FPE Chapter 8

The Amusement Park Opens (2)

Chi Yizhen was stationed inside the small ticketing booth at the park entrance — a place that doubled as the security post. The park had just opened and funds were tight. To complete the first urgent commission, Chi Yizhen hadn’t even had time to hire staff yet, so he had to handle everything himself. He was simultaneously serving as ticket seller, security guard, and event copywriter all at once.

While the group of visitors made their way through the Mystery Exploration Experience Zone, Chi Yizhen kept the park’s holographic model projection open beside him as he drafted activity proposals, glancing at the visitors’ movements on the projection every now and then.

At this point, the park projection functioned like a panoramic surveillance system for him — as long as it was open, nothing that happened inside the park could escape his eyes. Watching the group of visitors pick up the weapons he had arranged for them (junk he had scrounged from various corners of the park during setup), Chi Yizhen manipulated the park and nudged the sealed fissure open just a hair.

For low-level magic beasts, a crack that small was more than enough to slip through — but during the period when Chi Yizhen had been preparing to open the park for business, a Level 3 magic beast had squeezed in from the other side of the fissure. It was a three-headed serpent, its entire body shrouded in black mist. Because its level exceeded the park’s by one, it had broken through the park’s barrier and forced two of its heads through. Chi Yizhen had been genuinely startled when he first noticed it. Fortunately, this magic beast had only just reached Level 3, so Level 2 Chi Yizhen combined with the Level 2 park could still overpower it. Even so, Chi Yizhen had no intention of killing it — he was planning to use it as the boss for the next park event. So the fissure remained firmly sealed. He had originally figured the serpent would retreat once it grew uncomfortable being wedged in like that, but it had stayed stuck there for several hours without giving up. It seemed the novelty and vulnerability of the humans in this world truly held enormous appeal for them.

The serpent magic beast was still being suppressed, and the narrow crack wasn’t doing it much good — but for the lower-level magic beasts, that crack was just enough to squeeze through. The moment Chi Yizhen spotted one strangely-shaped magic beast dart out, he immediately sealed the fissure shut again. The serpent, which had only managed to get about one and a half heads through, was once again crushed flat and let out a shrill wail that only he could hear.

There are eleven of them in the park. Every one of them is wearing glasses that block magic beast damage. Even if that magic beast is top-tier among low-levels, surely they can beat it to death if each of them lands one hit with their weapons.

Chi Yizhen had great confidence in the fragility of low-level magic beasts — after all, these were trash-tier creatures he could deal with in a single kick.

Watching the park map as eleven little green dots representing the visitors came face to face with the magic beast, Chi Yizhen couldn’t help but feel a surge of excitement. This was the park’s very first commission, after all. If the visitors had a blast fighting, his park’s reputation would finally get off the ground.

But what he never could have anticipated was that this group of people would be so utterly cowardly. When he saw those little green dots being chased all across the map by a single red dot, Chi Yizhen was practically floored. He had no choice but to switch on the PA system. “Visitors, please remain calm. That is the BOSS of this experience event. Please use the weapons in your hands to defeat it.”

Wait — is this a game?

The visitors, who had been fleeing in all directions from the creature, paused ever so slightly when they heard the announcement over the speakers. But just then, Zhang He was sent flying by a fierce charge from the magic beast and crashed to the ground. He immediately let out an earth-shattering scream. “MOM! This is real, this is REAL — HELP!”

At that, the others were frightened out of their wits. The thing already looked horrifying enough on its own, and it came with a rancid stench that assaulted their sense of smell — and now it could apparently deal physical damage too. Were they actually playing some kind of game, or had they been swindled by some unscrupulous business into a monster experiment?

Watching everyone else scatter in a panic while the magic beast lunged toward Zhang He snapping its jaws, Cao Xiaoliang gritted his teeth, grabbed a wooden stick, and charged forward. With a loud crack, the stick connected solidly with the magic beast’s body, producing a satisfying, dense thud — the kind you’d get from hitting a fat pig. Cao Xiaoliang’s family raised pigs, and as a kid he had often chased them around with a stick, earning himself no shortage of scolding from his parents. The moment that stick came down and the familiar feeling hit his hands, Cao Xiaoliang’s eyes lit up. A few more strikes, and the magic beast was stumbling backward, forced to retreat away from Zhang He.

Cao Xiaoliang pressed the advantage, swinging the stick with gusto, shouting with mounting excitement as he wailed on it, “Hey — this thing is all bark and no bite! It’s totally beatable!”

The people who had originally been so frightened that they were scrambling in panic watched with their own eyes as Cao Xiaoliang, just a high school student, raised a stick and beat the magic beast until it wailed continuously. They felt both astonished and embarrassed at themselves. They finally raised the assortment of “weapons” they had found earlier following the story prompts and joined in, charging at it somewhat tentatively.

And so, with one person swinging a stick and another slamming a pot lid, they battered the thing together until it disintegrated into nothing. At one point, someone tried punching it bare-handed and found their fist passed straight through without resistance — that was when it finally dawned on everyone: the “holographic magic beast fghting” this park had advertised was real.

The moment the magic beast crumbled to ash before their eyes, the PA system crackled on again. “Congratulations to all visitors for defeating the final magic beast of this Mystery Exploration event. This event has concluded successfully. We hope to see you again soon.”

Truth be told, the event planning for this park was pretty rough around the edges — no guide NPCs, no host, and the initial experience had left quite a bit to be desired. But the magic beast that had appeared afterward and the thrill of fighting it together had completely swept all of that away. Now there was only one thought in everyone’s minds: absolutely insane.

After stepping out of the dimly lit environment into the bright lights of the lobby, everyone caught sight of one another — disheveled, a little wrecked — and thought back to the sight of themselves screaming and running in every direction just minutes ago. They couldn’t help but burst out laughing.

Chi Yizhen was standing at the entrance of the experience zone to receive them. He had been on edge the entire time, half-ready to just charge in and kick the low-level magic beast to death himself. Now, watching them walk out in high spirits, he nodded inwardly. The plan had been sound. Magic beasts could absolutely continue to be the park’s main draw.

Cao Xiaoliang glanced down at his watch and was stunned to find it was only eight o’clock. Given how intense the experience had been, he could have sworn two or three hours had passed.

Zhang He stood beside him, excitedly fiddling with the plastic glasses. “That magic beast was way too realistic! It actually knocked me over — how did they do that? Has domestic technology really gotten this far?”

That question was already being directed at Chi Yizhen from several angles.

Now that everyone had calmed down, they all found it puzzling — with technology like this, why had no one ever heard of it before?

Faced with the visitors’ questions, Chi Yizhen had long since prepared his answers. He rattled off an elaborate string of cutting-edge tech theory that left everyone thoroughly bewildered, then let out a sigh. “This is a project my friends and I have been working on. We spent years preparing for it — sold our houses to do it — and after all that, we finally have something to show for it, but we have no money for promotion.”

One of the visitors clapped his hands together. “With technology like this, you don’t need to worry about money. I have a friend who’s a manager at a tech company — I’ll introduce you right away.”

Someone else chimed in, “Are you taking investors? I’m not exaggerating — with technology like this, you could open a movie theater and make an absolute fortune.” By now, not a single person remembered that they had originally come for Sal. Every pair of eyes was gleaming with the fire of someone who had just spotted an opportunity to get rich.

Chi Yizhen thought to himself: if only we actually had technology like that. But outwardly he gave a firm shake of his head and stated with great conviction that his team was a team with a dream, devoted entirely to building an amusement park, and that they were declining all outside investment.

The visitors shook their heads and sighed as they left, muttering among themselves that the owner was too stingy — if he wanted to keep all the money for himself he should just say so, why dress it up in talk about dreams? Wasn’t that a bit childish?

The rest of the group pulled out cash and told Chi Yizhen they were coming back for more, clearly itching for another round to redeem their dignity from having run away screaming.

Getting to make money and eliminate magic beasts at the same time — why would Chi Yizhen turn that down? He collected the money with one hand and handed the glasses back out with the other. Noticing the visitors had no patience for following scripts or hunting for weapons, he simply grabbed a few sticks for them and then started opening the crack to release magic beasts one after another and let them fight to their hearts’ content. Since the magic beasts released afterward were completely different in appearance from the first one, the visitors raved enthusiastically about how much money the park must have spent designing so many different styles of magic beasts.

Chi Yizhen: …smile jpg

Cao Xiaoliang and Zhang He were still in high school and couldn’t stay out too late, but the moment they got home, they posted their experience from that evening straight to their Moments and their class group chat — with parents and homeroom teachers blocked, naturally.