IBGSW Chapter 2
Diverting the Disaster
The house door swung open. Amid the strange howling wind, the flame inside
the lantern showed a ghastly white color; as it lit up the
surroundings, far from making one feel comfortable all over, it instead gave
off an indescribable cold and gloomy feeling.
Yet at this moment,
this kind of cold and gloomy feeling brought an immense sense of peace to
the two brothers.
Seeing that the lantern light had not gone out, the two brothers initially felt a weight lift from their hearts. Under the dim glow, the two smiled in relief, but before they could open their mouths to speak, a violent gale suddenly swept in.
Wooo-
Under the wailing wind, the lanterns that Paperman Zhang had sworn were 'impossible to extinguish' swayed violently twice before a bizarre black human face emerged on the lantern's surface.
The face was contorted with agony and deep-seated malice. As its gaze shifted around, it glanced at the two brothers inside the room, and then, with a bang, the shadow burst apart.
As the black ghost face burst, the human-skin lantern, which had been extraordinarily sturdy, instantly ruptured and broke into pieces.
The flame inside, no bigger than a peanut, could not withstand the gale, and went out with a puff.
The room, both inside and out, was instantly plunged into darkness.
"..."
The smiles on the two brothers' faces froze instantly, and their bodies felt as if they had been plunged into an ice cellar.
"Aaaah!!!"
"Aaah—"
Two shrill screams rang out one after the other.
With the lights out, they had lost their cover. The ghost entity would find them, wrap itself around them one after the other, and keep at it until their fortunes were drained dry.
The two waited for death in despair; even the bolder older brother lost all will to resist in such a hopeless situation and slumped where he sat.
Yet what they did not know was that at the very instant the human-skin lantern burst and perished, the Investiture of the Gods on Zhao Fusheng's body was also in the middle of restarting.
At the moment the Investiture of the Gods successfully restarted, the plaque wreathed in black mist under the eaves of the manor looked as if a pair of invisible hands had wiped away some of its grime, revealing the three large, blurry characters on it: Demon-Suppression Bureau.
Boom!
Thunder and lightning lasted all night. The twin brothers in the bureau were convinced they were doomed. Just as they were waiting in despair for death, nothing strange happened that night, and they made it through safely.
As dawn broke, the thunder subsided and the rain stopped; red clouds even appeared on the horizon, framing the sunlight, a sign that today would be a rare day of fine weather.
The brothers' eyes were bloodshot as they sat back to back.
"Brother—"
Wujiu called out. Perhaps from screaming so loudly in the night, his voice was hoarse.
"Do you think the calamity has already passed?"
As he spoke, he turned to look at his brother.
His face was ashen, with bulging purple bags under red eyes. His brother was not much better. At this moment, he was completely soaked through, hair in a mess, lips cracked and peeling. Due to fear and despair, several red sores had grown on his lips overnight.
"Pr-probably..." The man nodded and tried to move his foot.
He had crouched for a whole night, and both his legs had long gone numb. Moving them now brought a needle-pricking pain. Yet the moment he thought that the calamity had passed, his eyes couldn't help but shine.
"We can't stay at the Wan'an County bureau any longer. The ghost domain nearby keeps growing, and the court has probably already given up on this place. We have to find another way out—"
As the brothers were discussing where to go next, a pale hand reached out from beneath the filthy white cloth on the plank in the middle of the hall. The cloth was pulled back, revealing Zhao Fusheng's tired, ashen face.
Her face was bloodless, and her head throbbed with pain.
She had just woken up, eyes confused, and stared fixedly at the hole in the roof above her, her mind automatically replaying last night's chaotic dream.
It felt to Zhao Fusheng as though she'd slept a very long time.
She had been working overtime lately, and a string in her mind had been pulled tight for ages; she hadn't properly relaxed or slept in a long while. Perhaps from too much stress, though she'd slept long, her sleep quality had been terrible.
She'd had a strange, bizarre dream.
She dreamt that an accident happened in her rented room, and at the brink of death, her soul had transmigrated into a place called the Great Han Dynasty, possessing the body of a girl with the same name as hers. The girl had been sold by her parents at a low price to a place called the Demon-Suppression Bureau.
When she first joined the bureau, this Zhao Fusheng had been overjoyed, thinking she'd have food and clothes and escape her hard life.
Oddly enough, right after she entered the bureau, her luck turned. It was so good she could pick up silver in the street, and whenever she was hungry, someone would unexpectedly deliver food. But the good times didn't last. As days passed, she found that her good luck always came with disaster.
From initially picking up silver to later picking up food, each stroke of fortune was matched by an injury. At first, it was just falls and minor injuries, but later it escalated to broken arms and legs.
Moreover, her body began to grow strangely cold, and she always felt a terrifying presence hiding around her body.
The two brothers who had bought her into the bureau looked at her in a way that was not quite right. The two often leaned together whispering in secret as if discussing something, and when their gazes landed on her, it was as if they were looking at a dead person.
Zhao Fusheng was frightened. Her illnesses and injuries multiplied, and every day she couldn't sleep for fear. She felt the chill pressing closer and closer to her back, her shoulders and back always heavy, as though carrying something invisible.
In the midst of that terror, bad news arrived: her parents had died in a ghost calamity. For some reason she immediately thought of her own strange bad luck and grew more afraid with every thought.
On the day her parents' bodies were carried into Wan'an County, Zhao Fusheng was in terror, but in the end she could not escape her fate. That day she had a premonition of disaster and hadn't slept in days. As she sat trembling, an unnatural cold wave approached from behind, and she turned automatically, and found a black shadow standing behind her.
Her pupils shook. Before she even had time to scream, the ghostly shadow reached out its hand. A black ghost palm pierced through her back, ripped through her chest and belly, and tore open her throat and chest cavity. In an instant Zhao Fusheng was disemboweled and dead.
The last thing in her memory was a grayish-white ghost hand ripping open her throat and appearing before her face, blood spraying. Her pupils contracted tightly.
She'd been killed by a ghost.
The suffocation and agony of dying still lingered in Zhao Fusheng's memory. Belatedly, she clapped a hand to her neck, and only after a long while did the breath held in her chest finally escape.
It was just a nightmare.
She thought with relief, yet felt something off: this nightmare was far too real.
As her thoughts returned, her eyes cleared, and she immediately noticed something strange. Above her head was not the white-painted ceiling of her rental room. Several black beams held up the roof, thick with grey cobwebs from long neglect. Most striking of all, directly above her gaped a hole about a meter across. Light poured through it, and dust floated in the beam.
A bad feeling rose in her. She felt the surface under her. It wasn't a cheap mattress but a crude, hard wooden plank.
She turned and sat up. Before her eyes lay a blood-stained white cloth. On either side of her lay two more door planks with the same white cloths over them, and beneath the cloths two human outlines.
A strange thought flashed through her mind: Mom, Dad!
No. These were the original Zhao Fusheng's parents. The day before yesterday, once news of their deaths came, the Fan brothers of the bureau had arranged to have the bodies sent here.
The memory surfaced naturally: because she had been tainted by something eerie, her entire bloodline had been killed by a ghost entity.
"..." Zhao Fusheng's hand trembled slightly, her face turning paler.
Just then, voices came from outside. Perhaps believing nobody was left in the residence, the two weren't keeping their voices down. One man said, "Brother."
He moved with a rustle and said uneasily, "According to what Paperman Zhang said, this ghost trades fortune for life. Once it wraps around someone, it drains the fortune of their whole household, and it won't leave before the whole clan dies a violent death."
"The bureau is the best example. Plagued by this ghost entity, almost everyone died. After we diverted the disaster, Zhao Fusheng's family died violently almost at once. And we survived last night unharmed. Doesn't that mean the calamity is truly over? That we're no longer bound?"
Fan Wujiu!
The name suddenly surfaced in Zhao Fusheng's mind. A young man's face flashed across it, and to her alarm, it wasn't unfamiliar. It was as if they'd known each other before.
While she was still shaken, another male voice sounded.
"In principle, once a ghost entity has killed, if no one else triggers its rules, we can be considered to have completely rid ourselves of this disaster."
"After all, the lantern went out last night, yet nothing happened to us—"
The brothers were not like ordinary people, and being in the bureau, they had their own ways of judging whether they were entangled by a ghost entity.
The man was sure nothing was on him now, which showed Paperman Zhang's method had worked.
At this moment, another name surfaced in Zhao Fusheng's mind: Fan Bisi1.
They were twin brothers, order envoys of the bureau. They had bought Zhao Fusheng from the Zhao household for five copper coins and brought her into the bureau.
The Great Han Dynasty, the Demon-Suppression Bureau, the Fan brothers, and now the bodies of the Zhao couple laid out beside her...
"..." Her vision went black. She turned her head instinctively left and right. All she could see was the bureau's ruined hall. The terrifying black shadow from her dream was nowhere in sight. But her sharp instincts told her that somewhere in the shadows, a pair of cold eyes was watching her every move. That malice washed over her and made her back prickle and her heart seize.
Outside, the Fan brothers still didn't know she was awake and continued their discussion.
"If the malignant ghost has gone and the curse on the bureau is lifted, we should leave this place right away and look for a new way out."
"The ghost domain here keeps expanding. Even in broad daylight, ghosts and monsters come and go."
"Our bureau here was wrecked by that ghost and now, everyone's dead. Staying here is a dead end. They say the bureau at Baozhi County is doing well, with a Bronze General who controls a Vicious-tier malignant ghost holding it down, very strong. Let's go and join him—" Fan Bisi was quick-witted and, compared with his impulsive brother, far steadier.
"But we already formed the soul-binding blood contract that day. The contract isn't dissolved. How are we supposed to get away from Wan'an County..." Fan Wujiu said uneasily.
"Idiot." Fan Bisi rebuked him loudly. "We find someone else to take the nominal post of chief commanding officer, then get them to strike our names from the Soul-Life Register. Problem solved..."
While the brothers talked, Zhao Fusheng, who had come back from the dead in the hall, couldn't believe her situation.
Impossible! Impossible!
How could something so absurd possibly happen? She had woken up in someone else’s body, and her nightmare had come true. She had actually become the nominal chief commanding officer of Wan'an County's Demon-Suppression Bureau, under the rule of the Great Han Dynasty.
Without a word, she threw off the shroud, leaped off the wooden plank, and dashed out of the hall.
"When we get there..." Fan Bisi was still talking when his brother seemed to hear a sound and turned his head.
In an instant Fan Wujiu's expression changed. It went from relief to terror, as if he'd seen the most horrifying thing in the world, and his pupils shook.
"Ga—ga—"
In his extreme fright he couldn't even speak properly. His arms went limp and he couldn't lift them, goosebumps ran up his spine to the back of his neck and over his scalp, and his hair nearly stood on end.
"What—"
Fan Bisi frowned and was about to speak when Fan Wujiu said in a sobbing voice, "Brother, a corpse, the corpse is moving—"
"What corpse? What nonsense are you..." he snapped, and then a familiar voice sounded.
"Impossible, impossible... how can this be..."
Barefoot, Zhao Fusheng dashed out of the courtyard toward the gate.
"...I..."
Fan Bisi watched her run out. His mind went blank, and he couldn't get a word out.
Zhao Fusheng ignored them. She dashed out through the long courtyard and appeared outside the gate.
What met her eyes was a long street, filthy and run-down, with low thatched houses on both sides. Many shopfronts were shut, a picture of decay. The shops that were open were mostly coffin shops and joss paper shops, with folded paper figurines set out in front. She looked up and down but saw no living person on the street. Perhaps from the lack of human presence, the whole street had an eerie stillness.
The scene was both foreign and strangely familiar to Zhao Fusheng. Her head buzzed. She pinned her last hope on one more thing.
Steeling herself, she lifted her head and looked at the top of the gate. A lantern hung to the left and right of the beam, and after last night's storm both had burst, exposing the lamps inside. The oil had spilled, and yellow fat dripped down the torn paper, giving off a foul stench.
Between them, under the eaves, hung a black plaque. The black haze on it had faded a little, and the outlines of three characters were faintly visible. The old Zhao Fusheng had been illiterate. But through the haze, she could read the characters on the plaque.
It read:
Demon-Suppression Bureau
