Forbidden Zone of Deception

Chapter 28 Village Chief
Jiang Jin helped the old man escape to the street, with the funeral bell following closely at his feet.

At this moment, the old man Huang Jianhua grabbed Jiang Jin's arm and said, "Quick, get in front of the mirror, quick!"

How long can this mirror last? It'll shatter and turn into black liquid in no time!

However, Jiang Jin still ran to a bronze mirror hanging under the eaves of a house and carefully observed his own reflection in the mirror.

At this moment, Deathstroke ran over, whimpering and rubbing against his trouser leg. Jiang Jin squatted down and stroked its trembling back.

“Take my wife to the village committee,” the old man said to Jiang Jin. “The mirror can only hold on for a little while, I definitely won’t make it through tonight.”

"You'll be alright..."

“You can’t save me.” The old man shook his head. “Young man, I don’t know who you are, but you are no match for ‘her.’ Her resentment has lasted for almost a hundred years… Even my good friend Li Qiang died at ‘her’s’ hands…”

"Can you tell me what the Soul-Suppressing Ritual is?" Jiang Jin asked urgently. "Perhaps I have a way to end all of this!"

“It’s no use…you can’t do it…” The old man shook his head again.

“Old man, I actually saw a copy of the village rules, which I found at the Huang family’s old house.”

Upon hearing this, the old man said, "Yes... the tourist rules are written for you. The village doesn't want outsiders to die here and attract outside investigations..."

He then coughed a few times and said, "This village... is a real hell!"

"Please tell me, what do the blue and red clothes signify respectively? And what is their connection to the soul-suppressing ritual?"

The old man's breathing was rapid and heavy, his fingers gripping Jiang Jin's sleeve tightly, as if grasping at the last straw.

"Take this..." The old man trembled as he pulled a small, coarsely sewn cloth bag from his robes and stuffed it into Jiang Jin's hand. "Use this in a crisis..."

Jiang Jin squeezed the bag, and a rustling sound came from inside.

He immediately opened it and found—it was glutinous rice!

"Grandpa, can this thing save you?"

"I've had enough of living..." The old man shook his head, his cloudy eyes filled with despair. He raised his fingernails, which were covered in black residue. "Back then, I also worked at the ancestral hall and committed some sins... You... take my wife and go... Don't worry about me..."

Jiang Jin wanted to ask more, but the old man had already closed his eyes, his breathing so weak that it was almost imperceptible.

However, the next moment, Huang Jianhua and his wife suddenly opened their mouths, and then a large amount of black water was vomited out by them!

"Ah ah ah..."

As he vomited black water, his hunter's instincts told Jiang Jin that he was under immense threat!

Then, both elderly people fell to the ground!

Jiang Jin looked up at the mirror that was gradually cracking, and inside... a figure in blue was grabbing the back of the necks of two old people from behind!

Enraged, Jiang Jin drew his boning knife!

This is a perfect opportunity... to practice his "Hunter's Curse Blade"!
However, when he slashed fiercely at the blue-clad figure reflected in the mirror, he felt as if he hadn't actually hit anything!
Looking in the mirror again... there was nothing there?
"Old...old man?"

Once he looked away, Jiang Jin could no longer see the two old people!
Jiang Jin gripped the bag of glutinous rice tightly and left as quickly as possible, the cold wind blowing on his face, icy and biting.

The village paths were winding and the old houses on both sides had their doors and windows tightly closed, but Jiang Jin could feel eyes peeking through the gaps, watching the outsider's every move.

He always felt that it was that ghost preventing the old man from revealing the truth about the soul-suppressing ritual to Jiang Jin, which meant...

The soul-suppressing ritual did indeed pose a threat to her!

He arrived near the ancestral hall and found dozens of white candles lit around it.

Was it a lament for the villagers chosen as sacrifices? Suddenly, the funeral bells rose and barked loudly.

Jiang Jin followed the gaze of the funeral bell and saw that the roof of the shrine was once again filled with crows. Their eyes glowed red in the darkness, all staring at this uninvited guest.

Jiang Jin looked at the gate of the ancestral hall and took a deep breath.

Activate Hunter's Vision!
He wanted to see what secrets the ancestral hall held.
The heavy wooden doors of the ancestral hall gradually blurred in his vision, and the internal structure was peeled away layer by layer like an X-ray film.

In the central courtyard, a dozen or so water vats are neatly arranged near the shrine of the ancestral hall, with white glutinous rice sprinkled around them.

Jiang Jin's eyes widened.

Inside these water tanks—

One after another, people wearing blue cotton shirts were soaking in the tub!
The men's hands were bound with red ropes, the knots cleverly tied to copper rings on the edge of the water tank, ensuring their heads remained above water and they wouldn't drown.

Their faces were pale, their swollen cheeks had an unnatural bluish-gray tinge, and their lips trembled slightly, as if they were silently muttering something.

Around the water tank, there were large numbers of heavily armed guards! With this level of force, Jiang Jin would believe it if you told him this village was involved in drug trafficking.

Jiang Jin turned off Hunter Vision, watched this scene, and then left.

This village, where people were like ghosts, gave him the creeps!
Two minutes after Jiang Jin left, in the central courtyard of the ancestral hall, a woman in one of the water vats suddenly began to struggle violently!
Her eyes snapped open, blood vessels bulging in her cloudy whites, and her bound wrists twisted wildly.

The red rope creaked under the strain, and then—

"Snapped!"

The rope snapped without warning.

The woman's body sank into the water instantly, a string of bubbles rose to the surface, and then the water returned to calm.

A guard who looked very young, only sixteen or seventeen years old, quickly ran over and checked the water tank.

At this moment, inside the water tank—

The woman disappeared completely.

Only one tank of water was left.

And after a while, the water in that vat began to get darker and darker, until finally it became a large vat of black water!
“Don’t get too close, Ah Bin,” the guard called Fourth Brother came up behind him and said, “Be careful not to get splashed by the pool water.”

"Fourth Brother," Ah Bin said tremblingly to his fourth brother, "Did Ah Wei really... just die like that?"

"Originally, we were planning to stake out a suspicious person. Although he didn't seem like a cop, we were still going to arrest him here and throw him into this pool of water." Fourth Brother, holding his gun, suddenly looked at the ancestral hall behind him.

"And then?"

"Later, things got so chaotic that we had to give up for the time being. Later, we sent someone to inquire, and Mr. Chen, the owner of Chen's Roast Meat, said that the man was his distant nephew. The village chief said not to cause trouble for Mr. Chen, so there was nothing I could do."

"Fourth Brother, speaking of which... I'm relatively young and only started working at the ancestral hall this month, so I'd like to ask, has no one ever seen the village chief at the village committee?"

Upon hearing this, Fourth Brother turned around.

"Yes, at least I've never seen it."

"I heard... no one in the village committee has ever seen the village chief? Even though the village chief rarely goes out and doesn't see people easily..."

However, Fourth Brother said, “In the past, Deputy Village Chief Huang took me to the Village Chief’s office. In the village, only Deputy Village Chief Huang had a key to the Village Chief’s office. Deputy Village Chief Huang would place the work documents on the desk in the office, then leave and lock the door. But when he opened the door again the next day, he would always see the approvals and signatures on the documents on the Village Chief’s desk. This was how the documents, including the tourist rules and the villagers’ rules, were conveyed to him. Deputy Village Chief Huang told me that in his thirty years as Deputy Village Chief, he had never once… seen the Village Chief!”

(End of this chapter)