“Me?”
Lin Bei pointed at himself.
Yang Jian nodded. “That’s right. You.”
“Because of my earlier misjudgment, the number of Buddha statues stacked up to this extent. The source ghost of the dream never attacked us, not because it didn’t want to, but because it was restricted by this world inside the mirror. It couldn’t come over.”
“As long as we drag it back into the dream, it will attack us immediately. But at the same time, it will be restricted by its own rules and won’t possess any supernatural power.”
“So it can be killed. Against the supernatural, no matter how huge its body is or how wide its range, as long as its killing rule is triggered, it will definitely die.”
Yang Jian patted Lin Bei on the shoulder and said:
“We only have one chance. It’s up to you. I’ll point out the true source ghost of the dream at the first moment.”
Gradually, the wailing like the chanting of scriptures no longer rang beside their ears, but instead filled this entire dream.
It was as if countless people were reciting sutras, and also as if tens of thousands of corpses were howling at the same time.
The entire space trembled faintly from the shock.
“Crack...”
A faint sound of something splitting rang out. Yang Jian raised his head and looked at the ceiling. A rumbling roar came from above, as if something had fallen, and at an astonishing speed.
“Boom!!”
The ground jolted violently, like an earthquake. The entire world was shaking, and the three of them were thrown to the ground.
A strange Buddhist radiance came from nowhere, suddenly filling the whole world. The blinding Buddhist light made it difficult for the three of them to open their eyes.
The entire world seemed to fall silent, utterly still.
When Yang Jian and the other two adapted to the Buddhist light and opened their eyes again, they were astonished to discover that they were actually on a street in Dachang City.
In the sky, sinister Buddhist light pierced down through the clouds. Accompanied by wailing like scripture chanting, countless enormous Buddhas that blotted out the heavens forcibly tore the sky apart and plunged straight down from above the clouds.
“Lin Bei!”
Yang Jian shouted Lin Bei’s name, his eyes fixed on the Buddhas falling one after another from the sky.
“I’m here!”
Lin Bei got to his feet. Three entirely different expressions surfaced on his deathly pale face. His body was rapidly rotting, corpse spots swiftly spreading across him. The ghost inside him was reviving.
Just then, a violent gust of wind swept down from overhead.
A gigantic palm descended from the sky.
That enormous hand blotted out the heavens and pressed straight down toward the three of them, piercing through the sky and passing through the clouds, stirring up countless currents of air that made it difficult for them to open their eyes.
Yang Jian immediately said, “That’s it! The first Buddha statue that attacked us is the source ghost of this dream!”
Tall buildings were collapsing, trees were sent flying, and countless structures were crushed layer by layer beneath that huge Buddha hand.
Lin Bei climbed onto a heavy truck, raised his palm toward the sky, and stared fixedly at the enormous hand drawing ever closer.
As long as contact occurred, he would be able to kill this enormous Buddha in an instant.
Yang Jian could already see the crisscrossing palm lines on that Buddha’s hand, but now he could do nothing. He could only watch helplessly as the massive hand pressed down toward them.
In the next second, contact began. Lin Bei’s entire body shattered with a crash, crushed flat in an instant by a tremendous force.
Then came Yang Jian. His body split open violently, blood gushing out.
His vision went black, and the entire world vanished.
He abruptly opened his eyes. Everything around him was scarlet. The ghost domain was still active. Yang Jian was standing at the foot of Liu Jing’s apartment building, exactly where he had been before he was pulled into the dream.
“It worked.”
Yang Jian had escaped that dream and successfully returned to reality.
The ghost eye on his forehead stirred faintly. His body had already been shattered into chunks of flesh, his organs and bones all exposed through his wounds.
Turning his head, he saw Lin Bei lying behind him. His entire body was mangled beyond recognition, like a puddle of rotten flesh spread across the snow.
Without the slightest hesitation, dense red light instantly enveloped them both. Yang Jian immediately restarted himself and Lin Bei.
“Captain Yang!”
Lin Bei looked at his body in astonishment. He had actually recovered completely in an instant.
Yang Jian looked at him and said, “Leave this place with me. The snow is starting to change.”
Before Lin Bei could speak, the extreme scarlet brilliance around them shot into the sky and flew swiftly in the direction of Dachang City.
Meishan Village.
Xiao Yuan held a dagger in her hand and stared blankly around her. At the final moment of the dream, Yang Jian had laid her flat on the ground and protected her, so she had not been harmed.
Just then, a streak of red light came rushing from the horizon. In only a moment, the entire Meishan Village turned scarlet.
Yang Jian, carrying a hatchet, walked out from the red light with Lin Bei.
“Xiao Yuan.”
Xiao Yuan immediately ran forward.
“Cousin! We succeeded!”
Yang Jian nodded. After confirming Xiao Yuan’s safety, he immediately brought the two of them to the room where his father’s memorial portrait was kept.
The three of them instantly appeared before the memorial portrait of Yang Jian’s father. The ghost eye stared fixedly at the portrait, afraid that some further change might occur.
He walked forward and looked at Yang Xiao in the portrait. There was no difference from before. He looked seventy to eighty percent similar to Yang Jian.
Yang Jian did not dare to rashly dismember the memorial portrait with the hatchet. He could not be certain whether, after this consciousness-type ghost was dismembered by the hatchet, his own consciousness would also suffer backlash.
He had no way to repair his consciousness. Facing a supernatural entity of this level, Yang Jian chose a more reliable method of handling it.
He opened the golden body bag he carried with him and put everything on the table inside it, including the memorial portrait.
“Yang Jian, why are you only back now? Keep your voice down. Auntie is already asleep.”
Wang Shanshan opened the door and walked in. She had a strange, inexplicable perception of Yang Jian; after Yang Jian returned to Meishan Village, she immediately sensed him.
“I was delayed by something. Did anything strange happen in Meishan Village tonight?”
“Something strange? No.”
Wang Shanshan shook her head.
“A lot of staff came earlier, but after they couldn’t find Xiao Yuan, they left.”
As Wang Shanshan spoke, she walked toward Xiao Yuan.
“Xiao Yuan, once this matter is over, come back to Dachang City with us. Let Yang Jian find a doctor to take a proper look at you.”
Yang Jian turned to Lin Bei and said, “Go guard the village entrance for the night. We’ll leave tomorrow.”
Lin Bei nodded and immediately went downstairs toward the village entrance.
Yang Jian pulled over a stool and sat in the middle of the room. He planned to stand guard here until daybreak.
Wang Shanshan looked at Yang Jian worriedly. She did not know what Yang Jian had experienced tonight. She took Xiao Yuan and left the room.
Time passed, minute by minute, second by second.
The ghost hand gripped the hatchet tightly. Dense scarlet light constantly flickered around him, and the whole of Meishan Village was suffused with red, remaining within Yang Jian’s ghost domain the entire time.
The sky had gradually begun to brighten when a sudden rooster’s crow broke the silence of Meishan Village.
Gradually, sparse footsteps sounded on the roads of Meishan Village. A few early-rising villagers had already gotten up and were preparing to work in the fields.
Yang Jian stood up. Red light contracted back from all directions. He picked up the body bag and went downstairs.
Xiao Yuan had said that if they could not kill the ghost before daybreak, they would die. But now the sky was already bright, which meant that the ghost that had pulled Yang Jian into the dream was inside the body bag.
Wang Shanshan was holding Xiao Yuan’s hand and had been waiting outside the main gate for a long time.
At that moment, a sedan drove into the village and stopped in front of Yang Jian’s old residence. The person at the head was a capable-looking middle-aged man.