The Price of Disguise

Bai Muxue darted behind a tent, just managing to avoid the gaze of the giant inflatable clown above her.

It wasn’t that Bai Muxue didn’t want to transform and rush in directly; however, the monster’s true form remained unclear, and she was no hot-blooded magical girl who could vanquish all foes with a cry of friendship and bonds.

Reckless action would undoubtedly lead her straight into their trap.

Moreover, her transformation exacted a considerable toll.

Each time she transformed, it would shave years off her life, so it was best not to transform unless absolutely necessary, reserving it for truly critical moments.

Cautiously, she peered out, observing the amusement park’s interior through the main gate.

A colossal pair of scissors swayed gently in the wind above the entrance, while clowns on either side gesticulated with their elongated limbs, their faces uniformly fixed in stiff, eerie smiles.

Colored lights spun and flickered, casting grotesque shadows and kaleidoscopic specks of light, making one feel as if they had stepped into a distorted kaleidoscope.

What made Bai Muxue’s eyes widen slightly was the sudden burst of cacophonous laughter, followed by a group of children, dressed in various outfits, their eyes tightly shut and unnatural smiles plastered across their faces, filing into the amusement park.

Their steps were rigid, their faces devoid of life, and only their unsettling smiles, jarringly bright under the shifting lights, stood out.

‘Children… Was that laughter truly theirs?’

Wait a moment… Bai Muxue’s pretty face stiffened slightly as she suddenly recalled the widely publicized child disappearance cases that had been plaguing Wangdu recently.

‘So, this amusement park was behind all this!’

‘Was the entire amusement park merely a barrier set up by this monster?’

Bai Muxue pulled out her phone; as expected, there was no signal.

Still, she opened her messaging app and sent several messages to the Bai family’s steward.

[If I’m not home by morning, something has likely happened. Please contact the Supernatural Investigation Department to check the amusement park in the city’s outskirts.]

[If the Supernatural Investigation Department finds no issues, then contact Shen Jingyi. I trust she’ll resolve it.]

The messages kept spinning in circles after she sent them, leaving her uncertain if the Bai family would receive them.

While contacting Shen Jingyi directly wasn’t out of the question, Miss Shen had already fought two high-intensity battles today.

She was probably still working the night shift at the convenience store, and if she were to rush here to fight without eating or sleeping, she might truly collapse from exhaustion.

‘If she could handle it herself, she should, rather than burdening the young woman.’

The young woman sighed softly, returning her phone to her pocket.

‘Now, the challenge was how to infiltrate…’

She gazed up at the seemingly endless, towering fence, then looked at the inflatable clown still monitoring the amusement park in the distance.

If they detected anything amiss, the entire amusement park might instantly turn hostile towards Bai Muxue.

Her index finger tapped her chin lightly, and a glint of thoughtful contemplation flickered in her ink-dark eyes.

Finally, a mischievous smirk played on her lips.

She tidied her wind-tousled long hair, then boldly strode out from behind the tent.

Under the watchful gaze of the inflatable clown, she adopted a similarly stiff smile and, swaying slightly, joined the procession of children.

She was making a gamble.

Since the ones lured here were all children, adults were clearly not among the monster’s targets.

Coincidentally, though Bai Muxue had long since outgrown the ‘child’ category, her youthful appearance and petite stature meant she could convincingly pass as a child.

So, she confidently stepped through the main entrance.

Although the petite Bai Muxue still seemed conspicuously out of place among the other children, the inflatable figures noticed nothing amiss.

The clowns at the entrance even waved their elongated arms, seemingly welcoming Bai Muxue and the others.

‘Aha, plan successful!’

‘Why can’t I be a child! What if I just developed a little early?’

‘Ugh, why did that sound so disheartening… especially for someone whose mental age was nearly forty…’

‘Come to think of it, ever since becoming a young girl, her manner of speaking and thinking had grown increasingly peculiar… Surely it was just her imagination.’

The triumphant gleam on her pretty face vanished as quickly as it appeared.

Bai Muxue glanced down at her flat chest, and for some reason, she let out a faint sigh, following the crowd into the amusement park.

The amusement park’s interior was entirely different from what Bai Muxue had observed from the outside.

It resembled a strange, sprawling doodle, with all facilities related to an ‘amusement park’ appearing like a child’s messy scribbles, devoid of any design logic, like random blocks of color haphazardly stuck together.

For instance, the Ferris wheel in the distance had crooked lines and haphazard, garish colors, while its gondolas varied in size, resembling flattened pancakes.

Each rotation was accompanied by an ear-splitting screech.

This bizarre and absurd spectacle left Bai Muxue feeling disoriented, as if she had stepped into another dimension.

She looked up, seeing a colossal, semi-transparent creature floating in the mottled, chaotic sky.

It resembled a jellyfish, its enormous, umbrella-like top pulsing with a faint, ethereal blue glow.

Countless slender, transparent tentacles extended outwards, enveloping the entire amusement park.

‘This…’

Bai Muxue’s pupils contracted slightly as she shifted her gaze to the children who had already dispersed around her.

There was a boy whose body had grown gaunt, his cheeks sunken, yet he tirelessly played a shooting game.

Nearby, a girl whose face was already shadowed by dark circles still wore that eerie smile as she played at the claw machine.

And then there were the children with faltering steps, struggling and swaying as they rode the rollercoaster over and over again.

‘A Disaster Beast! The one in the sky wasn’t a monster, it was a Disaster Beast!’

The scene before her suddenly dawned on Bai Muxue.

This creature likely possessed a form of mind control, creating this bizarre place by extracting memories from children’s brains.

This also explained why the amusement park looked so uncoordinated; after all, children’s minds were always wildly imaginative, and if you asked them to depict concrete scenes, they probably couldn’t.

‘Judging by the children’s condition, is this Disaster Beast siphoning their life force through this method? Then why was Sister Wang also affected?’

‘If it was targeting me, wouldn’t it be better to just control me directly?’

As Bai Muxue frowned in thought, the colossal Disaster Beast floating in the sky subtly turned its shimmering, translucent head, seemingly fixing its gaze in Bai Muxue’s direction.

Though the creature had no visible eyes, Bai Muxue distinctly felt its stare upon her.

She had been discovered.

Amidst the ‘gleefully playing’ children, Bai Muxue, standing perfectly still, appeared conspicuously out of place.

A chilling cold instantly spread through her entire body.

Without a moment’s hesitation, Bai Muxue turned and fled.

Unlike the brute-force chimera she had encountered before, this mind-manipulating foe was clearly far more troublesome, and charging in headfirst would be foolish.

Bai Muxue darted into a nearby tent, searching for a place to hide.

Just as her gaze fell upon a funhouse mirror in the corner, a pair of fair, soft hands suddenly reached out from behind the mirror, pulling the young woman away.

“Guh!?”

“It’s alright! I’m here to…”

Before the other could finish speaking, Bai Muxue, whose nerves were already stretched taut, reacted almost without thinking.

She bit down hard on the small hand attempting to cover her mouth.