FPE Chapter 9

Amusement Park Team-Building (1)

Cao Xiaoliang and his classmates were now in the second semester of their first year of high school. Summer vacation was approaching, and the vast majority of students were busy preparing for their final exams. Those like Cao Xiaoliang and Zhang He, who were still out having fun during finals season, were definitely in the minority. So when the two of them posted on their Moments, their curious classmates clicked in — only to discover that these two had actually gone out to play. Just as they were about to tease them about it, they took a closer look at the content. Fantasy Amusement Park? Full holographic monster hunting? Their classmates were left with a head full of question marks. What on earth was all this? Were these two just messing with everyone?

Their classmates casually handed out a courtesy like and left it at that.

Cao Xiaoliang and Zhang He had posted on Moments in the first place out of pure excitement, wanting to share something amazing with all their friends. Seeing everyone’s lukewarm response, they felt a little deflated — though it was understandable, since even they hadn’t believed it themselves when they were standing right at the park entrance. The two of them went and posted the news in the class group chat where no teachers were present.

Cao Xiaoliang: “It’s real! Zhang He and I experienced it tonight — it’s genuine holographic technology! It was absolutely mind-blowing! A whole bunch of us got so scared we almost thought the monsters were real! Zhang He even got knocked to the ground by one of the park’s monsters and cried out for his mom!”

Zhang He: “Cao Xiaoliang, go f**k yourself, take that back RIGHT NOW!”

As the two of them bickered, someone in the class group chat piped up asking for the address.

Convinced that he’d successfully sold them on it, Cao Xiaoliang immediately typed back: “It’s at 88 Taoyuan Street — the one with the big red banner out front, you can’t miss it! The park is closed tomorrow for maintenance, so everyone should go the day after. The owner said that since the park is in its trial run period, all holographic experience tickets are half price — just ten yuan each.”

It was already ten o’clock at night. First-year student Zhang Minmin had just finished memorizing vocabulary words and was about to go to sleep when her phone kept going off with a flurry of notification pings. She picked it up out of curiosity and saw Cao Xiaoliang enthusiastically promoting some newly opened amusement park in the class group chat. The way he was going on about it, anyone who didn’t know better would have thought the park belonged to his family.

Zhang Minmin had no interest in this sort of thing. Boys just knew how to fool around and never took their studies seriously — she wasn’t going to fall for it. She had been about to turn her phone off and go to sleep, but the address Cao Xiaoliang gave seemed vaguely familiar. She hesitated, searched it on the local map app, and confirmed her suspicion. Her sense of justice surged, and she picked up her phone and typed rapidly: “Cao Xiaoliang, I just looked it up on the map — 88 Taoyuan Street is the old Childhood Amusement Park. That place has been shut down for years. I even walked past it the other day. How could it have suddenly turned into a holographic park? It’s finals season and everyone is working hard to study. Please stop distracting people.” She attached a screenshot of the map as evidence.

The class had already been skeptical of Cao Xiaoliang and Zhang He’s promotion to begin with — after all, boys were usually up to mischief, and it wouldn’t be the first or second time they’d played jokes on people. With Zhang Minmin’s screenshot attached, everyone immediately felt they had seen through Cao Xiaoliang’s scheme. Another classmate quickly chimed in.

He He: “AR experience pods at the mall charge dozens of yuan for just half an hour! How could anything be ten yuan? And from what I know, neither domestically nor internationally is it currently possible to achieve true holographic technology. Something that can actually knock people over is even more impossible.”

He He’s family ran a technology company focused on AR. If there had been such a major technological breakthrough domestically, there was no way he wouldn’t have heard about it. Besides, if technology that impressive were actually being released, it would surely have had a launch event and promotional buildup — it couldn’t possibly just quietly open for business in some ordinary amusement park without a word.

By now, the class had collectively decided that Cao Xiaoliang and Zhang He were working together to fool them, and they started piling on.

“Cao Xiaoliang, Zhang He — if you two have that much free time, why don’t you help me finish my worksheets? I’ll absolutely cheer you on, right from the gates of Childhood Amusement Park.”

“What’s worth seeing in some run-down park that’s been closed for years? The fact that these two are suddenly pulling this stunt in the middle of the night — could it be that they’re trying to distract us so they can secretly study and get ahead of the rest of us?”

“Oh wow, that’s actually a real possibility! These two are so sneaky!”

One comment led to another, and soon Cao Xiaoliang and Zhang He had been branded as those underhanded types who appear relaxed on the surface while secretly grinding away in private. The class launched a full-on roast at the two of them in the group chat, and some classmates even went back to their Moments and withdrew their likes.

It drove Cao Xiaoliang and Zhang He absolutely mad.

There was no way the two of them could out-argue a dozen classmates in the group chat, so they retreated to their private messages to nurse their wounds together.

Cao Xiaoliang: “Hmph. They won’t go while the tickets are half price now, but they’ll regret it later!”

Zhang He: “Exactly! They’ll know soon enough just how badly they got it wrong today!”

As it happened, elsewhere, a well-meaning visitor who had left the park and immediately posted on Moments to spread the word suffered the exact same fate. His name was Wei Hua, and he was already thirty years old. Due to his sexual orientation, he had never married. When he first laid eyes on Sal, he had been struck by him as a breathtakingly handsome man — though Wei Hua was clear-eyed enough to know that someone like Sal could never end up with an ordinary person like him. So he had initially gone to the park simply to catch a few more glances at the stunning man. What he hadn’t expected was that he would end up becoming a devoted fan of the park itself.

After the other visitors left, he bought two more rounds of tickets. Every time he swung his staff and landed a blow on one of those hideous magic beasts, he felt as though he were beating away the pressures of daily life and the frustrations of his career. When he came out, he was gasping for breath from all the intense physical exertion — yet his whole body felt wonderfully refreshed, even better than after a foot soak and a full massage.

He immediately decided he would come to the park every day from now on. It was exercise for the body and a way to blow off steam through gaming all in one — wasn’t that ten times better than a gym? He cancelled his gym membership on the spot and planned to redirect that money toward the park.

As for the friends who had refused to take his recommendation and laughed at him instead, Wei Hua wasn’t a young kid anymore — he wasn’t going to argue with anyone about it. In the past, he would have quietly backed out of the chat. But now… he blocked them without a second thought. Ha — satisfying!

Good riddance to pointless social obligations! Wasn’t it so much better to spend that time at the park?

As for what became of the visitors after they left, Chi Yizhen naturally had no time to concern himself with that. By the time the park closed, it was already eleven o’clock at night. Even with the incredibly resilient body of a Level 2 player, two days without sleep while doing high-intensity work had finally made him feel tired. After seeing off the last visitor and locking the front gate, he didn’t return to his rental apartment. Instead, he made do and slept in the park’s security room — right now, there was nowhere that felt safer to him than here.

Three hours later, Chi Yizhen woke up feeling fully refreshed and began checking his mission progress.

The Main Quest 1 that the game required him to complete within three days — he had finished it on the very first day. Eleven visitors had come in that evening, but the number of tickets sold had exceeded eleven, as quite a few visitors had gone through the experience more than once. In total, thirty tickets had been sold, bringing in three hundred yuan.

For a proper amusement park, that level of revenue would have been pitifully small. But Fantasy Amusement Park’s primary income wasn’t money — it was experience points and points.

He opened the game panel and sure enough, saw a notification in the quest log. He opened it:

[Congratulations, Player, on completing Main Quest 1. Reward: one Interdimensional Travel Card, 100 Points.]

[Congratulations, Player, on gaining 11 Believers. Though your number of Believers is small, it is a beautiful beginning. May the Player continue to strive forward.]

So just buying a ticket and entering the park counts as becoming a Believer? Chi Yizhen thought to himself. That’s a pretty low bar for faith. At the same time, he also breathed a sigh of relief. Good, good — no need to go around brainwashing people like some kind of cult. He really would have had a guilty conscience if it came to that.

Something occurred to him, and he asked, “Does someone have to pay for a ticket to count as a Believer? What if the park runs a promotion and gives out free tickets?”

[A Believer’s faith can only be measured by money. As they say — where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. If a Believer is unwilling to spend money for their god, then their faith must be false.]

Chi Yizhen: ……

It’s actually like that! He ventured further. “What if someone spends tens of thousands at the park in one go?”

The game’s mechanical voice seemed to take on a note of excitement at this moment:[Then they would surely be a prime example of a Devoted Fanatic!]

Chi Yizhen: ……

The more you spend, the truer the faith — at first glance it seemed absurd, but thinking it over carefully, it actually made sense. Especially for someone as broke as Chi Yizhen: if any game could make him willingly pour tens of thousands into it, then his love for that game would be absolutely genuine. At that moment, Chi Yizhen’s thinking had instantly aligned perfectly with the game’s philosophy.

He continued clearing his notification alerts.

[Your Believers have collectively slain five Level 1 Magic Beasts, totaling 50 experience points. You have received 40 experience points.]

[Your park has sold 30 tickets. You have received 300 Points.]

Chi Yizhen understood now. Completing game-issued quests and selling tickets generated Points — ten Points per ticket — while renovating the park and slaying magic beasts generated the experience points needed to level up. However, when visitors slew magic beasts, one fifth of the experience had to be shared with the visitors.

But why one fifth? Was it a matter of equipment or venue? Chi Yizhen decided to run comparison tests later to figure it out. For now, he had something else to take care of. His earlier announcement to the visitors that the park would be closed for the day tomorrow was not without reason — he needed to continue renovating and upgrading the park. While the park could certainly ride the wave of attention that its “holographic monster hunting” selling point had generated for a while, it could not afford to stay stagnant if it wanted to sustain itself long-term.

The Fantasy Amusement Park’s predecessor was the Childhood Amusement Park, a fact that most locals were somewhat aware of. A run-down park could be passed off well enough using the cover of darkness and the scripted narrative, but no amusement park operated only at night. Continuing this way would inevitably arouse visitors’ suspicions — especially since he had told them in front of everyone that his team’s dream was to build the finest park in existence.

Beyond that, extraordinary encounter or not, he was still a person. And people needed to eat, drink, and sleep. If the park wasn’t making money, his savings weren’t going to hold out for long.

Taking everything into account, properly running the park was non-negotiable.

Chi Yizhen therefore opened the park’s model projection and got to work on the renovations. Earlier, building a wall to seal off that gaping hole and opening a new front entrance had already cost him five hundred points. Adding today’s earnings to what had been left over, he now had nine hundred points.

What can nine hundred Points actually accomplish? His eyes drifted involuntarily toward the quest reward: one Interdimensional Travel Card.

Should he use the card to go to the other world and grind a mission? After all, a single mission there was worth a thousand points. He hesitated for a moment, but ultimately decided against it. Even though it would be Sal’s body making the crossing rather than his own, that world was far too dangerous. Better to wait until he hit Level 10 before going back — and when he did, he was going to smash Raymond Herbert’s skull in.

In the end, Chi Yizhen decided to put his points toward upgrading the zone that had been used for the day’s experience activity.

This area had originally been the section of the amusement park designed for young children — it had bumper cars, merry-go-rounds, coin-operated rides, and the like — and covered roughly one mu of land. After years of abandonment, it was overgrown with weeds and strewn with gravel and dust everywhere. Now that it had been converted into a monster-hunting arena for adults, all the debris and clutter posed a serious tripping and collision hazard. Visitors came to the park to have fun — the last thing he needed was for someone to get hurt.

So Chi Yizhen first cleared the entire zone, leaving only some weeds and a few of the original dilapidated rides to set the atmosphere. This step alone cost him 100 Points, and it pained him deeply. He then, wanting to incentivize visitors to keep spending, had a scrolling achievement board installed at the entrance to the experience zone — the kind that displayed a live ranking based on the number of magic beasts slain. He then spent more time dressing up the experience zone to enhance the gameplay feel. Before long, all nine hundred Points were gone without a trace, and yet he felt as though he had bought almost nothing and had nothing to show for it.

“Why is everything so expensive?”

[Ding! Detection: debris collected from the Experience Zone contains Level 2 energy. Would you like to break it down and repurpose it to craft equipment?]

Chi Yizhen: ……

There’s actually something like that!

He didn’t hesitate — he hit confirm immediately.

The panel erupted in a flash of light, and within just a few minutes, the equipment crafted from the broken-down materials was complete.

****

The following day, at a certain company in Jin’an City.

First thing in the morning, Meng Le, who worked the front desk, received a message that Manager Wei had posted in the work group chat.

Wei Hua: After discussion at the meeting, the company has decided to set the team building date for tomorrow. The venue has already been selected — the newly opened amusement park at 88 Taoyuan Street. I have personally gone and experienced it myself, and it will absolutely be worth your while. The company will cover the cost of tickets and lunch. Everyone is to meet tomorrow at ten o’clock sharp — no latecomers.

Meng Le swiftly replied “Noted” in the group chat to deal with the manager, then immediately switched over to the private group and vented to a few close colleagues. She felt the manager was truly impulsive — just the other day he’d been talking about going to a farmhouse restaurant for team building, and now it had suddenly changed to an amusement park. Her colleagues were equally dismayed, groaning that weekend team building was even more exhausting than a regular workday. Team building, what a joke — they’d all rather stay home and sleep.

Some run-down amusement park. It would be great if it just went ahead and shut down tomorrow, Meng Le thought to herself.