Forbidden Zone of Deception

Chapter 151 The Hunting Mark and the Return

This ending was something Jiang Jin never expected.

Before the cooldown period for rule alteration ended, the evil spirit that had been entrenched in the mansion was finally dealt with.

After Wu Enying was completely drawn into the Annihilation Layer by Yingmin, Jiang Jin noticed that his SAN value was starting to rise. He quickly took out a piece of meat to replenish SAN from his Reincarnator Watch, ate it, and found that his SAN value indeed began to rise!
"Great!" Jiang Jin breathed a sigh of relief, which meant that the supernatural events in this terrifying dungeon were finally over!

Unbeknownst to him, his every move was being clearly seen through tactical binoculars by Han Wei in a distant tree.

After escaping Tomie, Han Wei initially planned to continue pursuing Jiang Jin and Liu Yan. However, after calming down and thinking things through carefully, he came to the conclusion that:
Killing Jiang Jin directly would not maximize the benefits.

He had signed a notarized contract with the Bloodthirsty Team, stipulating that no matter how much loot he obtained after killing Jiang Jin, it would all be handed over to them. If he could only obtain the Skull Key, and could only open it to get three pieces of loot, he wouldn't be able to get all thirty-odd Resentment Crystals. Even if he forced Jiang Jin to hand over those Resentment Crystals, he couldn't possibly keep them for himself.

That being the case...

Instead of using this as leverage, we could ask the Blood Lord for a drug that could cure my sister's cancer!
Of course, he wasn't afraid of the Bloodthirsty Team using his sister's life to blackmail him. The imperial court strictly prohibited reincarnators from using their professional skills on ordinary people, especially since Blood Lord was a LV4 reincarnator. To advance to LV5: Thousand Faces, he definitely needed to maintain good relations with the government.

He put down the tactical binoculars. At this stage, he had to ensure that Jiang Jin and his wife survived and mark them with his hunting mark so that he could sense them no matter where they went!
"Jiang Jin, meeting me was your misfortune! However, I must thank you; your life and fortune were exchanged for my sister's survival. After you die, I will definitely burn extra paper money for you every year on the anniversary of your death!"

Then, he took out a sniper rifle from the Reincarnator Watch.

The sniper rifle scope was aimed at Jiang Jin, who was completely unprepared.

He pointed the gun at Jiang Jin's shoulder, making sure he wouldn't kill him or significantly lower his SAN value.

Immediately afterwards...

"boom!"

A text prompt from the reincarnation system appeared in Han Wei's left eye.

This time, he fired bullets inscribed with blood curse runes, each bullet dealing a full 8% of his SAN value!
Enough to pierce armor!

Jiang Jin's insect armor was instantly pierced by the bullet!

At the same time, the Blood Curse Rune Bullet imprinted a hunting mark on Jiang Jin's body!

"Great!" Han Wei was overjoyed; with that, he could rest assured.

Then, he immediately jumped down from the tree and quickly fled.

After all, he didn't want to stay here and wait for the Gu worms to attack him!

The moment the bullet pierced his shoulder, Jiang Jin didn't even have time to feel the pain.

The alarm that the insect armor was being torn flashed wildly on the retina of his left eye, and the blood-red runes that appeared at the wound even burned through his clothes, with the patterns wriggling under his skin like living things.

"Han Wei!" Jiang Jin suddenly turned around and looked in the direction from which the bullet came. Liu Yan's swarm of Gu worms immediately gave chase, but returned after a moment, failing to catch up.

“It’s a hunting mark,” Liu Yan’s fingertips brushed against the wound on Jiang Jin’s shoulder. The Gu worms immediately emitted a warning buzz after detecting the rune energy. “He has marked you as long-term prey.”

Jiang Jin took out a bandage from the Reincarnator's Watch, and Liu Yan helped him bandage his wound.

“Next time we meet,” Jiang Jin’s eyes flashed with a sinister glint, “I’ll shove his eyeballs into a gun barrel!”

……

"2000 crystals of resentment? Really?"

At this moment, Lin Wenqiang, who was in charge of logistics and finance in the Bloody Team, stood in front of Blood Lord and his expression changed drastically.

"Commander, you spent 2000 Resentment Crystals to buy a reverse transcription gene serum? Are you perhaps planning to buy it to curry favor with some important figure?"

“Big shots have plenty of channels to get the potion from the official Reincarnators,” Blood Lord replied. “Han Wei is willing to sign a notarized contract with me for the Reincarnation System, exchanging an important piece of information for this potion.”

"Information worth 2000 resentment crystals?" Lin Wenqiang's face twitched. "Alright, since you think it's acceptable, then it's fine. However, you need to sign the form so I can do the accounting later."

Lin Wenqiang is a professional accountant; such a large expenditure cannot be handled with the slightest ambiguity.

"Don't worry about the finances, I won't make things difficult for you." Blood Lord handed him a financial voucher that he had already signed. "It not only has my signature, but also our team's official seal. You can just use this voucher to make the payment."

"understand."

Before long, the potion was placed on Blood Lord's table.

It's a pity this potion is for one person only, otherwise Blood Lord would have kept one as a backup.

If he didn't know Han Wei's character well, and if he didn't have his own courage, most people really wouldn't dare to spend this money.

He called Han Wei again.

"Han Wei, the medicine you requested has arrived. I will send someone to your sister's hospital immediately. How is the situation on your end?" "Jiang Jin has successfully resolved the paranormal incident, and I have also left a hunting mark on him. They can return to Blue Rainbow Academy at midnight."

“Very good,” Blood Lord nodded with great satisfaction, “I look forward to the important intelligence you will provide.”

What is the most important thing for the Blood Lord right now?
It's very simple, it's just about advancing to LV5!

It can be said that nothing takes precedence over this matter.

Every top-tier reincarnator knows full well that memetic contamination wiping out all of humanity is only a matter of time. Faced with countless mysterious and terrifying memes, the billions of life forms on Earth's material plane are less than ants. The common destiny of all humanity is to fall into the Avici Hemisphere! The difference lies only in who goes first and who goes later. But no matter how much it's delayed, no matter how optimistic the estimate, the extinction of all humanity should be no more than twenty years away. In a worse scenario, it's not entirely impossible that it could happen within five to ten years! This has been verified by countless priestly reincarnators!

The extinction of humanity is absolutely unavoidable. The various professional skills of the reincarnators are a joke in the face of truly terrifying memes. In fact, the higher-ups even considered a plan to escape Earth by spaceship, but later discovered that meme contamination was enough to completely overturn the concept of space in the material world. Once contaminated, it would make no difference whether they were on Earth or Pluto.

What governments around the world are now trying to do is to find a way to extend this time as much as possible.

To survive as long as possible, there's only one way: advance to LV5! Only at LV5 is it possible to survive after falling into the Abyss! Of course, how long one can survive after that is unknown. But just like a terminally ill patient, even with treatment, if they can only live two or three more years, that's still a good outcome!

Advancing to LV5 Reincarnator is like crossing a single-plank bridge amidst a sea of ​​soldiers.

Blood Lord reached LV4 using a shortcut. The downside of this method is that his chances of reaching LV5 in the future are much lower than those of the average person.

Therefore, he must fight for it! Fight for it at all costs!

Incidentally, the government once had a large number of special forces soldiers deliberately violate the monthly rules, becoming meme-contaminated and turning into Reincarnators, thus creating a Reincarnator army! However, this proved to be completely unworkable. Deliberately violating the rules would rapidly decrease SAN values, and the difficulty of the dungeons would be extremely high, making it difficult to mass-produce Reincarnators. Therefore, globally, there are still far more civilian Reincarnators than government-run Reincarnators.

At this moment, in Teacher Park's house.

The mansion's gates were finally opened normally.

Xu Yinqiu, Zhengyuan, and Meizi walked out supporting each other; both of them were still alive.

"You..." Zheng Yuan looked at the red rune on Jiang Jin's shoulder, hesitating to speak.

“It wasn’t ghosts or monsters that hurt him.” Jiang Jin put away his hunting rifle. “There are some human creditors who are even more disgusting than evil spirits.”

The creaking of a wheelchair came from the entryway. Teacher Park appeared in the doorway, pushed by Soon-hee, her fingers gripping the blanket on her knees tightly: "Young-min...where's my Young-min?"

Jiang Jin remained silent for two seconds, then walked to the wheelchair and squatted down.

He took the plate containing the cake and gently placed it in the old man's hand: "He has fulfilled his wish. From now on, no more evil spirits will appear."

Teacher Park's trembling fingers gripped the plate, and she suddenly burst into tears.

At the moment when the hour and minute hands coincide at 12, the cycle system indicates that a return is imminent.

Zheng Yuan noticed that Jiang Jin and the others were beginning to appear and disappear, and suddenly asked, "Who exactly are you? And will you still be able to—"

We probably won't see each other again.

They then left the horror instance.

The moment he regained his senses, Jiang Jin's shoes slammed heavily onto the classroom floor.

The smell of chalk dust filled the air, and the fluorescent lights overhead buzzed.

Liu Yan's Gu worms were frantically issuing warnings, but Han Wei was not nearby.

Jiang Jin cocked his shotgun instantly, and a burning pain shot through the hunting mark on his left shoulder.

A trail of blood was slowly sliding down the glass window of the classroom's back door.

As Jiang Jin's hunter vision automatically focused, almost simultaneously, the blackboard at the front door creaked, the chalk stood up on its own, and wrote five twisted bloody words: (Save me)!
Jiang Jin strode toward the blackboard. He still remembered the first rule of the restricted area: if bloody words appeared on the blackboard, they had to be replaced with mathematical formulas.

He picked up the blackboard eraser and wiped away the bloody words, then grabbed the chalk and wrote a Fourier transform formula.

Immediately afterward, when Jiang Jin, Liu Yan, and Xu Yinqiu rushed downstairs, they saw the swings on the playground moving on their own without any wind, and the iron chains making a chilling creaking sound.

Jiang Jin immediately remembered the sixth rule: When the playground swing starts to move automatically, you need to sit on it and count to 13!

Jiang Jin steeled himself and walked up to the swing, whereupon he sat down. Liu Yan helped him push the swing.

"1...2...3..."

When the count reached 13, the swing suddenly stopped.

The hunting mark suddenly burned intensely. Jiang Jin turned around and saw Han Wei's figure flash past the second-floor window of the teaching building!

Without hesitation, he raised his gun, aimed it at Han Wei, and pulled the trigger!
(End of this chapter)