The instant Yang Xiao stepped into the dream.
The ghost’s head in his hand vanished at once. At the same time, a deathly pale corpse appeared abruptly, standing silently behind him.
Yang Jian shouted, “Watch out!”
Without even turning his head, Yang Xiao drove a shard of glass in his hand viciously behind him. The corpse fell to the ground at once.
Seeing this, Yang Xiao immediately said, “It works! Your judgment was right. Within the dream, even this ghost’s physical body can be killed.”
However, something eerie happened. The ghost’s fallen body suddenly vanished into thin air.
At the same time, another ghost walked out from the rain.
It stared fixedly at Yang Jian, as if it had already confirmed Yang Jian’s authenticity. Now it was coming to kill Yang Jian and complete its killing pattern.
Yang Jian looked at that ghost and pondered silently.
“A restart? Every time it dies, it appears again? No, in the dream, no malignant ghost possesses supernatural power. This is more like this ghost’s own characteristic…”
“And because of Lin Bei, this ghost can’t distinguish which side is real. It can only rigidly follow its established killing pattern and kill me, the target whose reality has already been confirmed.”
Between Yang Jian and the evil ghost stood a large black dog. Perhaps because of the rain, the black dog’s body seemed to have grown ever so slightly larger.
Yang Jian keenly noticed that tiny change.
“Is the medium rain? Or water?”
Yang Xiao immediately said, “Bite him to death!”
“Woof!!!”
The black dog lunged violently and knocked the ghost down, clamping its jaws firmly around the ghost’s neck. Its bite was so powerful that it actually tore the head clean off.
The torrential rain in the sky became even more exaggerated. At that moment, Yang Jian and Yang Xiao seemed as though they were soaking inside a water tank.
More than a dozen corpses were already lying before them. Every single one had the exact same face, as if the features of different humans had been forcibly pieced together, looking extremely unnatural.
That black dog seemed to have experienced battles like this before. Swiftly and accurately, it locked onto the position where each ghost appeared, then pounced and bit it to death alive.
In this dream, nothing possessed supernatural power. The contest came down to who could fight better. Clearly, on a physical level, that black dog completely crushed the malignant ghost.
A ghost that only acted according to its killing pattern was far too rigid. Yang Jian merely stood beneath the eaves and did nothing; the ghost did not even detour. It simply walked straight over like that, then was bitten to death by the dog, without even the slightest resistance.
Just then, a sudden change occurred.
Amid the torrential rain, two identical corpses walked out.
When Yang Xiao saw this, his expression changed. He said to Yang Jian, “Something has gone wrong on your friend’s side. The ghost is using the mirror to stack itself.”
Yang Jian had already thought of this step. Since he had made a plan, he would not allow any mistakes to occur in that plan.
His expression did not change as he said, “If I’m not mistaken, because of the Ghost Dream, Lin Bei should now be trapped in that mirror world and unable to get out.”
“The ghost can use the mirror to stack itself through a reverse invasion. That dog can do the same. Let that dog enter the mirror as well. This dream has an upper limit. As long as that dog keeps attacking the ghost, sooner or later, the dog will completely replace that ghost and fully control this dream.”
“And once both sides stack themselves through the mirror, this contest can be compressed into an extremely short span of time.”
Yang Xiao pondered for a moment, then looked at Yang Jian. This plan was indeed feasible, but it was unfair to the person controlling that giant Buddha. There would always be an upper limit for a living person controlling a malignant ghost. Under the invasion of two ghosts, Lin Bei might die.
Thinking of this, Yang Xiao said, “An instantaneous stacking may cause your friend to drop dead on the spot.”
Yang Jian’s gaze sharpened. The current situation left no room for the two of them to delay. He said coldly, “Any ghost controller has already prepared himself to die the moment he steps onto this path. Trump cards? Contingencies? They’re nothing but the scraps your generation inherited from those who came before you.”
“Now I finally understand why the predecessors didn’t leave behind some methods for controlling malignant ghosts. It’s because your path was wrong. Precisely because you had those failures as warnings, you became timid, hesitant, and afraid to stake everything on one throw.”
“In our era, anyone facing the supernatural fights with their life. There are no miracles, no inheritances—only using our own lives to explore the root of malignant ghosts. Just do it. The fact that Lin Bei has made it this far means he has long since prepared himself for this.”
“When seeking a path to survive amid the supernatural, it is either life or death. Do you still not understand something this simple?”
Yang Xiao looked at Yang Jian. Although Yang Jian’s words were somewhat one-sided—ghost controllers of any era fought with their lives when facing the supernatural—Yang Jian was right about one thing: their path had been wrong. That was why they had not passed down certain methods of controlling malignant ghosts. They wanted the people of this era to explore on their own and walk an entirely different path.
Yang Xiao said, “I’m sorry. I underestimated the ghost controllers of this era. In the face of malignant ghosts, those who fight against them in every era are worthy of respect.”
After saying that, Yang Xiao turned to look at the black dog.
“Come here!”
The black dog immediately stopped tearing at its prey and ran to Yang Xiao, though it still glared viciously at the malignant ghosts continuously walking out of the rain.
Yang Xiao took out the mirror shard from inside his clothes and gently slipped it over the black dog. In an instant, the dog vanished from where it stood.
Almost at the same moment the black dog disappeared, several barks abruptly rang out from within the torrential rain.
Before Yang Jian could confirm the number, more than a dozen large black dogs suddenly shot out of the rain, attacking the malignant ghosts that were still increasing in number.
The ghosts kept dying, but at the same time, new ghosts kept walking out of the rain.
Every time a ghost used Lin Bei’s supernatural power to stack itself and arrive here, a vicious dog would follow right behind it and bite it to death.
A contest between malignant ghosts had begun. This was a collision between two identical supernatural puzzle pieces. Because of Yang Jian’s plan, that large black dog was gradually gaining the upper hand.
Yang Xiao stood beside Yang Jian, so astonished for a moment that he could not speak. Yang Jian had truly forced an unsolvable malignant ghost into a dead end.
Although this final replacement process was largely similar to the plan he had prepared for more than a decade, Yang Jian had accomplished it as an ordinary person after groping his way forward, analyzing and summarizing the supernatural nature of this malignant ghost.
Moreover, according to the intervention of other supernatural powers and the characteristics of the Ghost Dream, Yang Jian had compressed to the extreme a process that should originally have required a very long time to complete.
The torrential rain was growing lighter. The number of black dogs was gradually surpassing the malignant ghosts.
In this supernatural confrontation, the Ghost Dream was about to be completely replaced by the black dogs.
There was no intense clash, no magnificent spectacle. Everything seemed so natural and inevitable, but confrontations between supernatural forces were often this simple.
With the death of the final ghost, the sky cleared.
Yang Xiao raised his head and looked at the completely clear sky. He said, “It succeeded. Your plan went even more smoothly than expected.”
Yang Jian nodded. “There’s nothing surprising about it. That’s how the supernatural is: explore its patterns, make use of its patterns, then use those patterns to fight the supernatural itself.”
Looking at this anomaly who possessed his father’s memories, Yang Jian continued:
“Now it’s time for you to fulfill your promise. Help me control that dog. I still don’t trust you even now. To guard against any accidents, so… after this is over, you must die.”