A Buddhist Kingdom in Dreams (6)

With that thought, Yang Jian continued, "And then?"

"Then I got an assignment from headquarters to come to DQ City. They said there was a suspected supernatural incident here and told me to investigate. But on the way, I ran into what happened in Dahai City, and the plane was forced to land. It kept getting delayed, so I only just got here."

Yang Jian nodded. It seemed the fall of Dahai City had affected many places. Ghost handlers in Dajing City and elsewhere had all been caught up in it.

Headquarters was now so severely short-staffed that they had dispatched Lin Bei at short notice to investigate the abnormalities in DQ City.

"What about you, Yang Jian?" Lin Bei suddenly asked. "Did you come to DQ City on an assignment from headquarters too?"

Yang Jian shook his head. "I'm only here on personal business."

Lin Bei sounded somewhat regretful. "Really? That's a shame. The chances of survival would be much higher working with you."

Unless they were particularly close, people in charge generally would not take the initiative to help one another. After all, no one had absolute confidence when facing the supernatural. One mistake, and anyone could capsize in a gutter.

Then Lin Bei added, "I've been hearing about your exploits lately. Looks like I'll have to call you Captain Yang soon."

Yang Jian replied expressionlessly, "Just an empty title. Nothing more than a higher-ranking wage slave."

The two walked out of the stairwell. Lin Bei reached out to catch a snowflake, and his expression shifted slightly.

"This snow... something's wrong with it... The supernatural presence is very faint, but the ghost inside me is reacting strangely. It's a little like suppression, but it doesn't quite match the signs of being suppressed..."

Yang Jian said, "I'd suggest you leave DQ City as soon as possible. Even just judging by what we can see, the snowfall covers almost all of DQ City. There isn't much you can do here alone."

Yang Jian offered his advice. Once a ghost's influence reached the scale of an entire city, a single ghost handler could do very little. That was what his experience had taught him.

Lin Bei nodded in agreement. Yang Jian's analysis was accurate. When the supernatural covered too large an area, even a ghost handler with a Ghost Domain could only run themselves ragged trying to find the source ghost.

"Oh, right," Yang Jian added.

"Don't knock on my door casually again. My nerves are very sensitive. I might accidentally hack someone to death."

Seeing that Yang Jian did not seem to be joking, Lin Bei immediately said, "All right..."

Just then, Yang Jian's satellite phone rang.

Wang Shanshan's slightly hurried voice came through. "Yang Jian, come back quickly. Xiao Yuan is going around killing people. I can't stop her!"

"Killing people?"

Yang Jian was somewhat surprised. Although his younger cousin had shown some abnormalities earlier, they had not been so severe that she would kill people indiscriminately.

"Don't panic. Take your time and tell me what happened."

Wang Shanshan continued, "After you left, your mother and I stayed in the village, chatting with the elderly villagers. Just now, when we got home, screams suddenly came from the village entrance. I saw it with my own eyes... Xiao Yuan plunged a dagger into a child's chest..."

"Understood. I'll come back right now."

Yang Jian continued, "Liu Xiaoyu, send people over immediately. Stop my cousin first and wait for me to return."

Liu Xiaoyu's voice immediately came through the phone. She had been listening to what was happening on Yang Jian's end all along.

"Staff are already on their way."

A trace of gravity flashed through Yang Jian's eyes. It seemed this cousin of his was even stranger than he had imagined.

Killing people indiscriminately for no reason was very similar to a ghost handler on the verge of ghost revival, but Xiao Yuan's condition did not look at all like that of someone who had controlled a malevolent ghost.

Hanging up, Yang Jian said to Lin Bei, "I've got something to deal with. I'm leaving."

With that, Yang Jian was about to turn and leave.

Suddenly, without any warning, Yang Jian's vision blurred. His eyelids felt so heavy they might close at any moment, and a wave of drowsiness surged over him.

It felt as though something very heavy was pressing down on his eyelids, forcing him to close his eyes.

Without any hesitation, a swath of scarlet instantly expanded, enveloping the area.

Lin Bei looked at Yang Jian's signature Ghost Domain in alarm. He immediately pulled a piece of glass from inside his coat and went on guard.

"Yang Jian?! What happened? Were you attacked by a malevolent ghost?!"

Yang Jian said nothing. Amid the dense red light, he stood silently in place. The drowsiness grew fiercer, his eyelids heavier, as though he would fall asleep the very next second.

"Son, what's wrong?"

Liu Jing's voice came from behind him. Startled, Yang Jian whipped around. His surroundings were now a hospital ward. Liu Jing lay in the hospital bed, with a trace of tears still at the corners of her eyes.

A dream?! Consciousness?! An illusion?! Had Lin Bei attacked me?!

Several possibilities sprang into Yang Jian's mind in an instant.

Liu Jing repeated what she had just said.

Yang Jian did not respond. Instead, he examined his surroundings, but there was nothing abnormal about the room. It was the hospital ward he had visited earlier.

Suddenly, without bending her knees at all, Liu Jing rose straight upright. An old straw rope had somehow slipped around her neck. Then the rope jerked upward, hanging Liu Jing from the ward's ceiling.

The hazy darkness of night obscured Liu Jing's face. Only her two pupils, reflecting an eerie light, stared fixedly at Yang Jian. Even though her neck had been stretched long by the hanging, her mouth kept repeating:

"Son, what's wrong..."

Staring at Liu Jing before him, Yang Jian suddenly felt something called emotion. He experienced joy, anger, sorrow, and happiness once again, as though he had returned to his school days.

He lunged forward, about to raise the Ghost Hand and give this ghostly thing a vicious slap.

But Yang Jian shook his sleeve in astonishment. It was empty. His left hand had actually disappeared. No, it had not disappeared-he simply had no left hand.

It was not just the Ghost Hand. The Ghost Eye, Ghost Shadow, and Ghost Lake had all disappeared too. But what surprised Yang Jian even more was that he had completely adapted to having no left hand. His body did not feel anything was wrong at all, as though he had been born this way.

Without any hesitation, Yang Jian spun around, opened the door, and rushed out of the ward.

"Cousin? You're here!"

The scene changed abruptly. Yang Jian looked at the sight before him in surprise.

On a country lane, Xiao Yuan stood in a raincoat, holding a dagger and frantically stabbing a corpse in front of her.

As she stabbed, she looked at Yang Jian with a smile. The scene was extremely eerie.

Yang Jian stared at Xiao Yuan. He was gradually calming down now. The emotions that had just returned had left him a little worked up for a moment.

But Yang Jian reacted quickly. After seeing Xiao Yuan, he began rapidly analyzing the supernatural phenomena he had encountered.

The attack he had suffered, his vanished supernatural powers, the abruptly changing scenes, and Xiao Yuan before him.

And he could not control any of the scenes unfolding here now. He could only passively follow events as they developed. The feeling was just like being in a dream.

It reminded him of a malevolent ghost dossier he had once read: Nightmare.