Forbidden Zone of Deception

Chapter 143 The Hunter

Jiang Jin squatted down next to a rock, gripping the boning knife tightly in his hand.

Two plump wild rabbits lay side by side on the ground, their grayish-brown fur still warm.

He licked his chapped lips—

This guy really played the "hunter" role. Thank goodness for Deathstroke; now we can finally solve our food problem.

You have to understand, after more than ten hours of eating only a piece of cake and being stuck in the Lost Layer, even an Iron Man couldn't last that long!

"Dafeng, fire." He gave the order without looking up, the blade already pressed against the hind leg joint of the first rabbit.

Da Feng clumsily pulled out a plastic lighter with a baseball team logo printed on it, and after a few clicks, he finally managed to ignite the haystack that Liu Yan had prepared.

In the firelight, Jiang Jin's movements were clean and swift:

The tip of the boning knife made a small incision on the inside of the rabbit's hind leg. Fingers probed the thin membrane between the skin and muscle, and through a bloody process, the entire skin was peeled off completely, like removing a glove. The pink muscle tissue was exposed to the air, trembling slightly.

After skinning, the next step is to remove the internal organs—the blade gently lifts along the sternum, and the abdominal cavity is immediately opened.

The steaming internal organs slid to the ground. Jiang Jin deliberately kept the heart and liver, and wrapped the rest in leaves and buried them in the soil.

Liu Yan was handling the second rabbit, her technique even more meticulous, preserving even the fat around the kidneys intact.

Next came the cutting—Jiang Jin used the back of a boning knife to break the spine, dividing the rabbit meat into three parts: the foreleg, the hind leg, and the ribs.

Da Feng swallowed hard: "You used to be a butcher?"

"I've watched Bear Grylls' 'Man vs. Wild' series seven times." Jiang Jin rarely joked, skewering pieces of meat onto a sharpened twig, thinking: You'd never guess how I developed such knife skills.

Liu Yan had already built a simple grill with stones, and the flames could just reach the bottom of the meat.

"See what the art of primitive cooking is!"

The rabbit meat sizzled over the fire, and the fat dripped into the flames, stirring up a cloud of smoke.

Unsalted roasted meat exudes the most primal aroma of meat, mixed with a faint smell of blood.

"If only there were black pepper..." Da Feng stared at the gradually turning golden-brown pieces of meat, subconsciously licking his lips.

Jiang Jin turned the branch to ensure the meat was heated evenly: "This wild rabbit is definitely not as good as domesticated rabbits; its muscle fibers are coarser."

He poked it with the tip of his knife and said, "See? You have to eat it as soon as the blood has dried, otherwise it will become tough."

Liu Yan suddenly took out a few wild wasabi roots from her Reincarnator watch, ground them into a paste with a stone, and smeared them on the meat: "To kill bacteria and remove the fishy smell."

Jiang Jin raised an eyebrow in surprise; his wife always managed to come up with unexpected things.

The first bite of rabbit leg meat instantly awakened Jiang Jin's taste buds. The meat, without any seasoning, presented its most authentic flavor:
The foreleg meat is firm and chewy, and the fat layer on the ribs melts on the tip of the tongue.

Da Feng mumbled incoherently, oil dripping from his wrist down to his elbow.

This professional athlete has completely abandoned any pretense of image management at this moment, even chewing his cartilage with a crunching sound.

Liu Yan ate much more elegantly. She sliced ​​the meat into thin pieces and ate it in small bites with wasabi puree, while her slightly bright eyes revealed her equal satisfaction.

"You guys are saying..." Da Feng licked his fingers, then suddenly lowered his voice, "What's the situation with Teacher Park's family right now?"

Jiang Jin threw a cleanly gnawed leg bone into the fire: "I'm more interested in the answer to this question than you are in it."

"Shh!" Liu Yan suddenly raised a finger. The three of them held their breath and listened—a faint sound of branches snapping came from afar, as if some large creature was moving through the forest.

Jiang Jin's hand was already on the hunting rifle, but he froze when he saw who it was—a black wild dog was standing on the open ground twenty meters away, its green eyes staring straight at them... no, at the remaining rabbit meat.

"Alright, everyone gets a share, I'll give you half." Jiang Jin cut off a large piece of hind leg meat and threw it over.

Deathstroke wagged its tail instinctively. Although it was a ghost hound and couldn't eat normal food, why was it so unhappy at this moment?

The black wild dog sniffed warily, then picked up the meat and disappeared into the darkness.

In the firelight, the three exhausted men continued to share their hard-won dinner, intending to continue their journey to the battlefield after they had eaten and drunk their fill.

The black wild dog roamed through the woods, a piece of rabbit meat that Jiang Jin had thrown to it in its mouth.

Suddenly, a muffled bang from a silenced pistol pierced the night sky, and the wild dog's head exploded in a spray of blood. Its body staggered forward a few steps due to inertia before crashing to the ground.

A man in black tactical clothing emerged from the shadows, his boots crushing the carcass of a wild dog.

He crouched down and examined the wild dog's teeth with his fingerless gloved hands.

"Ordinary materialistic life."

Han Wei muttered to himself as he holstered the pistol back into the holster on his leg.

He looked up into the distance—a wisp of smoke appeared and disappeared among the trees, but no matter which way he went, he could not get close.

"Lost layer interference..."

Han Wei sneered, took out a lantern from the Reincarnator's Watch, and lit it.

He recalled his meeting with Kim Sook-mi at the bar three days prior.

The bar, named "Crimson," was located deep within the Dingyou Reincarnation Camp, its entrance hidden behind an abandoned container apartment. The two Chinese characters "Crimson" were crookedly written in dark red paint on the rusty iron gate, gleaming eerily in the dim light.

Kim Suk-mi leaned against the bar, her slender fingers holding a glass of tequila.

Her red lips looked particularly alluring in the dim light, and a silver skull brooch was pinned to her black leather jacket.

"Remember, just bring back the skull key."

Her fingertips tapped lightly on the glass, making a crisp sound: "You cannot embezzle the key after signing the notarized contract of the reincarnation system."

Han Wei narrowed his eyes, silently sizing up this dangerous woman.

This time, Blood Lord unusually offered a generous commission to hire him as a bounty hunter. His reputation is that he always keeps his word and never goes back on his word.

Han Wei looked up at Kim Sook-mi across from him and suddenly said, "Ms. Kim, lately, Korean horror games have been acting a bit strange. Do you know about 'Fox Stairs'?"

Kim Suk-mi's lips curled up: "What, you went to that instance too?"

Han Wei smiled bitterly, tilted his head back and drank it down, saying, "That's right, and... I almost died in there."

"I entered a mutated copy of 'Whispering Corridors 3: Wishing Stairs' after it was contaminated with memes," Han Wei recalled. "You should know the original movie plot—the friendship between two ballerinas turned sour due to jealousy, one of them made a wish on 'Wishing Stairs,' which led to the other's tragic death, and she eventually became a vengeful ghost."

But the setting of the dungeon is far more twisted than the movie.

"When I woke up, I found myself standing in front of a dilapidated school building. The reincarnation system gave me the task: 'Find the real Fox Stairs within three days and leave the school alive.'"

He initially thought it was just a regular horror game, until—

"I encountered 'Jinxing' and 'Suxi' in the dungeon."

Jin-sung (Song Ji-hyo) and So-hee (Park Han-byul) are the two female leads in the movie, but their behavior logic changes completely in the alternate version.

“Zhenxing is no longer just a jealous person, she… is more like a puppet controlled by some kind of force.” Han Wei said in a low voice, “I saw her cut her wrist with a shard of glass in the dance studio, and the blood dripped onto the floor, forming strange runes.”

"And Su-hee's ghost is no longer just a simple avenger. She appears in the dormitory corridor late at night, not to kill, but to... 'invite' others to dance."

Han Wei's pupils contracted slightly. "I once saw an NPC girl being dragged into a dance studio by her. The next day, the girl's body was arranged in a ballet pose, her toes broken, but she had a smile on her lips."

"The scariest thing is that the fox staircase in the dungeon isn't fixed. It appears in different places—sometimes on the stairs of the teaching building, sometimes in the corridor of the dormitory, and even... in a girl's dream."

Han Wei's voice grew softer and softer, "And every time he appears, he takes someone away with him."

Kim Sook-mi is Korean and had seen this well-known Korean horror film long ago. She continued, "And then what happened?"

"Most of the rules of this instance are related to the Fox Stairs. This staircase originally only had 28 steps, but if someone sincerely makes a wish, the 29th step will appear and grant the wish—but at a heavy price. However, in the instance, the 29th step does not 'appear,' but rather 'devours.'"

Han Wei's knuckles clenched until they turned white: "I saw an NPC girl step onto the 29th step, and then she was pulled in by something, leaving only one of her dancing shoes behind. Every time someone dies on the steps, time rewinds to the first day, but the deceased's memory is erased, and only we reincarnators remember." Han Wei smiled bitterly, "I went through three reincarnations before I figured out the pattern."

“In the final cycle, I decided not to fight the curse anymore, but to use it. I found Jin-sung and told her that So-hee’s ghost actually wanted her to let go of her obsession.” A complex look flashed in Han-wi’s eyes. “I lied to her and said that only by completing a ‘true duet’ could So-hee rest in peace. Jin-sung believed me.”

“That midnight, we went to the dance studio. Jin-sung stretched out her hand to the air, as if So-hee were really there.” Han-wei’s voice trembled slightly. “Then… So-hee walked out of the mirror.”

Two dances, one performed by the living, and one by the dead.

"When they finished their last beat, the entire instance began to collapse." Han Wei let out a long sigh. "The stairs disappeared, and Zhenxing and Suxi's figures turned into specks of light and dissipated."

The system notified him that the task was complete, but the last message sent chills down his spine—

"Warning: The core of the instance, 'Fox Stairs,' has undergone an unknown mutation and cannot be completely removed at the moment."

Han Wei thought it was all over, but after returning to the Samsara Camp, he found a mark on his body—a small number 29 on his left scapula, as if it had been branded on.

He lifted his collar, revealing the eerie mark: "And... I occasionally hear Su Xi's voice."

Kim Suk-mi's red lips pressed into a line: "It seems that the curse of that instance has already 'parasitized' you."

Han Wei then gave a meaningful smile: "So, to sum up everything I've said... going to the horror instance in Korea this time is possible, but..."

"You have to pay more."

……

Just as Han Wei finally broke through the Lost Layer's blockade using the lantern, Jiang Jin and the other two had just extinguished the campfire.

The undead hound "Demon Bone" launched the first attack, lunging at Dafeng and spewing out rotten saliva!
"Get out of the way!" Jiang Jin quickly fired the insect bomb!

"Perspective activated." Han Wei's pupils turned an eerie gray-white. Through the virtual interface of the Reincarnator's Watch, he could clearly see Jiang Jin and Liu Yan's joint storage space—more than thirty fragments of resentment crystals were neatly arranged, each emitting a chilling blue light.

"Oh my God!"

Even this battle-hardened hunter reincarnator couldn't help but curse.

An ordinary reincarnator would be overjoyed to collect three, but this couple had actually stored enough to trigger a "tsunami".

Jiang Jin fired continuously with his mournful cry, but Han Wei's armor was enough to withstand the opponent's attacks.

Blood Lord gave him quite a few good things!

(End of this chapter)