Buddhist Kingdom in a Dream (IX)

Yang Jian and Xiao Yuan were sitting in a luxurious private dining room. Before them stood a large round table laden with dishes.

Just then, a lifeless voice sounded beside Yang Jian's ear:

"Guest, all your dishes have been served. Please enjoy."

An arm covered in horrifying corpse spots reached out from beside Yang Jian, carrying a plate of steaming food.

The abrupt change of scene left Yang Jian momentarily dazed. His gaze traveled up the arm, and his pupils instantly contracted.

An old man's numb, hollow face appeared before him.

The Knocking Ghost. Qian Wanhao's grandfather.

Without a moment's hesitation, Yang Jian grabbed a plate and moved to smash it into the old ghost. He could not beat him in reality, but was he supposed to fear him in a dream too?

At that moment, however, a shard of glass flew over first and plunged viciously into the Knocking Ghost's chest, with such force that it pinned him to the dining room wall.

"Yang Jian, is that you?"

Yang Jian followed the voice and looked across the table. Lin Bei was sitting there, but he looked to be in excellent spirits, his eyes bright and alert-a stark contrast to his earlier gloomy demeanor.

"Lin Bei?"

Yang Jian was somewhat surprised to see Lin Bei, but he quickly realized what had happened. Lin Bei had been beside him at the time. It seemed he had been dragged into this dream as well.

"Yang Jian, can you tell me just what kind of damned thing we've provoked?"

Lin Bei held a small shard of glass, seemingly on guard against Yang Jian and Xiao Yuan. He could not be certain whether the Yang Jian before him was real either.

Seeing this, Xiao Yuan immediately charged at him with her sharp knife. From the look of her, she would not stop until she had stabbed Lin Bei to death. In this nightmare world, she trusted no one but Yang Jian.

"Xiao Yuan! Don't be rash!"

Yang Jian immediately stopped her. This younger cousin of his was even fiercer than he was. Yang Jian would come to blows at the first disagreement; Xiao Yuan wanted to kill the other person the moment they met.

Seeing Xiao Yuan charge at him, Lin Bei looked startled and stood up as well, gripping the glass shard and preparing to stab.

"Lin Bei, don't do anything reckless! She's my cousin."

"Your cousin?"

Lin Bei froze, then immediately looked as though everything had clicked into place. He sat down and said:

"You should've said so sooner. This cousin of yours was practically cast from the same mold as you. No wonder you're family-birds of a feather flock together."

Lin Bei had seen how Yang Jian handled things on the bus. He would not give an inch, and at the slightest disagreement, he would drag someone off the bus for a one-on-one fight. That ghost rider named Xu Feng had been brought thoroughly to heel by him.

Yang Jian's face darkened. This cousin really did have a similar personality to his, particularly when it came to fighting. Somewhat awkwardly, he said:

"Never mind that for now. How did you get here?"

Lin Bei rubbed his bald head. "I don't know either. When you activated your Ghost Domain, I suddenly felt really sleepy. Then I turned around and found myself in a mall, where dozens of headless corpses chased me, trying to kill me..."

"A mall? Headless corpses?"

Yang Jian thought of his Headless Ghost Shadow, which he had contained at Furen Mall.

It seemed that within this dream world, Lin Bei had entered a manifestation of another scene Yang Jian had experienced.

"That's right." Lin Bei nodded.

"They chased, I ran. I ran, they chased."

"Then how did you get here?"

Yang Jian looked around the private room. No matter how he looked at it, this place resembled the place where Miao Xiaoshan's older male cousin had been attacked by the Ghost in the Mirror.

Lin Bei said, "The ghost I control needs mirrors as a medium. I found a mirror in a clothing store in the mall and escaped. By the time I realized what was happening, I was already here."

Mirrors? Yang Jian thought of how he and Xiao Yuan had just fallen into a world filled entirely with mirrors. There had also been an eerie giant Buddha there.

Yang Jian looked at the glass shard in Lin Bei's hand. That giant Buddha might have something to do with him.

But Lin Bei seemed unwilling to reveal any more information about his own ghost.

After all, information that concerned his own life was not something he would readily reveal even under normal circumstances, let alone now, when he still doubted whether Yang Jian was real.

Lin Bei had been observing Yang Jian all along. He still could not be sure whether Yang Jian was real.

"Can you tell me now just what kind of damned thing we've provoked? This place is far too strange. Normally, even if I entered a dream, I wouldn't experience those bizarre things."

Even if he entered a dream, he would not enter this place...

Yang Jian keenly picked up on something odd in Lin Bei's final sentence.

Yang Jian had now lost all his supernatural powers. He was no longer the Ghost Eye Yang Jian people spoke of, but an ordinary person. All he could do was devote himself to analyzing every piece of information currently available to him.

In other words, this isn't the first time Lin Bei has encountered something supernatural involving dreams. Back on the bus, his condition looked very much like he was asleep and being hunted by a ghost in his dream...

Following that line of reasoning, Lin Bei very likely has some means of countering nightmares. Otherwise, he couldn't have survived in the dream while that Mummified Bride was attacking him.

But the most important thing now is to confirm that he's real, so nothing else goes wrong.

At that thought, Yang Jian said, "I can only tell you what I know, but before that, wait a moment."

As he spoke, Yang Jian picked up a plate from the table, spun around, and smashed it into the Knocking Ghost pinned to the wall.

Bang!!

With a dull thud, Yang Jian's blow actually caved in the Knocking Ghost's head. Yang Jian raised his hand and followed up with a stab, driving the knife straight through his heart.

Not to mention that Yang Jian was now an ordinary person, possessing the full range of emotions-joy, anger, sorrow, and delight. That long-absent feeling made him feel as though he were back in his school days with Zhang Wei.

"Try knocking on my door again."

Feeling much better, Yang Jian tossed aside the tableware stained with black blood and sat back down.

"All right, let's continue."

Across from him, Lin Bei watched, dumbstruck. He suddenly remembered that he seemed to have knocked on Yang Jian's door today as well, and a wave of belated fear washed over him.

And after witnessing Yang Jian's brutal beating of an elderly man just now, Lin Bei could almost confirm that the Yang Jian before him was the genuine article.

Throughout the entire supernatural circle, anyone who knew Yang Jian would have no doubts about the authenticity of the Yang Jian before them after seeing that scene.

Lin Bei wiped the cold sweat from his bald head and said, "Well, um... Captain Yang, about me knocking on your door today..."

"Don't knock next time."

Yang Jian picked up a tissue and wiped the filthy blood from his hands.

"Back to business. I don't have much information about this dream world yet. All I know is that it's a ghost my dad once controlled."

"Your dad?!"

Lin Bei looked somewhat surprised, but after looking at Yang Jian, then at Xiao Yuan, he felt it made perfect sense. It seemed no one in this family was particularly normal.