The moment the engine's jet slammed into Universe 222, the porthole glass suddenly crystallized into a bidirectional, entropy-reducing crystal—hexagonal edges simultaneously growing and dissolving, weaving a Klein bottle-like time loop across its surface. The five-fold spiral mark on the back of Lin Yue's neck trembled violently: the inner causal loop oozed golden-red time wrinkles, the second-layer dimensional pyramid condensed into a silver-blue entropy reverse vortex, the third-layer quantum curve radiated purple-gold probability tides, the fourth-layer logic curve blossomed into crimson rule ripples, and the outermost time symbol erupted into amber bidirectional light streams. The five elements collided in the entropy-balancing light stream, sending up suspended hourglass fragments, each simultaneously recording the trajectory of past and future events. The calico cat's gear eyes were jammed with reverse turbines, and the remains of its collar projected a wildly inverted Lorentz attractor: "Warning! The entropy reverse spacetime arrow is collapsing, and the causal chain is being devoured in both directions!"
Lu Li's coded body exhibited temporal interference patterns: the left half decomposed into a forward time flow (entropy increase) with a 55% probability, while the right half converged into a reverse time flow (entropy decrease) with a 45% probability. These two states permeated the Klein bottle structure, leaving behind time afterimages interwoven in orange, purple, and blue. As he pointed at the star map, nine afterimages appeared simultaneously on his fingertips, touching the nine temporal singularities of the entropy-reversed universe. "Look at these bidirectional gaps—dark purple fluid weaving an 'entropy lock network.' Every observed time point generates a causal paradox, while unobserved points foster space-time loops."
Lin Yue gazed outboard. A cluster of translucent hourglasses drifted in the void, each one encasing fragments of spacetime collapsing in both directions. In one hourglass, a supernova exploded and a star was born simultaneously (temporal superposition), while the same event in the adjacent hourglass collapsed into a single line due to the observer's gaze (causal determination). At the core of the central hourglass, a dark purple fluid, like a Möbius strip, entwined the arrow of time, splitting the course of events into two quantum states: "cause → effect" and "effect → cause," eternally oscillating in a reverse entropy cycle. As the spaceship passed through the cluster of hourglasses, Lin Yue's reflection in the porthole split into countless fragments—some lighting the fuse (cause A), others blowing out the explosive sparks (effect B). Many more reflections flickered in superposition, forming a vague ghost of time.
"The core of the entropy-reversed hourglass is the 'time paradox.'" Lu Li pressed his hand against the porthole, the Penrose ladder equation appearing on his fingertips. "The causal collapse here is the 'entropy lock mechanism' distorted by the dark purple fluid—much like the murder in the grandfather paradox, which allows it to simultaneously exist and not exist. Once the observer's consciousness is trapped, it will exhaust the possibility of time in a cycle of past and future. The 'time anchor' memory shows that the fluid utilizes the reversibility of the second law of thermodynamics to transform this place into a 'causal maze.'"
Before he could finish his words, the spaceship was engulfed in a vortex of reverse entropy. Entropy's force, inverting spacetime, caused the ship's hull to simultaneously appear rusted (forward observation), newly formed (reverse observation), and void (unobserved). The metal emitted a noisy buzzing sound, like a tape playing in reverse. A rain of calico gears crashed into the hourglass, instantly splitting into countless pieces—each gear spinning, disintegrating, and reforming in a different branch of time, forming a time tree interwoven with "birth" and "destruction," each branch leading to a different causal universe.
"We must find the 'Time Source Core'!" Lin Yue's thread of time plunged into a vortex of reverse entropy, her consciousness thrown into the torment of time's superposition. She saw countless versions of herself struggling within the branches of time: a 55% probability of her self disintegrating into a forward flow (extreme entropy increase), a 45% probability of her self converging into a reverse flow (extreme entropy decrease), and the remaining branches of consciousness were torn into fragments of "recollection" and "precognition," interfering in the cloud of time, making it impossible for her to distinguish between the causal nodes she was in.
Lu Li's code stream transformed into a golden-purple time buffer layer that enveloped her: "Don't be contaminated by entropy reverse consciousness! Every hourglass has a 'zero time critical point', like the intersection of time arrows, where all branches cancel each other out. Look at the dark purple fluid patterns - they are stitching the gaps between time branches, trapping the observer in a 'two-way cage'." Lin Yue followed the code light stream and saw that the dark purple fluid was like a time string tying all the branches of the hourglass. Every time the entropy reverse cycle string tightened, more consciousness was dragged into the cycle of the past and the future.
The calico cat's mechanical claws unfolded into a time neutralizer, and golden and purple neutralizing frequencies burst out between the gears: "Anomalous time pulses detected! Something in the hourglass's core is generating all time branches simultaneously, like the brain of the universe calculating the chain of cause and effect." The spacecraft's engine fell into a strange state - when observing a certain time branch, the fuel collapsed into the corresponding form (time A is unburned antimatter, time B is burning ash). The fuel in the unobserved branch remained in a superposition state. The repeated superposition and collapse caused the engine power to jump wildly between all time values, and it could disintegrate at any time due to time interference.
Lin Yue raised the Star Track baton and noticed the gear at its tip flickering between all the colors of time. She mobilized logic to balance the universe's "zero time frequency." As soon as the frequency left the baton, the hourglass decomposed it into time waves. Each wave represented the possibility of "experience" or "non-experience." These waves interfered within the cloud of time, trapping the baton in a state of causal entanglement. "No! Observation collapses here. Any stable timeline will be split apart by the hourglass!" The fivefold spiral at the back of her neck resonated with the core of the source of time, bringing back memories of the "Anchor of Time."
In memory, the original observer, "Time Anchor," stood at the core of the entropy-inverted universe—the "Time Source Heart," a time polyhedron suspended in the void. His consciousness was split into countless time states. Red consciousness sowed the future in branch A, blue consciousness harvested the past in branch B, and green consciousness maintained a temporal superposition in branch C. The countless interferences of consciousness trapped him in an eternal contradiction. Dark purple fluids grew in the cracks of the polyhedron, absorbing the energy of the interfering time branches and growing into an "entropy lock network" that entangled the universe, each node imprisoning a fragmented time state of consciousness.
"Imprisoned within the heart of the Time Source is the splintered time-state of the 'Anchor of Time'!" Lin Yue awoke with a start. The thread of time reached the center of the hourglass. There, a violently oscillating time polyhedron lay, its surface riddled with temporal cracks and oozing a dark purple fluid. At its core, the time-states of the 'Anchor of Time' frantically interfered—the red state shattered fixed cause and effect with its blade of time, while the blue state reconstructed uncertain time with its shield of superposition. Each collision caused the hourglass to violently oscillate. A rain of calico cat gears crashed into the polyhedron, only to be repelled by the time waves. The gears split into copies of time, experiencing birth and death in different branches.
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