The Yin Yang Master walked over to me, took me in his arms, and said he was to blame for not taking good care of me and letting me suffer such a grievance.
The feeling of being resurrected was wonderful. I hugged the master tightly, and tears uncontrollably streamed down my face.
The doctor returned but was tactful enough not to disturb us, simply standing quietly to the side.
The master wiped away my tears with a large hand, tousling my hair vigorously, and kept saying, "It's good that you're back, it's good that you're back!"
And I just looked at the master, smiling foolishly.
It was then that the doctor stepped forward and told my master that he wanted to give me another thorough examination. The master nodded, agreeing that health was important, and carried me to the bed.
The doctor first connected all sorts of devices to me, listening to my heartbeat and checking my blood pressure, his face aglow with excitement. While examining me, he exclaimed, "This is truly a medical miracle! All the indicators clearly showed death, yet you could come back to life, and all the indicators have returned to normal now."
The master, overhearing the doctor, was exceptionally pleased and breathed a sigh of relief on top of his happiness, carrying me back to the ward.
I asked the master to put me down, but he refused, saying it felt more secure to hold me this way.
The moment we got back to the ward, I put on my clothes first, after all, who would want to run around with their butt exposed?
After getting dressed, I intended to catch up with my master, but he stopped me, insisting I eat something first. I wasn't hungry until he mentioned food. Upon hearing it, I became famished, and gobbled down seven or eight pastries called "bread" that my master brought, which were soft and sweet, and especially delicious. To this day, I occasionally go out to buy some bread, but it has never tasted quite like it did back then.
I asked the master what he had been up to these days, and he said he went to subdue demons, mentioning a fox spirit that sucked the essence of strong men, but in the end, he only managed to injure it severely, allowing it to escape. However, its wounds were severe, and it would likely take a century or so before it could wreak havoc again.
When the master asked me, I recounted everything that had happened during this period. The master said he had also heard about Old Liu's case but had not witnessed it himself, and did not know which creature was responsible. But after I spoke about the incidents at the Juvenile Delinquent Management Center, the master's expression became grave.
The master surmised that perhaps all these events could be linked, including what happened to Old Liu.
The master told me I was not suffering from delusions; instead, something had intentionally erased parts of everyone's memory, and from my description, it might have been a nightmare creature.
Hearing "nightmare creature," I asked the master if it was what people commonly referred to as "sleep paralysis." The master outright denied it, explaining that sleep paralysis occurs when a person's three spiritual fires grow exceptionally weak during deep sleep, attracting mischievous spirits to press down on the person, but they do not endanger lives.
The common experience is that you're extremely awake but unable to open your eyes or move. Even if you forcibly open your eyes and see them, it is futile since your body is pressed down by the spirits, and you cannot move at all.
However, the nightmare creature is called an evil ghost. It can lure people into having nightmares, feeding on their fear. After gaining some strength, it can even manipulate a person's thoughts, controlling them like puppets at will, and another common tactic is to erase certain memories from people.
Everything that happened before was real, wasn't just a figment of my imagination, but why haven't my memories been erased?
The Yin Yang Master couldn't explain the reason either, saying it might be because I've practiced spells, or possibly because of the protective red bib.
I reached out and touched the red bib that the Yin Yang Master had given me. It turned out to be a real treasure. Lucky I didn't lose it.
I asked the Yin Yang Master how the nightmare should be expelled, and he said that nightmares are extremely cunning and elusive. They might take the form of a shadow or a dream and can reside within a person's body. If it turns into a shadow, that's better, as it can be seen and thus eliminated. But once it coexists with a person, unless it commits evil acts, it's very difficult to detect.
Having said that, even if a coexisting nightmare is discovered, it's hard to eradicate because it's attached to a person, and magic artifacts have trouble harming it unless it can be driven out of the body.
When I was about to share my experiences from the Netherworld with the Yin Yang Master, he covered my mouth and told me not to speak of it because he had been to the Underworld too and to never mention this experience to anyone else.
Because the Underworld has an unwritten rule that anyone who's returned to the living must not speak of what they've seen or heard in the Netherworld, otherwise they will immediately be taken by the Ghost Soldiers, cast into the Eighteen Levels of Hell, and never be reborn.
I silently expressed relief, feeling truly grateful that the Yin Yang Master came here. Otherwise, I might have been visiting the Underworld again, only this time as an actor in the Eighteen Levels of Hell.
Why say that? Who wouldn't want to share such an exciting experience? All kids have that mentality, and although they say that a poor child grows up fast, I still had a strong sense of vanity at the time, otherwise, I wouldn't have chosen the path of a Yin Yang Master.
After talking for a while, I still couldn't stop worrying about the friends at the Juvenile Delinquent Management Center. Although we had only spent a few days together, they never hid anything from me.
Then I started to coax the Yin Yang Master into telling me how to eliminate nightmares. He laughed and flicked my forehead, saying that this was how a true disciple should act. If I hadn't asked him tonight, he would have left tomorrow morning without me.
The Yin Yang Master said that eliminating nightmares is actually quite simple. Just need to burn them with fire, but it's not easy to find their coexistent body.
Hearing the word "coexistent body," I thought of that rag doll, the one with the grinning mouth and blinking eyes.
I shared this information with the Yin Yang Master, and he said it seemed that the nightmare hadn't found a suitable coexistent body yet, or perhaps it had some story with that rag doll and didn't want to leave it.
Having this information was like sending charcoal in snowy weather, arriving just in time. Otherwise, it would have taken a lot of effort to find that coexistent body.
I told the Yin Yang Master about a red-dressed woman who always appeared when someone was killed. He told me that wasn't the real entity, just something the nightmare had conjured up in people's minds. The real murderer was still the entity itself.
I also shared more detailed incidents, like when I sealed the rag doll within the Demon Repelling Circle, why the red-dressed woman could still commit murder, and even killed a warden.
The Yin Yang Master said I was deceived at the time as well. It probably used deceptive tactics to fool the observer, or else a discerning person would have realized its true nature. This nightmare indeed had become something formidable.