According to the special theory of relativity, the faster a material object moves, the higher its total energy.
Just like relativistic montum—as a particle's velocity soars exponentially closer and closer to the speed of light, its relativistic energy increases exponentially, approaching infinity.
This leads to the conclusion that for a particle with mass to accelerate to the speed of light c, infinite energy must support it, which is clearly impossible.
But about 100 years ago, a scientist discovered a kind of substance and accidentally found that this substance could carry ntal energy. Using this dium-like substance allowed ntal energy to accelerate beyond the speed of light.
This is the space-ti dium Shen Hui currently uses.
When a person dies, they emit trendous ntal energy. The space-ti dium allows this ntal energy to be transmitted to the past and future.
But transmitting ntal energy to the future is aningless, because in the instant of death, the future no longer has a container capable of receiving ntal energy. Going to the future has only two possible outcos: either rging into another person's body and being suppressed by the ntal energy originally in that body, or dissipating directly.
Transmitting to the past can serve as a prompt for one's past self.
And ntal energy can also be called mory information. Transmitting it to the past has limitations—the limitations of a person's brain capacity.
A person's brain capacity differs at different periods. If the brain capacity during a certain period is insufficient to receive ntal energy, side effects will occur in the body at that ti, such as drowsiness, absentmindedness, ntal dissociation, mory confusion, etc.
These side effects often appear when overwriting a tifra of over 10 years. This kind of overwrite is called linear overwrite.
Apart from linear overwrites, there are also dot overwrites.
"The advantage of dot overwrites is that they only transmit very short bursts of information, such as 1 minute or half an hour. Such short bursts of ntal energy won't burden the brain too much, so they can be perford repeatedly many tis."
"You asked earlier how I know we're on the 26th tiline now even though worldlines can't be observed. This is related to the theory I just explained.
Tilines don't disappear, they're just overwritten. Ordinary people can't feel tilines being overwritten because they never possessed mories of other tilines to begin with. To them, their current mories are their only mories, their only tiline.
But I'm different. I perford retrospection at different points on different tilines, so as soon as I reach one of those points, I can recall conducting retrospection on the tiline before, and extrapolate from there.
When I was 12, the worldlines were the 2nd, 3rd and 4th. When I was 13, the tiline beca the 5th and 6th. When I was 15 the tilines were the 10th and 11th. Up till the day we t, when I was 20, the tiline was the 26th, and it still is now.
For people like you who have only ever lived on one tiline, you can also judge whether soone has overwritten a tiline. Take for example—if I suddenly change behavior in a way that completely defies previous logical progression, it ans I've received information from the future and am about to overwrite the tiline."
Shen Yue asked again, "Could there be more than 26 tilines now? Maybe in a few years you'll find out this is actually the 27th?"
Shen Hui firmly shook her head. "No. Because the person who overwrote entire tilines, his brain capacity has maxed out. Every ti he goes back, the point he returns to gets closer and closer. The 26th ti was his last. He no longer has the dium to go back and make changes now."
Shen Yue seed to semi-understand. "Why?"
"Because the dium is still in my hands right now."
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