FPE Chapter 14

Counter-Game?

“Nothing good ever comes from anything associated with the word ‘influencer’!”

“If you want to go to an amusement park, isn’t Haishi’s Disney good enough? Why go to some obscure little park nobody’s heard of? And if that’s not an option, the big park in Jingdu has a 4D experience hall and cinema too — this kind of small park that suddenly blows up overnight is obviously sketchy.”

“It really did blow up out of nowhere. I’d never heard the name before, and then starting this morning, I suddenly had tons of content related to Fantasy Amusement Park flooding my feed. They spent serious money on that promotion!”

“Exactly, Jiang is reliable as always. I’ve been seeing so much Fantasy Amusement Park content today — I’d been wanting to say something for a while, but I’m not good with words. Jiang is basically my mouthpiece on the internet!”

“To the person above — Fantasy Amusement Park isn’t something a 4D experience can even compare to. It’s genuine full holographics. I’m literally at the scene right now, for real!”

“The paid commenters sure got here fast. How much are they paying per post? If there’s money to be made, share the wealth!”

—

Little Daze Cutie read through the comment section filled with nothing but cold mockery and sarcasm, and the one person who had tried to speak up on her behalf was also being met with a torrent of jeers. She was so furious she felt her lungs might burst. She was a local from Jin’an City, and seeing the old park from her hometown reopen with such impressive technology had filled her with genuine pride. She had even let herself imagine Jin’an City one day being transformed into a renowned tourist destination — after all, who wouldn’t want their hometown to prosper? That was precisely why she, a food blogger by trade, had gone out of her way to post the video and include the park’s name and address, hoping to share the wonder of this place with more people. But now, staring at a screen full of cold ridicule that had poured in from Jiang Zharen’s followers, and then glancing at her private messages flooded with people asking how much she’d been paid, Little Daze Cutie felt her blood pressure skyrocket. Her face had gone completely red with rage.

Her friend said, “I think this park is going to go big eventually. Online public opinion really matters — maybe we should mention this to the owner?”

Little Daze Cutie thought that made sense. With technology that impressive, who knew what they might be capable of doing about it. The two of them had already fantasized an entire satisfying story of someone getting their comeuppance, but by the time they finished touring the whole park, they hadn’t managed to find a single staff member, let alone the owner. In the meantime, Little Daze Cutie had been checking the comment section every now and then, and each time, the snide remarks sent her blood pressure surging all over again. Her temper finally gave way entirely.

She rolled up her sleeves and declared to her friend beside her, “Forget it. I’m going to fight these people to the bitter end!”

****

At two o’clock in the afternoon, Chi Yizhen finally finished editing the video inside the ticket booth. It shouldn’t have taken this long, but he kept having to step up to the window to sell tickets and deal with visitors’ questions, leaving him only scraps of time to edit.

He took one last look at the finished video, decided it was fine, and uploaded it. While waiting for the platform to review it, he idly scrolled through the trending section and was surprised to find three videos related to his park already sitting there.

“Is my park actually going to blow up?” Chi Yizhen felt a small rush of excitement. He clicked into the two positive videos, closed the bullet comments out of habit, and after watching them, formed a fairly good impression of the creator called Little Daze Cutie — he simply loved it when people praised his park. Then he clicked on the third video.

The male creator in the video was speaking fluently into the camera: “Full holographics works by reconstructing the diffracted light emitted from objects… What currently passes for ‘holographic’ in the world may appear three-dimensional, but it’s actually a flat image that tricks the human eye. What appears in that video can only be post-production special effects. Given the current level of technology, it is impossible for this to exist in reality — so when I hear someone claim this is a true holographic three-dimensional image, I just want to throw my head back and laugh… I thought this kind of obviously fake content no longer needed to be debunked…I’m grateful for the internet, which allows me to share my personal views with the public. In recent times, I’ve seen a great deal of negative commentary about me — calling me attention-seeking, saying I’m just chasing trending topics for traffic. I just want to say: fine, people can say whatever they like about me. But I, personally, will never stop. Because there is far too much herd mentality and deception on the internet, and most users, limited by their different levels of knowledge, cannot identify every kind of scam. Every time I see someone fall for one, I feel genuinely distressed. This isn’t me having an excess of saintly compassion — this is the empathy that every human being possesses. So I will keep going, to help everyone avoid a few detours. Thank you for the support, family…”

Chi Yizhen found the first half reasonable enough and had no grounds to argue with it — after all, the man wasn’t wrong, his was a fake holographic setup! But as he watched the second half, his brow gradually furrowed. Every sentence this Jiang Zharen spoke seemed sincere, yet for some reason, watching him just made Chi Yizhen vaguely uncomfortable — especially the part where he went after Little Daze Cutie, which made him even more uncomfortable. Little Daze Cutie was, after all, a genuine paying visitor who had actually spent money at the park. Making a mental note to thank Little Daze Cutie and send her a promotional fee once the day’s business was done, Chi Yizhen exited the page, checked the backend and confirmed his own video had passed review, then put his phone down with clean efficiency.

After all, he still had guests to look after. Where was he supposed to find time to be glued to the internet?

Since he hadn’t turned on bullet comments or looked at the comment section, he had no idea about any of the ill will directed at Fantasy Amusement Park online, nor the chain of flame wars that erupted one after another in the aftermath — and so his mood remained excellent for the entire day. When the park closed that evening and he checked the day’s ticket sales, he broke into a grin. Not only had he met his target, he’d exceeded it!

[Congratulations, Player, on achieving the milestone of 100 daily park visitors. Reward: 1,000 Merit Points. New Feature Unlocked ×1.]

[Your park sold 160 tickets today. You have received 1,600 Points.]

[Believers collectively slew 50 Level 1 Magic Beasts on your behalf. Total experience: 500. You have received 400 experience points.]

“Today’s ticket sales were more than 160, weren’t they!” Chi Yizhen remembered perfectly clearly — tickets for the Magic Beast Viewing Corridor and the Abandoned Park combined had totalled at least three hundred or more, and some visitors had even bought repeat tickets for the Abandoned Park!

[Please note, Player: only tickets for the Abandoned Park that involve participating in Magic Beast combat count as valid tickets. All other ticket types are excluded from Point calculations.]

Chi Yizhen: “……You absolute scammer!”

The Game: …

In the game’s silence, Chi Yizhen had a sudden flash of insight. He thought of something — every time a magic beast was defeated, it dissolved into black smoke and vanished without a trace. But a very simple scientific principle told him that energy was conserved. A creature that large couldn’t simply disappear for no reason. Beyond the portion converted into experience points to raise his level, could there be a part that was being fed back into the game itself? That would explain why the game insisted only Abandoned Park tickets counted — because tickets for the Magic Beast Viewing Corridor didn’t involve killing magic beasts, after all. But if that were all there was to it, then why had the experience reward been so extraordinarily high when the Magic Beast Viewing Corridor was first completed? Or was there some other component he hadn’t thought of yet? Chi Yizhen sorted through the logic and felt as though he could almost grasp the thread that would let him counter the game.

But he let nothing show. Instead, he calmly opened the newly unlocked feature as though nothing had occurred to him at all.

****

At nine o’clock that evening, He He finished studying and, as usual, opened the video platform — only to be surprised to find that the gaming creator who had gone without posting for several days had actually uploaded a new video.

He clicked in eagerly, expecting another new game introduction and the creator’s signature flashy gameplay footage — but one look at the title left him momentarily stunned.

——“Sorry, I’m Done Being a Gaming Streamer — I’ve Gone Home to Take Over the Family’s Amusement Park!”

He He: …

What on earth kind of move was this?