Chapter 300: Causality: A Soul of Enormous Mass
Gregory continued, “Have you ever heard the saying, ‘Everything has its cause and effect. Encounters that seem random are actually arranged by fate.’ In philosophy, this idea is usually classified as fatalism and dismissed as a form of idealism. But in the supernatural world, a considerable number of people are staunch believers in this theory. Even today, humanity is still unable to either prove or disprove it.”
Within the supernatural community, more than half of its members believe that every action a person takes, every person they meet, every word they speak, every deed they perform, and every consequence that follows… none of it is accidental. It is all inevitable—destined from the very beginning.
In other words, although people appear to possess free will, the course of their entire lives is already fixed from the moment they are born.
The unseen force that determines each person’s destiny is known as the Law of Causality.
It is like an immense, flawlessly woven web. Every strand in the web can be regarded as a person’s thread of fate. Each thread occupies its own unique place while remaining tightly intertwined with countless others. Every thread is influenced by the rest, even as it profoundly influences them in return.
“Shelly claimed that he twisted the warp and weft of space-time itself and reversed the deaths of both you and him. If what he said is true, then after all these years, he must have passively grown into an unimaginably terrifying mass of energy! Here, let me use this handkerchief as an example…”
Gregory pulled a handkerchief from his shirt pocket and used a black ballpoint pen to color one of its threads.
“Let’s say this blackened thread represents Shelly, while the handkerchief itself represents the Law of Causality operating normally, before it was disturbed. According to the original course of events, Shelly was supposed to die during the Mayflower Apartments incident you mentioned. His thread of fate should have come to an end at that point.”
The ballpoint pen moved downward to a point in the lower middle of the thread. Gregory tapped it twice, then pressed harder, wedging the tip into the gap between two threads. Catching the black thread, he tugged it sharply to one side.