Bang, bang, bang!
Gunshots.
“Still haven’t found it!?”
Jiang Ran frantically rummaged through the bookshelves, his face deathly pale.
“Not yet! This library is too damn big!”
In the distance came the crash of bookshelves toppling over, and the gunfire was drawing closer and closer.
“Found it!”
Jiang Ran shouted, pulling a diary from a pile of old books. Its cover was mottled, its inner pages yellowed with age.
He was just about to open it—
Thud!
His companion’s body jerked backward and fell to the ground, a blossom of blood rapidly blooming across his chest.
“Qin Feng!”
Jiang Ran lunged forward, only to be forced back by a hail of bullets.
“Go…”
Qin Feng’s face twisted in pain as he clutched at the blood gushing from his chest.
“【As long as you go back to the past and change all of this… everything will start over… go!】”
Jiang Ran gritted his teeth.
There was no time to think. He turned and ran toward the stairs behind him, all the way up to the rooftop.
Panting heavily, he rushed to the edge of the roof.
He placed the diary on the ledge and flipped through it quickly.
“Not this entry… not this one… this is it!”
Jiang Ran’s gaze burned as he stared at the handwritten words and read rapidly.
“March 27, 2009. Weather: clear. I thought today’s experiment would fail as usual, but in the mid-afternoon, a strange young man arrived—”
Click.
Something cold touched him.
A scorching gun barrel pressed against the back of his head.
“Don’t move.”
Jiang Ran’s heartbeat skipped.
What frightened him was not the pistol, but that all-too-familiar voice.
His eyes were filled with shock and incomprehension.
“Qin… Feng?”
Behind him, Qin Feng gave a soft snort and pulled a prop blood pack out from under his shirt.
“Fake.”
He squeezed hard. Blood splattered everywhere, staining them both.
Jiang Ran did not turn around. Slowly, he stood up.
Only then did he realize that the chaotic gunfire had stopped at some point. In the distance, the cicadas’ cries were deafening. The setting sun stretched their two shadows out in parallel, never to intersect again.
“So this was a trap you designed.”
“Yes.”
“We’ve known each other since high school…”
“Yes.”
Qin Feng’s voice was calm.
“But you’ve never treated me as a friend. Otherwise, it wouldn’t have taken until today for me to catch hold of your secret.”
He lowered his head and looked at the open diary.
“I considered many possibilities, but I never imagined you could travel through time and space through a diary.”
“Judging by how anxious you were just now… what would happen if I let you finish reading this entry?”
“Would you disappear with a whoosh and travel back to 2009? Or would only your consciousness go back, leaving your body here?”
“You can try,” Jiang Ran said evenly.
“No need.”
Keeping the gun barrel steady, Qin Feng took out his phone with his left hand and held it to his ear.
“【Lilith.】”
He paused.
“I caught him. This game—I win.”
With that, he hung up.
“Lilith is your boss?” Jiang Ran looked at the setting sun.
“Lilith is the god of this world,” Qin Feng answered.
Jiang Ran laughed.
“The top scorer in the gaokao saying something like that—didn’t your physics teacher die of rage?”
“Lilith is omnipotent.”
“Being omnipotent doesn’t make you a god.”
……
After a brief silence, sparrows sprang up from the power lines.
“Very well.”
Qin Feng raised his phone again.
“Consider it fireworks to celebrate the end of the game. I’ll let you witness it.”
“Lilith.”
He said softly,
“【Let the sky go dark.】”
In an instant, the red sun vanished and black clouds churned.
Rolling thunder came from afar. The entire world dimmed, as if a layer of black gauze had been draped over the lens.
From bathing in sunset to being drenched in heavy rain, only a few seconds passed.
Qin Feng lowered the phone.
“How was that?”
“Astonishing.”
Jiang Ran tilted his head back, facing the falling rain.
“So… this is your secret. But I still have to say, you set off your fireworks too early.”
Qin Feng shoved the gun forward, forcing Jiang Ran to step onto the ledge.
Half a step farther, and he would fall to his death.
“Your trump card has already been exposed. Stop bluffing. Are you going to leave with a little dignity, or shall I send you on your way?”
Heh, heh, heh, heh.
Jiang Ran laughed and spread his arms.
“You’re wrong. The one whose trump card has been exposed… is you.”
“Oh?”
Qin Feng was unimpressed.
“Then show me your comeback.”
“I told you just now. Even omnipotence doesn’t make one a god. Only the one who controls history and manipulates history can be considered a god.”
Jiang Ran shifted his feet and turned around, pressing his forehead against the gun barrel.
“Keeping a diary really is a good habit, Qin Feng. These days, very few people can persist in writing a diary every single day like you.”
Qin Feng’s pupils contracted.
“What do you mean?”
Jiang Ran looked into his eyes with great interest.
“【Is it possible… that right now, we are inside your diary?】”
Boom！！！！！！
Lightning struck. The flash vanished in an instant, illuminating Qin Feng’s face in pallid white.
“No matter how I die, I’ll leave the diary. When that time comes, take a guess—which one of us will this gun be pointing at?”
Qin Feng’s finger joints clenched tightly around the trigger, blue veins trembling!
Jiang Ran closed his eyes, his arms still spread wide, and his entire body leaned backward.
“You can never defeat me within history. Because in this game upon the river of time…”
He leapt. Earth and sky turned upside down.
“【I am history!】”
……
……
……
……
……
……
Thump.
The sound of an air cushion being struck.
“Cut！！！！！！！”
The director leapt up excitedly from behind the camera and yanked the black gauze off the front of the lens. The world returned to brightness.
“That was incredible! Perfect! Such a difficult long take, and you actually got it in one shot! You two are practically born movie kings!”
Thunderous applause erupted all around.
The boy holding the showerhead for rain, the underclassman using a flash to create lightning, and the underclasswoman who had covered the camera with black gauze all threw down their props and clapped until their hands turned red.
“The scene between the two seniors was amazing!”
“We’re definitely winning an award at this university film festival!”
“To stay that controlled under the pressure of a one-take shot…”
“Senior Qin Feng is already the top gaokao scorer himself. He was practically playing himself! As expected, a genius is a genius wherever he goes!”
Amid the cheers and celebration, Qin Feng grabbed the roof ledge and jumped down.
There was another rooftop one level below. The air cushion they had placed there in advance had caught Jiang Ran perfectly, leaving him unharmed.
Qin Feng reached out and pulled Jiang Ran up, then punched him lightly.
“Not bad acting.”
Jiang Ran smiled and punched him back.
“You weren’t half bad either.”
The juniors crowded around them, chattering away, their eyes filled with undisguised admiration for the two.
“Jiang Ran, there’s one more thing I need your help with.”
The director, who was also the president of the film club, walked over.
She handed the script booklet to Jiang Ran.
“This microfilm still doesn’t have a title. Since you wrote the script, you should be the one to name it.”
Jiang Ran took the script.
“Honestly, it’s kind of embarrassing. This story is actually just something I came up with back in middle school when I was bored in class.”
“A phone that can grant any wish, a diary that can travel through time and space… they were all chuuni fantasies from when I was young. My face was burning when I was saying those lines just now.”
“You looked like you were enjoying it plenty,” Qin Feng mocked.
The director handed Jiang Ran a pen.
“In any case, it’s your work. You should be the one to give it a name.”
“Fine.”
Jiang Ran did not refuse. He took the pen, thought for a moment, and began to write.
“The setting I wrote back then was about eleven geniuses taking part in a game and influencing the fate of the world.”
“It’s been so long that I can’t remember a lot of the details anymore, but I do still remember the title.”
“If you don’t mind it sounding too chuuni… how about we use the original name?”
He smiled faintly, turned the script around, and showed everyone the title he had just written on the cover—
“Genius Playground!”
【Genius Playground】