Genius Playground

"Hehe~ So that’s a yes!"

On the other end of the line, Nan Xiuxiu sounded overjoyed.

"Then it’s a date! I’ll send you the address in a bit. It’s in the same villa complex as last time. I even rented a whole house just for this!"

"And I’ll take care of all the arrangements. I’ll invite Wang Hao and your roommates, too!"

"So... you don’t have to worry about a thing. Just show up tonight! You have to be there, okay?"

With that, as if afraid Jiang Ran would change his mind, Nan Xiuxiu hung up.

BEEP. BEEP.

After two soft beeps, the phone screen went dark.

The lock screen displayed the current time—

May 15, 2025, 7:14 AM.

Jiang Ran felt a swirl of complicated emotions.

He slipped his phone back into his pocket and headed for the club activities building.

’Now that Nan Xiuxiu’s taken care of, it’s time to deal with Chi Xiaoguo.’

He took a roundabout path to the club activities building and pushed open the door to the Film Club.

Chi Xiaoguo had been waiting inside for quite some time.

"Senior! Senior! So, was your experiment a success or not?!"

The moment Jiang Ran walked in, Chi Xiaoguo rushed over to him excitedly.

In truth, she had no idea what kind of experiment Jiang Ran was conducting, nor what result would constitute success.

But...

...she was still hoping for a definitive yes.

After all, she’d seen how busy Senior Jiang Ran had been lately, running back and forth for the Film Club and the Positron Cannon. He must have been doing it all for some good news today.

However...

...Jiang Ran could only offer a wry smile.

"I’m not sure if you could call it a success or a failure. But based on the outcome... I’d say it probably failed."

"Oh..."

Chi Xiaoguo’s face fell instantly.

"Well..."

She scratched her head, at a loss for words.

Jiang Ran walked over to the lab bench and looked at the Positron Cannon.

"But it’s too early to jump to conclusions. We just ran into a few problems with the procedure."

’The procedure?’

Chi Xiaoguo blinked and pointed to herself with her index finger.

"Was it... a problem with how I operated the Positron Cannon?"

"No, no."

Jiang Ran shook his head.

"It wasn’t your fault. It was mine."

He walked up to the lab bench, his hand hovering over the Positron Cannon, feeling its residual warmth.

"Normally, I was supposed to press the button on my phone within 0.7 seconds of the Positron Cannon’s activation."

"But... as you just saw, right as I was about to press it, a call came in and threw everything off."

"So, theoretically, we can’t say the experiment failed. It’s more that there was a flaw in the execution."

On his way over, Jiang Ran had been thinking about it.

’If that call from Nan Xiuxiu hadn’t come in, and if I had managed to hit ’send’ on the message within 0.7 seconds as planned... would everything have gone according to plan?’

’A temporal shift would have occurred...’

’The Time SMS would have been sent successfully...’

’A Worldline Jump...’

’And when I opened my eyes again, would Cheng Mengxue, who died in an accident two years ago, be here in the Film Club room instead of Chi Xiaoguo?’

’If everything had gone smoothly, it should have worked.’

"We’ll have to find time to run the experiment again."

Jiang Ran turned to Chi Xiaoguo.

"You did a great job operating the Positron Cannon. No issues at all. Next time, just stick to the same countdown and press the activation button. I’ll handle the rest."

"Right!"

Chi Xiaoguo nodded vigorously.

"So, should we start now?"

"We can’t do it now."

Jiang Ran demonstrated, pressing the Positron Cannon’s activation button. CLICK. CLICK. CLICK. The mysterious machine was dead, completely unresponsive.

"After each activation, the Positron Cannon needs a 20-hour cooldown period before it can be used again."

This was a pattern he and Qin Feng had confirmed many times on World Line 0.

It didn’t matter if the Time SMS was sent successfully or if any other action was taken; the Positron Cannon was just that finicky—

—once activated, its capacitor would blow out in 0.7 seconds, causing it to shut down. It would then be completely unresponsive to any input until after the 20-hour cooldown.

"Wow, what a complex mechanism."

Chi Xiaoguo marveled.

"The Positron Cannon looks so crude and old, I never would have guessed its design was so intricate. I wonder which Film Club alum created it?"

"I don’t know," Jiang Ran said, shaking his head.

He had discussed it with Yan Rui, a senior, who had in turn asked the previous club president. The response was always the same series of three questions:

"What Positron Cannon?"

"Where did it come from?"

"The Film Club has something like this?"

So...

...the Positron Cannon must have an incredibly long history—so long that none of the recent club presidents even knew it existed.

If the club hadn’t lost its official status this year, forcing Yan Rui to clear out all the junk, the old machine might never have seen the light of day.

"Huh?"

Jiang Ran blinked, his eyes fixed on the Positron Cannon’s power supply module.

’Strange.’

He had noticed something odd—

’This time, the capacitor didn’t blow out.’

’What’s going on?’

He was baffled. Cautiously, he reached out to touch the black capacitor on the power supply module...

SSS.

It was definitely hot.

’This must be what burned Chi Xiaoguo earlier.’

But that was exactly the problem.

According to his previous experiments on World Line 0, this capacitor was supposed to overload, blow out, and burn up after the Positron Cannon was activated.

That was why both Qin Feng before and Jiang Ran now had bought a large stock of identical capacitors from Old Qi’s Home Appliance Repair Shop.

But this time...

’Why didn’t the capacitor burn out?’

It was hot to the touch, but upon closer inspection, the capacitor seemed perfectly intact. It probably wouldn’t even need to be replaced to be used again.

’How strange.’

Jiang Ran scratched his head.

’Did I, a complete amateur forced into this, just accidentally fix a critical bug that even a genius like Qin Feng couldn’t solve?’

’Heh, not likely.’

Jiang Ran was self-aware enough to know that was impossible. If Qin Feng couldn’t fix it, there was no way he could. It wasn’t even a case of a blind squirrel finding a nut.

’Whatever.’

’I’ll just make a note of this strange phenomenon for now.’

’A single data point doesn’t prove anything.’

’It might just blow out during the next experiment. For now, it’s not worth investigating.’

Chi Xiaoguo walked a circle around the Positron Cannon.

"Twenty hours from now... That’ll be sometime tomorrow."

"That’s right."

Jiang Ran nodded.

"I don’t know if you’re free, but would you be able to come here again tomorrow morning?"

"Of course!"

Chi Xiaoguo puffed out her chest.

"Don’t you worry, Senior! Anytime you need my help, I’m just a call away!"

"Thanks."

Jiang Ran gave a small smile.

"Then let’s meet here again tomorrow. Same time as today. We’ll run the experiment again then."

"OK! No problem!"

Chi Xiaoguo threw her hand up in the air.

"By the way, it’s about time for breakfast. Are you heading to the cafeteria, Senior? My treat!"

"Maybe next time."

Jiang Ran pointed to his temple.

"I still need to think some things through about the experiment."

"Okay then."

Chi Xiaoguo walked to the door of the club room, then turned back.

"Well then, Senior, see you tomorrow!"

...

And just like that, the ever-energetic ray of sunshine was gone.

Jiang Ran stood up and closed the door, and the Film Club room fell silent once more.

Shafts of sunlight streamed in through the window, blanketing the desk, lying across the sofa, and spilling onto the floor.

Empty. Still. Nothing.

The room had once been packed to the gills with hundreds of Rhine Cat dolls, leaving no room to even stand or turn around.

More than once, Jiang Ran had been spooked by the sharp gazes of the roomful of Rhine Cats.

And now, not a single eye remained.

He sat back down on the sofa.

He watched the specks of dust floating in the air, each one engaged in its own unpredictable Brownian motion, its path impossible to chart.

’That strange experience earlier... what in the world was that?’

Finally having a moment of peace, Jiang Ran began to seriously recall that dream-like "journey through time."

’Was it real, or was it a hallucination?’

’Was the irredeemably evil Magician really Qin Feng, or was it just a delusion, a flashback?’

’The year 2045 on the digital clock... was that the actual future, or a vision I had before dying?’

’I was shot in the back of the head with a pistol, so how did I end up back in 2025 in the blink of an eye, just feeling a bit dizzy?’

Everything was a confusing mess. He needed to sort out his thoughts.

Jiang Ran stood up, pulled over the small blackboard in the club room, and picked up a piece of chalk to write.

"It’s time... to sort this all out."