Chapter 178: Vivian, Part 2

Vivian felt utterly panicked throughout it all; she genuinely couldn’t understand why things had spiraled so far out of control.

She never wanted a mother who’d been twisted into some monstrous creature — what she wanted was her real mother back, whole and smiling, telling her gently to be careful as she ran off to play.

She wanted her kind old butler and his family back too, exactly as they’d always been. So why had everything suddenly fallen apart like this, out of nowhere?

Vivian simply couldn’t make sense of any of it, no matter how hard she tried.

She was still far too young, really, to properly grasp the full weight of what had happened around her.

Over time, gradually, whatever remained of the creatures’ human memories continued fading away bit by bit, until eventually all that lingered within them was a singular purpose: to listen to Vivian, and to protect her above all else.

And so the black creatures began taking turns standing watch over her, guarding her tirelessly around the clock.

Vivian, confused as she’d initially been, slowly began noticing these subtle shifts happening around her.

She refused to accept things staying this way, and so, stubborn as ever, she dug her heels in.

She wanted her family restored properly. She wanted the amusement park reopened, just as it had once been.

The black creatures were still her family, deep down, and the amusement park itself had been her mother’s own gift to her — something she simply couldn’t bear to lose entirely.

Then, one day, a man in black robes appeared before her.

He told Vivian plainly that if she truly wanted her family and the amusement park restored to their former glory, she would need to listen to him carefully and follow his guidance.

The man led her up to the very highest point of the castle, where he laid out the full solution before her in detail.

No one else, however, ever learned exactly what words passed between the man in black robes and young Vivian that day.

Vivian matured rapidly after that, eventually donning robes identical to the man’s own, becoming the very figure quietly controlling everything from behind the scenes.

He’d told her that so long as she completed her assigned task properly, her mother and everyone else affected would eventually revert back to normal, and they’d all become a happy family once more, just as before.

The castle’s ground floor was renovated for public use, while the upper floors were converted into staff living quarters, with Vivian herself claiming the very top floor as her own private residence.

A year passed by before the first survivors finally began appearing within the amusement park itself.

Whenever these special circumstances arose, Vivian understood immediately that her true mission had officially begun in earnest.

Despite how mentally mature she’d become through all of this, deep down she remained, at heart, still very much a child. She often shed her black robes entirely, disguising herself instead as an ordinary little girl so she could simply go play throughout the amusement park like anyone else.

Over time, she gradually made a handful of genuine friends this way.

The gopher children were the very first to welcome her in without question, and the man in black had taught her a great many useful skills along the way. So whenever one of the gopher children got hurt during a round of whack-a-mole, she’d quietly step in and heal them without a word.

For reasons she couldn’t fully articulate, these small moments always left Vivian with a genuine, quiet sense of accomplishment.

Strange as that might sound, it was undeniably true nonetheless.

Vivian found herself smiling more often as a result — though the moment she returned to her chambers in the castle and laid eyes on the black creature waiting there, her smile would inevitably fade back into silence once more.

Mommy can’t hold me in her arms anymore...

The thought alone was enough to darken Vivian’s expression considerably each time, only strengthening her resolve to bring her family back to normal, whatever it took.

She refused to let her mother or the old housekeeper continue suffering like this.

She missed her mother’s warm embrace terribly. She missed the housekeeper’s gentle attentiveness, and the cook’s carefully prepared meals.

She missed absolutely everything about the life she’d once had, down to the smallest detail.

Vivian’s methods, in time, grew even more sophisticated than anything the man in black had originally taught her — she transformed the entire amusement park into a sprawling playground of horrors in her own right.

Countless survivors met brutal, drawn-out deaths within its walls as a result.

Still, she noticed one persistent problem — the amusement park simply didn’t have nearly enough staff members to sustain itself properly.

While tourists had technically existed within the park before, it had ultimately been built exclusively for her own personal use, never truly intended to stay open to the wider public for very long at all.

But ever since these mysterious "tourists" had first begun devouring the native locals, they’d started showing up at the park with alarming, relentless frequency.

With so many arriving constantly, Vivian had little choice but to have her people work on coaxing outsiders into staying, hoping to convince at least some of them to remain permanently as staff.

And if that failed — well, then they could simply be left to die instead.

The man in black had assured her he’d find some way to keep every single outsider trapped there, one way or another.

Vivian understood exactly what he truly meant by that — he wanted every outsider to eventually perish within these walls. But staying alive here, in truth, wasn’t really all that different from dying outright anyway.

And so Vivian devised the idea of offering part-time positions instead. The "tourists," after all, paid no real attention to staff members going about their work — their singular focus was simply enjoying themselves.

Only outsiders, naturally, would ever willingly take on such part-time roles in the first place.

Vivian certainly harbored some fear that they might eventually try to rebel against her. But she was, after all, the undisputed ruler of this entire amusement park by now, and she had no shortage of methods at her disposal to keep them firmly in place regardless.

In time, Lan Ruoling became Lily of the Valley. The man became the clown NPC. Cheng Lin took up work as a restaurant waiter, and the woman became the resident haunted house NPC.

Yan Yue, meanwhile, had been trapped within the Red Sleeve Pavilion, ultimately dying there, and was reborn as a maid serving within its very walls.

...

There wasn’t much left of the performance after that, and both Lin Yun and Song Xizheng wore distinctly grim expressions by the time it wrapped up.

So this was how they’d first come to encounter Vivian, then.

Vivian was, without question, the very same little girl who’d appeared twice before at the theater already.

Though several years had clearly passed by within the story itself, Vivian still appeared exactly as young as ever, never having aged a single day.

Just who exactly was that man in black robes, though? Was he the very architect behind this entire twisted world? And why had he simply abandoned Vivian to fend for herself afterward? Wasn’t he the least bit concerned she might fail to complete the task he’d assigned her?

Still, Lin Yun had noticed something important during the performance — among the items the man in black had originally handed over to Vivian was a leather scroll, the very same one she herself had picked up not long ago.

Lin Yun’s eyes flickered sharply at the realization. If that scroll truly belonged to Vivian all along, then why exactly had it ended up in that child’s hands instead?

The child from before, notably, hadn’t even been a girl at all — he’d been a young boy.

Lily of the Valley had mentioned that the boy had approached her entirely of his own accord, without any prompting.

Which meant, somehow, that item had eventually made its way from Vivian’s own possession into Linglan’s hands, before finally being passed along by Linglan to that particular boy.

So then, exactly who was that child, really?

And what purpose did the leather scroll actually serve? What exactly did those strange paintings depicted on it even represent?

Why had Vivian seemed so desperately eager to recover that scroll, specifically? Was she perhaps worried its contents might reveal something deeply shameful about her?

Lin Yun rubbed at her temples, feeling a headache building steadily behind her eyes. Why did it feel, more and more, like she’d been quietly maneuvered into some elaborate game of chess without ever realizing it?

Forget it. I really don’t want to think about any of this further right now. The more I dwell on it, the worse this headache gets.

The puppet show had finally ended, and a handful of tourists were already rising from their seats, preparing to head toward the exit.

Song Xizheng and Lin Yun had been so thoroughly absorbed in watching the performance that neither had found the time to actually finish their popcorn, which meant, naturally, that Sang Biao hadn’t gotten fed any more of it either.

Sang Biao decided it didn’t matter much — he’d simply help himself when the moment felt right.

Every so often, he’d sneak a paw into the popcorn bucket, producing a fairly loud crunching sound each time, almost as though the noise were drifting up from somewhere down on the first floor entirely.

Fortunately, plenty of other tourists nearby were munching on their own popcorn just as loudly, so Sang Biao’s sneaky little indulgence went completely unnoticed in the mix.

The two of them waited patiently until most of the crowd had cleared out before finally rising to leave themselves.

This time, the strange little girl never made an appearance at all, and the pair successfully collected their little red flower on the way out, exiting the puppet theater without incident.

"That little girl didn’t show up this time? Did she somehow figure out she wasn’t supposed to come around a third time?" Song Xizheng scratched his head thoughtfully, half convinced he’d been bracing himself for a confrontation today for nothing.

Lin Yun shot him a flat, unimpressed look. "Isn’t that a good thing, though? Would you rather she’d shown up? Would you actually want her shrinking us down to size or something?"

"No, no, it’s not that exactly — it’s just genuinely a little unsettling, honestly, that someone who kept showing up so consistently just suddenly stopped coming around out of nowhere like this."

Song Xizheng quickly waved his hands defensively; he’d very nearly been scared out of his wits earlier, though thankfully he’d managed to keep his composure just in time.