Yang Jian gripped the shard of glass and stood up, looking toward his mother. Zhang Fen still had not woken. Although this mother was an illusion manifested by the dream according to his own experiences, Yang Jian could still feel that maternal love, identical to what he remembered.
After tucking Zhang Fen in, Yang Jian got up and walked to the entryway of his home, pressing himself against the door as he listened carefully for any movement outside.
Although ghosts did not possess supernatural power in the dream, Yang Jian was currently only a high school student. If he wanted to subdue an adult man, he had to catch him off guard and end it in one strike.
Yang Jian waited quietly. Suddenly, the sound of footsteps rang out abruptly, as if someone had appeared out of thin air at his front door and was walking toward it.
Then came the sound of a key being inserted into the lock. Yang Jian took a step back and braced himself to strike.
With a click, the lock opened.
Before the door had fully opened, Yang Jian yanked it open and rushed forward in a single stride, the sharp glass shard aimed straight at the newspaper in the person’s hand.
“Slash!”
The newspaper was instantly cut in half, and a pale human face appeared before his eyes. Yang Jian was startled.
The face beneath the newspaper was extremely unnatural. The entire face had an indescribably bizarre quality, as if someone had forcibly pieced it together from the features of seven or eight corpses.
“Woof!!!”
A snarling bark rang out from beside him. The large black dog threw itself at Yang Jian and knocked him down, its sharp fangs biting toward his neck.
The moment the large black dog saw Yang Jian stab at its master, it had pounced over, completely failing to notice that the person behind the newspaper was not its master.
In that instant between life and death, Yang Jian used the shard of glass in his hand to press hard against the black dog’s teeth. But the black dog’s strength was terrifyingly great, and under its tearing bite, cracks actually began to appear in the glass shard.
Yang Jian curled up with difficulty in the corner, doing his best to reduce the area of his body that could be attacked.
This black dog was far too large, nearly twice Yang Jian’s weight, and it pressed down on him until he could hardly breathe.
Just then, the ghost actually turned and retreated out the door. Yang Jian’s eyes nearly split with fury. If he was bitten to death here now, everything would be for nothing.
“Get lost!”
Yang Jian had fought for more than ten years and had never lost. At this moment, he erupted with all the strength in his body and slashed fiercely, carving a wound deep enough to reveal bone across the black dog’s face. At the same time, he kicked viciously at the dog’s lower body.
The black dog yelped in pain, and the strength in its jaws instantly loosened.
Taking advantage of that instant opening, Yang Jian kicked off and threw himself toward the ghost, grabbing its ankle with a death grip.
The black dog reacted extremely quickly. Even though that spot had been kicked until it bled, it could still immediately turn and pounce at Yang Jian.
But suddenly, it stopped in its tracks. A low whine came from its mouth, and its eyes glared viciously at the ghost’s head.
It did not understand. It was clearly its master’s body, so why did it have another face?
But its master had given it an order: if it saw this face, it was to bite it to death.
The next second, the black dog lunged forward. Its sharp teeth instantly pierced the neck, biting down hard on the ghost’s throat and tearing at it frantically.
The ghost died, but Yang Jian did not wake up.
At that moment, an abnormal change suddenly appeared in the surroundings. A torrential rain actually began to fall from the sky.
Through the endless curtain of rain, Yang Jian unexpectedly saw his father—or more accurately, the anomaly that possessed his father’s memories.
It was also raining heavily in the real Meishan Village. Yang Xiao walked to the side of a fishpond and plunged headfirst into it. Before long, he swam back up holding a heavy wooden box.
When he opened the wooden box, inside were two pallid human legs. Even after soaking in the water for more than ten years, they showed no signs of decay, as if they had just been sawed off a corpse.
Yang Xiao continued walking through the downpour with the human legs in hand. But Yang Jian could clearly see that when he passed the fishpond, the surface of the water reflected another stiff human figure, identical to that ghost.
“The dream and reality have begun to overlap. The ghost dream seems capable of superimposing itself and attacking different people at the same time.”
“It’s only because of Lin Bei that the ghost can no longer distinguish reality from the dream. It can only use the rain as a medium and attack through physical means.”
“My deduction was correct. As long as the three parts of the ghost in reality are brought into the dream, my plan will succeed.”
Yang Xiao also noticed that figure, but he did not stop. He continued walking toward another place.
The rain grew heavier and heavier, almost becoming a deluge poured from the sky. This nightmare seemed as if it was about to invade the past.
In the rain, that stiff figure was gradually approaching Yang Xiao, but Yang Xiao paid it no heed. He knew very well that he did not have much time left, and he continued striding quickly forward.
Yang Jian saw Yang Xiao walk into a dense forest. In the deepest part of the woods stood a small wooden cabin.
Yang Xiao entered the cabin, took out an iron shovel, and began digging beside the wooden house.
Because the trees blocked the rain, the figure in the rain began to become incomplete. Seizing this gap, Yang Xiao dug a wooden chest out of the soil. It looked extremely heavy.
Yang Xiao did not linger. He hoisted the wooden chest onto his shoulder and began walking in another direction.
After he left the woods, the stiff figure in the rain became solid once more and slowly approached Yang Xiao.
The ghost was getting closer and closer to Yang Xiao. In the dream, Yang Jian stared at the reality refracted by the torrential rain, but he did not panic. His father had been entangled with the ghost dream for so many years; it was impossible that he would not have even this much precaution.
Sure enough, just as Yang Jian thought, Yang Xiao suddenly turned around and pulled open his coat. Inside were pieces of bright, gleaming mirror shards. Then Yang Xiao actually took the initiative to step forward and come into contact with the fierce ghost.
The next second, the instant the mirror touched the ghost, the ghost vanished into thin air.
“Lin Bei’s ghost... It seems he went to find Lin Bei. That great Buddha in the school was Lin Bei’s handiwork. It possessed the supernatural power to make ghosts lose themselves in mirrors, but this method is far too dangerous...”
“The terror level of the ghost dream far surpasses that of the Buddha statue. Right now, it’s only borrowing the special properties of that mirror world to temporarily restrict the ghost dream’s movements. Once the dream completely covers reality, the ghost dream may instead invade the entire mirror world. When the time comes and an overwhelming ghost dream appears in reality, no one will be able to stop it.”
Yang Jian looked at the torrential rain before him. Even though he knew this method was extremely dangerous, there was no other option now.
Yang Xiao had already arrived at a small temple. Without the slightest pause, he directly used the wooden box in his hand to knock off the heads of two divine statues standing in the temple.
The two human heads rolled to the ground, as if they had just been chopped off. There was no sign at all that they had been sealed away for more than ten years.
One head looked exactly the same as that ghost, while the other was actually Yang Xiao’s own head. Yang Xiao tucked the two heads under either side of his body, then walked out of the small temple.
In the torrential rain, Yang Xiao raised his foot and lightly stepped on a puddle on the ground.
Immediately, from Yang Jian’s perspective, the entire real world actually flipped over in an instant. Through the medium, Yang Xiao had forcibly stepped into the dream.