Forbidden Zone of Deception

Chapter 99 Yimin Convenience Store

After the seven reincarnators left the cemetery, they looked at the cemetery entrance.

“Qingyiyuan Cemetery…” Jiang Jin murmured.

"Master, please take me on!" Azi practically pressed her body against Dr. Lin. "All six of us will follow your lead!"

“You can just call me Dr. Lin,” Dr. Lin shook her head. “This is also my first time participating in a fully rule-based mission. Right now, I’m just like you, unable to use any of my professional skills.”

"Don't say that, your experience is definitely far superior to ours!" Qiu Feng, the man in the suit, also said, "You were a renowned main attacker for the Dawn team back in the day!"

Jiang Jin rarely heard Yu Tianlun mention his past in the Chenxi team, and he didn't take the initiative to find out. But now it seems that Dr. Lin in front of him was a high-level executive even in Chenxi in the past.

Why would someone like that come to the terrifying dungeon alone for a trial?

"Hmm?" The young Wu Ge twitched his nose.

At the exit of the cemetery, the air was filled with the acrid smell of burning incense and paper money.

Jiang Jin glanced down at his Reincarnator watch; the time was 17:23, less than forty minutes before the mission's six o'clock entry deadline.

Jiang Jin said, "Time is running out, everyone should hurry up and get going."

Mingquan Road is right in front of the entrance to the ancient tomb, and the next step is to confirm whether this is the outer urban area of ​​▇▇ city.

“▇▇City…outer district…” Jiang Jin opened his phone and found that the map app also worked in this instance. “Hmm? Why are there three ▇▇Cities connected together on this map?”

“Our map app works here too,” Qiu Feng nodded, holding his phone, and said, “Okay, let’s see where Yimin Convenience Store is…”

However, this area seems so remote that the maps don't accurately mark which shops are along the way.

The seven people walked slowly along Mingquan Road. On both sides of the street were old-fashioned residential buildings from the 1990s. Most of the shops that passed by were selling funeral supplies, and some of the faded funeral couplets at the entrance of the shops swayed gently in the night wind.

And people soon discovered that most of the residents on both sides of Mingquan Road were wearing strange masks!
“These are all ghost masks unique to Guichi Nuo Opera,” Dr. Lin said, seemingly quite knowledgeable about this folk custom. “Compared to the typical Nuo Opera masks with their blue faces and fangs, the Guichi Nuo Opera masks are relatively more human-like.”

"As expected of a master, you really have a lot of research to do!" Azi immediately gave Dr. Lin a thumbs up.

At that moment, the Nuo opera mask looked particularly eerie under the flickering streetlights. Because it resembled a human more closely, it amplified the uncanny valley effect.

Just then, passing by a newsstand, Dr. Lin looked down at the date on a newspaper and said, "Oh, I see. Today is the Ghost Festival."

The Ghost Festival? Everyone immediately tensed up.

Dr. Lin said in a low voice, his cuffs stained with some paper dust: "That's why the residents here wear Nuo opera masks."

Suddenly, flames as tall as a person shot up from the burning paper bucket on the street corner not far away, and several masked people danced a strange dance around the fire.

Their movements were perfectly synchronized, their joints making a "clicking" sound, like puppets controlled by invisible strings.

A tall figure wearing a judge's mask blocked the road, the Book of Life and Death in his hand turning pages automatically with a rustling sound.

Old Chen instinctively reached for his weapon, only to realize that he couldn't use any props here.

The person wearing the judge's mask suddenly turned his head and looked at the seven people.

"Don't look at that mask!" Dr. Lin said.

The seven people walked quickly and continued forward.

At this moment, Jiang Jin saw an elderly woman in her seventies or eighties sitting in front of a funeral shop at the alley entrance, folding paper money. Her movements were mechanical and precise, her aged fingers folding the yellow paper into the shape of ingots, and a pile of paper offerings half a meter high had already been stacked at her feet.

Jiang Jin stepped forward and asked, "Grandma, could you tell me how to get to Yimin Convenience Store?"

The old woman didn't even look up, continuing to fold paper money, and asked, "What, what are you saying? I'm old and a little hard of hearing."

Jiang Jin could only lean close to her ear and ask, "I mean... where is Yimin Convenience Store?"

"Oh, you mean Yimin Convenience Store? Just walk about 300 meters ahead, and you'll be there."

Her withered fingers pointed forward.

“Grandma,” Dr. Lin approached and asked, “Is Mingquan Road the only road in this outer district? Or is there only one Yimin Convenience Store on this road?”

Jiang Jin was immediately impressed. As expected of Commander Yu's former subordinate, his thinking was very rigorous.

Yimin is indeed a very common name for convenience stores. If someone has the same name as another store and accidentally goes in, only to have it cleaned up by the cleaners, they'll be truly devastated.

“There’s definitely only one Mingquan Road in the outer city,” the old lady replied. “And there’s definitely only one Yimin Convenience Store.”

Are you sure?

“Of course I’m sure, I’ve lived here for fifty years. If you need to buy something, that Yimin convenience store has a fairly complete selection.” The old lady added, “If you need to buy funeral supplies, our store has everything you need.”

The old lady pointed to the funeral service shop behind her, next to which hung two white lanterns.

The shelves inside were filled with paper figures with birth dates and times, as well as various colored funeral clothes. At the cashier, a clerk wearing a Nuo opera mask was tapping an abacus in front of him with his long fingernails.

"Walking down this street, it seems like everyone is wearing Nuo opera masks?" Jiang Jin asked.

"Today is the Ghost Festival, and since this place is near a cemetery, there are a lot of people here to sweep the tombs."

At this moment, Murong Yan noticed that Azi was searching on her phone. "What are you searching for?"

"I want to find out what the prototype of this copy is..." Azi became increasingly anxious. "If we can find out, maybe we can find out what kind of mystery and secrets Yimin Convenience Store has!"

"Did you find anything?"

"I first looked up 'paranormal convenience stores,' but those were all from movies and TV shows. Then I looked up real paranormal phenomena, but I didn't find anything..."

Azi then entered "real paranormal videos" into the search engine and searched again.

This time, some information popped up.

"A paranormal video is going viral online: a terrifying ghost in the mirror!"

Azi immediately clicked on it.

This is a short video that is only fourteen seconds long.

"Well, this is it?"

The video shows a completely dark bathroom with a man standing in front of a mirror. Between him and the mirror is a lit candle.

A man was standing in front of the bathroom mirror, his upper body bent at about a 70-degree angle, his face almost touching the mirror.

A few seconds later, a crack suddenly appeared on the mirror!
Murong Yan also came over to take a look and said, "Can you tell if this is a real paranormal phenomenon or a fake, composite video?"

“My medium skills are all locked, otherwise I would have been able to figure it out… but this scene…”

Then... something terrifying happened! The man's expression in the mirror suddenly changed, revealing a ferocious look, and he slammed his head against the mirror!
However, in the real world, men just stand in front of the mirror and do nothing!

The scene was indeed terrifying, but it wasn't much to the reincarnators. However, Azi suddenly remembered: "Holy crap, I know what instance this is! It's the haunted house!"

"A haunted house?" Murong Yan was stunned. "Are you talking about Yimin Convenience Store?"

"No, no, I'll go report to the expert right away!"

After a while, Azi ran over and told everyone, "Everyone, this is a copy world of an online horror novel, which tells the story of the protagonist running a haunted house."

Dr. Lin asked, "What's the plot about Yimin Convenience Store in the novel?"

“This…” Azi scratched her head and said, “I’ve only read half of this book, but I don’t recall any plot involving convenience stores.”

"Where is the haunted house the main character lives in?" Jiang Jin pressed. "Is it close to here?"

"You can find the address of that haunted house online, but it's not in this city, it's in a neighboring city."

Do you have a contact number?

"There have been calls from people making reservations to visit the haunted house."

“Call and ask,” Dr. Lin said. “I’ll talk to the protagonist.”

When I called back... the line was busy.

"This haunted house seems to be doing pretty well..." Azi's face darkened. "We can't find the main character's phone number online either!"

"Then let's forget about it for now."

Soon, the seven people saw the sign for Yimin Convenience Store on the street ahead.

“This place doesn’t look big, but we’ll be working here all the time…” Old Chen gritted his teeth: “In such a small place, if a ghost attacks us, we’ll have nowhere to hide! And we don’t have any means to fight back!”

“A truly powerful ghost is useless no matter how many tricks it has.” Dr. Lin, having seen many big scenes, remained very calm. “Let’s not go over there yet. According to the rules, we can go in at six o’clock. Let’s use this time to gather some intelligence around Mingquan Road. The most important thing is to confirm whether the Mingquan Road mentioned in the mission is indeed this road, and whether Yimin Convenience Store is indeed the only one.”

“Indeed, we must be cautious,” Wu Ge nodded. “We must execute the tasks of the reincarnation system with absolute rigor.”

"We also need to pay special attention to convenience stores that have faded signs or no signs at all," Murong Yan said in a deep voice. "If we're not careful, we might go into the wrong store..."

She didn't finish her sentence, but everyone understood the consequences. Violating the reincarnation system's instructions and entering the wrong location would trigger the sanitation workers' cleanup mechanism—those terrifying beings in orange sanitation worker uniforms would "cleanse" the violators as if they were garbage.

Without anyone noticing, Dr. Lin had become the temporary leader of this small group of seven. Everyone admired him wholeheartedly and unconsciously accepted his leadership and arrangements.

Not far from Yimin Convenience Store, there is a grocery store where a bald, middle-aged man is sitting, idly scrolling through his phone.

Old Chen took out his lighter and waved it: "Well then, I'll go buy a pack of cigarettes first and ask around. If too many people go, the shop owner might find it suspicious and might not tell us the truth."

“That’s true,” Qiu Feng said, “but it doesn’t have to be too little. I’ll go too.”

Dr. Lin instructed, "Then you two, gather more information about Yimin Convenience Store. There's still time. Be careful with your questions, and it's best to buy a lot of things. Do you have enough cash on you?"

“I brought cash,” Qiu Feng patted his pocket. “I’m very thoughtful.”

Jiang Jin recalled Qiu Feng walking in wearing a sharp suit and carrying a newspaper. He didn't know whether to say that Qiu Feng was too pretentious or too confident.

"Okay, you go."

(End of this chapter)