Chapter 738 705 The Man Who Should Have Died

Yang Jian had never expected that after chasing out of the village, the ghost he’d finally catch up to would bear such a face.

The face was the spitting image of his father’s portrait, sharing a striking resemblance with him.

This bizarre encounter in a nightmare made Yang Jian feel as if he had found his long-lost father, unfamiliar as he was, yet it stirred his heart and he couldn’t gather himself to fight right away.

In the dream, he wasn’t affected by his own ghost shadow, Yang Jian here was emotional, a perfectly normal person.

“I must act quickly,” Yang Jian’s reason was urging him to end this nightmare as soon as possible.

He was quickly recovering from his astonishment, ready to take out the person before him.

However, the figure in front of him, covered in mud, wearing outdated clothes, and looking exactly like his father from the portrait, suddenly opened his mouth and spoke, “You’re more excellent than I had imagined.”

“Hm?”

Upon hearing these words, Yang Jian’s pupils shrunk sharply, his heart almost jumping out, and he couldn’t help but back away several steps.

The ghost before him had actually spoken.

This completely overturned his worldview, shocking him profoundly, even more, terrifying and unbelievable than any supernatural event he had encountered before.

“The ghost is still in the village, to be precise, I’m not a ghost.” The person before him spoke again, seemingly noticing the shock in Yang Jian’s eyes.

“What exactly are you? My father’s portrait? A mutant with living memories, or… are you my father?” Yang Jian stared intently at him, still gripping the rusted steel bar he was using as a weapon tightly in his hand.

Should anything unexpected happen, he would fight without hesitation.

The person before him had a cold, somewhat wooden expression, not like a living person, “To be precise, I am neither a portrait nor a mutant, and certainly not your father… I am a memory that exists in this nightmare, no, that’s not a sufficient description. I should be more like a ghost with living memories… just incomplete.”

“What?”

Yang Jian was still gripped by astonishment.

A ghost with living memories?

In an instant,

he thought of an experimental direction that Wang Xiaoming had been doggedly pursuing. That fellow was attempting to create the perfect ghost master through various methods.

And the perfect ghost master was exactly a ghost with living memories.

How terrifying would a ghost become with the thoughts of a living person?

It was unimaginable.

Not to fear the resurrection of fierce ghosts, not to die, not to fear any supernatural events, even to use some strange objects without any cost, and to keep contending with real fierce ghosts indefinitely.

Even the most ordinary ghost, if able to be perfectly mastered, could instantly surpass the current Yang Jian.

But the person before him now said he was incomplete.

“So what are you exactly now?” Yang Jian stared at the mutant who looked exactly like his father’s portrait.

The person continued with a deadpan face, “You could consider me someone who has been dead for over a decade, or perhaps, just another ghost in this nightmare.”

“So, you are not my father?” Yang Jian asked again.

The person’s face was calm and numb, as if in thought or perhaps in reminiscence, “A person exists by their memories, and my memories stopped over a decade ago; and I am well aware that I’ve died. Can someone who’s been dead for over a decade still be considered your father?”

“So you could say that I’m a mutant with your father’s memories.”

He did not admit to being Yang Jian’s father, but he did not deny it either, because he was what remained of Yang Jian’s father after his death, a segment of memory that should have vanished but instead survived in this nightmare-fueled Meishan Village due to the power of the supernatural.

Yang Jian’s gaze flickered slightly; he was starting to grasp the meaning behind the words of the person before him.

He himself did not know what he was.

If put more abstractly, this was an obsession of the dead, accompanying the nightmare.

“Now is not the time to dwell on this question. I think you must have many questions, and I don’t have much time to give you; the ghost has been searching for me, so ask whatever you wish to know and I can answer for you,” the man said.

Yang Jian’s gaze sharpened, and he directly asked, “How did you die?”

“After experiencing some unknown supernatural events, I was eroded by a fierce ghost, so I thought of a special method, but it failed. Thus, I died and became what I am now. If I had survived, perhaps I could have become the perfect master of fierce ghosts, rather than being trapped in this endless nightmare,” the person spoke.

“I’ve encountered someone called Old Qin, who said he was the one who hit you with his car,” Yang Jian continued.

“Old Qin? He’s not dead yet? He’s a very mysterious person, I don’t know much about him,” the person recalled woodenly, “He drove a supernatural bus, trying to stop the resurrection of fierce ghosts, endlessly transporting them from reality back to some strange place.”

“Day after day, year after year, never resting, and that job could only be done by him. I once had the chance to become the next bus driver, but my failure meant that Old Qin had to choose someone else.”

Yang Jian was slightly surprised.

He had not expected that the old man from the headquarters had been silently contributing for so many years.

“Was he successful?” the person asked.

“It must have failed. I went to see that eerie bus, and there was a driver on it, but he was already dead, a corpse,” Yang Jian said.

Only at this moment did he suddenly understand why he had seen a dead man acting as the driver when he got on that supernatural bus.

It turned out that the man couldn’t hold on anymore, and one day he died on the bus, which then led to the bus being without a driver.

“Old Qin was right, there’s no stopping the resurgence of malevolent ghosts; he did his best,” the man said slowly, obviously having experienced a lot in the past.

Yang Jian then asked, “There’s a body near the village, cut into three parts, along with two human heads. What is that about?”

“That’s the body of a ghost. Once the ghost from the nightmares kills me, it will go and reclaim its own body. When that happens, the ghost will awaken from the nightmares, and once awake, it can pull reality directly into the nightmares—a supernatural event with no solution. And those nightmares will get more dangerous day by day. With your current ability, you won’t even be able to survive the first day’s nightmare,” he said.

At that moment, the man turned and walked into the forest. Yang Jian’s expression shifted slightly, and he followed.

“If it weren’t for Old Qin driving the bus and knocking that ghost unconscious, there would be no way to deal with it. A lot of people would have died,” he said.

“Knocked out cold?” Yang Jian immediately understood.

It was Old Qin who, driving the supernatural bus, had hit the ghost, causing it to crash.

It was just that kind of crash was not complete, or rather the ghost was gradually waking up from that crashed state, which is why this supernatural incident occurred.

“Burying pieces of the ghost’s body in three different places outside the village serves as a form of protection for the village. The ghost doesn’t have that many thoughts; it’s looking for its body, yet it senses three different locations. What would the ghost do in this situation?” the man said, walking into the dim forest.

The light around them suddenly became gloomier.

Yang Jian hesitated for a moment but still followed. He said, “If three identical targets appear at the same time, the ghost is likely to keep wandering.”

“Exactly, hence the ghost keeps lingering around the village, and that’s why I hid inside the village and avoided the ghost’s attacks,” the man explained. “The ghost is looking for me and its body, but it has not succeeded. This situation has continued until now… Tonight, the balance was broken.”

“During the day, I found those bodies and put them together, and that might be why the balance was disrupted,” Yang Jian said, his gaze flickering.

He put the bodies into body bags, cutting off the ghost’s sensing ability.

So the ghost no longer lingered near the village; instead, it came straight for the man in front of him.

The calm had been shattered by himself.

“I knew that the balance would be broken sooner or later. Leaving the body there was a lure, hoping that someone would discover it, could find it. After all, anyone who finds the body is definitely related to the supernatural and might be able to solve the current predicament,” the man continued.

It seemed like he had been waiting for this day all along.

Or perhaps he also wanted to be liberated.

After all, not everyone can endure the relentless fight with a real ghost in nightmares for so many years.

“There was an extra head among the bodies, whose is it?” Yang Jian asked.

“One is the ghost’s, the other is mine. I became an aberration because of that head. If that head were gone, I wouldn’t be able to appear in the nightmares,” the man said as he continued to walk deeper into the forest.

Yang Jian observed his surroundings; this was his third visit to this forest, and it was different from during daytime.

The area had expanded.

It was as if boundless and had become denser.

One could get lost here, unable to see the outside scene.

“Did you save me from the last nightmare?” Yang Jian asked.

“You could say that. Someone like you shouldn’t die in this nightmare. You have more important things to do. Besides, your being here means my task is already complete. What happens next is up to you,” the man said.

“What do you mean?” Yang Jian frowned.

The man did not speak, his steps coming to a halt once more.

In front of them, a small wooden hut appeared.

The hut wasn’t damaged or collapsed; it looked exactly the same as it did over a decade ago, with no changes whatsoever.

“What is it?”

Suddenly, Yang Jian saw a shadow at the doorway of the hut. As he approached, the shadow moved.

Only upon a closer look did he realize.

It was a large black wolfhound, whose eyes lacked the wildness of a beast and instead held an indescribable eeriness.

“Why would there be a dog in the middle of nightmares?” Yang Jian exclaimed.

Could the ghost actually pull a dog into the nightmares?

The man walked over and petted the dog, saying, “After all I’ve been through, I eventually died at the hands of this ghost. I couldn’t just die for nothing; I had to achieve something. This dog is my greatest accomplishment.”

Yang Jian asked, “Is it special?”

“It’s not special right now, but if you can manage it, it can replace the ghost and become the source of this nightmare,” the man said, his tone filled with a touch of seriousness.

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by novlove.com

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