Genius Club

Chapter 299: Chapter 14 Your Eyes and the Puzzle Chapter 299: Chapter 14 Your Eyes and the Puzzle Mirror?

What does this mean?

After saying this, Huang Que clicked away in her high heels without looking back.

The sound gradually faded away, disappearing at the turn of the stairwell, and all was quiet again.

Liu Feng was also bewildered for quite a while before poking Lin Xian’s arm:

“Lin Xian, who is this woman?

Why does it feel like I can’t understand a single word she’s saying…

I’m certain it’s Chinese, but she always seems to shy away from the question, going round in circles.”

“The Riddler,” Lin Xian summarily concluded:

“She’s a pure Riddler, the kind Batman ought to take out.”

“Has she always been like this?” Liu Feng looked at Lin Xian with a sympathetic gaze.

“Well…

I wouldn’t know about that.”

Lin Xian shook his head:

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?

Liu Feng half-opened his eyes in disbelief, looking at Lin Xian:

“Really?

You’ve only met twice?”

“Yeah, what’s so surprising about that?”

“But you two…

seem so familiar, as if you’ve known each other for a long time,” Liu Feng still couldn’t believe it.

He glanced at Lin Xian, then at the doorframe where Huang Que had just leaned, blinking:

“Especially just now, that woman, you called her Huang Que, right?

The way she looked at you, that’s not how you look at someone you’ve barely met twice.

Her gaze was really familiar, as if…

as if she’s looking at…”

Liu Feng scratched his ear, unable to find the appropriate adjective.

“Looking at what?” Lin Xian asked curiously.

“The way she looked at you was like…

like looking at…”

Liu Feng pursed his lips and uttered what he thought was the most fitting answer:

“Like looking at a lover.”

…

…

…

“Heh,” after a short silence, Lin Xian let out a chuckle and patted Liu Feng’s shoulder:

“Liu Feng, I’ve always had this stereotype of you, seeing you as someone who’s not good with words, not one to joke around, straightforward, and factual.

I didn’t expect you to have a sense of humor; what a surprise.”

“No, no, no.”

Liu Feng firmly waved his hand:

“I’m not joking with you.

I’m being factual; what I said is the truth.”

Lin Xian was dismissive:

“What science man would understand all this love business.”

“You can’t say that, Lin Xian.

It seems your stereotype of scientists is really severe.

Don’t forget, I’ve been in love before,” Liu Feng countered as he looked back at Lin Xian:

“Have you ever been in love?”

“I…”

Lin Xian was momentarily at a loss for words.

Putting away his smile:

“I really haven’t.”

“See, that’s just it.

You have no experience in this area, no girlfriend, so of course, you wouldn’t understand women.”

Liu Feng hummed lightly, giving Lin Xian’s shoulder a weighty pat like an elder brother:

“Her gaze at you wasn’t mistaken, just trust me.

I can’t be wrong about a woman’s look – it was definitely the kind that one shows only toward a lover, that sticky yet familiar feeling.”

“How can you be so sure?” Lin Xian turned his head.

“Because…”

The usually serious Liu Feng’s expression grew intense:

“The way Qi Qi looked at me was just like that.”

Liu Feng paused, his voice filled with longing:

“The worse her condition got, feeling her days were numbered, the more her gaze became like that.

Wanting to look at me, wanting to take in more of me, yet always averting her eyes, but every time our eyes met, she would reveal that regretful and reluctant smile…

just like the woman just now when she looked at you.”

“So…

how could I possibly be wrong, Lin Xian.”

…

Lin Xian said nothing.

He turned his body to look at the silent, speechless Liu Feng.

That moment, he believed.

Because Liu Feng’s gaze was the same.

Just like the former Li Qiqi, just like Huang Que just now.

Perhaps…

As Liu Feng had said.

He didn’t understand women; he didn’t understand romance.

But he had experienced love, life-and-death separations, the departure of a lover and the powerlessness of longing.

These were experiences more reliable than any theory,

Unfamiliar.

But engraved deeply within.

Lin Xian also patted Liu Feng’s back:

“Well, even though I’d like to agree with you…

the fact is, it’s not what you think.

As you’ve seen, although she’s pretty, she must be in her thirties, maybe even close to forty.

There couldn’t possibly be any story between me and a woman her age.

Honestly…

I still prefer them a bit younger.”

“Alright, alright, let’s drop it.

You’d better get back to work.

Although this woman is a mystery, her timing is always impeccable, she never speculates without cause.

So now I also agree with what you said earlier –”

“There might not be any problem with the ‘Space-Time Clock’ you designed, and the reason we couldn’t measure the changes in the space-time curvature could indeed be, as we had guessed, the lack of a proper reference point, not achieving true horizontal calibration.”

“If you really think the changes in space-time curvature, the shifts in world-lines, and all such things are connected to cosmic constants, maybe your research should start from there.

Huang Que also said nothing is absolutely right or wrong in this world, so even if I’m your investor, you don’t have to consider the advice of a layperson like me.

You have complete freedom to pursue your original research path.”

Liu Feng nodded.

He didn’t have a clear direction or clue regarding cosmic constants as of yet.

He had tried so many possibilities that all turned out to be wrong, and that’s why he was now planning to look for answers from the perspective of space-time curvature.

He decided to give it a try.

His intuition told him his theory should be without errors.

Because Qi Qi had once said…

The world, the universe itself, is inherently beautiful.

Formulas, rules, all kinds of theories, they possess an aesthetically pleasing coherence and completeness of their own.

Although it sounds a bit mystical…

In the field of mathematics, if the intuition holds that a theory is beautiful, then it is very likely to be correct.

Academic history has repeatedly confirmed this; many extraordinarily beautiful theories have been proposed before being verified afterward.

Thinking this,

Liu Feng pointed to the note Huang Que had left behind:

“The woman just now said…

if we figure out what to do, we should go to the address on that note.

What did it say?”

The two walked over, picked up the slip of paper, and unfolded it.

Looking at the address written on it…

Liu Feng couldn’t help but inhale sharply!

It was a place that looked simple but was well known by all people of China—

[Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center]!

“Can we…

Can we even go there?”

Liu Feng handed the piece of paper to Lin Xian:

“This isn’t some place that’s open to the public, let alone entering, even approaching it is a problem due to its nature as a state secret.”

Uh…

Lin Xian contemplated the elegant handwriting on the paper.

Who knows.

Huang Que was an extremely mysterious woman in the first place, so Lin Xian wouldn’t find any of her actions surprising.

However, for the moment, it seemed that Huang Que didn’t harbor any ill will towards him, so he chose to trust her for now.

Moreover, a place as important as the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center wouldn’t be left unguarded for an outsider like Huang Que to mess with.

Since he had the state as a backup, what was there to worry about if he actually went to Jiuquan to find Huang Que?

“Let’s talk about this matter later.”

Lin Xian rolled up the small piece of paper and tucked it into his pocket:

“At the moment, I don’t see any necessity for our research to go to space…

Liu Feng, pretend this never happened.

Don’t let it disturb your train of thoughts.

Continue with your experiment as planned and try to calibrate this ‘Space-Time Clock.’ Once we detect changes in space-time curvature, we’ll see what kind of relationship it has with the universal constant.”

However…

Liu Feng seemed to be unresponsive to Lin Xian’s persuasion.

Ever since he saw the words on the note, he had been frowning as if facing a formidable enemy, deeply absorbed in thought, and even beads of sweat appeared on his forehead.

“I think I have some ideas.”

Liu Feng looked up at Lin Xian:

“Could it be that Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center is a hint from that woman named Huang Que?

Universal constant, universal constant!

Since it’s a universal constant, we need to look further into space!

Cosmic microwave background…

blinking frequency…

planetary bands…

gravitational wave motion…

dark dimension spectrum…”

Suddenly, Liu Feng started murmuring complex professional terminologies under his breath.

“I think I’ve got some inspiration!”

He hastily looked around, picked up a piece of chalk from the table, and began scribbling on the blackboard.

The chalk moved swiftly.

He erased and wrote again, wrote and erased again.

Lin Xian waited for a little while…

it didn’t seem like a quick solution was forthcoming.

He yawned, waved at Liu Feng who had entered a state of deep concentration:

“I’ll be leaving then.

Contact me immediately if there is any breakthrough in the research.”

“Mm-hmm.”

Liu Feng was far too occupied to pay attention to Lin Xian, still feverishly writing on the blackboard, eyes shining with excitement.

Watching this scene, Lin Xian couldn’t help but feel a mix of amusement and frustration.

He had just been feeling guilty for stereotyping scientists, but Liu Feng’s level of focus was the very embodiment of the stereotype, depicted the same way in 120 out of 100 novels.

But…

This state of work wasn’t bad either.

“Hopefully Li Qiqi’s wish can be realized soon,” Lin Xian muttered softly to himself before stepping out of the lab and closing the steel security door behind him.

Bang.

…

Lin Xian pushed open the glass door of the bathroom and walked over to the sink.

He propped his hands onto the washbasin, his gaze fixed on the huge mirror on the wall reflecting his own image staring back at him.

The puzzle that had been confounding Liu Feng in his research seemed to have found a clue.

But on his own part, he was still completely in the dark.

The enigmatic message left by Huang Que once again demanded that he guess.

The previous game of “Catch Me If You Can” was somewhat easy to guess since he was already in the middle of the game at the time.

But now…

He thought back to the last thing Huang Que said when she left at noon:

“Take a good look in the mirror, Lin Xian.”

“There’s something you want inside the mirror.”

Mirror.

How did it suddenly come to mirrors?

Without considering the context, admonishing someone to take a good look in the mirror could be equivalent to an insult in polite terms.

Calling someone ugly, lacking self-awareness, or a toad wishing to eat swan meat.

But obviously, Huang Que did not mean that at this moment.

What exactly did she refer to with “mirror”?

Was it the most common, most ordinary kind of reflective mirror that is found everywhere?

Lin Xian looked at his reflection in the mirror, blinking his eyes.

The reflection blinked back.

He turned his head to the left.

The reflection mirrored the action.

Even if he moved closer, his eyes pressing against the mirror’s surface, he could not see anything out of the ordinary.

Lin Xian straightened up, contemplating a trope often found in anime.

“It shouldn’t…

be that outlandish, should it?”

He spread the fingers of his right hand and placed them on the mirror with an exceedingly naive gesture, attempting to merge into a different world within the mirror.

…

…

As expected, it was a foolish idea.

“Ah, I really hate riddles,” he said.

Lin Xian was utterly baffled by the puzzle Huang Que had left him.

Moreover.

She said there was something he wanted inside the mirror.

What did he want?

Right now, there was so much he wanted…

He wanted answers to many questions, he wanted the truth behind the universal constant 42, he wanted to gain the power to make himself stronger, he wanted an invitation to the Genius Club, he wanted to understand the threads that Zhao Yingjun had painstakingly hidden from him in the dream realm—

“Wait a minute.”

Lin Xian gazed at his own reflection in the mirror, which stood up slowly, just as he did.

Zhao Yingjun,

Dream realm,

City in the Sky,

The clues she hid from him.

𝑛𝘰𝘷𝕘𝗼.co

“Could it be…”

Lin Xian’s heartbeat quickened, and the man in the mirror opened his mouth, staring at him, murmuring silently as if he had been muted:

“Could it be that what Zhao Yingjun left for me 600 years later…”

“Is in the mirror?”