Genius Playground

“Oh, right.”

Sang Biao was confused too. He looked at the pudgy man:

“Lao San, what happened to you? Didn’t you go scout out the ventilation pipe over there? How’d you get here before us?”

“Boss! I almost died of fright!”

Lao San complained tearfully:

“You know how there was a Permission Wall in the vent before? We were stepping on that invisible air and couldn’t fall no matter what.”

“I was careless this time! I forgot all about that while I was scouting inside. I wasn’t paying attention, fell right through, and slid down the pipe all the way here!”

“I was stuck here for over ten minutes before you guys showed up! These cats are alive! I’ve never seen cats this big in my life! And they can talk!”

“They kept dragging me to all sorts of rides. That drop tower and the roller coaster were terrifying! They scared the soul right out of me!”

“I told them I wouldn’t go on any more rides, no matter what, but they just kept chasing me, trying to drag me to the pendulum ride or something!”

Heh.

For a moment, Jiang Ran didn’t know whether to laugh or cry, unsure what to make of this amusement park tragedy.

But he keenly picked up on a piece of information…

If you could slide down from the ventilation pipe, you could get straight to the 42nd basement level. That would save a lot of time compared to crawling through the sewers.

“Boss! What in the world is this place?! It’s too weird!”

Lao San looked at the Rhine Cats singing their theme song in chorus behind him, his face pale and his legs weak.

“I dunno!”

Sang Biao was also completely baffled:

“Who would’ve thought it’d be this huge down here! If Pompey really hid the treasure in some nook or cranny, how are we supposed to find it?!”

Suddenly, as if reminded of something, Lao San stopped crying and stood up straight:

“Boss… just now, when the big cats pushed me onto the roller coaster and I went for a ride…”

“At the very end of this amusement park, I saw a silver gate as tall as the sky! There was a line of English written on it! But the roller coaster was so scary, I couldn’t get a clear look!”

Sang Biao slapped his thigh:

“That must be it!”

He turned around, clenched his fist, and sneered at Jiang Ran:

“Trying to scare us off with these petty tricks… Pompey really underestimates us!”

“Who was that screaming for his mommy just now…?” Jiang Ran muttered.

“That’s not important!”

Sang Biao waved his hand dismissively:

“What’s important is that we’ve finally found the place where Pompey hid his treasure! I’m sure of it… behind that door must lie the deepest secret of the entire Digital World!”

“Now that all the Permission Walls are down, it means we can even enter the room that Pompey himself couldn’t get into! Let’s go, boys! I’m about to ascend the throne and become the new king of the Digital World!”

With that, he hauled Lao San to his feet and told him to lead the way.

“No, running will be too slow.”

Jiang Ran knew it was around 10:30 right now. The amusement park was huge; they definitely couldn’t run to the end in nine minutes. They had to use some kind of high-speed transport.

He looked up at the roller coaster, which snaked through the air like a great dragon…

It seemed to be the fastest thing in the entire amusement park.

“Hello.”

Figuring it couldn’t hurt to ask, Jiang Ran greeted the Rhine Cats:

“Could you use this roller coaster to take us to the end of the amusement park, in front of that silver gate?”

“Of course, meow!”

Hearing that someone was finally willing to go on a ride, the adorable Rhine Cats jumped for joy, high-fiving each other. A few even pulled party poppers from their aprons, shooting colorful streamers into the air:

“You can ride it however you want!”

“Any way you want is fine! Here at Hang City Paradise, the customer is king!”

“We’ll be sure to get you there as fast as possible!”

“Maximum speed, meow~ Engineer meows, get ready~ Target: end of the park!”

It seemed this amusement park had truly never had any visitors before. The excited Rhine Cats swarmed forward, a sea of heads and soft, fluffy paws, and lifted the four of them up.

“Fuck! I’m not riding this thing!”

Sang Biao’s feet left the ground as he struggled desperately:

“Let me down!”

“You’re riding it whether you like it or not!”

Jiang Ran looked at him:

“Think about it, Sang Biao! With the Permission Walls gone, it’s like all roads lead here now! If you don’t hurry, someone else will definitely beat you to it! For all we know, someone might already be at the silver gate!”

“I’ve been scared of these things since I was a kid!” Sang Biao kept struggling, kicking his legs.

“Do you want Pompey’s treasure or not?! If you’re a man, then stop being a coward! Get on!”

…

…

…

“AHHHHH!!!!” x3.5

Jiang Ran had thought there was a limit to how intense a roller coaster could be.

But in this illogical amusement park, it seemed nothing followed the rules of logic!

This wasn’t a roller coaster! It was a sideways-launched rocket!

He had once described roller coasters as your body flying ahead while your soul struggled to catch up. But now… he felt like his soul had been left completely in the dust.

Under the immense wind pressure, he couldn’t even turn his head. Otherwise, he really would have looked back to see if the roller coaster was forming a Mach ring as it broke the sound barrier.

The reason only 3.5 people were screaming was that Lao San, forced to ride for the second time, was already foaming at the mouth, gurgling incoherently.

In the blink of an eye, Jiang Ran saw several Rhine Cats in engineering outfits adjusting the track’s direction.

Finally, after only a few dozen seconds, he could see the silver gate at the end of the park, standing tall between heaven and earth.

SCREECH—

The roller coaster screeched to an extremely uncomfortable halt, sending a shower of sparks into the air.

“Lao San! Lao San!”

Sang Biao’s constitution was as tough as expected. He jumped off the roller coaster and grabbed Lao San by the shoulders, shaking him back and forth. But it was clear the other man had passed out and was completely unconscious.

“Sorry…”

Jiang Ran climbed out, his legs trembling:

“I admit, I spoke too soon.”

“Spoke too soon? You’re just fucking hard to kill!”

There was no time for that. The deadline of 39 minutes and 11 seconds could arrive at any moment. Jiang Ran hurried to the silver gate.

Looking up towards the endless sky, Jiang Ran felt as insignificant as an ant before this gate.

He quickly spotted the line of English words Lao San had mentioned, carved conspicuously on the gate.

Central Control Zone

“Central Control Zone…”

Jiang Ran’s English was excellent, so he read it aloud directly.

He walked forward and placed his hand on the silver gate.

RUMBLE…

The two doors, as tall as the dome of the sky, opened to either side with an impossible, weightless speed.

Jiang Ran looked inside…

Inside, there was nothing. It was still the same ultimate white.

But!

Floating in mid-air was a short-haired girl in a school uniform! Countless streams of light, like silver threads, flowed out from the top of her head, connecting upwards to some unknown destination. They were layered and dense, yet perfectly orderly, with not a single stream crossing or overlapping another as they stretched out to the entire world!

Jiang Ran’s eyes widened.

That was…

The uniform of Hang City High School! The same uniform he had worn for three years!

And as for the short-haired girl, he had known her his whole life; they had been together day and night, inseparable—

“Xiaoxue!!!”

Unable to contain his excitement, he broke into a run, rushing toward the figure he had longed for day and night:

“Xiaoxue!!!!!!”

In mid-air…

The girl, like a sleeping beauty amidst the thousands of brightening silver threads, slowly opened her eyes.

She looked at the man rushing toward her from below:

“Jiang…”

Her lips barely moved, her voice light and airy.

It felt as if many years had passed, and yet also like only yesterday:

“Jiang… Ran?”