[If you see any illusions while working...that is a routine leak. Don't panic. Simply follow the instructions and contain the goods again...]
Fu Qian still remembered clearly the explanation of his duties on his first day of work.
But that was precisely what had always made him curious about the wording.
"Contain again"—wasn't that usually said of something that had been contained before, but had now escaped?
Yet most of the tasks he'd handled since joining seemed to involve things being dealt with for the first time, which didn't quite fit the idea of a leak.
The events involving his fellow employee Su Gao were a little closer to that description.
For instance, he had first met her after she'd become a Transcendent, then traveled back more than a decade to help her embark on that path.
But on closer consideration, things weren't actually that clear-cut. It couldn't be called a textbook example.
His objective at the time had merely been to "destroy the perfect White Porcelain Doll." In theory, he could have simply disposed of both the doll and Su Gao.
In fact, he'd nearly done exactly that.
The oft-mentioned principle of self-consistency in time travel? Could he only reach the timeline in which he'd spared Su Gao?
It was certainly hard to dismiss, but as he'd said, Fu Qian wasn't satisfied with that explanation.
After all, when he'd been in the Night Holy Capital, he'd encountered two possible futures and personally rejected one of them. That seemed to contradict the principle of self-consistency.
So if there wasn't such a strong causal connection, what had allowed Su Gao to stab him three times back then?
Several missions lay between Old Town and the Corrupt Forest.
In theory, he could have gotten stuck and died during any one of them,