Forbidden Zone of Deception

Chapter 114 Reverse Cognitive Pollution
The forestry worker was waiting for the ghost customer to approach him.

Frankly speaking, under the seal of the reincarnation system, even if he dies, it would be difficult for his resentment to retaliate.

However, once the resentment successfully backfires, the resentment within the convenience store will make it difficult for ghosts to enter for a short period of time!
This can buy Jiang Jin, Wu Ge, and Murong Yan some time.

He still hoped that they could survive.

Even living an extra hour is a good thing.

As for him... he was merely clinging to life with barely any strength.

Mo Yi...

Ying'er...

Also, Commander, I'm sorry...

Lin Ye's mind was filled with images of his wife, daughter, and guild leader, as well as the countless times he had lived and died in terrifying dungeons.

The ghost customer's face was almost touching the forestry worker's!
Just as Lin Ye was preparing to die, the ghost customer raised his hand and pointed behind Lin Ye.

He was referring to a box of high-end cigarettes.

This startled Lin Ye.

Then, as if waking from a dream, he handed the cigarette to the ghost customer.

what's the situation?
Test me?
Waiting for the chance to take off my mask?

But the ghost customer simply took out the recharge card and handed it to him.

After receiving the recharge card, Lin Ye felt as if he had been transported to another world.

It wasn't until the ghost customer walked out of the convenience store that Lin Ye realized his legs were weak and his back was completely soaked.

The flashback in my mind came to an abrupt end.

Did he... survive?

……

It was past midnight.

The four people took turns working by drawing lots.

Forestry is still in a daze.

Now it's Wu Ge's turn to collect the cash outside.

Forestry, after all, has seen a lot in the world, so it has finally recovered.

The most pressing issue right now is...

Why didn't the ghost customer target me?
What is the mechanism behind the ghost customer's murder?

It's not just lime juice, it's the mask too. Once you take off the mask, it's the same... a dead end.

Having killed Qiu Feng's ghost, it's clear that, guided by the doll, Qiu Feng's mask was removed, confirming that Qiu Feng wasn't a ghost but a human. So...

"Dr. Lin, what did you do back then? Something that Qiu Feng didn't do?" Jiang Jin quickly pressed, "Think back carefully!"

Lin Ye thought for a moment and said, "At that time, I..."

"What was it then?"

"Lost in a flashback of memories..."

Murong Yan understood: "It's a common flashback scene in Japanese anime, I know that."

"Yes, that's right. That's how it is." Lin Ye nodded. "But that has nothing to do with the ghost customer not taking off my mask, right?"

Jiang Jin thought for a moment and said, "Perhaps, ghosts are something similar to thought entities? When you are immersed in deep memories, you also release similar brainwave wavelengths, and are then regarded as one of the same kind by ghost customers?"

Murong Yan looked at Jiang Jin and asked, "Have you been reading too many of Ni Kuang's Wesley science fiction novels?"

"Yes, I've read quite a lot of them when I was in school."

“Ni Kuang’s books are about the origin of everything and aliens. He especially likes to use science fiction concepts to explain various paranormal phenomena. The Reincarnators have already studied this. Ghosts and brainwaves are completely unrelated to materialistic physical phenomena.”

“However, Jiang Jin’s idea can also be taken as a reference,” Lin Ye did not completely reject Jiang Jin’s deduction, “After all, we still don’t know enough about ghosts.”

“Actually, I’ve had this question for a long time…” Jiang Jin stared intently at Lin Ye, “Ultimately, what kind of existence is a [ghost]?”

What is a ghost?
"Take the materialist layer for example. Before the emergence of meme pollution, humans lived entirely on the materialist layer. All supernatural phenomena and ghost stories were nothing more than hearsay and popular literature, just like the Bermuda Triangle, which were purely absurd rumors from the era of print media."

"Huh? The Bermuda Triangle is just a rumor?" Murong Yan's eyes widened. "I always thought it was real when I was a kid." "Yes," Lin Ye nodded. "Neither the vampires and werewolves in Europe nor the Qing Dynasty zombie cat-faced old lady in China are real."

"However, these non-existent ghosts and spirits are made into horror movies and novels by humans, and then they are transformed into strange and terrifying copies of the rules by meme contamination." Jiang Jin couldn't understand this the most. "The ghosts imagined by people in the material world actually exist in the meme-contaminated plane. So what exactly are ghosts?"

“There is a group of reincarnators in the United States called the Duncan Club, which has been conducting research on the material layer and the pollution layer,” Lin Ye replied. “After Manhattan fell, the United States almost assembled the nation’s think tank to study how to deal with meme pollution, led by Dr. Douglas Duncan. The focus of their research was on the material layer and the pollution layer. But to this day, there is still no reasonable explanation.”

“It’s actually more chaotic over there than we imagined,” Murong Yan said. “Many reincarnators even insist on believing in conspiracy theories, thinking that the polluted layer is the real world, while the materialistic layer is a lie.”

“That’s normal. Most of their citizens are either on drugs or have dyslexia.” Jiang Jin thought for a moment and then said, “But think about it carefully, what makes us assume that the material world is the only reality? Doesn’t it say at the entrance of the Reincarnation Camp? Welcome to the real world. Perhaps the material world is just a limited observation of the world by humankind. The turkeys declare that this is the absolute truth of the farm universe because the farmer delivers feed to them on time every noon.”

"The farmer's theory you're talking about is just science fiction to fool readers who haven't studied physics," Lin Ye retorted. "Physical theories can't be derived purely from empiricism. The laws of physics in the material world are like Lego bricks; moving one piece will cause the whole thing to collapse. The laws of physics in the universe are a perfectly fitted Lego castle. Moreover, modern astronomy has confirmed that the starlight of the universe over the past 138 billion years is completely consistent, and even the most distant galaxies obey the same physical laws as atoms in a laboratory. The laws of physics are like a tightly woven logical net; moving one part affects the whole. In reality, from microscopes to telescopes, all evidence shows that this net is complete and self-consistent, and there are no loose threads that the farmer cut. However, the pollution layer is different; it only affects specific individuals contaminated by memes, and things contaminated by memes (including ghosts) only affect humans."

Then, Lin Ye raised a finger: "Let me give you an example. In the past, someone who fell into the annihilation layer in a certain terrifying instance could observe a giant planet appearing in the location of Mars through a telescope. In the annihilation layer world he observed, Earth was swallowed by this giant planet, and he himself was also turned into dust. However, the Earth in the material layer of the instance was completely intact. All the phenomena in the contaminated layer only affect individuals, which is why, even after so long, most people in the world believe that the meme contamination outbreak is just a contagious mental illness with severe somatization symptoms. The contaminated layer cannot be the real world!"

Murong Yan quickly waved her hand and said, "We've gone off on a tangent. Let's rethink the problems we're facing now."

Why didn't the ghost customer remove the forestry mask?

“I have another idea,” Jiang Jin proposed a new perspective: “Actually, we can think about it the other way around. It’s not that Dr. Lin did something that Qiu Feng didn’t do. It could also be… that you didn’t do something that Qiu Feng did.”

Upon hearing this, both Lin Ye and Murong Yan were moved.

“Chou Feng sprinkled water in front of the freezer and took some wine to the cashier,” Murong Yan began to recall. “Also, he flipped all the chairs in the dining area up!”

“I didn’t take the chair down,” Lin Ye thought for a moment, “and I didn’t wipe the water off the front of the freezer.”

"But you haven't done these things."

Then, the three of them fell silent again.

But what does that prove?

“Dr. Lin, the example you just gave…” Jiang Jin suddenly said, “Ghosts are a bit like us humans; they also need to travel between different planes. The vast majority of ghosts cannot enter the material plane, but even in different levels of the contaminated plane, there are places that ghosts cannot go, and therefore there are things that cannot be observed.”

Lin Ye and Murong Yan were both stunned.

"Humans have a SAN value. When the SAN value is high enough, both the mind and body can escape the contamination layer and return to the material world. So, ghosts, being a kind of existence that tends towards pure spiritual beings, might they also have a similar concept of SAN value?"

What if ghosts also had SAN values?
Without a doubt, the ghosts of the Mysterious Layer cannot observe the Lost Layer, and the ghosts of the Lost Layer have even less of a chance to observe the Annihilation Layer.

"Could dolls and lime juice be similar to cognitive stabilizers for us humans?"

Jiang Jin recalled his experience at Minghui Glass Factory, where he used the pills his brother gave him to save the children contaminated by memes, and said, "If that's the case, then perhaps it makes sense. Ghosts need these things to clearly observe our human identities!"

Lin Ye and Murong Yan exchanged a glance.

"Then what do you mean?"

"The cognitive stabilizing pills increase our SAN value, and they might have the same effect on ghosts. But the Nuo opera mask and the incense are cognitive pollution for ghosts! Making it difficult for them to distinguish between us and other ghosts!"

The forestry worker gasped.

Is humanity perpetuating cognitive pollution and distortion regarding ghosts?
A path never before imagined!

Conversely, lime juice is a cure for cognitive pollution for ghosts?
Murong Yan suddenly said, "Could it be that drinking that lime juice can increase our SAN value?"

"If it had that effect, the reincarnation system would probably have notified us immediately, right?"

At that moment, the door opened, and Wu Ge walked in.

"Time's up, let's draw lots."

Subsequently, Wu Ge also learned of Jiang Jin's idea that "incense and masks can cause cognitive corruption in ghosts."

"If Jiang Jin's idea is correct, then..."

Wu Ge looked behind him: "That's why the night shift rules say the incense must keep burning! The incense can create cognitive pollution in ghosts, and combined with the mask, it makes them truly recognize us as one of their own! And then..."

Jiang Jin lit a new incense stick.

He remembered.

At that time, the old incense had almost burned out, and Qiu Feng lit new incense. The new incense had just been lit, and its diffusion effect was not yet strong enough to effectively corrupt the perception of ghosts!
At this point, the doll's prompting to the ghost customer made him begin to doubt his belief that the night shift cashier was a ghost. Meanwhile, Dr. Lin, whose perception of ghosts had been heavily tainted by the burning incense, saw their masks as their true faces!

but……

So Jiang Jin lit another incense stick at the same time, making sure that before one burned out, the other would burn for a while longer!
However, even so, the problem still cannot be completely solved.

Lime juice!
This is the antidote for ghosts, allowing them to completely access the "cognitive pollution" caused by incense and masks!

They couldn't destroy the antidote!

　I've been watching Xiaolong's "The Corpse Retriever" these past couple of days, and I just got to the part where the Qing Dynasty zombies battle the cat-faced old woman.
　　
　
(End of this chapter)