Genius Club

This novel is translated and hosted on Bcatranslation

“If the Millennial Stake was planted in 1952, then it must have been created in 1932,” Liu Feng said, staring at the numbers on his screen. He frowned, tapping his pen on the desk. “But that doesn’t help us much. There were no spacetime rifts in 1932. No matter how much we think about it, we can’t reach it.”

He leaned back in his chair, narrowing his eyes. “But… 1952, now that’s something. That’s our key. It’s the only lead we have to unlock the mystery of the Millennial Stake and save Chu An Qing!”

He paused, his voice softening. “But here’s the problem: if we want to use the Time Travel Machine and the Entangled Spacetime Particles to go back to 1952, we’ll need to wait until 2234—when that comet carrying Astatine-339 finally reaches Earth.” He sighed. “That means we’ll have to enter the hibernation chambers. Only by hibernating until 2234 will we have a chance to save Chu An Qing.”

Lin Xian listened carefully, his brow furrowed in thought. “There’s more to it than that,” he said slowly. “If Einstein lied about the Millennial Stake… what else might he have lied about?”

Liu Feng gave him a sharp look, and Lin Xian shrugged. “Once you find one lie among a hundred truths, you start questioning everything. Maybe all of it was a lie.”

Lin Xian got up from his chair and gestured towards the door. “Keep working here,” he said. “I’m going home to tell Zhao Ying Jun about all this.”

Liu Feng stood too, walking Lin Xian to the door. “By the way, your daughter’s due soon, right?”

Lin Xian’s face softened with a smile. “Yeah, in about two weeks. We’re going for a final check-up soon. Then we’ll know the exact date.”

“That’s amazing,” Liu Feng said, smiling warmly. “How does it feel, knowing you’ll be a dad?”

“I’m excited, of course!” Lin Xian said, chuckling. “It’s part of why I want to save Chu An Qing—to give Chu Shan He an answer. And for Yu Xi… I want to make the world a better place.”

With that, Lin Xian left the Donghai University Rhine Joint Laboratory, got into his car, and drove to Zhao Ying Jun’s house.

When Lin Xian got home, he opened the door to find VV, their fluffy Pomeranian, rolling lazily on the floor. VV used to bark at every sound from the elevator, but it seemed to have outgrown its excitable phase. Now it mostly just ate, napped, and enjoyed life, like a little pampered god.

“Born from worry, dying in comfort,” Lin Xian muttered, shaking his head as VV burped and gave him a sleepy glance, before waddling into the bedroom.

Lin Xian followed the little dog into the room. Zhao Ying Jun was sitting at the desk, reading, and he began telling her about everything he had figured out at the lab.

“So it’s true,” Zhao Ying Jun said, frowning. “But the question remains—did Einstein lie to us on purpose, or was he misled? Could his vision of the future have been hijacked somehow?”

“Lied, or misled,” Lin Xian echoed, thinking aloud. “I don’t think Einstein lied. I think he was deceived—he saw a fake future.”

He took a deep breath and continued, “If Einstein really wanted to deceive us, he could have done a better job. Like, why make me suspicious by saying there was no dispersal of the Millennial Stake in 1952? He could’ve just made up a reason and told me the Stake was beyond saving, and I might have believed him.”

Lin Xian shook his head. “Take, for example, when I asked about my own death. If Einstein thought I was a threat, he could’ve given me a fake date, had me lie low, and then have Agent 17 take me out. But he didn’t.”

“I’ve never seen myself as the smartest in the Genius Club,” Lin Xian said, a wry smile on his lips. “Actually, I’m probably the least brilliant. But in all these years, none of the other members have caught Einstein in a lie. It’s not that they’re not smart enough.”

Zhao Ying Jun nodded in agreement. “If Einstein wanted to keep 1952 a secret, he could have done it in a hundred smarter ways. He didn’t need to hand you clues that would make you suspicious.”

“Exactly,” Lin Xian said, pulling up a chair to sit across from Zhao Ying Jun. “Einstein’s goal has always been to prevent humanity from destroying itself, to find a path to a truly happy future. When he started the Genius Club, it was to gather the best minds to help find that path.”

“And when he found it, he stopped the club’s meetings to keep that timeline stable. Even now, I’ve lost the ability to break through spacetime barriers.”

“If the future Einstein saw is real, then there’s no problem. I’d work alongside him to stabilize that timeline. But if the future he saw was fake, then…” Lin Xian hesitated, looking Zhao Ying Jun in the eye. “If we do nothing, humanity will be extinct in six hundred years. We won’t be able to keep our promise to Chu Shan He, and we won’t be able to save Chu An Qing.”

Zhao Ying Jun stood up thoughtfully. She walked over to the desk, turned on the lamp, and picked up a pen. She stared at the paper in front of her, deep in thought.

“Based on Liu Feng’s experiments, we’re starting to see things more clearly. Right now, there are two main problems we need to solve,” she said.

She wrote down on the paper:

Discover the truth about Einstein and the motives of those behind him. Save humanity from extinction in 600 years.

Uncover the mystery of the Millennial Stake and bring back Chu An Qing.

Click. She capped the pen and looked at Lin Xian. “It’s not as bad as before. Now, there are only two things we need to deal with.”

“There’s one more thing,” she added, looking thoughtful. “The true identity of the Genius Club president—the old man with the Einstein mask. Do you think it matters?”

Lin Xian rubbed his chin. “Maybe. If I could find him, then yeah, it’d matter. I could talk to him, maybe solve a lot of this.” He shook his head. “But I haven’t even found Newton, Gauss, or Galileo. How am I supposed to find Einstein?”

“Maybe if VV, the super AI, returns, it could help. But that’d mean waiting until 2482 and finding Cheng Qian. Another blocked path.”

Zhao Ying Jun looked at Lin Xian, her eyes serious. “You once thought that maybe the man behind the Einstein mask really is Einstein—alive and unchanged.”

Lin Xian smiled. “That was just me. Musk disagreed completely. He doesn’t think anyone could live past 140 and still be sharp. But with all the strange things in this world, maybe it’s possible.”

Zhao Ying Jun shook her head, her gaze sharpening. “Think about it again. Some people… they don’t age.”

Lin Xian’s eyes widened. “You mean… Yellow Finch?”

Zhao Ying Jun nodded. “Remember last month? If Yellow Finch wanted to find you before the first timeline shift, she had to find you in the year 2000, when Zhang Yu Qian disappeared. But when she officially met you in 2023, she still looked thirty.”

Lin Xian nodded slowly. “Which means… Yellow Finch doesn’t age.”

But why? Lin Xian wondered. It had to be linked to her blue eyes and time travel. But Agent 17 had blue eyes too, and she aged—so why didn’t Yellow Finch?

Yellow Finch used ordinary spacetime particles, a one-way trip. Agent 17 used entangled particles—a round trip. That had to be it.

“I’ve got it,” Lin Xian said suddenly, his eyes lighting up. “Time travelers using ordinary spacetime particles don’t age.”

Zhao Ying Jun smiled faintly. “We’re getting somewhere. Now, back to the Genius Club president’s identity…” She tapped her pen thoughtfully on the desk. “It’s not impossible that he’s really Einstein. Musk might say it’s impossible, but given everything we’ve seen… maybe it is a property of spacetime particles.”

Spacetime particles… Lin Xian felt he was on the edge of something big. He stood up and began pacing.

“Woof!”

In his rush, Lin Xian accidentally kicked VV, who rolled across the floor like a little round ball until he bumped into the door frame.

“Woof! Woof! Woof!” VV barked furiously. How could Lin Xian kick him like that? Was it just because he’d gotten a bit round lately? Where was the gentle Lin Xian who used to pet his head and talk to him softly?

But Lin Xian was lost in thought, not even noticing VV’s anger. His mind was reaching across time and space, trying to grasp a key idea, a breakthrough.

“Liu Feng studied it,” Lin Xian muttered to himself. “For spacetime particles to enter our world, they need a rift. And the locator module of the Time Travel Machine shows that the first rift appeared in 1952. Before that, there were no rifts.”

“So, if a spacetime particle wanted to reach us, it couldn’t have arrived before 1952.”

Lin Xian stopped and looked at Zhao Ying Jun. “If something like this happened in 1952—”

“A spacetime rift appeared in the latter half of 1952. At the same time, a spacetime particle drifted through from beyond the rift. It was the very first spacetime particle in history. And somehow, Einstein got hold of it—maybe something else happened, but it changed him. He became like Yellow Finch—a time traveler.”

“Einstein’s eyes turned blue, and he stopped aging. That’s how he founded the Genius Club and managed to survive all these years, maybe even forever.”

Suddenly, Lin Xian remembered the third rule of the Genius Club: Members must wear a mask at meetings to maintain privacy.

Could it be… that the rule wasn’t just to protect privacy but to hide Einstein’s blue eyes?

Zhao Ying Jun listened carefully to Lin Xian’s analysis. She turned back to her desk, uncapping her pen.

“It seems like 1952 is the key,” she said. “The first spacetime rift and the first spacetime particle—they both came to Earth then. It’s really the start of everything, the root of every mystery.”

“The vision Zhang Yu Qian had of Einstein in 1952—it wasn’t just random. And the painting ‘Sorrowful Einstein’ was also created in 1952.”

“Remember when we played that sentence-making game? Through spacetime particles and rifts—1952, Einstein, the Genius Club, the Millennial Stake, the white light of destruction, the fake future, the blue eyes—all of these key terms are linked.”

She wrote down the third item on the list:

Everything began in 1952, with the first spacetime rift and the first spacetime particle.

Zhao Ying Jun held up the piece of paper and walked over to Lin Xian.

“Look,” she said, pointing to the list. “All three things we need to solve point to 1952. So, Lin Xian…”

She looked into his eyes. “Whether it’s to save the future or fulfill our promise to Chu Shan He and bring back Chu An Qing, we have to make this trip to 1952.”

…

Lin Xian was silent. It had come to this—a step they couldn’t avoid.

In truth, Zhao Ying Jun’s ‘Hibernation to the Future’ plan didn’t bother Lin Xian too much. After all, they’d only go into hibernation after their daughter, Yu Xi, turned eighteen. They’d be taking a long journey through time, but she’d be an adult by then, ready to make her own decisions.

If Yu Xi wanted to join them, they’d hibernate as a family. If she wanted to stay, that was fine too. She’d have her own life, and Lin Xian and Zhao Ying Jun would respect her choice.

But what about Chu Shan He and Su Xiu Ying? Could they bear the wait, never seeing their missing daughter again?

Lin Xian couldn’t let that happen. If Chu Shan He never got to see Chu An Qing alive again, Lin Xian’s promise would mean nothing.

But the Millennial Stake research was stuck. All the clues were hidden in 1952. Without traveling back, there was no way forward, no way to save Chu An Qing.

That was why Lin Xian hadn’t dared to face Chu Shan He all this time. He had promised so much, yet there had been no progress. How could he face him?

Suddenly, Zhao Ying Jun took his hand, her touch warm and gentle.

“I know what you’re thinking,” she said, her voice full of understanding. “You’re thinking about Chu Shan He, aren’t you?”

Lin Xian smiled ruefully. “You can see right through me. I was just thinking—what’s the point of saving Chu An Qing if Chu Shan He and Su Xiu Ying aren’t here to see it?”

“Don’t worry,” Zhao Ying Jun said, squeezing his hand. “I understand your guilt. I know how hard this has been for you.”

“That’s why I went to see Chu Shan He. I told him a little—not the core details, but enough to let him know you’re still trying.”

“Chu Shan He trusts you. He knows you’ll keep your promise. And I mentioned the hibernation plan too. He told me that if we can get rid of the memory-loss side effects, he’d be willing to join us—even hibernate early, just to be there when Chu An Qing comes back.”

Lin Xian said nothing. Zhao Ying Jun… she had taken care of so much that he couldn’t.

“Tomorrow, let’s go see Chu Shan He together,” Lin Xian said. “I haven’t dared face him because we had no progress. But now, we have clues—important ones.”

“The promise I made to Chu Shan He is my lifelong commitment. I’ll do whatever it takes—even if it costs me everything—to save Chu An Qing and reunite their family.”

Zhao Ying Jun smiled. “Of course. We’ll face this together. It’s our shared promise to keep.”

“I know you can do it. And Chu Shan He believes in you too—he’s never doubted you.”

Just then, Lin Xian’s phone began to ring. He glanced at the caller ID: it was Du Yao.

Could it be…?

He quickly answered the call.

On the other end, Du Yao’s voice was full of excitement.

“Lin Xian! We did it!”

“The Brain Neural Electric Helmet—it’s a success!”

This novel is translated and hosted on bcatranslation