Genius Playground

RUSTLE.

With his lingering doubts, Jiang Ran slid the sheet of deductions marked with ”42” to the very bottom of the pile.

All his current theories were no different from wild guesses.

’I’ll just have to wait until the next time I go to 2045... and find a way to hear the rest of Qin Feng’s last words—the part after ”42 is—”.’

Jiang Ran twirled his pen.

The second major takeaway from this trip to the Future World was discovering the specific time he was forcibly ”kicked” back to 2025 by the world line.

He had already established that there were only three ways to return to 2025 from the Future World of 2045:

1. Death.

2. Do nothing and wait until 12:00 PM noon, at which point he would be forcibly ”kicked” out by the world line.

3. The instant Qin Feng was beheaded.

However, there was a coincidence between the second and third methods—

The time of Qin Feng’s beheading was also exactly 12:00 PM noon.

Therefore, Jiang Ran had never been able to tell if he was being ”kicked” back to 2025 because it was 12:00 PM, or if the actual trigger was the Magician, Qin Feng, being beheaded.

But after this trip to the future, he finally understood...

He would return to 2025 at exactly 12:00 PM noon, and this had absolutely nothing to do with Qin Feng’s beheading.

The evidence was that this time, Qin Feng’s beheading had occurred about a minute early. That was why he had been able to witness the entire process, get showered in a rain of blood, and even lock eyes with Qin Feng’s severed head for over ten seconds... Only then did the dizzying, buzzing sensation of his return begin.

In contrast, the last time, Qin Feng had been beheaded right on schedule. The moment the Ghost Head Saber fell, the dizzying sensation of spacetime shifting had begun.

”So, Qin Feng’s execution and death isn’t the fundamental reason for my return to 2025.”

Jiang Ran wrote down his summary on the paper:

”My time in the Future World is fixed. It lasts from approximately 10:00 AM to 12:00 PM on September 17, 2045, for a total of about two hours.”

If he had a digital clock from the beginning, he could have calculated the exact duration.

But that was impossible. His initial ”spawn point” was a prison cell. There was no way for him to get a digital clock or a watch, so he couldn’t know the precise time.

”I’ll just base my summary on two hours for now.”

Jiang Ran wrote this conclusion on the sheet of paper.

Next was the third takeaway from this trip to the future—

Fang Yang.

This was the Assassin’s real name.

At first, Jiang Ran had only asked casually. He figured that since they had escaped prison together so many times, and the man had repeatedly looked out for him, he should at least ask for his real name.

He truly didn’t have any other motive at first.

But as fate would have it, the Assassin’s name was an incredible coincidence, almost identical to his pretty-boy roommate’s name!

One was Fang Yang, the other Fang Ze.

Not only did they share a surname, but even their given names were similar. ’They’re very likely blood brothers, right?’

Considering their ages, the possibility was very high.

The Assassin looked like he was in his forties, which meant he would have been in his twenties twenty years prior, in 2025.

He’d seen Fang Ze’s age on his student ID card; he was nineteen, the same age as Jiang Ran.

So, the likelihood that the Assassin, Fang Yang, was Fang Ze’s biological older brother was quite high.

”I’ll ask Fang Ze when I get back to the dorm tonight...”

Jiang Ran smiled faintly.

”Maybe I’ll actually get the chance to grab a meal with the Assassin in 2025.”

...

After class, Jiang Ran left the academic building, found a secluded corner, and burned the paper on which he had just written his thoughts.

It might have seemed paranoid, but it was always better to be cautious.

Especially since he wasn’t even sure if he was being watched, let alone who his enemy was. It put him in an extremely vulnerable position.

In the evening, Cheng Mengxue asked Jiang Ran to have dinner with her at the cafeteria and then go for a walk on the athletic field afterward.

Jiang Ran didn’t refuse.

He had to admit, the feeling was deeply familiar and nostalgic.

On World Line 0, the three of them had been inseparable, spending every evening together.

Sometimes they would sit on the field and chat, other times they would wander down the pedestrian street off-campus, and sometimes they would simply pass the time reading in the library...

In short, their university life had been just like that—simple and unpretentious, yet full of joy.

Happiness is something that rarely has a concrete definition.

Especially at their age, happiness depended only on who you were with, regardless of any external factors.

This time, as he took a long-awaited stroll with Cheng Mengxue across the field, chatting idly, Jiang Ran felt her realness with increasing intensity.

She was just as Wang Hao had described. She remembered every little detail from their childhood, adolescence, and high school years. Her speech, actions, and mannerisms were identical to the childhood friend in his memories.

As they talked about one topic after another, circling the field again and again, Jiang Ran often found himself in a daze, as if he had temporarily returned to the World Line 0 he longed for day and night.

During these moments, he often wondered: Was the Cheng Mengxue from World Line 0 the same person as the Cheng Mengxue from World Line 1?

Intuitively and theoretically, they definitely were not.

But in practice, it was hard to tell them apart.

Because, how exactly does one define a ”person”?

Physical body, DNA, personality, appearance...

From those perspectives, the Cheng Mengxue of World Line 0 and the Cheng Mengxue of World Line 1 were no different.

The only difference between the two was their experiences over the two years from 2023 to 2025. One studied with him at East Sea University; the other went to the United States for medical treatment and lived in obscurity.