Forbidden Zone of Deception

Chapter 313 Horror Trap

But at this moment... Li Yin sensed an extremely discordant and eerie feeling!

As if he had just thought of something, he suddenly rushed to the shelves where plums and apricots were displayed!

Li Yin quickly picked up an apricot, brought it close to his eyes, and carefully observed its shape, color, and stem under the bright light. He even squeezed it with his hand to feel its firmness. Finally, he slammed the apricot to the ground, making a dull sound that was not typical of an apricot!

"This isn't an apricot!!!" Li Yin's voice was hoarse with excitement and fear as he picked up the golden fruit. "This is a Golden Nai Plum! It's a plum variety that looks and looks extremely similar to an apricot!!"

He quickly explained to the bewildered crowd: "Look! Real apricots are rounder, with shallower sutures, more noticeable fuzz on the skin, and are very soft when ripe! This fruit, however, is more heart-shaped, with a pointed top, deep and obvious sutures, smooth skin, and a relatively firm texture! This is a plum! A type of plum!!"

It was like a bolt from the blue!

Everyone was stunned!

What Zhou Qiang fed him wasn't an apricot at all, but a golden plum—also a type of plum! Because Sun Miao had also chosen a plum earlier, he repeated the choice of fruit type, thus triggering the shadow curse by violating the blood-letter instructions!

Jiang Jin and the others gasped in shock, never expecting things to turn out this way!
Li Yin continued, "After Qian Yong and Zhao Meiling chose raspberries and bananas to feed them, the ghost deliberately pointed to ordinary plums and golden plums respectively, and remained silent, further misleading us and making us even more convinced that the golden plums on the shelf were not the same fruit as ordinary plums, but apricots!! This is a carefully designed cognitive trap!"

“But…but then,” Jiang Jin asked, puzzled, “wouldn’t that mean there would only be seventeen kinds of fruit? Watermelon, cantaloupe, Elizabethan cantaloupe, banana, peach, grape, plum, strawberry, pomegranate, apple, lychee, orange, dragon fruit, raspberry, blueberry, pineapple, lemon…If this Golden Plum is counted as a plum, then what about the eighteenth fruit mentioned in the blood-written instruction?”

"Find it!" Li Yin practically roared. "Find it quickly! There must be another type of fruit hidden!"

Everyone went into a frenzy, searching the store. They lifted up mats, checked corners, moved shelves...

at last!

“Here!” Jiang Jin exclaimed softly.

He laboriously moved the heavy pallet at the bottom of the wooden shelf where the cantaloupes were stacked. Beneath the pallet, in a dark corner, lay a full box of bright yellow fruit, emitting a rich, sweet aroma—

mango!!!

Mangoes are one of the most common and seasonal fruits in summer fruit shops!
It was cleverly hidden in the most inconspicuous and hard-to-detect corner from the very beginning!
No wonder Qian Yong complained before that there were no mangoes in the fruit shop during the summer! They've always been there, they just couldn't see them!
The enormous reversal left everyone dizzy.

The ghost used a fruit that looked very similar, the golden plum, to impersonate an apricot and pointed out two different kinds of plums, thus reinforcing the residents' mistaken perception. At the same time, it hid the real eighteenth fruit, the mango, and successfully induced Zhou Qiang to violate the rule against repeating choices, and killed him with the shadow curse!
"Check! Quickly check the other fruits!" Li Yin's voice was more urgent than ever before. "See if there are any other fruits like the Golden Plum and apricot that look like two different kinds but are actually the same! We can't be misled any longer!"

The command was immediately met with a response from everyone; the instinct for survival temporarily overcame their fear.

They rushed to the remaining shelves like madmen, picking up every kind of fruit, comparing them repeatedly under the light, discussing amongst themselves, and full of suspicion.

“Hami melon and Elizabethan melon!” Zhao Meiling pointed at the two kinds of melons, her voice shrill. “They both look yellowish-green, could they be different names for the same thing?”

"Yes! And watermelons too. Although they're big, could there be smaller varieties that could be confused with others?" Sun Miao asked, enduring the pain from being hit by Zhou Qiang.

"Cut it open! Cut it open and you'll see what's inside!" Wang Tianba shouted gruffly.

Cut it open?

A thought struck Jiang Jin: the fruit knife hidden on his person… could it be for this situation? The rules only stated that whole fruit must be used for feeding, but didn't prohibit cutting open similar fruits to check before feeding…

Just then, to everyone's surprise, Sun Miao, who looked somewhat timid, actually pulled a small fruit knife out of his pocket with trembling hands!

He stammered, "I...I saw the location of the Blood Letter quest was a fruit shop, and I thought...I thought it might be useful, so...so I brought one..."

This knife was completely different from the gleaming, controlled knife in Jiang Jin's arms; it was just an ordinary household fruit knife with a plastic handle, less than ten centimeters long.

Qian Yong snatched the knife from Sun Miao's hand, picked up a cantaloupe and an Elizabethan melon without hesitation, and sliced ​​them open with a swift motion.

The orange-yellow and white-green flesh, exposed to the light, emits different sweet aromas.

"Look! The flesh colors are different! The cantaloupe is orange-yellow, while the Elizabethan cantaloupe is white-green!"

"The textures are different too! These are definitely two different kinds of melons!"

Everyone breathed a slight sigh of relief, but their vigilance remained undiminished. Then someone suggested checking the dragon fruit and pineapple. In the midst of this chaotic inspection, Qian Yong suddenly threw the knife on the ground with a loud clang, attracting everyone's attention.

His face was terribly gloomy, and his gaze swept over everyone like a knife.

"That damn thing... it's so insidious!" Qian Yong said through gritted teeth. "When it saw Zhou Qiang trigger the Shadow Curse and commit suicide, it immediately jumped out and pointed out 'Plum'! Because it knew that Zhou Qiang violated the rules because he chose the wrong fruit and picked plum twice! Even though Zhou Qiang was already on the verge of death, it wouldn't let him go and wanted to finish him off!"

Wang Tianba suddenly said, "Hey, if you're going to talk, then talk. Don't spit in my face!"

Qian Yong has a volatile temper, and now he's a powder keg ready to explode at any moment!

"What kind of time is this for you to still be arguing about this! Did I hit the nail on the head and you're feeling guilty? Tell me, those nine names on your arm, were they originally nine names tattooed on your arm by you, a ghost?"

This sudden accusation was like lighting a powder keg!
Wang Tianba was furious when Qian Yong pointed his finger at him and called him a ghost!
"Bullshit! Qian Yong! I think you're the one who looks like a ghost! You've been pretending to be so calm the whole time, did you already know what was going on?!" Wang Tianba roared and lunged at Qian Yong!
Zhou Qiang is dead, and no one can easily subdue him anymore.

Although Wang Tianba was just a street thug, he was strong and powerful. Enraged, he threw a punch at Qian Yong's face!
Qian Yong was prepared. Although he was not very tall, he was exceptionally agile. He turned his head to dodge Wang Tianba's fist and at the same time delivered a vicious blow to Wang Tianba's jaw!

No one expected that Qian Yong, when enraged, would be no less ruthless than Wang Tianba, a local thug. Wang Tianba, clearly having completely lost his mind, didn't care whether Qian Yong was a good person or a bad guy; he just wanted to teach him a lesson!

The two instantly started fighting, throwing punches and kicks at each other haphazardly while cursing incessantly.

"I'll kill you!"

"You think I'm afraid of you? I'd like to see if you're a human or a ghost!"

"Stop fighting! Stop it!" Li Yin tried to step forward and pull the two apart, but in the chaos, he was hit on the chin by someone's elbow, and the pain made his vision go black.

Zheng Jie and Zhao Meiling also screamed and tried to stop him, but as soon as they got close, they were swept by Wang Tianba's wildly waving arm and stumbled to the ground.

"Wang Tianba, are you crazy?! You even hit women?!" Sun Miao's face showed anger when he saw Zheng Jie and Zhao Meiling fall. No one knew where he got the courage, but he rushed up without thinking and hugged Wang Tianba from behind!
"Get out of my way, you four-eyed frog!" Wang Tianba was bloodthirsty and punched Sun Miao in the eye. The frame twisted instantly and the lens shattered. Sun Miao screamed and squatted down, covering his face.

This completely ignited the fuse for a chaotic battle.

"Wang Tianba, how dare you hit people like that?!"

"Sun Miao, you're suspicious too! You're the only one who brought a knife!"

"Qian Yong, you're so ruthless! I bet you're no good!"

The seeds of doubt grew wildly under the nourishment of the threat of death. Everyone found each other suspicious and had too much fear and pressure to release.

Those who tried to break up the fight were attacked and immediately joined the fray; the person who was attacked harbored resentment and began attacking those around them as well.

Inside the fruit shop, a completely irrational brawl erupted!
Tables and chairs were overturned, a shelf was pushed and wobbled, and a lot of fruit rolled all over the ground, its juice spilling out as it was trampled.

"Are you all crazy?" Jiang Jin shouted. "Don't touch the fruit that hasn't been chosen yet! Don't touch the corpse in the center of the shop! Do you want to die?"

Upon hearing this, the fighters calmed down a bit and began to move away from the shelves to continue their brawl.

Then, he and Li Yin quickly picked up and protected the still-intact fruit, putting them back on the shelf one by one.

Fortunately, most of the damaged fruit was already selected and fed to the animals. After all, these people haven't completely lost their minds and still know their limits.

At this moment, inside the fruit shop... angry curses, screams, and groans mingled together, creating utter chaos.

Jiang Jin dodged several attacks with his skill, tightly guarding the knife in his arms, coldly watching the out-of-control scene. To him, this was actually an excellent opportunity to observe who the ghost was, so he chose not to intervene.

after all……

Who is the evil spirit of the rules?

(End of this chapter)