Genius Playground

TAP, TAP, TAP. TAP, TAP, TAP.

The chalk danced across the small blackboard.

First, the [Cause] of that strange experience—

After the Positron Cannon activated, the text message failed to send. Instead, I was interrupted by a call from Nan Xiuxiu and hit the answer button.

I don’t know the principle behind it, but the moment I hit the answer button, there was a buzzing sound, I grew dizzy, space-time shifted, and a Worldline Jump occurred (suspected)...

When I came to my senses, I found myself in a prison, cellmates with Sang Biao, the stupid young man, the Bookworm, and the Assassin, forced into a prison break.

He stopped the chalk, looking at the word specially noted in parentheses: "suspected."

That’s right. This was the contradiction.

Logically speaking, since the buzzing and dizziness occurred, and my location changed, that should be enough to prove a Worldline Jump had definitely happened.

But the contradiction was that after I was shot in the head and killed by a prison guard, I inexplicably experienced the dizzying space-time shift again, and then, even more inexplicably, jumped back to the moment the Positron Cannon had activated.

Unthinkable.

Jiang Ran picked up the chalk again.

He wrote [The Experience] on the small blackboard—

If I didn’t misread the numbers on the digital clock, my experience in the prison took place on the morning of September 17, 2045.

Today is May 15, 2025.

’So... during that buzzing space-time shift, was I thrown twenty years into the Future World?’

Honestly, he wasn’t convinced that experience was real right now.

Even though every physical sensation had been so real—including the bone-deep sting of bone fragments when the bullet tore through his head... he still couldn’t believe he had just taken a random trip to the Future World twenty years from now.

"If it really was the Future World twenty years from now, then Qin Feng would be forty," Jiang Ran suddenly thought about the age issue.

It wasn’t just Qin Feng being forty; I should have been thirty-nine.

But recalling how everyone in the prison addressed me, it was always "young man," "little bro," and the like.

A thirty-nine-year-old man shouldn’t fit such youthful forms of address, right?

So, that was another suspicious and inexplicable point.

"I’ll shelve this question for now, too."

He had no choice. Questions he couldn’t figure out could only be set aside.

And so, he picked up the chalk again and wrote the final [Result] on the board—

The result was both tragic and dramatic.

A prison guard grabbed me by the hair and slammed my head against a table twice, smashing half my face.

I thought I was dead for sure, but unexpectedly, after being shot in the head, I "traveled back" or, rather, "jumped the worldline again" back to the reality of 2025.

He wasn’t sure why.

Could it be... that every time he dies, he gets a full-health revival on the previous worldline?

’That would be way too overpowered!’

"No, no."

Jiang Ran shook his head, quickly casting aside the terrifying thought.

He absolutely could not entertain the idea of taking life lightly.

If someone were to ask him to try committing suicide now to see if he could use this Skill to return to World Line 0... he absolutely wouldn’t dare.

He preferred to believe that some other reason caused that headshot to blast his consciousness from 2045 back to 2025.

"Alright, that’s the whole story."

He tossed the chalk, dusted off his hands, and looked at the summary on the small blackboard.

Organizing it all from top to bottom cleared his thoughts considerably.

So, it was time to analyze the conclusions.

"This suspected Time Travel to 2045... what was it, really?"

Jiang Ran thought of three possibilities:

[1. A pure delusion or hallucination.]

The human brain can fall into confusion and dazes under various conditions, like heatstroke, eating poisonous mushrooms, overexertion, and so on.

Since I’m constantly jumping between worldlines, it’s not impossible that there are side effects on my brain.

[2. The time trip was real, and I really did take a tour of the future twenty years from now.]

There was no real principle to support this guess.

If I had to force an explanation, maybe the dent on the Positron Cannon’s casing broke some internal component.

As a result, by some strange twist of fate, the Positron Cannon’s function was altered, teleporting my consciousness to a future worldline.

This conclusion was a bit of a stretch, but he’d include it as a placeholder for now.

[3. I didn’t actually experience Time Travel; instead, a memory was forcibly implanted in my brain.]

Jiang Ran felt this possibility was more likely.

After all, from my perspective, I spent an hour in prison, but not a single second had passed in the real world. That didn’t seem to make sense in terms of temporal continuity.

My own memories were already a mess.

First, I have the Full Space-Time Memory constitution, as named by Cheng Mengxue, which allows me to retain memories from previous worldlines but not the current one.

Second, I do have a history of amnesia.

I learned from Xu Yan that I was right there when Cheng Mengxue had her car accident, witnessing the whole thing, yet I have no memory of it afterward... That’s also very suspicious.

Finally, there’s the completely inexplicable return from the dead.

’My skull was smashed, yet I came back to life.’ That’s impossible according to physics and biology. Only a memory download seems somewhat plausible.

"Sigh..."

Jiang Ran let out a long sigh.

Things were really getting more and more troublesome.

’I hope this unexpected experience was just a random farce.’

"Tomorrow, on the morning of May 16th, I will conduct the Time SMS experiment with Chi Xiaoguo again."

He looked at the calendar on his phone.

"There won’t be any more unexpected phone calls to interrupt. If all goes smoothly, the Time SMS will be sent to the time of the college entrance exams two years ago... Xiaoxue will be able to avoid the car crash and come back to life."