Forbidden Zone of Deception

Chapter 216 The Strange Changes in Edo and Entering Lanruo Temple

Meanwhile, in the real world, in the Edo Special District.

It was 2 a.m. when the Longxiang Army soldiers patrolling the streets began to notice something was wrong.

Tiny black particles floated in the air, gradually drifting down.

Then, the two soldiers noticed a little girl in a navy blue dress squatting next to the mailbox.

The soldiers suddenly noticed that the mailbox was riddled with bullet holes, revealing the rusted metal inside.

The two soldiers turned into black dust as black particles drifted down.

"Is it tasty?"

A man in a white coat came up and asked a question at some point.

The little girl looked up. Glistening crumbs clung to the corners of her mouth, and her pupils appeared a cloudy, milky white.

“It’s crispier than the rationed bread.” Her voice was soft. “Mom said we have to go participate in the school evacuation after we finish eating.”

The man was silent for a moment, then took out a sugar cube wrapped in waxed paper from his pocket: "How about I trade you this?"

The little girl tilted her head in thought, her broken neck making a creaking sound. Her cervical vertebrae were clearly dislocated, but it didn't seem to affect her movement.

“We can exchange two,” she finally decided, handing over her middle and index fingers. “I need to keep my little finger to find my way around.”

The three men took the severed fingers and placed them into a lead box labeled "Sample 7-B". Inside the box lay more than a dozen similar severed fingers, each with the same ceramic-like cut.

“Third observation record,” he said, speaking into the miniature recorder in his collar, “The contamination level of the ‘schoolchild meme’ has intensified, and infected individuals have begun to exhibit autophagy. New discovery: the engulfed areas show enamelization, speculated to be related to glass melting during the bombings of that year…”

The recording suddenly stopped.

The sound of orderly footsteps echoed from the distant street.

Here, we have entered the Lost Layer.

A line of elementary school students dressed in national uniforms emerged from the street corner. They held hands, and each of them was missing several fingers on their left hand, the severed ends gleaming with the same eerie light.

The teacher at the front of the line had a charred air raid turban wrapped around his neck, with wires extending from the ends of the turbans, connecting to the back of each child's neck like puppeteer strings!
"Hide first." The man suddenly pulled the little girl into the shadows of the mailbox.

They held their breath and watched the procession pass by.

The teacher's eyes had no eyeballs. When the group passed a certain angle, all the children suddenly turned to face the sunlight at the same time, and their shadows merged on the ground and began to twist eerily.

“That’s my class,” the little girl whispered.

Once the procession had gone some distance, the man quickly opened his notebook. The yellowed pages were densely covered with observation records; the latest page depicted a pollution distribution map of the Edo Ward, showing that the radiation range of the "schoolchild meme" had already partially affected the material plane. Any life form in the material plane that observed the meme would be instantly pulled into becoming part of it.

"Have you ever seen an uncle wearing a black suit?" the little girl suddenly asked.

The man paused, his pen poised.

“No.” He closed his notebook. “How about I take you back to school?”

The little girl smiled. Her teeth began to fall out and onto the ground.

"Okay." Her voice suddenly turned into a chorus of countless children.

Fifteen minutes later, the man brought the little girl to an abandoned classroom.

Most of the children in the classroom had their hands fixed on their desks, and their ten fingers were slowly melting, turning into a crystalline liquid that flowed toward the center of the classroom.

A group of little girls dressed in national costumes stood in a circle, using their melting fingers to draw a map of the landing points of incendiary bombs on the ground.

"The teacher said that you researchers love doing experiments the most," the little girl whispered in the man's ear.

Suddenly, the classroom loudspeaker blared an air raid siren.

As the alarm blared, the classroom began to disintegrate in the man's vision. Before his eyes, the skin on the little girl's cheeks began to turn into transparent file folders, but she remained unresponsive. Finally, even her consciousness froze into a contained observation record—

[Final Record of Meme Sample 7-B]

The subject completed the transformation

Recommended meme cultivation measures: Continuously feed fragments of a Tokyo map from Showa 20 (1931).

And at the same time...

Isaka Sousuke stood on the deserted street, staring at the shop that had suddenly appeared.

"Showa Clothing Store"——

On the faded wooden sign in front of me, most of the lettering has peeled off and can only be barely discerned.

“Something’s not right,” Sousuke Isaka said in a low voice. “Ten minutes ago, this was a convenience store.”

His subordinate, Harada Kiyoshi, also a samurai professional reincarnator, had his hand already on the hilt of his sword: "Meme contamination?"

Sousuke Isaka's pupils contracted slightly: "I'm afraid so... This is 'the materialization of rule contamination'."

Inside the shop window, seven wax mannequins stood quietly, dressed in Western-style clothing from the early Showa era.

Suddenly, model number 1 moved.

Its head slowly rotated, making a "click-click" mechanical sound, until the back of its head was completely facing forward.

There was no bone or flesh at the break in the neck, only dense black granules.

Model number 3 raised the tailor's scissors in her hand, the blades snapped open with a "snap," and then without hesitation, she slashed her own abdomen, revealing her empty chest!

There were no internal organs inside, only a wriggling shadow.

“What are they recreating…” Chinatsu Nikaido’s voice trembled slightly.

Sousuke Isaka's gaze was fixed intently on the glass.

The lights in the shop window suddenly went out and then suddenly came back on.

The models have returned to a still position, but their positions have changed—

Model #1's face was pressed against the glass, its rotting eyeballs staring at the crowd through the window; Model #3's scissors were pressed against the inside of the glass, dark red liquid seeping from the tips; Model #7's body had turned into a charred human silhouette.

At four o'clock in the morning, fishmonger Koji Sato at the Edo Wharf Market, as usual, lifted the plastic sheet covering the tuna storage box and prepared to start his day's business.

However, the moment he saw the fish meat, his fingers trembled violently—

Thick, black mist was seeping from the cut surfaces of all the fresh, chilled tuna.

Sato instinctively took two steps back and covered his mouth and nose, but the black mist had already wrapped around his fingertips, and his skin immediately felt a burning pain.

"What...what the hell is this?!" He shook his hand in horror and shouted towards the next stall, "Yamada! Come and see!"

Just as Yamada approached, the black mist suddenly surged and lunged at his face like a living thing!

He staggered and fell to the ground, his eyes rapidly becoming bloodshot, and a gurgling sound of suffocation came from his throat.

Black fog quickly filled the entire dock.

In the morning mist, the first group of workers who arrived at the dock stood frozen in place.

The outlines of twenty giant steel ships are slowly emerging from the sea.

They were covered in rust, with bullet holes and scorch marks on their hulls, and broken masts, but the main gun turrets were spinning strangely, emitting a harsh metallic noise.

"It's...the ghost ship of the Allied Fleet?!" An old fisherman slumped to the ground, the rice ball in his hand rolling away.

He recognized one of the warships—it was the Yamato battleship!

Even more terrifying were the "soldiers" on the deck.

They stood in formation, dressed in Showa-era military uniforms and wearing gas masks.

At that moment, the battleship's loudspeakers suddenly started playing the "Naval March" on their own.

The moment the sound wave swept across, the workers on the dock froze.

Their eyeballs bulged, blood vessels burst under their skin, and their internal organs were twisted and crushed by an invisible force.

Some people tried to escape, but they fell to the ground after taking only two steps, with tiny black particles emerging from their ear canals, as if they were being devoured from the inside by some kind of parasite.

When the Longxiang Army soldiers arrived, the dock had become a living hell. However, all they could see on the sea was a thick black fog.

The leading officer crouched down, picked up a wisp of black mist with tweezers, and placed it into a specialized portable analyzer.

The data on the screen made his pupils shrink:

"High-concentration resentment crystallization reaction... also mixed with PFAS (perfluoroalkyl substances) and radioactive isotopes."

Suddenly, a crackling sound came from the walkie-talkie: "Captain Zhang! Black fog is starting to appear in the city as well. Those who come into contact with it will experience hallucinations and eventually die!"

Captain Zhang looked up sharply—the black fog had swallowed half the bay, and even more terrifyingly, more "things" were vaguely emerging from the fog:
Zero fighter planes flying in the air;
The charred "school evacuation boat" had the deck piled high with the remains of elementary school students.
The translucent battleship "Yamato" had its cannons glowing with a dark red light...

Self-Defense Force F-15 fighter jets roared past, launching missiles at the ghost fleet. But the armor-piercing missiles pierced straight through the hull, as if hitting a holographic projection, and finally exploded into a water column on the distant sea surface.

"Physical attacks ineffective!" the pilot reported in a panic. "They have no physical form... Wait! What are those?!"

The main guns of the Yamato suddenly opened fire.

No shells, no flashes of light—only a shockwave that distorted space swept past the fighter jet. The next second, all the instruments in the cockpit reversed, the pilot screamed in agony, and the fighter jet, as if crushed by an invisible giant hand, exploded into a fireball in mid-air.

Ground troops also suffered a bizarre attack:

The tank turret locked itself the moment it was aimed, and the gun barrel bent into a pretzel shape.
The infantryman's gun grew tumor-like tissue, causing it to explode when the trigger was pulled;
The communications channel was filled with the roars of old Japanese soldiers: "Tenkabanzai!"

Meanwhile, on the Shinkansen (bullet train).

"Click."

The lights in the carriage suddenly flickered.

Someone looked up, frowned, but quickly became engrossed in their phone again.

However, the next second——

"boom--!"

The train suddenly accelerated and rushed forward without warning. The strong inertia caused the passengers to sway and fall, with cell phones and briefcases clattering to the ground.

"what happened?!"

"What is the driver doing?!"

Amid terrified screams, some people lunged at the emergency brake button, but no matter how hard they tried, the train continued to hurtle forward.

The view outside the car window began to distort.

The tunnel walls, which should have been made of concrete, began to slowly undulate, with dark red viscous fluid seeping from their surface, resembling rotting flesh!
"Then...what is that?!"

A female student pointed tremblingly out the window, and everyone looked in the direction she was looking—

They discovered that blood vessels had grown on the inner walls of the tunnel.

Yes, blood vessels!
Even more terrifying, these blood vessels were connected to fist-sized sarcomas at their ends. The sarcomas had cracks on their surfaces, revealing cloudy eyeballs that stared intently at the passengers inside the carriage.

"Ugh—!" Someone vomited on the spot.

"Are we...are we inside some kind of organism? Or is it another new meme contamination?"

Even though they were used to the horrors of the Edo Special District, they still felt a chill run down their spines.

The electronic display screen inside the carriage suddenly lit up with a glaring red light. Instead of showing the name of the next station, the screen displayed a strange line of text:

[Next stop: Tokyo Station, Showa 20]

"Showa 20?!" A middle-aged man's face turned deathly pale. "Isn't that... 1945?!"

"Are you kidding me!" someone roared. "This broken machine must be malfunctioning!"

But something even more terrifying happened—

Everyone's watches, cell phones, and even the electronic clocks in the carriages started spinning wildly counterclockwise.

"My watch... my watch is running backwards!"

"The phone time is wrong too! It's... March 9, 1945?!"

Panic spread like a plague.

The train finally slowed down and came to a gentle stop.

The moment the car door opened, a musty smell rushed in—not moldy, but a strong tar smell, like… a burned human body.

The platform was packed with people.

They stood expressionless on the platform, dressed in old-fashioned suits or schoolgirl uniforms from the 1940s, carrying empty lunchboxes printed with the word "Victory is certain".

The most chilling thing is—

These people have no shadows.

"Please...please make way..." A daring commuter tried to squeeze off the bus, but was blocked by a man in wartime uniform.

The man slowly raised his head, revealing a face half-rotted, its hollow eye sockets staring at him, a strange smile spreading across its lips:

Welcome to... Tokyo.

Tokyo? A word that sounds both familiar and strange.

The passengers who got off the bus quickly realized something was wrong.

The platform walls were covered with yellowed old newspapers, the headline of which read:

[B-29 bomber raid at night leaves over 100,000 dead and wounded]

"This...this is news from back then?!"

Some people tried to run back, but found that the train had disappeared and there was only thick fog at the end of the tracks.

Even more frightening, people from the "Showa era" began to gather around.

"Where did you come from?" a "person" dressed in a female school uniform asked, tilting her head and twisting her neck at an impossible angle.

"We...we came by tram..."

"Trains?" The female student's smile widened. "There aren't any trams in Tokyo anymore."

She raised her hand and pointed into the distance—

In the pitch-black night sky, countless incendiary bombs were falling from the sky.

The survivors finally realized—

They were trapped on the night of the Tokyo air raids on March 9, 1945.

But even deeper despair was yet to come:

Every time an incendiary bomb falls, time resets to the moment the train arrived at the station.

They were forced to go through this hell again and again.

until--

To become the new "Showa Ghost".

The night was as dark as ink, and the streetlights in Qingtan Community flickered on and off. The Nirvana team stood downstairs at apartment building number 25, looking up at the dark, gaping window.

"The retinal projection shows the target is on the fourth floor, in the innermost room," Yu Tianlun said in a low voice.

Several people silently climbed the stairs. At the end of the corridor on the fourth floor, a rusty iron door was half-closed.

Yu Tianlun gently pushed open the door, and the beam of his flashlight pierced the darkness—

The body of a monk sat upright in the center of the room.

He was wearing a tattered robe, his hands clasped together, his head bowed, as if he were still meditating.

His lips were etched, and the corners of his mouth... were slightly upturned, as if he were smiling.

“He has been dead for at least three days, but his body has not decomposed.” Murong Yan stepped forward to examine him. “His muscles are abnormally stiff, as if he was forcibly fixed in this position by some force.”

Jiang Jin's gaze fell on the monk's fingers—his right index finger was slightly extended, pointing to the corner of the room.

"What is he referring to?" Jiang Jin frowned.

Yu Tianlun looked in that direction and saw only a mottled wall in the corner.

"Wait a minute, there's a gap in the floor...." Jiang Jin's ghostly eyes noticed it immediately.

There was a hidden door beneath the floor.

Several people worked together to lift the rotten wooden planks, revealing a narrow staircase leading downwards. In the darkness, a faint dripping sound could be heard, as if some kind of liquid was slowly seeping into the ground.

Then they went downstairs.

Jiang Jin's self-awareness began to blur instantly.

"Jiang Jin, a reincarnator from the Nirvana Team, you are about to enter the terrifying [Lanruo Temple] dungeon..."

In this terrifying instance, you will be set to [role-playing] mode…

(End of this chapter)