"Ring ring ring!!"
Su Xin was jolted awake by the alarm clock.
He groggily opened his eyes, feeling a splitting headache, breathless, and his vision was somewhat blurry, as if looking through a convex lens, where everything appeared bizarrely distorted.
"What's going on…"
Su Xin's consciousness was still a bit hazy; it took him several minutes to realize that he must be ill.
But in this state, even keeping his eyes open was challenging, his mind was sluggish, and soon he couldn't bear it anymore and closed his eyes again.
"Forget it, I'll sleep a bit more."
Who knows how much time passed.
By the time Su Xin woke up again, his stomach was growling with hunger.
He checked the time: 1:30 PM.
"Damn! Did I sleep that long?"
Su Xin widened his eyes and got out of bed.
Although still feeling somewhat unwell, the ample sleep had cleared his mind considerably, and his strength had mostly returned.
Ten minutes later, Su Xin, wearing a mask, left his room and enjoyed a hearty lunch outside his residence, also purchasing some fever-reducing medicine and patches along the way.
Replenished with energy, after taking the medicine and soaking in a hot bath, he felt even more spirited.
Sitting in front of his computer desk, Su Xin started to seriously ponder his upcoming plans.
Concerning the system tasks.
Since activation, the system had only automatically triggered once during class yesterday, leaving him unable to discern any patterns, he reluctantly set aside further exploration into system tasks for now.
What's most crucial now is the causality points.
After all, this is vital for upgrading supernatural abilities.
He was only 40 causality points short of executing the first upgrade to verify his hypothesis.
The method to gain causality points was by doing good for others.
And since causality points have numerical values, how many you earn must be closely related to the magnitude of the good deed done.
Saving a life surely outweighs simply picking up something that someone dropped.
Moreover…
Based on his experience of acquiring causality points yesterday, the amount he put in and whether the other party appreciated it seemed not to significantly influence the system's allocation of causality points, or not much at least.
Fang Mengzhu clearly didn't consider Su Xin's actions to be lifesaving, just thought his appearance indirectly discouraged her suicidal thoughts.
From Fang Mengzhu's perspective, Su Xin was merely a catalyst, similar to an unrelated passerby unintentionally disrupting an impending murder by their presence, and thus, the rescued person wouldn't see themselves as saved by that passerby.
But to the system, whether directly or indirectly, intentionally or unintentionally, and regardless of how much effort he put in, as long as he helped someone, he could earn causality points.
"Just do good deeds, regardless of the means, regardless of what the world thinks, for the heavens know of causality."
Su Xin felt a clarity in his heart.
Regarding the approach to obtain causality points, he now had a rough idea.
He immediately opened the website and browsed through popular forums, quickly finding a suitable target in the help-seeking section.
"Seeking kind-hearted people to save my child…"
Su Xin began reading the post, which included various medical details and diagnostic reports of the sick child, certifications from charity organizations, numerous photos of the sick child, and a family introduction.
In this world, large charity organizations had dedicated auditing departments that could review the situations of underprivileged families for free and provide corresponding certification, often involving cross-audits by two or more organizations.
Some underprivileged families that passed the audit could receive assistance from the charity organizations. Even those who didn't benefit could still post proof materials online to seek help from netizens.
Of course, in this process, it was impossible to completely avoid false certifications but could largely prevent unscrupulous netizens from swindling donations with random internet images.
After reading the post and various evidence, Su Xin checked the authenticity of the case on the charity organization's official site and confirmed the illness's reality, then directly transferred 20,000 to them.
"Ding! Gained 30 causality points!"
Su Xin's eyes instantly lit up.
"It really works!"
This lifetime's Su Xin, having lived an affluent life from a young age and leisurely capitalizing on his past life's novel to make money, didn't care for money. Otherwise, he wouldn't purposely only copy moderately successful novels and earn money so discreetly.
Now, awakened to the system, he viewed money as dirt; able to gain causality points through donations, he didn't hesitate to continue.
Soon, another 20,000 was donated.
"Ding! Gained 22 causality points."
"Huh?"
"Despite donating the same amount of money, the causality points earned aren't the same?"
"Is it due to differing illness severity? Or varied proportionality in treatment cost coverage? Or maybe some other reason?"
In the ensuing hour, he found ten more help-seeking posts. To minimize differences from objective factors, he selected only end-stage lung cancer cases with the same required donation amount and similar financial gaps; even the patients were around forty years old, and their family conditions were comparable.
Su Xin donated 20,000 to the first three seekers, gaining 28, 19, and 31 causality points, respectively.
Then, he donated 30,000 to the last seven seekers. The causality points received varied greatly, from a low of 23 points to a high of 46 points.
Su Xin quickly calculated.
Across a total of twelve donations, he averaged 26 causality points per 20,000 and 32 points per 30,000 in the later seven.
Though not many donations yet to draw precise conclusions, much could already be inferred from this.
Su Xin focused his thoughts:
"Donation amount impacts causal point gain but isn't decisively influential. Moreover, increasing donation doesn't proportionally increase causality benefits, merely inflating donation amounts will diminish return rates."
"Furthermore..."
"In the last seven donations, despite minimal differences in objective factors, results varied significantly, with the least earning less causality than several 20,000 donations."
"Excluding these objective factors, the most plausible explanation is that the recipients themselves significantly affect causal point yield."
"It perhaps hinges on the recipient's subjective will; some repay kindness with gratitude, while others are ingrates, some even deride or envy benevolent donors in secret."
"Some are good, others evil..."
"Some fervently cling to life, others have resigned to death, only waiting to die…"
After contemplating, Su Xin grasped more about how causality points are acquired.
Detailed mechanisms, however, would require further future research once financially viable.
Presently, his bank account only had 60,000 left, so the donation pursuit had to be temporarily suspended.
Now, the most important task was initiating the first upgrade of the [Concealment Prayer].