Forbidden Zone of Deception

Chapter 137 Cake and Basement
When Ms. Park woke up, she found that the room had become dimly lit.

She slowly propped herself up to sit up. After sleeping all afternoon, she felt much better.

After coughing, she called out in a hoarse voice, "Miko."

Upon hearing the noise, Miko immediately put down what she was doing and quickly went into the teacher's bedroom.

She skillfully helped Ms. Park up, then adjusted her wheelchair, saying, "Ms., did you sleep well? I'll go prepare dinner for you."

"Thank you for your hard work. Have they eaten?"

“They all said they were full from the barbecue and cake at noon and didn’t need to eat dinner. So I only prepared food for you, teacher. I’ll go heat up the leftover dishes from lunch and make you a bowl of porridge.”

"Okay. By the way, Miko, is the basement door locked securely? Has no one gone in?"

"Don't worry, no one will go in."

A short while later, Miko brought over the food.

"Teacher, the food is ready, please eat first."

"Where's the cake?" Teacher Park suddenly interrupted her, her aged fingers gripping Mija's arm tightly. "Is Youngmin's cake still on the table? In the yard, right? That table faces the door, so Youngmin will see it as soon as she comes in."

Miko paused for a moment, then said, "They should still be in the yard."

"Miko, quick, go check it out!"

Teacher Park's tone suddenly became unusually urgent and left no room for argument: "Go see it now!"

Miko was startled by this sudden excitement and quickly reassured him, "Teacher, please eat first, I'll eat later."

"No!" Teacher Park's voice suddenly rose, drawing the attention of everyone in the living room outside. "My dinner is not important; you go and confirm it now!"

Faced with the teacher's unusual stubbornness, Miko had no choice but to walk quickly to the window, open it, and stick her head out.

In the darkness, on the long table in the courtyard, the cake on the plate remained perfectly in its place, and the fork beside it was also untouched.

"It's still there, teacher, the cake is perfectly fine."

Teacher Park finally breathed a sigh of relief, and her tense shoulders relaxed.

She took the bowl of rice from Miko and began to eat in small bites, but her eyes kept glancing out the window.

Just then, Xu Yinqiu rushed back from outside, looking travel-worn.

As soon as she entered the courtyard, she immediately activated her Incantation Eye and looked at the cake on the table.

This wasn't the first time she had used her Incantation Eye to observe the cake, but in her special vision, the cake always exuded the aura of ordinary food, without any unusual supernatural fluctuations.

You see, because the rules kept mentioning cake, Xu Yinqiu was very wary of it. But now, could it really just be an ordinary cake?
“Teacher,” Miko asked softly as she served food to Teacher Park, “Aren’t you being too concerned about the cake? If you leave it like this overnight, it’ll probably just feed the ants.”

Teacher Park paused for a moment, holding the soup spoon, looking at the kimchi and porridge in front of her, and said, "Every year on his birthday, I save a piece of cake for Young-min. That child loves cream cake the most. No matter what others think of him, he is still my child."

“But…” Miko hesitated, her eyes filled with worry as she looked at her teacher.

“He will come back, I know,” Ms. Park continued. “He will definitely come back. So, Mija, if any of you see the person wearing the rabbit mask, please tell me immediately. I will... I will guide him home.”

Xu Yinqiu had already arrived at the door of Teacher Park's bedroom. When she heard "the person wearing the rabbit mask," suddenly, under the vision of the Zhuyou Eye, the SAN value of everyone present fluctuated significantly.

Everyone's SAN value has entered the mysterious layer.

Half an hour later, everyone else had gone back to their rooms to rest, leaving only Zhengyuan and Meizi still sitting at the table in the living room.

Miko sighed softly, "Zhengyuan, something about what the teacher said earlier doesn't seem quite right. Should we take her for a thorough checkup? I'm worried it might be a sign of early-onset dementia."

Zheng Yuan nodded, his brows furrowing slightly: "What you said makes sense. But given the teacher's personality, I'm afraid he won't cooperate with the inspection easily."

He paused, then said, "But don't be so pessimistic. I don't think the teacher is demented. She probably still has a hard time accepting that Yingmin has left her forever. Actually, I can really understand the teacher's feelings. When my mother passed away, I also felt like the sky had fallen. I always felt that my mother would come back one day."

His voice suddenly choked up, and Miko considerately didn't press him further, but simply waited quietly for him to calm down.

“I still can’t understand it,” Zheng Yuan finally continued, his voice low, “My mother was doing her business in the shop that day, so why did she suddenly rush out? She even ignored the red light and drove straight over?”

Miko sighed as well: "Auntie was a good person. I remember she was always smiling and was especially kind to me. Why do good people never get good rewards?"

She wiped away the tears from the corners of her eyes and said, "I got my first period just a week before my aunt passed away, and I'm so grateful to her for comforting me..."

Zhengyuan remembered that the smell of fertilizer outside the classroom was particularly strong that day, and Dafeng happened to see the bloodstains on Meizi's pants. Lacking knowledge of physiology, he blurted out, "Teacher, Meizi pooped in her pants." Minghao and Shihao, who were sitting close to Meizi, immediately pinched their noses and shouted, telling Meizi to leave quickly.

Miko cried terribly, and Eun-young immediately gave her toilet paper. Although they were both girls, they were still elementary school students and hadn't started menstruating yet, so she didn't understand what was happening and genuinely thought Miko had soiled her pants. Soon-hee, who wanted to be a child star, would bring a dance dress to school and practice whenever she had time. She kindly offered to borrow Miko's dance dress to change out of her soiled pants. "At that time, it was Teacher Park who first noticed the situation," Jung-won continued. "The teacher explained female physiology to everyone, saying that this was a very normal situation, and every girl would have to deal with this troublesome old friend in her life. Everyone must not laugh at Miko because of this."

Miko's eyes were full of gratitude: "Because your house is so close to the school, the teacher suggested that you take me to your house so that your aunt could help me. I remember your aunt was so kind at the time; she not only changed my pants but also taught me how to use sanitary napkins and told me not to be afraid..."

Her voice trailed off: "That's when I realized that menarche signifies a woman's natural development. But I never expected that just a week later, my aunt would..."

Zhengyuan's eyes welled up with tears. Every little detail about his mother's life became exceptionally clear at that moment.

He remembered how his mother always saved the best snacks from the shop for him when he came home from school, how patiently she taught him how to make dumplings, and how proud she smiled when she learned that he had gotten a perfect score on his test...

But just like that, his mother left him forever.

“The teacher is like me back then,” Zheng Yuan said softly. “Knowing that the person is gone, I would rather live in a daze.”

Miko gently grasped Masamoto's hand: "But we have to help our teacher get through this. She can't stay like this forever..."

At this moment, she looked towards the teacher's bedroom and suddenly said, "But to be honest, I always feel that the teacher seems to know something about Young-min that we don't."

Xu Yinqiu overheard their conversation.

She looked toward the iron gate leading to the basement.

In the azure vision of the Eye of Zhuyou, there was nothing but emptiness behind the door—no supernatural fluctuations, no abnormal SAN values.

"This is unreasonable..."

She muttered to herself. As a healer, she knew very well that since this was a mysterious layer of space, the absence of any supernatural fluctuations only made it more eerie.

That is to say...

There's a deeper level inside. It's not just the shallow layer of confusion.

She suddenly recalled a scene from a movie: Ms. Park's husband hanged himself in this basement, his body swaying gently in the wind.

Xu Yinqiu recalled the rule about not being allowed to enter the basement.

In the end, she had no choice but to leave first; to force her way in would be tantamount to courting death.

Recalling Jung-won and Mi-ja's conversation, those memories about their first period were clearly reminiscent of Yoo Jung-won's experience in the movie. Teacher Park expelled Jung-won from the classroom without any explanation, and when she returned home and told her mother, her mother angrily took her menstrual underwear to confront the teacher, only to be hit by a car and paralyzed on the street.

In this meme-contaminated copy, Jung-won's tragic experience is grafted onto the fictional character "Yoo Jung-won," while the original abuser, Teacher Park, is transformed into a loving mentor.

“Memory alteration, identity swapping… this is the horror of meme contamination…” She gripped the Soul-Stabilizing Coin on her chest.

The most terrifying thing isn't ghosts or monsters, but that the reality of the entire world has been distorted and corrupted by memes. Xu Yinqiu had witnessed something like this more than once in horror dungeons before, so it wasn't anything new to her.

Just then, she suddenly heard a sound behind her.

Looking back...

The wall rippled like water as a ferocious, crimson hound struggled through it and crashed heavily to the ground!

"Death knell!"

The Eye of Zhuyou allowed her to see the undead hounds that were normally only visible to hunters and those trapped in the Lost Layer!
She cried out and immediately crouched down to check Jiang Jin's hunting dog.

This once majestic skeletal hound was now in a pitiful state—the bronze runes on its exposed dark red fascia had dimmed, its eye sockets, burning with eerie blue flames, flickered, and its right forepaw was twisted at an eerie angle.

"Death knell, where is your master? Is he nearby?" Xu Yinqiu called out anxiously.

The hound let out a broken whimper, and its paws slightly raised.

Xu Yinqiu confirmed that the Death Knell had already released the Ghost Domain state.

The bronze incantations gradually faded.

The ash within its body repairs injuries very slowly.

Xu Yinqiu suddenly noticed that it had a torn piece of cloth in its mouth.

She immediately grabbed a cloth, on which was written in blood: "Sister Yinqiu, please put two pieces of cake in a bag and put it around the neck of the funeral bell so it can bring them to us! I will definitely be here to meet you before 12 o'clock! Beware of the person wearing the rabbit mask; never let him into this house!"

This is... Jiang Jin's handwriting!

　Sorry, I didn't finish writing until after midnight.
　　This chapter is from June 30th.
　　
　
(End of this chapter)