Forbidden Zone of Deception

Chapter 290 The Mezzanine
Guided by the treasure map, Jiang Jin and Su Wan, under the silent watch of the crows, finally arrived at a desolate woodland on the edge of the town.

The final location marked on the map is a large tree with an extremely strange shape.

The tree trunk is twisted, looking like a human body struggling in pain. Its bare branches stretch towards the sky, as if desperate arms want to embrace the gods who have abandoned this land. The bark is covered with patterns that look like naturally formed, distorted human faces.

The mere proximity of Jiang Jin and Su Wan was enough to unleash a torrent of malice, a mixture of centuries of resentment, curses, and fear, making it difficult to breathe and sending shivers down one's spine.

“This is it…” Jiang Jin drew his Death Cry hunting rifle, his Ghost Eyes operating at full power, trying to see through the illusions surrounding the tree. Deathstroke stood at his feet, ready for battle, emitting a series of threatening growls, while Ash’s body trembled slightly as he sensed the immense threat.

Just then, Su Wan suddenly did something that surprised Jiang Jin!

She actually took out the ghost doll Annabelle, wearing a white lace dress and with a strange smile on her face, from the Reincarnator's Watch!

"You!" Jiang Jin's pupils contracted, and he subconsciously shifted the gun slightly to aim at Su Wan. "You brought it out? And you even turned it into your personal cursed puppet?!"

He knew Annabelle's terror all too well; she was an extremely evil being that even the Warrens' Museum of the Haunted House needed to be sealed away with relics! In The Conjuring cinematic universe, Annabelle has a very prominent role, with three standalone films!
Su Wan seemed unsurprised by Jiang Jin's reaction. She stroked Annabelle's cold, eerie face, a glint of fanaticism in her eyes: "That's right. How could an ordinary cursed puppet be worthy of me? Only a spirit like Annabelle, filled with resentment and power, is worth my painstaking refinement. As long as I can completely control it and absorb its core resentment, I can use it to break through the bottleneck of a LV3 Blood Sacrifice! This will be my strongest trump card!"

Alarm bells rang in Jiang Jin's mind.

The risks of turning Annabelle into a natal cursed doll are immeasurable. Su Wan's ambition is too insane; to put it nicely, it's unrealistic; to put it bluntly, it's like trying to get something for nothing!

Just as the atmosphere was tense, another unexpected event occurred!
Without warning, a thick, grayish-white fog, as if it were alive, surged in from all directions, instantly engulfing the surrounding scenery!
Visibility plummeted to less than a meter, and even the strange tree that was so close by disappeared into the fog. The fog was icy cold, carrying a thick aura of decay and despair.

"Watch out! Something's wrong with this fog!" Jiang Jin warned immediately.

He tried to see through the fog with his Ghostly Eyes, but his vision was blocked by an even stronger force of rules, and he could only see a chaotic turbulent flow.

They had clearly been pulled into a spatially distorted, lost-world region!
"Deathstroke! Help me!" Jiang Jin made a decisive decision and gave the order to Deathstroke.

With a low growl, Deathstroke, relying on his enhanced spatial awareness, managed to pinpoint a direction in the fog and began to guide Jiang Jin.

Jiang Jin slung the Mourning Shotgun behind his back and drew out the Chen's Bonecrusher, which was more suitable for close combat and dealing with emergencies!

The two people and their dog struggled forward through the thick fog. However, after walking several hundred meters, they should have bumped into trees or left the woodland by now, but all around them remained an endless expanse of gray and white, as if they were trapped in an endless maze.

My sense of space was completely lost, and my sense of direction became blurry.

A sense of crisis, like a cold, venomous snake, coiled around Jiang Jin's heart. This treasure trove was far more dangerous than he had imagined.

Meanwhile, the atmosphere was equally tense inside the Perrin family home.

The Lian brothers, Lian Xuan and Lian De, looked at the video and audio recording equipment that the Warrens and Drew had set up in various rooms, as well as the bloodstain traps that Jiang Jin had previously set up against spirits, each with their own thoughts.

Lian Xuan looked at the gloomy sky outside the window, weighing his options in his mind.

Although Blood Lord's level has dropped, his foundation and methods remain, and he should be able to recover in the future; Jiang Jin, as the vice leader of Nirvana, has great potential and Ye Xiu's support behind him.

If they could curry favor with these two, they might be able to secure a better future for themselves and their brother by joining a larger group, which would be much safer than remaining as solitary reincarnators. The question is, which one should they join?

"Ade," Lian Xuan asked his younger brother in a low voice, "if you had the chance, which team would you choose, Bloodstained or Nirvana?"

Lian De answered almost without hesitation: "Nirvana, of course."

He looked at his brother and gave a straightforward reason: "The Blood Lord's aura is too cold and evil. All the team members have to have their soul imprints implanted. If we follow him, we might be used as materials one day. Deputy Commander Jiang and Commander Yu... are more humane, value their teammates, and won't sacrifice them casually."

Clearly, the younger brother values ​​the team atmosphere and the leader's character more.

Lian Xuan nodded; his brother's thoughts coincided with his own. While the Bloodstained Team was powerful, its internal competition was brutal. Those who joined later would find it difficult to gain trust and resources, and might only be able to join a branch team. Nirvana, though smaller, seemed more united and "human," and was currently expanding. Joining now would make them early veterans of the team.

Just then, an old-fashioned music box in the corner of the living room suddenly started playing on its own!

The ethereal yet slightly eerie music echoed in the quiet house.

Lian Xuan, acting as a medium, immediately stepped forward to investigate.

He carefully opened the music box, watching the swirling dancers inside and the spiral patterns on the mirror, concentrating his senses. Suddenly, he glimpsed a blurry figure flash past him in the mirror, disappearing into the shadows of the corridor!

Lian Xuan's heart tightened, and he immediately ran to inform Blood Lord of the matter.

After hearing this, Blood Lord merely curled his lip in disdain: "No need to make a fuss. It's just a pitiful wandering soul controlled by a witch's evil spirit, roaming the Mysterious Layer. This kind of thing can at most scare ordinary people, but it poses no threat to us LV2 Reincarnators."

He clearly didn't take these low-level spirits seriously.

Subsequently, time quietly slipped away amidst the oppressive waiting and tedious investigations.

Blood Lord seemed to be pacing casually around the house, but in reality, he was making precise calculations in his mind. As a Soul Stealer, he had a thorough understanding of the trajectory of souls moving through the Mysterious Layer.

His gaze seemed to casually sweep towards the second floor. He needed to find a plausible excuse to bring out his "discovery" without making it seem too abrupt or prescient. The opportunity soon arrived.

Ed Warren and Rowling were discussing the distorted voice of Caroline in the recording in the hallway, their faces filled with confusion and seriousness.

Blood Lord stepped forward, his face bearing the perfect expression of an enthusiastic student filled with curiosity about the supernatural, and said, “Ms. Warren, Ms. Rowling. Mrs. Perrin mentioned that once when she was playing hide-and-seek with her daughter, she heard clapping coming from the closet in her daughter’s room. She went into the closet to search but found nothing. Her daughter was actually in another room.”

This is one of the classic horror scenes from the original movie, and Blood Lord remembers it very clearly.

"Could it mean there's something... special there? Like a gap in space?"

Upon hearing this, Ed stroked his chin thoughtfully and said, "Your idea makes some sense. Sometimes structural anomalies in buildings, such as cavities or mezzanines, can indeed become breeding grounds for spiritual activity or affect the magnetic field, causing people to have illusions."

Rowling nodded, her psychic intuition seemingly picking up on something as well, and said, "Let's go take another look at that wardrobe."

The group went up to the second floor again.

The old wooden wardrobe stood quietly against the wall, appearing particularly somber in the dim light.

Instead of taking immediate action, Blood Lord continued to guide the conversation: "Why don't we check the inside of the wardrobe? Perhaps there's something we haven't noticed."

"Hmm, that makes sense. Drew, can you lend a hand?"

At this moment, Blood Lord narrowed his eyes slightly. His senses were far more acute than anyone else's; he could "hear" the extremely faint tremors and fluctuations of spirits behind the wall.

"Teacher, let me do it."

Then, he stepped forward, opened the wardrobe, and pretended to inspect it carefully, tapping lightly on the back of the wardrobe with his fingers.

Thump thump... thump thump... click.

At a wall panel that appeared no different from the rest of the wall, a knocking sound produced a very subtle, hollow echo, unlike that of a solid wall.

“There’s a hidden compartment here!” Blood Lord immediately said, his tone filled with surprise at his discovery.

Ed and Rowling immediately came over!
"There's another compartment behind this?" Ed frowned.

Then, Blood Lord performed another feat, easily removing a seemingly intact piece of the wardrobe's inner wall!

Behind them, a dark, barely passable hole appeared!
A chilling aura, a mixture of old dust, decaying wood, and some indescribable coldness, wafted out from the cave!

Ed's expression changed, and he immediately shone his flashlight into the cave. The beam pierced the darkness, illuminating a narrow, suffocatingly steep, downward-sloping mezzanine passageway!
The corridor's floor and walls were made of rough wooden planks, covered in cobwebs, and its destination was unknown.

"This... how many secrets did this house hold?!" Ed's voice was filled with shock. These secret spaces hidden behind normal architectural structures are often the best cover for evil and tragedy.

In fact, this mezzanine corridor was supposed to be discovered by them tomorrow night, but Blood Lord dug it out first.

Blood Lord stood at the cave entrance, staring expressionlessly into the darkness.

He had achieved his goal. He knew that the faint, terrified spirit of the boy Rory was now huddled in some corner of this corridor.

And he is about to "recruit" this poor little devil, adding another piece to his game in this haunted house.

Blood Lord sneered inwardly. He knew that the ghost of Rory, the boy who disappeared after being murdered by the witch Basshiba, lingered here. In the original storyline, this young, mysterious spirit would appear alongside his fourth daughter, Cindy, and his youngest daughter, April.

A minor's SAN value is like a spring—easily fluctuating, but also incredibly resilient and quick to recover. Like Wu Ge, the adopted son of the Blood Lord, who only needs to enter a dungeon once a semester to stabilize his SAN value, spending most of the time studying and living like a normal student. Therefore, ghosts love to haunt children.

For Blood Lord, a former LV4 Soul Reaper, dealing with a ghost from the Mysterious Layer was a piece of cake. He secretly activated his ability and easily absorbed the weak and bewildered ghost of the boy Rory.

He didn't destroy it, but instead imprisoned it temporarily and sent a cold, piercing warning: "Little one, I'll give you a chance. Go back to Basshiba and be my eyes, always indicating her location to me. Otherwise... I will extract your soul and refine it."

The boy Rory's ghost trembled, unable to speak, but conveying a sense of obedience. To these weak wandering spirits, the human before them was far more terrifying than the witch spirit that controlled them.

Following the same method, Blood Lord quickly found another maid ghost controlled by an evil spirit in the kitchen area and coerced her into becoming his spy.

Having planted two spies within the evil spirits' ranks, Blood Lord felt somewhat relieved. This would allow him to grasp Basshiba's movements sooner. However, he also noticed that the ghost of Ms. Walker (Rory's mother), who had hanged herself in the basement, seemed to be not in the Mysterious Layer, but rather in a deeper Lost Layer, which, with his current near-LV3 strength, was difficult to accurately mark and communicate with.

Lorraine Warren, who had been secretly observing Bloodlord, felt a deep unease and repulsion from the pure, undisguised evil emanating from him, despite her gratitude for the help of her "students." This was the complete opposite of the mercy and holiness of God she believed in.

Beneath the seemingly calm investigation, the undercurrents within the Perrin family were growing increasingly turbulent.

Meanwhile, far away in Salem, Jiang Jin and Su Wan are facing an unknown and deadly crisis amidst the dense fog and spatial labyrinth...

(End of this chapter)