The Buddhist Kingdom in the Dream (10)

"That's right."

Yang Jian nodded.

"It was my dad, but that doesn't matter anymore. The dead should be properly buried in the ground."

Yang Jian glanced at Xiao Yuan and continued:

"In this dream world, ghosts can be killed. In other words, we just need to find the ghost at the source of this nightmare and kill it to get out."

"Ghosts can be killed?"

Lin Bei froze for a moment, then immediately understood what Yang Jian meant. In this dream world, the ghosts that appeared likewise followed the nightmare's own rules of killing, adhering to the nature of malicious ghosts.

Yang Jian nodded and continued, "A malicious ghost can recreate the experiences of those drawn into the dream, then use those experiences to kill them. To get out, we have to find it while under its attacks and kill it."

Lin Bei frowned. Yang Jian made it sound simple, but actually doing it would be as difficult as ascending to heaven.

The fact that it could draw him into a dream without his noticing meant this malicious ghost had a higher terror level than the one that had previously hunted him in his dreams, and was far more dangerous.

And this was only the initial stage of entering the dream. As time passed, the dream would only grow more perilous.

Lin Bei had confirmed that Yang Jian was real. He said, "Captain Yang, I don't have any supernatural abilities here. I'm no different from an ordinary person right now."

Yang Jian nodded and raised his mutilated left hand. "It's the same for everyone. No one has any supernatural abilities in the dream."

Lin Bei glanced at Yang Jian's left hand and continued.

"My situation is rather special. A ghost has been hunting me in my dreams all along, but the supernatural power I control can keep it from finding me. As long as there's a mirror to serve as a medium, I can make the malicious ghost hunting me lose its way inside the mirror."

Yang Jian began to think. Combining this with their current circumstances, he rapidly analyzed the information, trying to find the key to unraveling this bizarre dream.

Yang Jian asked, "You mean that wherever you are, as long as there's a mirror, you can use it as a medium to connect to the malicious ghost you control?"

Lin Bei nodded and said:

"You could put it that way. At first, that dream ghost tried to kill me in a small room, but I encountered a Buddha statue there. An extremely dangerous supernatural item. Even now, I still can't confirm whether I've truly gained control over it."

Deep fear showed in Lin Bei's eyes as he continued:

"After that night, the ghost kept appearing in my dreams. But through mirrors, I could travel between different scenes in the dream. That room gradually grew larger as I traveled through it, and the Buddha statue grew larger and larger along with the room's expansion..."

Yang Jian glanced at the mirror shard in Lin Bei's hand. His earlier guess had been correct: that eerie giant Buddha was indeed connected to Lin Bei.

If what Lin Bei said was true, then the malicious ghost he controlled wasn't consciousness-based. If Yang Jian had to describe it, this was a special type of malicious ghost he had never encountered before.

Mind-based.

Wherever a mirror existed, no matter where he was, even in a dream, that ghost could use Lin Bei and the mirror as mediums to invade any place.

And what Lin Bei was doing seemed less like controlling the supernatural and more like a way of making use of it.

If Yang Jian wasn't mistaken, every time the ghost attacking Lin Bei in his dreams passed through that space, it would be suppressed by the giant Buddha.

But that suppression was mutual. At those moments, Lin Bei could take advantage of the opening to indirectly control that eerie giant Buddha and use its supernatural power.

When the bus stalled, Lin Bei had gone to sleep to use the giant Buddha to contend with the Mummified Bride.

That made sense. Based on Lin Bei's information, Yang Jian could confirm that the mirrors appearing in this dream weren't there because of him, but because of Lin Bei.

With Lin Bei's arrival, the giant Buddha was also invading this space. In other words, two supernatural powers were now colliding, and this dream world was no longer merely recreating Yang Jian's experiences.

Just then, a familiar voice came from the doorway:

"Young man, what kind of car are you driving?"

"An AE86. What, want to drift?"

Zhang Wei? Yang Jian stood, walked to the doorway, and pushed the door open.

"Wait, Captain Yang!" Something suddenly occurred to Lin Bei, and he tried to stop him, but it was already too late.

The three of them were sitting in a speeding taxi. Outside the windows was Dachang City, with a light drizzle falling from the sky.

Yang Jian looked at the driver's seat. No one was there. The taxi was racing down the road at full speed, with a cold, sinister lake ahead.

Just as the vehicle was about to plunge into the lake, Yang Jian twisted sideways into the driver's seat and gripped the steering wheel with one hand. The car braked sharply, its rear drifting right along the edge of the lake.

"That was close..."

Lin Bei looked at the gloomy lake beside them. Its color was clearly abnormal.

Outside the windows, the gloomy sky hung low. Grayish-white clumps were slowly drifting down from the clouds, coating the entire world in a layer of deathly gray.

"The Ghost Painting's Ghost Domain?" A flicker of surprise crossed Yang Jian's eyes as he looked at the grayish white filling the sky.

"Impossible... The ghosts here only have their outward forms. They don't possess supernatural powers."

Then Lin Bei spoke. "Maybe something's gone wrong with the World in the Mirror where the Buddha statue is..."

"Imitation, but not imitation in the true sense. As long as something has been reflected in a mirror, it can be simulated. But only its outward manifestations can be simulated, not the real thing. This Ghost Domain is an illusion."

Yang Jian considered this after hearing it.

Lin Bei had still been on the bus when the Ghost Painting went out of control. He had never seen its Ghost Domain, and it was even less possible for Yang Jian's younger cousin to have seen it. Of those here, only Yang Jian had seen the Ghost Painting's Ghost Domain.

Then how had that World in the Mirror Lin Bei controlled imitated the Ghost Painting's Ghost Domain...?

The only explanation that made sense was that, in its clash with the supernatural power of this dream, the giant Buddha had stolen some scenes Yang Jian had experienced from the dream.

But through this false Ghost Domain, Yang Jian could confirm that the giant Buddha had become more deeply entangled with this nightmare. That let him glimpse an opportunity, a chance to escape this place.

Xiao Yuan suddenly pointed at the rearview mirror and said, "I see that giant again."

The two men looked into the rearview mirror. A Buddha statue sat within it, its features indistinct.

It was exactly the same as the Buddha statue Yang Jian and Xiao Yuan had previously seen in that World in the Mirror.

"Again?"

Lin Bei's expression changed, and he asked:

"Captain Yang, you've seen the Buddha statue?"

"Yes." Xiao Yuan nodded.

"My cousin and I fell into a mirror just now. There was a really huge Buddha statue sitting there."

As Xiao Yuan spoke, she spread her arms to demonstrate.

Lin Bei's face went deathly pale. "Normally, I'm the only one who can see that giant Buddha..."

"What do you mean?" Xiao Yuan asked, tilting her head.

Lin Bei explained:

"I've never been able to figure out the relationship between the giant Buddha and the mirrors...

"But once, a ghost rider who had a grudge against me used a skull to invade my dream. He forcibly tore my dream apart and broke into that World in the Mirror. The instant he observed the giant Buddha, the number of giant Buddhas increased to two... Then he died, and even that skull entered a crashed state."

"What do you mean?" This time, it was Yang Jian who asked.

Lin Bei continued, "Ever since then, I've suspected that whenever someone's gaze falls on the Buddha statue in the World in the Mirror, its numbers increase. The more people see it, the more of it there are. Just like looking into mirrors, the giant Buddha uses the reflections of gazes in the mirrors to stack countless copies of itself... until it bursts that space open and fully invades reality..."

Holding the steering wheel, Yang Jian's expression grew increasingly grave as he listened. According to Lin Bei, this Buddha statue was far too mind-based.

He and Xiao Yuan had entered that World in the Mirror. By rights, they should have died the instant they saw the Buddha statue.

Yet both of them had survived. It seemed that the Buddha statue had fallen behind in its struggle against the dream and been suppressed by it.

But according to Lin Bei, the Buddha statue could stack its own supernatural power independently. As long as gazes and mirrors existed, one day the number of Buddha statues would stack up beyond even this dream's ability to suppress them...

He looked at the Buddha statue in the rearview mirror. This dream world and that World in the Mirror were now colliding with and invading each other.

If another all-encompassing attack like the one by the female corpses from Ghost Lake occurred, those corpses' gazes would make the giant Buddha's numbers grow exponentially, reaching a terrifying figure.

At this thought, another possibility suddenly occurred to Yang Jian. Perhaps that World in the Mirror had been created by someone in the past using some supernatural power to imprison that eerie Buddha statue there. It was only Lin Bei's appearance that had allowed this giant Buddha to reemerge into the world.