New Gods of North America

After seeing David Mills ultimately and successfully being "convinced" by the other party,

Wayne was certain that something was wrong with this world, so he silently walked into the restroom, contemplating countermeasures in front of the mirror.

According to the script given by the evil spirit earlier,

unless there's some strange, unexpected twist, based on normal logic, the next part of the plot should be that everyone follows the trail of "Viper" and continues to the next location for a search.

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

Therefore, Wayne quickly made a judgment:

It's more likely that "I," or "my group," has been targeted.

The reason is simple:

If you see all the other vehicles on the highway driving in the opposite direction, a rational person should really consider whether they are the one driving in the wrong direction.

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

Conversely, assuming another situation,

if that evil spirit is truly powerful enough to control all these clergy members in the neighborhood without anyone noticing,

then Wayne would feel that it might not be a bad idea to temporarily follow the script written by the evil spirit...

In that case, jumping ship would have to wait until dawn or until they're far away.

So, rather than thinking that everyone else is controlled, it's better to first try to "awaken oneself."

Theoretically, when humans are trapped in dreams or illusions, there are at least two effective ways to wake up:

One is called the "sensation of falling," for example, many people suddenly wake up after dreaming of "falling off a cliff."

The other is called "pain," in fact, even a mosquito bite can instantly wake someone up.

Perhaps, in essence,

both of these methods may be stimulating the survival instincts and self-preservation programs in the human subconscious.

Well, Wayne isn't really sure if these claims are reliable, but that's what they say in movies and TV shows.

"You've already realized you're in a dream?"

Wayne took a few sips of holy water in the restroom, and then he saw himself in the mirror suddenly start talking to him, "Unfortunately, holy water is completely ineffective in this situation. You are destined to be trapped in the dream forever."

So confident?

While Wayne was thinking this, he didn't waste any words with himself in the mirror.

His mind raced for a few seconds, and he decisively chose the "pain" solution, preparing to shoot himself to see if he could "wake up."

Obviously,

Wayne's body has had extensive experience with being shot. One shot is unlikely to kill him, but if he's guided by a hallucination to fall from a height and "shatter," he might not be able to recover.

So, amidst the astonishment of the "self" in the mirror,

Wayne rolled up his sleeves, quickly pulled out his spare pistol loaded with ordinary bullets, and shot himself in the arm—not the head, because a headshot is too damaging, and not the flesh, because he was worried that the bullet would fly out and accidentally injure someone else.

According to Wayne's plan, if this dream is real enough, he might be awakened by the pain,

and if this dream is not real enough, then when the dream is "seen through," that might be when he wakes up.

"Bang—"

...

Wayne suddenly looked up, feeling as if he had dreamed in class.

He snapped back to reality, and the scene before him instantly changed dramatically.

Wayne found himself back in the scene where everyone had finished inspecting the house, and he was about to say goodbye to the beautiful young lady.

At this moment, in the minimalist lines of sight, Wayne still couldn't see anything unusual, and even the severe pain of the bullet entering his arm seemed like an illusion.

His arm now looked as good as new, without any visible or palpable wounds or bloodstains.

Then everything cycled again.

The group discovered the cobra, attempted to capture it but failed, everyone went to find David Mills, and then he entered the restroom alone to think of countermeasures.

The "self" in the mirror looked smug, "I don't mean to provoke you, but you are destined not to wake up from the dream."

Wayne thought for a moment and pulled out his revolver from the holster again:

"Since it's a dream, can I do whatever I want?"

"This is not your dream; you are just a passerby. But for yourself, that's 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 bit dangerous, "Even something like this can happen."

Then Wayne saw the scene in the mirror suddenly change.

The Wayne on the other side of the mirror rolled up his sleeves, quickly pulled out the revolver, and shot himself on this side:

"Bang—"

...

After that, there were similar cycles twice in a row.

The third time, Wayne tried to compete with the other side to see who could draw their gun faster, and then the other side was even more ruthless, directly choosing "self-termination" in the mirror.

The fourth time, the plot was a little more flashy: the house caught fire, everyone came to help, the evil spirit was destroyed, the masses were grateful, and finally Wayne discovered that everything was fake, and then he was "Bang!"-ed.

After the fifth gunshot, Wayne looked up again,

finding himself once again back in the scene where everyone had finished inspecting the house, and he was about to say goodbye to the beautiful young lady.

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

The feeling was not easy to describe: his breathing gradually became rapid, his consciousness gradually became blurred, he suddenly felt very sleepy, and even the surrounding temperature seemed to have become a little colder.

This time, the beautiful young lady smiled at Wayne, "You are sinking deeper and deeper into the dream. If this continues to cycle, I am sure you will die here."

Wayne had now preliminarily confirmed the situation and was not fooled by it:

"You're lying. This is not a dream at all, and it has nothing to do with the so-called 'cycle.'"

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

Although at this time, according to Wayne's five senses, he should not have any wounds on his body,

after the self-healing ability was activated, Wayne's spiritual intuition could still feel the spiritual power in his body being consumed in a real way, and then it continued to be consumed until about 3% stopped.

This is roughly the normal consumption for Wayne to self-heal non-fatal and non-critical injuries—such as the gunshot wound he had previously made in his arm.

Wayne first noticed this when he found that he seemed to be experiencing increasingly severe blood loss,

but he could not feel any wounds on his body.

At that time, Wayne vaguely had a guess: could the evil spirit's ability be "to cut off and change other people's sensory perceptions"?

That is, the so-called "blindfold"?

Anyone who is deceived by this evil spirit may be like a monitor that has been deliberately connected to the wrong video cable, or a Bluetooth headset that has been quietly connected to other devices, or a monitoring system that has been hacked.

Perhaps the pictures displayed in front of you have been tampered with, the sounds you hear are completely from other places, and even the senses of touch and smell are no longer trustworthy.

But fortunately, reality is reality. When the car's fuel is not enough, simply modifying the data on the sensor or panel will not allow the driver to be unaffected.

And if you reverse the reasoning along this line of thought, then the evil spirit's logic is easy to understand.

The evil spirit initially wanted to deceive everyone to leave as soon as possible, and then turned to trying to keep everyone, essentially to reduce the possibility of its location being discovered by other members of the church.

And the evil spirit's repeated actions in the cycle were perhaps all to slowly exhaust Wayne to death, while also trying to prevent Wayne from shooting again and attracting others—the gunshots emitted by the evil spirit in the hallucination may only be heard by Wayne alone, but the gun in Wayne's hand will really make a sound.

In a nutshell,

this thing probably does not have direct killing ability.