Consider how the shortest path between any two points on a line can be determined using their positions and the fact that movement is only allowed along the line.

Observe that for any two nodes, the shortest path is simply the absolute difference of their indices, and explore how this property can be leveraged to avoid redundant computations.

Investigate how precomputing prefix sums or using dynamic programming can optimize the solution to achieve better than O(n²) time complexity by reusing intermediate results.