IBGSW Chapter 105
Don't Touch the Gate
Zhao Fusheng's question came at exactly the right moment, pulling Zheng He back from the brink of losing control.
His fear of her made him rein in his rage quickly. Once the baleful light in his eyes was suppressed, he saw that Zhao Fusheng had somehow climbed several steps and was only two paces from the gate.
Even the Fan brothers and Gu Jiansheng had followed her up. Only he had been left behind, standing at the foot of the steps for a good while.
He hurried forward a couple of steps, and only then realized she had asked him something.
"The doors?"
Zheng He took a moment to react. He thought, instinctively shook his head, but after two shakes his expression changed:
"Now that you mention it, the doors did seem a bit off."
He said:
"When we got here, several door planks had been taken down, with bloody handprints all over them."
At the time, Deputy Commander Zheng hadn't thought much of it.
After the Sun family's disaster everyone had been in a panic, and a few doors knocked over in the crush was only to be expected. The Sun mansion was big, with more than eighty people living inside and out, many wing rooms and countless doors. A few collapsed doors weren't something anyone would remember.
As for the bloody handprints, that was normal too. With so many dead and such horrible deaths, it would be strange if there were no blood on them.
"A few mangled corpses were even laid out on doors. Maybe whoever came first pieced them together." Zheng He had arrived late, and with Zhao Fusheng asking for details he felt a little guilty and hastily declared:
"Later I'll call a few order envoys to ask."
"Mm," Zhao Fusheng replied.
In truth, by this point she already sensed that this ghost case was almost certainly tied to the Zhaos.
Especially that last line from Zheng He: a few corpses were laid out on doors.
This resembled the form of the revival of the Zhao couple's malignant ghosts. After the couple died, the door planks on which their bodies had lain had also become great malevolent objects accompanying the ghosts, so Zhao Fusheng suspected their killing rule was very likely tied to doors.
On the carriage, when she had told Zheng He the ghosts' tier, she'd said they were very likely still Baleful-tier because the two ghosts were incomplete.
At that thought she turned and looked at Fan Bisi.
Back then Fan Bisi, shrewd man that he was, had kept a trick up his sleeve when burying the two ghosts, burying the door planks separately.
A malignant ghost deprived of its companion malevolent object loses a great deal of strength. In other words, the malignant ghosts revived from the Zhao couple were not whole.
There was no precedent in the Great Han for two ghosts being born together and committing crimes, so Zhao Fusheng could only infer for herself.
From what she had learned, after a malignant ghost lost part of itself, whether of its body or its companion malevolent object, its first rule wasn't to kill at random.
Killing was only a side effect of its behavior. Its main purpose was probably to search for what belonged to it, and in the search, innocent people died.
In other words, the bloodbath these two ghosts had stirred up in Baozhi was only an appetizer. When their tier grew and they recovered their malevolent objects and were pieced back together, that would be when they truly went on a rampage!
"I can't let them keep killing!"
At the thought, Zhao Fusheng's heart tightened, and she resolved to close this case as quickly as possible.
Just then she heard Fan Bisi calling:
"My lord, my lord..."
"Huh? What is it?"
She turned to look at him, and Fan Bisi pointed at Zheng He beside him:
"Lord Zheng has a question for you."
She steadied herself and turned to Zheng He.
Under her gaze, Zheng He's heart clenched and he quickly asked:
"Why did you suddenly ask about the doors, my lord? Have you figured out this ghost's killing rule?"
This concerned the Baozhi ghost case and was tied to his own life. This was no time to be timid and silent, so he screwed up his courage and asked.
At his words, Fan Bisi also realized something. He exchanged looks with his brother, and thinking back to how Zhao Fusheng had looked at them earlier, they all thought at once of the two door planks stamped with ghost shadows.
But Zheng He wasn't one of their own, so the brothers wisely stayed quiet.
Zhao Fusheng wasn't about to tell him about the great malevolent objects either.
Though Zheng He now understood how terrifying the ghost calamity was, the malevolent objects a ghost spawned were far too important, and ghost-controllers had no character to speak of.
Right now Zheng He was acting respectful only because her strength could crush him. If she let her guard down and told him about the malevolent objects, he might well turn greedy and spread the word.
"I have some idea. I just thought of something."
Zhao Fusheng nodded, half truth and half evasion, said no more, and walked up to the gate.
She did not push the door. She stopped before it.
Zheng He had mentioned that several door planks in the Sun mansion were covered in bloody handprints. Perhaps influenced by his words, Zhao Fusheng felt that these two vermilion doors also carried a heavy stench of blood mixed with the smell of paint, strangely pungent.
But after careful observation she found the doors had been roughly scrubbed. Mottled blood clots were visible, but no full palm prints.
She stood at the door a long time without moving, then her eyes flashed, and she turned and called:
"Zheng He."
Gu Jiansheng, his face wrapped in gauze, thought she was waiting for someone to push the door for her, and promptly volunteered:
"I'll clear the way for you, my lord!"
It wasn't that he was reckless.
Two commanding officers were gathered here, so the Sun house was now the safest place in Wan'an and Baozhi counties. If a malignant ghost showed up, even if the half-dead Zheng He didn't sense it, the formidable Zhao Fusheng surely would.
He had offended Zhao Fusheng and was eager to show off before her. The moment he finished speaking, he reached out and pushed—
With the creak of hinges, the two unlocked doors swung open.
"Don't touch—"
Zhao Fusheng had been about to stop him but was a step too late. She'd only half said it when Gu Jiansheng had already rashly pushed the gate open.
Belatedly realizing she had tried to stop him, he turned around in confusion and stammered:
"My lord, this—"
Gu Jiansheng's flattery had landed on the horse's leg1. Seeing that Zhao Fusheng's face had gone livid, he panicked and instinctively looked at Zheng He:
"My lord..."
"Useless dog—"
Zheng He was furious and glared at Gu Jiansheng. If Zhao Fusheng hadn't been present, he wouldn't have held back his rage and would have killed him on the spot.
"Enough."
Zhao Fusheng waved a hand, staring at the door:
"Don't touch things like this carelessly."
Gu Jiansheng's heart hammered, and he shook all over. Hearing this, he knew she wasn't pursuing his rash act. He let out a breath, and tears nearly came:
"Thank you for not blaming me, my lord, thank you—"
"Why would I blame you?"
Zhao Fusheng didn't turn her head:
"I was only afraid you'd bring a great disaster on yourself."
"Has my lord found something?"
Zheng He, whose face had been cold, realized from her words that he'd misunderstood her intentions, frowned, and stepped forward.
Zhao Fusheng casually stepped aside and said:
"Come take a look."
Though his expression was stiff, the fellow wasn't stupid. After hearing her, and remembering how she had rebuked Gu Jiansheng for pushing the door, he knew the gate absolutely must not be touched.
But since she told him to look, he couldn't very well refuse, so he leaned in and pretended to look carefully.
At first Zheng He was only going through the motions, but being a ghost-controller, he sensed something wrong once he got close.
"This door—"
The aura left by a malignant ghost hit him in the face, and his expression changed slightly:
"There's a malignant ghost's baleful aura."
"More than that."
Zhao Fusheng shook her head:
"There's also the smell of blood."
She glanced at him:
"Have you lost your sense of smell?"
Zheng He hadn't expected his secret to be seen through so quickly and simply admitted it:
"The ghost I control has hollowed out my organs. The only reason I'm still alive is that the malignant ghost hasn't left my body."
"..." Zhao Fusheng was taken aback at his words, looked at his chest, and nodded in understanding.
Ghost-controllers in this world were truly strange, and similar to parasitism as she knew it.
Ghost-controllers relied on ghosts' power to survive in this dangerous world, and the longer they accompanied the ghost, the more their bodies became shells to contain it. In the end, like Zheng He, they became one of the ghost's hosts and survived only because the ghost remained in their bodies.
Once the ghost left and drained them dry, they would be dead.
"I suspect—"
Zhao Fusheng didn't dwell on Zheng He's loss of smell. Her main aim was to confirm the case.
Seeing that Zheng He was wary and unwilling to touch the gate, she regretted having gone soft and shouted at Gu Jiansheng to stop earlier.
Zheng He was a ghost-controller and was far harder to kill than an ordinary order envoy. Using him as bait to catch the ghost would have been perfect.
Too bad she'd missed the chance, and it would be hard to trick him now.
"Move aside."
Suppressing her regret, she signaled Zheng He to step back.
Her words were direct, but Zheng He didn't mind.
He had still been tense, worried Zhao Fusheng would force him to touch the gate, so when she told him to move away he was delighted and flashed aside with great speed.
After well over an hour together, he found she wasn't as scary as he'd imagined.
She was different from the ghost-controllers he knew.
Though they'd met unpleasantly, since he'd conceded she had neither been petty nor deliberately pushed him down to build her own authority.
Unlike moody ghost-controllers, she was even-tempered and seemed unaffected by the ghost, which was truly strange.
And she was strangely easy to get along with. She spoke directly but not in a way that upset him, and he even felt a little relaxed in her company.
Seeing Zhao Fusheng step back up to the gate, he hesitated a moment and asked:
"Do you suspect something is off about this door, my lord?"
"Yes."
The reason everyone had guessed from the start that the Baozhi ghost calamity was tied to the Zhao couple was that the corpses Fan Bisi had personally supervised burying had mysteriously vanished from their coffins.
On the way to the Sun house, Zhao Fusheng hadn't been fully sure the ghosts in this case were the Zhao couple.
But after reaching the Sun house, she found deep ghostly aura left on the gate, and learned from Zheng He that several room doors in the mansion had been taken down with corpses laid on the planks. She could now nearly be certain this ghost case was the work of the Zhao couple's malignant ghosts.
Her answer made Zheng He all the more wary of the gate.
He leaned in again and examined it carefully.
Dried blood remained on the door. He couldn't smell it, but the aura left by a malignant ghost was everywhere.
"I don't see anything—"
Zheng He shook his head:
"My eyes aren't good enough."
"It's not you."
Zhao Fusheng looked at him, and an idea stirred:
"Let me try."
With that, she reached out to touch the gate.
Before her hand even touched it, Fan Bisi grew anxious and caught her sleeve:
"My lord—"
She herself had said there was something wrong with this gate. Touching it might very well trigger the ghost's rule.
The Zhao couple's malignant ghosts had killed in Baozhi for half a month and were already formidable.
The two ghosts were at least Baleful-tier, and moving together. Even without the malevolent objects, even if incomplete, this was at least a Calamity-tier case.
Zhao Fusheng turned to him as he held her, and Fan Bisi shook his head anxiously.
"Don't worry."
Zhao Fusheng shook off Fan Bisi's hand:
"I know what I'm doing."
In their time together Fan Bisi had come to know her temperament and knew that once she'd made up her mind no one could talk her out of it. Though uneasy and worried, he could only give up.
"..."
Zheng He's eyes flickered. He saw Zhao Fusheng's hand, stretched out, stop abruptly about an inch from the vermilion door.
It looked like Zhao Fusheng had held back some clues about this ghost case, but clearly the gate could not be touched. If she touched it, she'd very likely be marked by the ghost and become its next target.
At the thought, malice rose in him:
The Baozhi ghost calamity had been delivered by Zhao Fusheng. Now his own trouble had come because of her, and when she got here she'd humiliated him in public—
Now her hand was about to touch the gate. If he gave her a shove, she'd surely knock the gate open...
Beneath the clothes on Zheng He's chest, the malignant ghost's half-closed eyelids opened slightly, revealing a pair of dead-fish gray-white eyes, and malice seeped out—
Just then, Zhao Fusheng opened her Hell!
Ding-ling!
In Zheng He's ear he seemed to hear a faint, crisp bell.
Whoosh—
A cold wind blew from nowhere, and an inexplicable terror engulfed Zheng He's entire body.
An invisible force overawed him.
The malignant ghost on his chest, whose eyes had opened, seemed restrained and closed them again, resentful and bitter.
The malice that had suddenly risen was driven away in an instant by the bell and the cold wind.
Zheng He shuddered. Once clear-headed, he quickly felt a lingering dread. Looking down at his own palm, he was glad he hadn't made his move yet.
He didn't know why, but he felt an instinctive fear of Zhao Fusheng, as though she had something that restrained him.
Under the ghost's influence, he wanted to eliminate whatever threatened him, but if he had made his move rashly, what awaited him might not have been good.
While Zheng He's thoughts churned, he suddenly heard Fan Wujiu's cry beside him:
"Heavens!"
