New Gods of North America.

Chapter 311 Loop
After seeing that David Mills was finally successfully "persuaded" by the other party,
Wayne was sure that something was wrong with the world, so he walked silently to the bathroom and thought about what to do in front of the mirror.

According to the script given by the evil spirit before,
Unless there is a strange and unexpected development, according to normal logic, the next plot should be that everyone follows the trail of the "venomous snake" and continues to move to the next place to search.

In other words, the underlying logic behind the evil spirit's initial actions was probably that it wanted Wayne and the others to get away from the last house that was inspected as soon as possible, but then for some reason, it seemed to change its mind.

So Wayne quickly made a judgment.

Now it is probably more likely that "myself" or "my group of people" have been infected.

The reason is simple,
If you see all other vehicles on the road driving in the wrong direction, then a rational person would do well to really judge whether the person driving in the wrong direction is actually "you".

After all, "misleading one person" is normally easier than "misleading a group of people".

On the other hand, assuming another situation,
If that evil spirit is really so powerful that it can control all the clergy in the entire neighborhood without them noticing,
Then Wayne would think that it is not impossible for him to follow the script written by the evil spirit for the time being...

In this situation, if you want to defect, you have to at least wait until daybreak or run far away.

So instead of thinking that everyone else is being controlled, try to “wake yourself up” first.

Theoretically, when humans fall into dreams or hallucinations, there are at least two effective ways to wake them up.
One of them is called "falling feeling". For example, many people will suddenly wake up after dreaming that they "fall off a cliff".
The other is called "pain". In fact, even a mosquito bite can wake a person up instantly.

Perhaps in essence,

Both of these methods may stimulate the survival instinct and self-protection program in the human subconscious.

——Well, actually Wayne is not sure whether these statements are reliable or not, but that’s what they say in movies and TV shows.

"Have you found yourself in a dream?"

Wayne drank a few sips of holy water in the bathroom, then he saw himself in the mirror and suddenly spoke to himself, "It's a pity that holy water is completely ineffective in this situation. You are destined to be left in the dream forever."

So confident?

Wayne thought about this without saying much to himself in the mirror.

His mind raced for a few moments, and he decisively chose the "pain" option. He prepared to shoot himself to see if he could "wake up."

obviously,
Wayne's body has had plenty of experience with being shot, so he basically won't die from one shot. But if he's led by an illusion to fall from a height and "break into pieces", he may not be able to get it back.

So in the surprise of the "self" in the mirror,
Wayne rolled up his sleeves, quickly pulled out a spare pistol loaded with ordinary bullets, and shot himself in the arm - he didn't shoot the head because a headshot would be too damaging, and he didn't shoot the flesh because he was worried that the bullet would accidentally injure someone else after it flew out.

According to Wayne's idea, if this dream was real enough, he might wake up from the pain.
And if the dream is not real enough, then when the dream is "seen through", it may be the time when you wake up.

"boom--"

……

Wayne looked up suddenly, feeling as if he had had a dream in class.
He came back to his senses with a start, and the scene in front of him changed drastically in an instant.

Wayne found himself back to the scene when everyone had finished checking the house and he was about to say goodbye to the beautiful young lady.

At this moment, in the vision of simple lines, Wayne found that he still could not see anything unusual. Even the severe pain when the bullet hit his arm just now seemed like an illusion.

The arm now looked intact again, and no wounds or bloodstains could be seen or felt.

Then everything cycles again.
Everyone found the cobra and tried to catch it but failed. Everyone went to find David Mills together, and then he went into the bathroom alone to think about countermeasures. The "self" in the mirror looked very arrogant, "I don't mean to provoke you, but you are destined to never wake up from the dream."

Wayne thought about it and took out the revolver from the gun bag again:
"Since this is a dream, can I do anything?"

"This is not your dream. You are just a passer-by. But for you, it is true. You can do whatever you want to yourself, because no matter how many times, the situation will be the same."

The "self" in the mirror looked a little dangerous, "even something like this could happen."

Then Wayne saw the picture in the mirror suddenly change.
Wayne on the other side of the mirror rolled up his sleeves, quickly pulled out his revolver, and fired a shot at himself:
"boom--"

……

The next two times were similar cycles.
The third time, Wayne tried to compete with the other party to see who could draw the gun faster, but the other party was more determined and chose to "suicide" directly in the mirror.
The fourth time the plot is a little more fancy, the house is on fire, people come to help, the evil spirit is destroyed, the people are grateful, and finally Wayne finds out that everything is fake, and then "Bang!"

After the fifth gunshot, Wayne raised his head again.

I found myself back to the scene just now when everyone had finished checking the house and I was about to say goodbye to the beautiful young lady.

But Wayne could feel that he seemed to have become weaker again than before.

The feeling is hard to describe. My breathing gradually became rapid, my consciousness gradually became blurred, I suddenly felt very sleepy, and even the temperature around me seemed to have gotten a little colder.

This time it was the beautiful young lady who smiled at Wayne, "You have fallen deeper and deeper into the dream. If this cycle continues, I am sure you will die here."

Wayne had already preliminarily confirmed the situation at this time and was not frightened by it:

"You're lying. This isn't a dream at all, and it has nothing to do with the so-called 'loop'."

As he spoke, he began to activate his self-healing ability.

Although Wayne's five senses indicated that he had no wounds on his body,
But after the self-healing ability was activated, Wayne's spiritual intuition could still feel that the spiritual power in his body was actually being consumed, and it continued to be consumed until it reached about 3% before stopping.

This is roughly the normal consumption of Wayne's self-healing of non-fatal and non-vital injuries - such as the gunshot wound he had previously suffered in the arm.

Wayne first noticed this when he found that he seemed to be losing more and more blood.

Yet he could not feel any wounds on his body.

At that time, Wayne had a vague guess: could the ability of this evil spirit be to "cut off and change the five senses of others"?
Is this what is called "ghost covering your eyes"?
Anyone who is deceived by this evil spirit may be like a monitor that is deliberately connected to the wrong video cable, or a Bluetooth headset that is secretly connected to other devices, or a monitoring system that has been hacked.
Perhaps the images displayed in front of your eyes have been tampered with, the sounds you hear come from somewhere else completely, and even senses such as touch and smell are no longer reliable.

Fortunately, reality is reality. When the car is running low on fuel, driving cannot be unaffected by simply modifying the data on the sensors or panels.

If we follow this line of thought and work backwards, the logic of the evil spirits is easy to understand.

The evil spirit first wanted to trick everyone into leaving as quickly as possible, and then turned to try to keep everyone here. In essence, it was doing this to reduce the possibility of being discovered by other people in the church.
The evil spirit's repeated actions in the cycle may be aimed at trying to slowly wear Wayne down, while also trying to prevent Wayne from shooting again and attracting other people - the gunshots made by the evil spirit in the hallucination may only be heard by Wayne, but the gun in Wayne's hand will really make a sound.

To sum it up in one sentence,

This thing probably has no direct killing capability.

(End of this chapter)