Chapter 195: The Death of the Black Monster

Song Xizheng was more than a little shocked by this sudden revelation.

This particular black monster...

Wait!

A wild thought flashed through Song Xizheng’s mind.

Could these black monsters... actually be the rightful owners of this very castle?

Vivian’s mother, the housekeeper, and the cook, perhaps, all along?

No wonder they’d ended up here, and no wonder they hadn’t tried hurting him.

"You... you really mean that?"

Before he could even finish speaking, a sudden commotion erupted from somewhere down the stairs below.

Song Xizheng hurried over and peered down; the noise seemed to be coming from the seventh floor.

The tourists had made it up to the seventh floor, exactly where he’d scattered all those small beads earlier.

He quickly spun around and whispered, "Those tourists are coming up now. They’re already on the seventh floor. Not sure how many there are. Can you handle this?"

One of the black monsters nodded firmly — the castle’s steward, apparently. It pulled open one of the nearby rooms and retrieved its contents.

Sure enough, more beads, a whole stockpile of them.

Plenty of other items were tucked away in there too, things that might help slow the tourists’ advance.

Seeing all this, Song Xizheng breathed a small sigh of relief, though he still felt it wasn’t quite enough.

They really needed to kill off those tourists, otherwise they’d come rushing back the moment supplies ran out.

He glanced back. There weren’t many black monsters stationed here. What if tourists broke through that other door instead? These few wouldn’t stop them.

One of the black monsters suddenly approached and tugged firmly at Song Xizheng’s clothing, insistent.

It was clearly signaling for him to follow along.

Song Xizheng hesitated for a moment, but ultimately refused.

Lin Yun still hadn’t emerged, which meant her own mission remained unfinished.

He also sensed, vaguely, that their current situation had become a genuine matter of life and death for everyone trapped here.

He had to stay put so Lin Yun could finish her mission in peace.

He wondered how she was holding up right about now, hoping she was close to finishing...

Before long, the tourists came rushing up the stairs.

They grew wildly excited the moment they tripped over the scattered beads, proof that humans were still somewhere in the castle!

With only a dozen steps remaining, their excitement reached a fever pitch.

But their faces fell the instant they laid eyes on the black monster instead.

Why was it this old black creature here? Where were the actual humans?

Just as they were about to charge forward anyway, the "butler" began pouring down more beads.

"Damn it! I’ll send every last one of you tumbling down there in a minute. You’ll end up lying there whether you survive it or not!"

The tourists remained determined, though, and whatever the "butler" had prepared wasn’t enough to stop them.

Song Xizheng had no choice but to draw his weapon and attack from behind the black monster.

Before long, the tourists noticed Song Xizheng too. They grew considerably more excited, having assumed only these black old creatures were up here, never expecting an extra surprise.

Black creatures weren’t edible, sure, but humans certainly were!

"Damn it," Song Xizheng cursed under his breath.

The fighting broke out all through the corridor, with the black monster able only to try and hold the tourists back as best it could.

Several of the black monsters ended up getting shoved over the edge by the attacking tourists.

One side of this particular corridor had nothing but a railing separating it from open air, dropping straight down to an open-air garden on the third floor.

After being thrown over the edge, one black monster plummeted straight down, crashing hard into that open-air garden far below.

A spreading patch of red quickly pooled out beneath the fallen creature.

That was its own blood, pooling dark and spreading wider by the second.

She stared up toward the corridor where the fighting still raged, and finally let her eyes close for good.

Once her life had ended, the black monster reverted back to her true, original form.

She turned out to be the cook who’d prepared nutritious meals for Vivian every single day, someone Vivian had genuinely loved very dearly.

He used to pester her constantly, asking for little cakes and cookies whenever the mood struck him.

Now, after all these years, she would never bake another cookie or cake for Vivian again.

All around her, many more tourists and black monsters alike continued falling from above.

But once each of them died, they too reverted back to their own original forms.

"Hey! Song Xizheng, are you all right?!"

Song Zhenzhen came rushing forward, wielding a wooden gun, with Xiong Qi and George close behind her.

Song Xizheng had just finished chopping off a tourist’s head with his axe when he heard the voice and glanced over, eyes lighting up at once.

What were they doing here?!

"Hey! Don’t hurt the black monsters! They’re Vivian’s own family, every single one of them is good!"

Worried they might attack the black monster by mistake, Song Xizheng shouted the warning quickly.

"Damn it, why didn’t you say something earlier!"

Xiong Qi hastily pulled back a punch he’d already thrown, narrowly avoiding sending one of the black monsters flying clean out of the corridor.

The "housekeeper" let out a deep sigh of relief too. Thank goodness — they’d nearly lost yet another family member.

This particular group of tourists wasn’t especially large, and they were dealt with fairly quickly in the end.

The black monsters, however, had suffered heavy losses throughout the whole ordeal.

There hadn’t been many to begin with, and once the tourists realized their attack power wasn’t high — easily knocked over and killed — their numbers had dwindled down to roughly ten.

"How did you all manage to find this place? And how’s the amusement park doing?"

They sat down together to rest, and Song Xizheng finally couldn’t resist asking.

Song Zhenzhen glanced over at the black monster seated across from them and said, "Vivian seems to have completely lost her mind. She’s ordering every single ride in the amusement park to be destroyed."

"It seems like Linglan’s efforts have failed entirely. She couldn’t stop Vivian after all. In fact, most of the tourists are already under Vivian’s control now. They’re all out there helping her tear the whole amusement park apart."

"By the time we arrived, quite a lot of the park’s rides had already been destroyed."

Song Xizheng’s eyes widened, though he still looked puzzled. "Those rides are massive — how could she possibly destroy them? Surely not by hand alone, right?"

George, standing off to the side, scratched his head thoughtfully. "It looks like she’s got some kind of special item in her hand. Whenever she uses it, the whole facility just collapses."

"Holy crap... she really has lost her mind entirely..."

"Why would anyone want to destroy an amusement park for no real reason at all? Isn’t that just asking for endless trouble?"

Song Xizheng and Lin Yun had actually arrived at the castle fairly early themselves, completely unaware of everything happening back at the park.

"She probably wanted to capture survivors, and also find something specific, though we honestly have no idea what exactly she’s searching for."

Song Zhenzhen recalled bits and pieces of what she’d overheard along the way here.

The butler sitting across from them listened quietly, and upon hearing Vivian intended to destroy the entire amusement park, he felt a sudden, sharp pain deep in his chest.

Vivian... she was the very child he’d personally watched grow up over the years!

How had things possibly turned out this way, after everything?

She’d already told them everything they needed to know. It was enough that they still remembered any of it at all; there was no need to drag them back here.

Things were actually perfectly fine just as they currently stood.

So why wouldn’t she simply listen to reason?

But the household staff could do nothing at all to stop any of it.

Both the castle and the amusement park remained entirely under Vivian’s control. In their weakened state, they couldn’t possibly stop her, and could only watch helplessly from the sidelines.

After a long while, he finally stood up, wanting to look down and check whether any of his fallen family members were still visible below.

In the chaos of the fighting, he’d nearly forgotten that someone would need to collect the bodies once everything had finally settled down.

But when he looked down below, he froze in sheer disbelief.

His family had all reverted back to their normal, human forms.

But they had also, every one of them, died in the process.

The butler seemed to grasp something important at last.

So... only death could bring them back to their original state, then?

No wonder, no wonder Vivian had tried so desperately hard, yet all she’d ever actually managed to achieve was restoring their memories, nothing more.