Prodigy’s Playground

Chapter 55 Ferris Wheel

Offering a cigarette is the most effective way to communicate in Dragon Country.

As long as the other party is willing to take your cigarette, it means everything can be discussed.

The old man took a drag and coughed twice, dryly:

“It’s been, what, more than ten years now… That year, Yongxiao—Qin Feng’s father—died in an accident.”

“How exactly he died, where he died, we don’t know… Sigh. So young, and he left behind the child and his mother, the two of them depending on each other.”

“After the funeral was done, the mother and child left. We don’t know where they went. Back then, everyone thought she’d gone to remarry—who would’ve thought they’d never come back after that, like they’d vanished off the face of the earth.”

…

What this elderly gentleman said was, in fact, consistent with what the teacher at the school had said.

[After Qin Feng’s father died, Qin Feng left his hometown with his mother. For ten years, there was no word from them.]

“Then what about this house?”Jiang Ran pointed behind him.

“Sir, may I ask what happened with Qin Feng’s family home?”

“It looks like it was destroyed by a big fire. Was it an accident? Or… was it deliberately set on fire?”

The old man took another deep drag.

Then slowly exhaled.

“It was definitely arson, but to this day nobody knows who set the fire.”

“Not long after Qin Yongxiao’s funeral was finished, and after the mother and child had left… one night, this old house suddenly caught fire.”

“The fire spread fast. By the time the villagers noticed, even the main beams had collapsed. Luckily, no one was living inside.”

“I really don’t know who they’d offended back then… People say when someone dies, their debts are settled. Yet someone still chased after them to burn the house down—truly too sinful.”

The old man shook his head.

“The villagers all guessed that Qin Feng and his mother left because they were afraid someone would come looking for revenge, so once they left, they never returned.”

“That kid Qin Feng was smart from a young age. The whole village was counting on him to get into a good university. Who knows what kind of huge trouble his father got into out there… A perfectly good family… just fell apart like that.”

He took one last, epic drag deep into his lungs.

The old man flicked away the cigarette butt, stamped it out a few times, and left, leaning on his cane.

…

Once the old man’s stooped figure disappeared into the depths of the alley, Jiang Ran and Wang Hao exchanged a look—eyes filled with the shadow of the word “conspiracy.”

It seemed that Qin Feng, and what happened to Qin Feng’s father back then, were far from simple.

[There must be some secret that brought disaster upon him, forcing Qin Feng to leave his homeland and utterly change the trajectory of his life.]

Now Jiang Ran also understood why Qin Feng had gone missing, and why he never came looking for him.

Presumably.

Qin Feng must have encountered some kind of difficulty—something beyond his control.

He had thought that the time-traveling text messages would change Qin Feng’s childhood, letting him live a happy life with a complete family.

Yet he hadn’t expected that the claws of the butterfly effect would not spare him… Not only did it prevent him from saving his father, it even made his life more miserable than before.

“Sounds like there are quite a few hidden details. Things are getting interesting.”

Wang Hao turned back toward the burned ruins of Qin Feng’s home.

“Let’s see if we can find any clues over here.”

Originally, Wang Hao hadn’t been interested in Qin Feng’s affairs at all—he was purely here to accompany Jiang Ran.

But now, his curiosity had been stirred, giving him a detective-like thrill of cracking a case.

Jiang Ran stepped through the mud to follow him, returning to the broken walls and shattered remains.

It must have rained here yesterday. The ground was slick, and the rain had washed the dust away, making the carvings on the courtyard walls and stone surfaces clearly visible.

This was the place where Qin Feng once lived.

Jiang Ran took a deep breath. Dampness and freshness rushed toward him.

Clearly, this place had been abandoned for a long time. Everything inside that could burn had already been reduced to ashes;

what couldn’t burn had been eroded by wind and rain…

Dust to dust, earth to earth. Everything had lost its former appearance.

After circling the ruins twice without finding any clues, Jiang Ran turned his gaze toward the courtyard wall that was still barely intact.

Moss had piled up in the corners, and grass sprouts had emerged from the sand and mud between the bricks. There was no trace of human presence here, yet everywhere brimmed with life.

“Huh?”

Reaching the eastern side of the courtyard wall, Jiang Ran stopped.

He squatted down and saw that on the stone surface, freshly washed clean by the rain… there was a simple line-drawn graffiti carving.

This kind of clumsy, childish line-drawn graffiti should have been made by a very young Qin Feng back then.

Remarkable.

The marks of time had actually crossed through the years, presenting themselves before Jiang Ran.

He recalled a line from the famous science-fiction novel The Three-Body Problem:

“The longest-lasting way humans preserve information is by carving words into stone.”

The authority of that line was fully on display at this moment.

Everything in Qin Feng’s home had been burned to nothing by the great fire. Years of wind and rain had eroded away anything that remained—no information survived at all…

And yet, this single doodle that a young Qin Feng had casually carved into the stone wall had defeated time, allowing itself to be discovered by those who came later.

Jiang Ran stepped closer and carefully examined the image carved into the stone wall.

This was…

A Ferris wheel?

He blinked.

It really did look like a simple line drawing of a Ferris wheel.

On the outer edge of a large circular ring, eight small circular cabins were drawn. At the bottom, there was even a triangular support frame… This was definitely a Ferris wheel.

What was intriguing was that, in the very center of the Ferris wheel’s large circle, a wide-open eye had been carved.

Jiang Ran thought he might be seeing things.

Because normally, the center of a Ferris wheel should have many supporting spokes—that would be more realistic.

But in this simple drawing, the center of the Ferris wheel was empty, with only a single large eye, its pupil shining brightly.

It was probably something young Qin Feng had drawn for fun.

But…

[Why does it feel… so familiar?]

Locking eyes with the large eye inside the Ferris wheel, Jiang Ran found himself unable to look away. His thoughts seemed to be tightly seized by that eerie pupil, gradually swallowed whole.

“What are you staring at?”

Behind him, Wang Hao walked over.

He leaned in, following Jiang Ran’s gaze.

“Huh? You carved this?”

Jiang Ran was speechless.

“Why would I carve something like this for no reason?”

“Hmm…”

Wang Hao narrowed his eyes and carefully examined the carved marks on the wall. He even picked at them with his finger, scraping off some debris.

“Feels like it’s been here for quite a few years. Is this a Ferris wheel? Gotta say, it’s carved pretty well. Do you think Qin Feng carved this when he was a kid?”

“Possible.”

Jiang Ran nodded.

“But it’s also possible that some other kids from the village carved it in the past ten years.”

“This abandoned ruin with no one watching it would be a pretty good secret base for kids. They probably come here to play a lot.”

“So whoever carved this Ferris wheel isn’t strange at all. It could’ve been Qin Feng, or it could’ve been someone else.”

Wang Hao chuckled.

“You’re saying a bunch of nonsense. Then why are you standing here with a tortured look, agonizing over it?”

Jiang Ran took another step forward, moving even closer.

That’s right.

The more he looked at this Ferris wheel-plus-eye image, the more familiar it felt—yet he still couldn’t pull out the exact memory path from his mind.

“I’m not agonizing over who carved this.”

His index finger traced along the grooves.

[I’m just absolutely certain that I’ve seen this image somewhere else before—but right now, I can’t remember it no matter what.]

His fingertip circled once around the carved Ferris wheel.

“Just where… have I seen it?”