Buddhist Realm in a Dream (VIII)

Xiao Yuan glanced back at the female corpse, aimed at its head, and hurled the dagger in her hand with all her strength.

Splash!

The female corpse was actually sent flying backward by Xiao Yuan's dagger and fell into the rushing lake water.

Gripping Xiao Yuan, Yang Jian charged onward along the increasingly slippery path. The corpses raining down on either side had gradually begun crashing onto the path.

An unbroken series of dull thuds sounded behind them. Even out of the corner of his eye, Yang Jian could see countless female corpses rising from the water, as though they were being forcibly dragged up from the riverbed.

"Cousin, let go of my hand for a second."

Xiao Yuan pulled her hand out of Yang Jian's grip, produced another knife from somewhere, and hacked furiously at a female corpse that had already drawn close to them.

Yang Jian watched his younger cousin hacking away while giggling. She was outrageously fierce, nothing like him, who could only be suppressed in the face of Ghost Lake.

Xiao Yuan seemed to be slashing wildly, but every strike actually landed precisely on the female corpse's heart, neck, or chest. Her movements were exceptionally accurate, as though honed through countless trials.

Xiao Yuan suddenly turned to Yang Jian and said:

"Cousin, run faster. I've never seen these corpses before. There are a bit too many of them."

Yang Jian quickened his pace, but Xiao Yuan's words made him realize something:

Every anomaly that had appeared in this nightmare so far had been connected to him, whether it was the Ghost Rope's attack or the current Ghost Lake.

This dream seemed able to read other people's life experiences, manifesting everything Yang Jian had once experienced within this nightmare.

This reminded Yang Jian of another supernatural item in his possession.

That bloodstained old newspaper.

That newspaper could alter other people's memories. Combined with this ghost that could pull people into dreams, could it modify someone's memories without them noticing at all?

Perhaps his younger cousin's abnormality was the result of one of his father's experiments with the supernatural...

At some point, the path beneath their feet had turned muddy. They could even kick up splashes as they ran.

The path seemed to be narrowing. No... it was not the path that had changed. The water on both sides had actually begun to rise! It slowly pressed down toward them.

The female corpses standing on the lake's surface drew closer and closer. At this rate, they would soon engulf the two of them completely.

Just then, Xiao Yuan rummaged inside her clothes and actually pulled out a handgun.

Running beside her, Yang Jian stared in surprise. His cousin could actually get her hands on firearms. The restrictions on guns were extremely strict now; ordinary people did not even have a channel through which to ask about them.

The gun had a streamlined shape overall and seemed to be made of some kind of transparent glass. Yang Jian did not know much about firearms, but judging by its appearance, it was probably one of those homemade guns circulating among civilians.

Xiao Yuan raised her hand and pulled the trigger at the nearest female corpse.

Bang!

With an enormous gunshot, a female corpse was sent flying backward, knocking over a whole swath of corpses with it.

But this was only a cup of water against a burning cartload of firewood. More female corpses were surrounding them.

Yang Jian discovered that these female corpses did not possess the real Ghost Lake's supernatural power. They merely had its appearance.

Yang Jian looked at Xiao Yuan. "There are too many of them. Xiao Yuan, got another knife? Get your cousin one too."

"Here." Xiao Yuan pulled two more sharp knives from her bag, keeping one and handing the other to Yang Jian.

Yang Jian felt somewhat embarrassed. Just how much stuff was this cousin carrying?

But since physical treatment could work, a flicker of excitement crossed Yang Jian's eyes. He now possessed the emotions of a normal person.

And when it came to fighting, he had never lost.

With Yang Jian joining in, the female corpses on either side were actually unable to approach them for a time. A hollow pocket of safety briefly formed around them.

Although the cousins fought together fiercely, this nightmare world seemed unwilling to rest until it killed them both. The corpses falling from the sky actually began hurtling toward them.

Yang Jian turned sideways to dodge a female corpse crashing down at him.

"Can't this ghost handle losing? Now it's playing dirty."

The falling corpses grew more and more densely packed. If it had been a drizzle before, it was now a downpour.

The entire sky was a dark mass of corpses. Before one could land, the next slammed into it, driving them both toward the ground.

Crack...

Amid this chaos, the sound of breaking glass came from beneath their feet. Startled, Yang Jian looked down.

At some point, the path had turned into an enormous mirror. Strangely, however, its entire surface reflected only Yang Jian and Xiao Yuan.

"A mirror...?"

Yang Jian suddenly thought of Miao Xiaoshan's cousin. He had once been trapped inside a mirror by a ghost connected to mirrors. His guess had been right: every anomaly manifested in this dream world was connected to his own experiences.

As they ran, the cracks grew denser, rapidly spreading like a spiderweb, as though the whole thing would shatter in the next second.

"Xiao Yuan! Hold on to me!"

Yang Jian only had time to shout that one sentence.

Crack!

With a sharp crack, the mirror beneath their feet immediately collapsed and shattered. Before either of them could react, a sensation of weightlessness abruptly struck, and they plunged underground.

Wind howled past their ears. They were falling fast, but even after nearly ten seconds of free fall, Yang Jian still could not see the end.

If they kept falling like this, they would smash to their deaths!

Suddenly, a dazzling white light flashed. Only then did Yang Jian discover, to his surprise, that they had fallen into an exceptionally vast space whose boundaries were difficult to discern.

Mirrors surrounded them in every direction.

Countless enormous mirrors connected to one another, forming the walls of this space. Each reflected a deathly pale light that left Yang Jian dizzy and disoriented.

"What is this...?"

At the very center of this expanse of light and shadow sat a Buddha statue so enormous that words could not describe it.

The Buddha statue blotted out the sky and sun, absurdly immense. They had been falling for so long, yet they still had not passed its head.

The entire Buddha statue seemed to have been carved from dark yellow stone, yet beneath the white light, it gave off a lifeless sheen. It looked more like the skin of a corpse, exceptionally eerie.

From Yang Jian's perspective, nothing obscured the Buddha statue's face, yet it remained a blur.

Through that indistinct view, Yang Jian could only sense that the Buddha statue was half-smiling, kindly and benevolent, and glaring with eyes wide in fury.

Three entirely different expressions actually appeared in Yang Jian's eyes at the same time. Intense dissonance and dizziness assailed him through his vision, and this bizarre sense of visual displacement made his stomach churn.

"A Buddha statue?"

A trace of doubt flashed through Yang Jian's mind. He had never experienced any supernatural incident involving a Buddha statue in his memory.

Could my memories have been altered by that newspaper...? Like that time at home when I called the Newspaper Ghost Dad...

Just as Yang Jian was pondering this.

"Ow! That hurts!"

Xiao Yuan and Yang Jian landed bottom-first on a bench. Xiao Yuan immediately sprang up, rubbing her bottom as she hopped about.