Super genius

He instinctively looked around. Seeing no third person, he turned and strode toward the corridor.

His manager froze. "Hey, where are you going?"

[Even the genetic defects in my chromosomes have been erased. It looks like I can rule out this world being a subspace projection.]

Lu Yanchu stopped abruptly, the shock and uncertainty in his heart surging and spinning like something tossed up by a wave.

It was close, not a hallucination. The voice was right beside his ear, yet he could see no one speaking.

The almost supernatural phenomenon left him feeling as though his world had turned upside down. Lu Yanchu tried to calm himself first, but before he could finish drawing a breath, someone suddenly grabbed his right arm from behind.

He reflexively raised his elbow and pulled free. When he turned, he found his manager staring at him, bewildered at being shaken off.

"It's me! What's gotten into you? Why are you so jumpy?"

Lu Yanchu's dark, jade-like eyes swept over his face. He spoke in a low voice. "Did you hear anyone talking just now? Besides you and me."

His manager was utterly confused. He looked from side to side. "J-just now? Wasn't it only the two of us?"

Lu Yanchu pressed his lips into a grim line. He looked down the corridor, though it was unclear what he was looking at.

Finally, he lowered his gaze. "There might be more to my ear injury than external damage. I need to see the doctor again."

"What?!"

After receiving his chromosome report, Ji Ting left Ruihe. When he stepped out of the elevator, he threw everything in his hands into a trash can.

He reached into his jacket pocket for his car keys, pulling something else out with them.

It fell to the ground with a soft sound. Ji Ting lowered his eyes and saw the bank card Ji Yanzhi had given him.

Ji Ting bent down to pick it up, then held it and studied it impassively for a while.

Ji Yanzhi had angered him last night. Now that he had calmed down, he could more or less work out why Ji Yanzhi had given him the card.

And the reason seemed somewhat at odds with his understanding of him.

At that thought, Ji Ting closed his fingers around the card and put it back in his pocket.

The modified engine roared deafeningly. Just as the sports car pulled away, someone poked his head out of a van in the distance.

"Hey, wasn't that President Ji's younger brother?"

The bodyguard in the passenger seat snapped his head up. "Where?"

The other man pointed. "He was standing right there. Red lips, white teeth, ridiculously good-looking. He was driving a red sports car, too."

The bodyguard thought for a moment, then grabbed his phone. "Stay in the car and keep watching. I'm going to call Liao."

At seven that evening, Ji Yanzhi returned to the family home.

As usual, he went to his room to shower and change after entering. When he came out, he found the butler waiting in the corridor.

"What is it?"

The butler hesitantly began, "Young master, the Second Young Master today..."

Ji Yanzhi's expression instantly turned cold. "What? Did he cause trouble again?"

"No, no, he didn't cause any trouble." The butler waved his hands in denial, then continued haltingly, "It's just that the Second Young Master has been acting very strangely."

Ji Yanzhi turned toward the elevator. "Tell me on the way."

The butler hurried to catch up. "The Second Young Master went out during the day, then started chatting with us as soon as he came back."

Ji Yanzhi turned his head. "Chatting?"

"Yes, with me, with Liu the chef-oh, and he talked to the gardener about plans for the plants." The butler's face creased slightly. "There's nothing strange about chatting, really. But when he listened to us, he kept staring at us, as if he were studying something on our faces. It was rather unnerving."

Ji Yanzhi had expected something more serious. He figured Ji Ting was playing up again. "Leave him be. Talk to him if you want to. If you don't, just ignore him."

"Yes, sir."

Ji Yanzhi went downstairs to the dining room, where the troublemaker was already seated at the table.

The brothers exchanged a glance, then each coldly looked away without saying a word.

"Uncle Yang, serve dinner."

Once all the dishes were on the table, Ji Yanzhi had barely picked up his chopsticks when Ji Ting suddenly spoke. "You gave me that card last night because of Xu Ren, didn't you?"

He had checked the card's balance: three million. Ji Yanzhi disliked him so much that Ji Ting could think of no explanation other than compensation for something he had done wrong.

Ji Yanzhi's hand paused almost imperceptibly. He said expressionlessly, "Think whatever you like."

"I did consider that, given your personality, you would most likely pretend nothing had happened after realizing you'd misunderstood me. But I didn't expect your strong sense of morality to prevent you from reconciling it internally, leading you to compensate me in such an awkward way."

Hearing Ji Ting launch into a lengthy analysis of him, Ji Yanzhi narrowed his dark eyes. "Ji Ting, have I been too lenient with you?"

Ji Ting looked away from his face and calmly picked up his chopsticks. "I can tell you're still feeling awkward."

"You..."

The phone on the table suddenly vibrated. Interrupted, Ji Yanzhi glanced at the screen and answered. "Speak."

Liao Kai spoke on the other end. "President Ji, Lu Yanchu is still at the Medical Center. Aside from his manager, we haven't seen anyone else turn up."

Ji Yanzhi was already holding back his anger. "Then why are you calling me?"

"Well..." Liao Kai swallowed. "One of my men said he saw the Second Young Master at Ruihe today, so..."

Just as Ji Ting was about to pick up a lion's head meatball, he was hit with a murderous glare.

"Keep your men watching."

With that, Ji Yanzhi lowered the phone from his ear, his gaze growing colder. "Who would've thought? You and Lu Yanchu seem to be getting closer and closer."

Ji Ting's brows shifted slightly. "I don't know him. How could we be close?"

"You don't know him?" Ji Yanzhi gave a low laugh. "Then did you or did you not go to Ruihe today?"

"I did. For a medical examination."

Ji Yanzhi raised an eyebrow. "What a coincidence. You went to Ruihe for an examination, and right afterward, Lu Yanchu rushed over from his filming location in Huairou. The two of you really are on the same wavelength."

One of the most common symptoms of Asperger syndrome was an inability to understand the implications behind people's words, leaving those with the condition able to grasp only the most literal meaning of what others said.

Yet now, Ji Ting understood. [Ji Yanzhi is being sarcastic. He doesn't believe me.]

Ji Yanzhi's heart jolted, and his brows knitted. "It's not too late to tell the truth. I can let you off without punishment."

"I am telling the truth."

Ji Ting set down his chopsticks and looked at him calmly, indifferently. "Ji Yanzhi, the truth is, it isn't that you're unwilling to believe me. You simply hate me too much. That's why you decide I'm at fault without checking the facts."

Then he lowered his eyes and rose from his chair. "Enjoy your dinner. I'm going back to my room."

Watching him leave, Ji Yanzhi found his emotions becoming complicated for a moment, followed by an inexplicable surge of irritation.

His well-defined fingers clenched hard. He picked up the phone on the table and dialed a number.

"Fu Cheng, does that Medical Center at Ruihe belong to your group?"

"Right. Help me look into something."

The next day.

Ji Yanzhi spent the entire morning in a meeting with the research and development department. When he left the conference room, his secretary came forward and handed him his phone.

"President Ji, Mr. Fu called you twice just now."

"All right."

As soon as Ji Yanzhi returned to his office, he called him back. "Hello, Fu Cheng."

"Yanzhi, I've got what you wanted."

Ji Yanzhi said, "Then can you send it over now..."

Fu Cheng abruptly interrupted him, his tone heavy. "What we found is a little complicated. There's something we need to discuss in person."

Ji Yanzhi frowned slightly and raised his wrist to check the time. "All right. Pick a place."

Half an hour later, Ji Yanzhi drove to the restaurant at the given address.

When he entered the private dining room, Fu Cheng was already there. Rather unexpectedly, another man was sitting beside him.

Only after the restaurant manager closed the door from outside did Fu Cheng make the introduction. "Yanzhi, this is Doctor Zhou from Ruihe's Neurology Department."

Why had he specifically brought a doctor along?

Ji Yanzhi kept his expression neutral and shook the man's hand. "Hello."

After sitting down, he looked at Fu Cheng. "What is it that has to be discussed in person?"

"You'll find out in a moment."

Then Fu Cheng turned to the other man. "Doctor Zhou, sorry for the trouble."

Doctor Zhou nodded, placed a paper bag on the table, and took three CR scans out of it.

"President Ji, these three scans are the results of the brain examination Mr. Ji Ting underwent at Ruihe yesterday."

Ji Yanzhi froze. Then an uncomfortable, stifling pressure swelled in his chest.

Ji Ting really had gone for a medical examination?

When Ji Yanzhi remained silent, Doctor Zhou continued, "Those so-called IQ tests on the market are really just gimmicks. To truly understand someone's intellectual capacity, you have to examine their brain."

Ji Yanzhi picked up on the implication. "What do you mean?"

"This is Mr. Ji Ting's NODDI image." Doctor Zhou pointed to one of the scans, then took out another. "And this one belongs to an ordinary person."

"When a person thinks, the brain's neuronal circuits form synaptic connections, which resemble branches." His fingertip traced a circle, drawing their attention to the radiating synapses. "In an ordinary person, these 'branches' tend to be rather disorganized, like a burning sparkler. This image, for example."

Ji Yanzhi glanced at the image he was pointing to, then looked back at Ji Ting's.

That comparison drew his brows into a tight furrow.

Not only did the "branches" in Ji Ting's image have remarkably few offshoots, but their directions were also highly concentrated, forming a striking contrast with the image beside it.

"We've never seen anything like his case before, so at first we suspected some new form of brain pathology." Doctor Zhou's voice gradually grew excited. "Until we saw Ji Ting's brain MRI."

"Look at this gray matter density, this white matter volume..."

Doctor Zhou sighed as though admiring a priceless work of art. Seeing the two men frown, he simply stood up from his chair.

"Let me put it this way." He held a hand at waist height. "An ordinary person's intellectual capacity is here."

"A genius is here." He raised his hand to his temple.

"But Ji Ting is..." Doctor Zhou turned sideways and pointed his index finger upward.

Beside him, Fu Cheng listened in bewilderment. He raised an eyebrow. "The ceiling? That's not extraordinarily high, is it?"

Doctor Zhou shook his head emphatically and said, enunciating every word, "Look out this window. He's at the highest cloud you can see in the sky with your naked eyes."

Ji Yanzhi and Fu Cheng: ...