Genius Playground

”You’re just here to pick a fight today, aren’t you!”

He couldn’t comprehend Jiang Ran’s train of thought at all.

”You saw I was getting discharged today and weren’t happy about it, right? Trying to piss me off so I have to go back for another two weeks? I really ought to thank you for that, you freak!”

”Teacher Zhang, please calm down.”

Jiang Ran quickly tried to soothe him.

”I just wanted to ask if you still remember how you built that Positron Cannon back then. What principles did you use?”

”How could I possibly remember that?”

Zhang Yang snorted angrily.

”That thing was completely cobbled together for fun. There weren’t any principles to follow. We just slapped on whatever parts we had, then jacked up the voltage to get some sound and light effects.”

”Huh?”

Jiang Ran was thrown for a loop.

”You mean... you didn’t develop the Positron Cannon for some special purpose?”

”Are you kidding me? It was just a toy!”

Zhang Yang chuckled.

”A Positron Cannon... you don’t actually think it was real, do you? There’s really something wrong with your head today.”

”We built that thing back then purely for fun, just a toy we cobbled together out of scrap.”

”Did anything... miraculous ever happen?” Jiang Ran pressed.

”Hmm...”

Zhang Yang looked up at the sky.

”If you want to talk about miraculous, I guess it was how easily it blew up. As I recall, it would explode as soon as you powered it on. It even fried the fuse box for the club activities building back then.”

”But we thought that was cool. That kind of destructive power was exactly what we wanted, just like the Positron Cannon in the anime. Later, we used it to cause trouble all the time. If there was a club we didn’t like, we’d use the Positron Cannon to blow their fuse box.”

...

Jiang Ran was dumbfounded and speechless.

’What a bunch of scumbags!’

’Is it that easy to get a teaching license these days? How can a delinquent student with a track record like Teacher Zhang’s now be teaching and shaping young minds with a straight face?’

”How dare you say that!”

His wife pinched Zhang Yang’s arm hard.

”What nonsense are you spouting in front of your student! Is that any way to teach? You’re setting a terrible example! Zhang Yang, you’d better watch what you say!”

”Ahem.”

Teacher Zhang Yang, who seemed a bit henpecked, quickly patted Jiang Ran’s shoulder and tried to backpedal.

”Actually, I was exaggerating a bit. Your teacher wasn’t *that* mischievous back in the day~”

”It was mainly my friend, Chen Zhennan. The two of us tinkered with the Positron Cannon together. He has a very strong sense of justice, so whenever I came up with some crooked idea, he’d shoot it down with a stern lecture and try to set me straight.”

”Think about it, with a hall monitor like that watching me every day, how could I possibly go around blowing up other clubs’ fuse boxes with the Positron Cannon! Just kidding, just kidding! Trying to liven things up, hahaha...”

...

At this point, Jiang Ran couldn’t care less whether Teacher Zhang Yang had blown up other people’s fuse boxes twenty years ago.

He only cared about one thing: could the Positron Cannon be repaired or not?

This was a matter of life and death for Cheng Mengxue!

As for...

Chen Zhennan.

The name obviously belonged to a man, so Chen Zhennan must have been the boy in the middle of the trio in that old photograph.

Judging by the intimate, affectionate posture between the boy in the middle and the girl on the right, Chen Zhennan and that girl were clearly a couple. That meant Zhang Yang could only have been the clueless, rocking third wheel.

But Jiang Ran was truly a little disappointed.

He had originally thought that Zhang Yang and his friends had at least *some* purpose or plan when they invented the Positron Cannon.

Even if they hadn’t initially considered it from the angle of a Time Machine, they should have had a clear goal and direction, right?

But now...

The whole truth was out.

*They invented the Positron Cannon completely on a whim, cobbling it together to play with as a toy, and its only practical application was blowing up other clubs’ fuse boxes.*

’Shit!’

Jiang Ran cursed inwardly.

He had to retract the fleeting admiration he’d felt for Zhang Yang...

’A leopard really can’t change its spots.’ Other than his more reasonable behavior in prison in 2045, the guy had never been serious a day in his life.

He sighed.

The greater the hope, the greater the disappointment.

He had thought he could rely on Teacher Zhang to help him fix the Positron Cannon, but now... it seemed completely hopeless.

”Did you guys... really just slap the Positron Cannon together without any plan whatsoever?”

Jiang Ran was still unwilling to give up just like that.

”Since you named it the Positron Cannon, there must have been a reason, right? I know it’s a thing in the anime *EVA*, but that show is an old relic from the last century. Why would you suddenly decide to build a Positron Cannon in 2005?”

”See! See! A fake fan, I knew it!”

Zhang Yang lifted his Iron Crutch and pointed it at Jiang Ran.

”*EVA* is indeed a 1995 anime from Japan, that’s true. But in 2005, the director, Anno Hideaki, suddenly announced that he was going to create a brand new *EVA the Movie* series—a deluxe four-part saga.”

”The first movie in the new series came out in 2007, the second in 2009, and the last one just a few years ago—”

”Never mind, never mind. You can stop.”

Jiang Ran waved his hand dismissively.

He had absolutely no interest in any of this anime, manga, or otaku stuff.

Zhang Yang’s meaning was already crystal clear.

The reason they wanted to build a Positron Cannon toy in 2005 was simply because some big news about *EVA* had broken that year. So Zhang Yang, an anime fan, had a sudden whim to pay tribute to it.