Yang Jian had seen Xiaoyuan take out that handgun in a dream. The fact that it could be brought into a dream proved the gun was not a supernatural object, but a weapon manufactured by humans.
Its streamlined, transparent body, and that terrifying power comparable to a rifle’s.
Yang Jian pondered for a moment. Xiaoyuan was suspected to have had her memories altered by his father, but unfortunately, his father had already vanished into the nightmare, and that truth had been buried along with him.
He had now effectively controlled the Ghost Dream. He could only see whether he could start from the dream and dig out Xiaoyuan’s altered memories.
Yang Jian said, “I’ll bring Xiaoyuan to Dachang City. I’ll investigate this matter.”
Wang Xiaoming waved his hand.
“Your cousin has already gone missing. When you asked me to tell you the bus’s location, headquarters’ staff lost track of her.”
“Missing?”
He had not seen Xiaoyuan in the second layer of the dream. He had always thought that, like Lin Bei, Xiaoyuan was trapped in the first layer of the dream. But now it seemed that this cousin of his might have already broken free from the dream long ago.
Thinking of this, Yang Jian nodded and said, “If you find Xiaoyuan, have her come to Dachang City to find me. Don’t threaten her with force. If someone gets killed, don’t come looking for me.”
After saying that, Yang Jian turned and left without looking back.
Wang Xiaoming stood where he was, watching the red light before him dissipate.
“Cao Yanhua was the one who asked you to probe Yang Jian just now, wasn’t he? Tell me how you feel.”
Li Jun slowly walked out from the darkness behind him. Half of his charred face made him look incomparably terrifying. He said,
“Judging from the surface alone, there are two ghosts I’ve never seen before. He’s grown too quickly. But given his personality, he seems to have recovered a little bit of his humanity. That is something that should be almost impossible.”
Wang Xiaoming nodded, then turned around and continued the research he had just put on hold.
Dachang City. One corner of the horizon suddenly flushed scarlet. After Yang Jian picked up Wang Shanshan from Meishan Village, the two of them buried his father’s remains in the small cabin in the woods, then immediately rushed back to Dachang City.
“You really don’t need to tell Auntie?”
Wang Shanshan and Yang Jian returned to the old mansion. The Ghost Child had also been let out. Perhaps because Yang Jian had kept it locked away for too long, it seemed a little lively.
Yang Jian glanced at the Ghost Child and said, “No need. If my mom found out that it was my dad who took the chest she used for her dowry and used it to hold a corpse, she’d nag for an entire day again. I left a note at home. She’ll understand.”
He took a can of cola from the refrigerator and drained it in one gulp, then casually found a sofa and lay down.
Wang Shanshan was a little surprised.
“You’re going to sleep?”
Yang Jian closed his eyes and said, “That’s right. Want to join me?”
Wang Shanshan froze for a moment after hearing that, then silently walked over and gently placed Yang Jian’s head on her lap.
“I won’t sleep. I don’t sleep much each day now. I’ll just stay here with you.”
Yang Jian was not truly trying to sleep. He would not even feel tired. But after the matter with the Ghost Dream, he had discovered that everything in dreams was incomparably real.
In dreams, he was a normal person. He could be happy, he could be sad, and he possessed all the emotions a normal person should possess.
Only in dreams could he experience what it felt like to be human. He needed to search for himself within dreams to avoid completely becoming an emotionless monster.
Lying in Wang Shanshan’s embrace made Yang Jian feel extremely at ease. His eyes slowly closed, and he sank into a deep sleep.
Daxia City.
In an abandoned old district, the air was filled with a thick stench of corpses. Looking down from high above, a semicircular ghost domain was enveloping the urban area.
Suddenly, a small black dot in the distance rapidly approached. It was an afterimage, dropping straight down from the sky, flying almost贴着 the ground. Buildings behind it kept collapsing, but each time, that figure dodged past them.
Behind that afterimage, an afro-haired man was chasing him.
“I don’t care if you’re Ye Zhen or Ye Fake. The fierce ghost I control is the strongest!”
The afro-haired man swung his hand fiercely at Ye Zhen. In an instant, a tide of corpses covered half the sky and swept toward Ye Zhen, destroying every building along the way.
Ye Zhen glanced back.
“Supernatural stacking... but why attack only with corpses...”
The longsword in his hand stabbed into the ground. Borrowing the momentum, Ye Zhen used the sword as the center and drifted in a circle on the spot before stopping, facing the tide of corpses that nearly blotted out half the sky.
“Something’s very wrong. Every corpse is a ghost that truly exists, yet this person hasn’t used any other methods to attack me. Is it a contact-type? I’ll test it first.”
A humming sound gradually rang out. Ye Zhen pulled out his longsword, and then his figure abruptly vanished from where he stood. When he reappeared, he was already closing in on the afro-haired man. He raised his sword and was about to thrust.
Seeing Ye Zhen suddenly appear, a trace of panic flashed across the afro-haired man’s face.
Just then, those hundreds upon thousands of corpses actually turned their heads in unison, all staring viciously at Ye Zhen. The corpses closest to Ye Zhen suddenly grabbed at him.
“Bang!”
Ye Zhen was sent flying backward, crashing through several cars in a row before barely coming to a stop.
He staggered to his feet in a sorry state. Rotting corpse blotches flickered continuously across his body, appearing several times in succession before slowly fading away. He raised his head and looked at the afro-haired man in midair.
“Impossible. You’ve controlled this fierce ghost for less than a week. There’s no way you could achieve this level...”
“Hahahaha!” In midair, the afro-haired man looked at Ye Zhen, whom he had sent flying, and laughed ferociously.
“I told you long ago that the fierce ghost I control is the strongest! I have the ability to end this supernatural era. I only killed a few people, that’s all. Was there any need to chase me so relentlessly? Since you want to kill me so badly, then you can go down and accompany them!”
After saying that, the ferocity on the man’s face grew even stronger. Then he dived down from midair, carrying the corpse tide with him as he attacked Ye Zhen.
Ye Zhen turned and shot away. The two of them returned to that earlier state of one chasing and the other fleeing.
Ye Zhen analyzed the earlier probe in his heart.
“An attack of that level is indeed supernatural stacking, but that doesn’t make sense... How could an ordinary person who has controlled a fierce ghost for less than a week grow to this point...”
He looked back at the corpses blotting out the sky.
“If any fierce ghost stacked to this degree, it could kill me in an instant. But he seems to only intend to use the corpses to drown me.”
“Wait... When I approached him just now, I clearly triggered the ghost’s killing pattern, but he didn’t use the ghost’s supernatural power to attack me.”
“Could it be...” A strange look flashed across Ye Zhen’s face.
“I can only try again.”
Thinking of this, Ye Zhen turned around. He spread both hands and let himself skid along the ground. His speed gradually slowed, but his eyes remained fixed on the afro-haired man and the corpse tide behind him.
The afro-haired man looked at Ye Zhen with his arms spread and said ferociously, “What’s wrong, great philanthropist? Giving up? If you had knelt down and begged me just now, maybe I would have spared your life. But now, you can honestly go die!”
The next moment, the corpse tide swallowed Ye Zhen like a pillar of water.
Within the boundless tide of corpses, Ye Zhen continuously endured the corpses’ attacks. Corpse blotches spread rapidly across his body, then quickly receded. The supernatural power of the Substitute Ghost was exerted to its limit at this moment, as if Ye Zhen would die in the very next second.
But Ye Zhen’s expression did not change in the slightest. On his deathly pale face, a pair of eyes without the slightest emotional fluctuation stared blankly at the afro-haired man before him.
“It is indeed a rather special ghost.”
“Hmm?” The afro-haired man froze.
Ye Zhen continued, “This corpse tide truly is real supernatural stacking, but you are unable to use supernatural methods to attack me.”
A hand suddenly stabbed into Ye Zhen’s chest. The afro-haired man roared viciously, “So what! You’re about to die right now!”
Ye Zhen’s expression still did not change at all. “To be able to stack to this degree, yet not even be familiar with the fierce ghost you yourself control—this does not conform to common sense.”
He grabbed the afro-haired man’s arm and pulled the hand out of his chest inch by inch.
Ye Zhen continued speaking to himself. “The moment I began to doubt, the supernatural attack against me immediately vanished. Otherwise, I absolutely could not have survived until now.”
Ignoring the afro-haired man’s shocked gaze, Ye Zhen drew the longsword at his waist.
“If I’m not mistaken, these ghosts are fake. There is only one true ghost. It’s just that before, I believed they were real, so they became real.”
After saying this, he gave the afro-haired man no time to react and pierced his chest with one sword strike.
“Borrowing the false to make it real—under certain circumstances, it can indeed catch people off guard.”
The afro-haired man looked at his own pierced chest, his face full of terror. He immediately begged,
“Don’t kill me! Don’t kill me! I’ll tell you everything!”
Ye Zhen shook his head and slowly pulled out the longsword in his hand.
“No need. I already know everything.”
Seeing Ye Zhen so decisive, the afro-haired man immediately changed back into a ferocious expression and roared, “I only killed a few women, that’s all! What right do you have to kill me! What qualification do you have to judge me! I am the one who—”
A cold flash of light streaked past. Ye Zhen carried the man’s head and landed on the ground, then placed the corpse into a body bag.
The ghost domain around him slowly contracted back into his body. Ye Zhen was just about to leave.
Just then, a memory that did not belong to him suddenly appeared in his mind. He was still standing here, just like today. Only, in that memory, there was one additional person. Across the street, a man dressed in casual clothes was walking toward him with a smile.
Ye Zhen raised his head and looked at that man.
“Shen Lin.”