Forbidden Zone of Deception

Chapter 293 Graffiti

An eerie stillness descended upon the Perrin family mansion late at night.

To monitor paranormal phenomena, cameras equipped with motion sensors and temperature detectors were installed throughout the house, along with numerous bloodstain traps set by Jiang Jin. However, apart from the occasional brief recording triggered by the night wind, the house was generally eerily silent.

This unusual calm was largely due to the presence of the Blood Lord. Although his level had dropped, the foundation of his resentment as the Soul Prison Lord remained, and he had already subdued the weaker wandering spirits and earthbound spirits that occupied the house, apart from the core witch's evil spirit.

He told Jiang Jin that he had subdued and refined those low-level spirits with a little skill, temporarily eliminating the surface source of disturbance.

This gave the house a rare, calm before the storm.

At this moment, Blood Lord sat cross-legged on the sofa in the living room, closing his eyes to regulate his breathing. He held several crystals of resentment in his hand, trying to draw power from them in an attempt to quickly restore his LV3 Soul Refiner level.

His body was surrounded by astonishing soul power fluctuations, making him appear mysterious and powerful in front of Jiang Jin.

By the end of the day, Blood Lord had become the center of attention. The Perrons were both grateful and in awe of him, and even the children who had been terrified earlier looked at him with curiosity and a hint of admiration. After all, after he used his methods, those terrifying sounds and eerie movements had completely disappeared.

Drew, a friend of the Warrens, leaned close to Ed and asked incredulously in a low voice, "Ed, he... he's really your student? I feel like... he knows more than you, and his methods are more... efficient?"

Ed himself looked puzzled and vaguely replied, "Well... it's common for students to surpass their teachers in certain aspects... perhaps he has a unique talent in the field of the supernatural."

He couldn't explain why a "student" would possess such sophisticated, even ruthless, methods.

At this moment, Cindy, the fourth daughter of the Perrin family, and April, the youngest daughter, walked hand in hand timidly to the Blood Lord.

Jiang Jin noticed that Cindy was holding a painting that had obviously just been completed.

"Uncle... thank you," Cindy said softly, handing over the drawing. "With you here, we're not so scared anymore."

These children had been severely harassed by ghosts, leaving them with psychological trauma that could last a lifetime. The Blood Lord's ability to "drive away" ghosts gave them a sense of security amidst their extreme fear.

Blood Lord slowly opened his eyes and looked at the painting.

The drawing paper contained childish scribbles. A human figure was drawn crookedly with crayons, and it was barely possible to make out that the figure was wearing dark clothes and had a big, exaggerated smile drawn on its face with a red pen.

"This...is me?" Blood Lord stared blankly at the "happy-smiling" version of himself in the painting. He couldn't remember the last time he had that expression.

Jiang Jin walked over at this moment, looked at the painting, and praised it gently: "It's painted very well, capturing the essence."

Blood Lord casually handed the painting to Jiang Jin, saying, "If you like it, it's yours."

Jiang Jin didn't accept it, but just smiled and said, "You should keep the children's good intentions for yourself."

Cindy tilted her little face up and asked expectantly, "Brother, Uncle, can you...can you help us defeat those bad monsters?"

Blood Lord's lips twitched slightly, feeling inexplicably annoyed: Why is Jiang Jin the older brother and he the uncle?
Yes, he is much older than Jiang Jin, but is the age difference that obvious?

Looking into the children's innocent yet fearful eyes, he initially intended to give a perfunctory reply, but after biting his lip, he finally answered stiffly, "Of course you can. Go to sleep peacefully."

The children seemed relieved after receiving the promise, and went upstairs with several glances back at their mother as she urged them on.

After the children left, Jiang Jin looked at Cindy's retreating figure and suddenly said thoughtfully, "That little girl named Cindy... I feel like I've seen her somewhere before."

Blood Owl leaned back slightly, closed his eyes, and said in a calm tone with a hint of reminiscence, "The young actress who played her is named Mackenzie Foy. She previously played Murphy Cooper in Interstellar and Bella and Edward's daughter in Twilight."

Jiang Jin suddenly realized, "Ah! Right! No wonder she looked so familiar! Liu Yan really likes 'Interstellar,' should I go get her an autograph later?"

Blood Lord picked up the graffiti again, examined it for a moment, and commented with disdain, "It's too ugly. This kid doesn't seem to have any artistic talent."

Jiang Jin looked at the Blood Lord, then said seriously, "I want to protect this family. They are very united in the face of disaster, supporting each other without complaint, only wanting to protect one another."

Blood Lord scoffed, casually placing the painting on the sofa beside him, his tone returning to its coldness: "Just a bunch of NPCs. A horror game under meme contamination won't follow the perfect ending of a movie. It's highly likely that not everyone will survive like in the original film. This evil spirit will be especially ruthless towards children."

Jiang Jin's eyes suddenly sharpened: "Anyone who lays a hand on a child is a beast. I once saved a few children in a glass factory in a red-code restricted area. Behind that incident... there were reincarnators involved, but I don't know who they were."

Blood Lord's eyes flashed, and he immediately understood that Jiang Jin was referring to the dirty work his Long Cang had done. It was because of that incident that Long Wu's death was indirectly caused that Long Cang hated Jiang Jin to the bone, but he had always suppressed it. He was silent for a moment, and unusually did not refute it, but only said lightly, "Yes... to lay a hand on a child, it is indeed... a bit too much."

Jiang Jin glanced at Blood Lord with some surprise. Rumors said that Blood Lord of the Bloodthirsty Team was ruthless and inhuman, but after several encounters, he felt that he was quite different from what he had imagined.

Blood Lord seemed to see through his thoughts, his tone carrying a hint of subtle complexity: "But there's nothing we can do, so many children... were born into this cruel era."

He silently added in his mind: Children in the real world probably won't even have the chance to live to adulthood...

Looking at the resentment crystal in Blood Lord's hand, Jiang Jin suddenly thought of a question and asked, "Hey, Blood Lord, I have an idea. If you could absorb five resentment crystals now and advance back to LV3 Soul Refiner, would that help you in your future attempt to break through to LV5?"

Blood Lord shook his head decisively, a dark glint in his eyes: "Impossible. My current decline in realm is essentially a powerful rule seal that has temporarily suppressed my core power, not a destruction of my foundation. The total amount of resentment and pollution I have accumulated has not decreased, it has only been restricted. To absorb more fragments of crystals would be like pouring water into a blocked pool, which is meaningless and may even exacerbate the backlash of the seal."

Just as the two were talking—

Click!Click!
Suddenly, the cameras installed in the corridor started taking pictures automatically one after another! The flashes were blindingly bright in the darkness!

The two immediately became alert!

Immediately afterwards, a terrifying sound, as if something was being torn apart, came from the direction of the second floor!

"It's a bloodstain trap!" Jiang Jin exclaimed. It was a trap he had set up earlier that had a strong stimulating and marking effect on spirits!

The two immediately got up, grabbed their weapons, and rushed up to the second floor.

Upon reaching the location where the trap was set—the stairwell leading to the attic—they discovered that most of the blood runes on the ground had been roughly wiped away by some unseen force, emitting a sizzling, corrosive sound, and the air was filled with a strange smell of burnt and cold.

The trap was triggered, but it was also destroyed!
Before they could investigate further—

"what!!!"

The eldest daughter, Andrea, screamed in terror from her bedroom!
The two men immediately rushed into her room.

Andrea's face was deathly pale, and she was trembling as she pointed to the top of the wardrobe.

There, out of nowhere, appeared a black, vacant-eyed... goat specimen head!

The specimen head was so lifelike, as if it had just been chopped off, and you could even smell a faint trace of blood!

The second rule came to Jiang Jin's mind: If any new specimens (especially black dogs or goats) are found in the hallway or bedroom, cover their heads with a red velvet cloth and move them to the basement before sunset that day...

The problem is, the sun has already set!
"Quick! Find a red cloth!" Jiang Jin shouted immediately. Caroline frantically found a red tablecloth, and Blood Lord stepped forward and quickly covered the eerie goat's head with the cloth.

The goat's head seemed to twitch slightly the moment it was covered, but eventually fell silent.

After dealing with this unexpected situation, Blood Lord whispered to Jiang Jin with a solemn expression, "Do you see? This is just the beginning. Tomorrow... will definitely be a fierce battle."

Jiang Jin immediately activated his rule-altering ability at this moment, adding the line "If it has already sunset, move to the basement before 3:07 AM!"
Then, he immediately began to deal with the situation with Blood Lord!
Finally, after placing the goat's head specimen in the basement, the two returned to find Ed Warren anxiously calling the priest, explaining the series of strange events and hoping to get the Perrin family a formal exorcism.

However, the reply on the other end of the phone was disheartening: the biggest obstacle was that the Perren family were not Catholics, nor were they baptized, and the evidence of "haunting" that had been collected so far was far from enough to convince the diocesan bishop, let alone report it to the Vatican for approval.

The cumbersome procedures and rigid dogmas seem so ridiculous and powerless at this moment.

Blood Lord couldn't help but sarcastically remark, "In the original movie, I remember that the exorcism ritual was only approved at the very last minute, when everything was almost resolved."

Jiang Jin shook his head helplessly: "Has this director watched too many Hong Kong police and gangster films? The police always arrive at the scene after the fight is over."

However, in this tense and oppressive atmosphere, something even more terrible happened.

Blood Lord inadvertently glanced at the children's doodle that he had casually placed on the sofa.

He picked it up instinctively!
The moment his gaze fell upon the painting, it felt as if the blood in his body had frozen!
In the drawing, the head of the "Blood Lord," who was originally drawn with a red crayon and was grinning, was... severed from his neck!
A rough, black line brutally separated the head from the body! The smile, contrasted with the severed head, appeared incredibly eerie and terrifying!
"Provoking me... huh? Then come on!" Blood Owl's face twisted into a ferocious grin, a blatant death knell!

Jiang Jin, who was standing nearby, also noticed the changes in the painting and immediately understood: the evil spirit was proclaiming its existence and... murderous intent in various ways!
(End of this chapter)