Forbidden Zone of Deception

Chapter 338 The Desperate Situation from the Annihilation Layer
Jiang Jin gripped the Moon Shadow Blade. The few drops of dark red blood on the blade made his hand tremble violently just by looking at them, and they burned his vision and nerves.

It struck, but what did it strike?
Is she Sadako's physical form? Or some kind of projection of her that exists between reality and illusion?
The chilling aura emanating from the bloodstains was completely different from ordinary blood; it was more like a condensed resentment.

If this blade is made of resentment crystals, this strike might just create a fragment of resentment crystal!

He suppressed the pounding in his heart and suddenly realized something was wrong. Why were his two undead hounds not giving any warning?

He immediately looked to both sides...

Deathstroke seemed alright, and reported back an anxious but relatively stable mood. However, Sadie collapsed on the tatami mat, and its spiritual connection with Jiang Jin became extremely weak and intermittent, conveying a pain on the verge of collapse!

The undead hound from the [Summoning] dungeon was in dire straits!
On its neck, there was a clear handprint made of pure black energy!
The handprint was slender, belonging to a woman, and was constantly radiating a corrosive, cursed power.

This immediately reminded Jiang Jin of the original movie, where the protagonist, Asakawa Reiko's, spirit was dragged into her childhood memories by Sadako. Childhood Sadako crossed time and space, grabbed Reiko's hand, and left a mark directly on Reiko's wrist in the present!
This is precisely the terrifying aspect of the Annihilation Layer evil spirits; the linear timeline of the material world can be easily twisted like a pretzel in their presence! However, manipulating time is merely the entry-level requirement for the Annihilation Layer evil spirits!

At this moment, Sadie's neck was twisted at an extremely unnatural angle, emitting a silent wail. Her body began to disintegrate from her neck, turning into specks of gray-black resentful dust, like ashes blown away by the wind, drifting in the air!

Almost simultaneously, the cold, impersonal text of the Reincarnation System forcibly appeared on the retina of Jiang Jin's left eye:

"Warning: Reincarnator Jiang Jin, your undead hound Sadie has been attacked by an irreversible curse originating from the Annihilation Layer of the Horror Dungeon."

The core structure of Sadie's resentment has completely collapsed and cannot be repaired.

The remaining resentful ashes of this unit will be assimilated and absorbed by the memes of the current Horror instance, permanently losing the possibility of being reforged.

Sadie, the hound of the dead, has been confirmed dead.

"Sadi!" Jiang Jin felt a sharp pain in his heart. This undead hound had only been with him for such a short time, and... it was gone?
Based on previous intelligence, the team had estimated that Sadako might have barely reached the threshold of the Annihilation Layer. But the reality before them shattered that illusion!

The ability to unleash such a domineering curse that completely obliterates the very foundation of a necromancer's existence is something that no "early stage of the Annihilation Layer" could possibly achieve!
Their assessment of Sadako's strength was fatally flawed! This being, enhanced by meme contamination and the Death Ferry, is far more terrifying than imagined!
The next day, sunlight streamed through the windows of the guesthouse, but it couldn't dispel the gloom in everyone's hearts.

Sadie's "death" cast a shadow over everyone.

To check out information about NHK television and to ease his depressed mood, Yu Tianlun turned on an old-fashioned television in his room around noon and tuned it to the NHK channel, where the midday news was being broadcast.

The television screen became clear, and a dignified and beautiful female anchor with a capable demeanor was broadcasting the morning news.

When her face appeared fully on the screen, all the reincarnators were stunned!
This face is clearly that of Reiko Asakawa, the female lead played by Nanako Matsushima in the movie "Ring"!
In this twisted version of the story, she unexpectedly transformed from a frontline reporter investigating the truth in the movie into a composed news anchor for NHK!

"Next, we have a breaking international news report that we've just received," Reiko Asakawa announced in her standard announcer's voice on television. "According to our Paris bureau and multiple foreign news reports, early this morning, former Princess Diana of Wales was involved in a serious car accident in the Alma Bridge tunnel in Paris, France, when her vehicle was involved in an accident while trying to evade paparazzi. She died at 4:00 AM local time, at the young age of 36. Her fiancé, Dodi Fayed, has also been confirmed dead… The specific cause of the accident is still under investigation. We will continue to follow the developments. The next news item is…"

“Oh right, today is August 31, 1997, the day Princess Diana died,” Jiang Jin said in a deep voice. “But that’s not important. ‘Reiko Asakawa’ is a real person in this world, and she’s an NHK news anchor!”

Yu Tianlun's eyes flashed with a sharp light: "This is a breakthrough! In the original movie, she was the key figure in investigating the cursed videotape incident. Even if this world has been corrupted and altered by memes, her existence itself may still be connected to the core secret. We must go to NHK TV station; perhaps we can find information about that documentary, 'A Study of Izu Folklore,' from back then!"

This discovery offers a glimmer of new direction.

Around noon, in order to verify some ideas and further stimulate their understanding of the pollution of rules, Jiang Jin and Gao Gongwei decided to watch the original videotape again.

They chose Yui Takamiya's room and arranged the environment strictly according to the rules.

The videotape began playing, and familiar, eerie images flashed by one after another. When the final image of the ancient well ended and the screen returned to its usual static, Yui Takamiya, who was watching the time display on the recorder, suddenly exclaimed, "Huh?"

"Jiang Sang, something's wrong! The playback duration... is 1 minute and 25 seconds!" Jiang Jin's heart skipped a beat, and he immediately looked at the small LCD screen of the video recorder. The number displayed on it was indeed 00:01:25!

It was a full 5 seconds longer than the rules and previous viewings!
What were those extra 5 seconds? They didn't notice any new content during their viewing!
Just then, Jiang Jin keenly noticed that the static noise from the television seemed to be mixed with some extremely subtle and distorted other sounds.

He concentrated and carefully discerned the details!

That was... a dull, struggling sound, as if coming through a layer of water, a desperate sob as water rushed into the throat, on the verge of drowning!
Just then, Takamiya Yui's eyes widened as she pointed at the TV screen: "Hair! In the static... there's hair moving!"

The previously disordered black and white noise seemed to be organized by an invisible force, vaguely outlining strands of drifting and tangled black hair!

"Roar!"

The undead hound, Deathstroke, which had been guarding the side, seemed to sense a great threat. It let out a low growl and, without waiting for Jiang Jin's command, pounced on the television set!
Immediately afterwards, its head actually disappeared into the television screen as if it had pierced through the water!
Ripples, like waves on water, spread across the screen surface!

Immediately afterwards, a huge, invisible force erupted from inside the television!
"boom!!"

The heavy CRT television was suddenly overturned and crashed heavily onto the floor from the cabinet with a loud bang!

However, what was even more terrifying than the TV falling was that the static and noise filling the screen seemed to have a physical presence and weight, like thick, black and white debris, splashing out from the cracked screen frame and splattering all over the ground!

These "snowflakes" that fell to the ground did not disappear. They crawled and gathered on the floor like living things, and among the constantly jumping black and white spots, more and clearer black hairs were growing and spreading at a speed visible to the naked eye!
Sadako Yamamura's hair, through these concrete snow-like noises, is about to come from the television screen into this real world!

Jiang Jin made a quick decision, took out a piece of meat to replenish his sanity, gave one to Gao Gongwei, and then quickly swallowed one himself.

A cool sensation surged into my brain, forcibly returning me to the material world, and the writhing snowflakes and wildly growing hair on the ground completely disappeared.

Gao Gongwei's face turned pale. Remembering Rule Five, he immediately stepped forward and, disregarding the danger, began to remove the back cover of the cracked television. He had worked in an electronics store when he was in college and was very skilled at disassembling appliances.

really!

On the surface of that huge cathode ray tube glass cone, near the tail, there was a blurry, charred black human-shaped mark, as if it had been burned by high temperature!
The outline was vaguely discernible as a curled-up, long-haired figure!

Gao Gongwei dared not delay. He and Jiang Jin immediately found a clean cloth and, according to the rules, vigorously wiped the scorch mark.

As they wiped, a cold, resentful energy seemed to dissipate, and the scorch marks gradually faded and eventually disappeared.

At the same time, through Deathstroke's vision, Jiang Jin could see that the physical snowflake noise and wildly growing hair on the floor inside the contaminated layer also faded and dissipated as if they had lost their support.

In the end, all that was left was a broken television set and a messy floor.

The crisis was temporarily averted, but both of them were still shaken.

Immediately afterwards, Jiang Jin took the original videotape out of the VCR, and the part he touched was wet!
The videotape casing emitted a strong, salty smell of seawater, as if it had just been retrieved from the seabed!
Before leaving the room, Jiang Jin felt parched and subconsciously picked up the water glass on the table, took a sip, and then immediately spat it out!

The clear water in the glass had turned into a bitter, salty, and fishy taste of seawater!
He rushed to the kitchen, turned on the tap, and the tap water that came out also had a distinctly salty seawater taste!
Pollution... is no longer limited to that videotape and specific appliances; it has begun to infiltrate the most basic aspects of daily life at the material level!
An even more despairing message appeared on Jiang Jin's Reincarnator Watch.

The previously slowly fluctuating SAN value assessment of potential decline suddenly jumped up to B+ level!
The watch screen displays a warning: Environmental meme pollution levels continue to rise, and the potential for SAN value decline has been assessed as B+. Under the current environment, the effectiveness of conventional SAN supplements will continue to diminish.

After the reincarnators gathered, Jiang Jin explained the basic situation.

Everyone noticed that the SAN value displayed on their watches was decreasing with increasing potential, and even Xu Yinqiu, who had upgraded to LV3, was unable to suppress it for them!
As an experienced incantation reincarnator, Xu Yinqiu predicts that when the curse's final deadline (the seventh day) arrives, the team members will most likely be forcibly pulled into the annihilation layer and confront the source of the curse, Sadako Yamamura!
(End of this chapter)