IBGSW Chapter 113
Conferring the Door Gods
The sound of cracking bones filled the air. Zhao Fusheng's organs were crushed by the violent squeeze, and blood mixed with shreds of flesh gushed from where the broken bones pierced her. She felt as if the ghost shadow were going to grind her into a sheet of "paper."
Her body was a plaything under the ghost's overwhelming strength. She had no power to hit back at all.
A Disaster-tier ghost's killing power was far beyond the ordinary. It had crushed the Baleful-tier ghost she controlled outright, and her ghost arm was dead still, like a lifeless object.
At the moment between life and death, Zhao Fusheng bore the agony. Hearing the Investiture's prompt, she chose at once: Yes!
100 points of merit deducted to open the divine position!
In her sea of consciousness, the blood-stained Investiture of the Gods instantly roiled with black fog and a gust of cold wind. Ghostly wails rose sharp and one after another.
The Zhao couple's ghost shadows seemed to sense the stir in the Investiture, and their movements stalled for a beat.
At that moment, as the merit points were deducted, the bloodstains on the first divine position were wiped away by a supreme will, leaving an empty slot.
The Investiture of the Gods prompted again:
Sensing the appearance of Disaster-tier malignant ghosts. Qualification for investiture reached. Confer the great ghosts as gods?
Yes!
Zhao Fusheng heard a crisp crack in her ears. Her lumbar spine snapped, and her upper body slumped straight down.
Her eyeballs were almost squeezed out of their sockets.
As her head fell sideways past the edge of the ghost door plank, she saw the ghost that had been her father, face to face with the Fan brothers, and the look of terror and horror on their faces.
In the gray world, the ordinary people shone with vigorous life force. The ghost-controller Zheng He had a ghost curled in his body in the shape of an infant, gray-black amid the red.
This was the world as it looks to someone about to become a malignant ghost!
Her lower body had been drawn into the icy plank. The blood pouring from her merged with the ghost shadow. Like the best glue, her blood fused her body to the plank and pressed her against the back of the mother ghost.
Limitless slaughter, now the shadow of death, covered her. In the last moment of clear consciousness, she confirmed the investiture.
Instantly, the ghost shadows' killing motion froze.
The father ghost's mottled, livid hands stopped in front of the Fan brothers.
The power of the Investiture of the Gods severed the link between her and the ghost door planks in an instant.
Her withered legs slowly slid out of the planks.
Her sluggish consciousness stirred back to life. The moment she came to, she slid down the back of the mother ghost like a child on a slide.
The planks were stained with blood. Once she was out of the death zone, she braced her hands on the ground and crawled desperately forward two paces.
In her sea of consciousness the Investiture prompted her:
Please invite the ghost-gods into their divine positions!
Zhao Fusheng had escaped death, but it was a dangerous moment. The ghosts, their first strike having failed, paused briefly and then started walking again.
Meanwhile on the other side—
Zheng He and the others had watched with their own eyes as Zhao Fusheng was caught on the planks. Just when they thought she was certainly dead, she had somehow found a way to escape them.
But as she slid down, the two ghosts abandoned the Fan brothers and turned together to come for her again.
This time she's really done for! Zheng He sighed.
Anyone with eyes could see that her first escape from the ghosts' grip had cost her dearly. Ghost-controllers had far more vitality than ordinary people, but they were still people. With the two ghosts striking again, how could she live?
Zheng He had accepted his fate.
But just then, Zhao Fusheng, her body snapped in two and slumped on the ground in a grotesque posture, propped herself half upright on the last of her breath.
The mother ghost reached out to seize her head. The father ghost abandoned the Fans and turned to grab her legs.
At that moment, perhaps from too much tension and fear, Zheng He thought he saw Zhao Fusheng bring her two palms together and lift them toward the empty air, as if cradling something.
In the dark, Zheng He saw it plainly. Her hands were empty. They held nothing.
Perhaps in the panic of life and death, she had made some instinctive gesture?
As he wondered—
Zhao Fusheng had opened the first divine position. As the Investiture's prompt to invite the ghosts in sounded, a cold object dropped into her palm.
It was a strange black tablet about three inches long and three fingers wide. It was neither gold nor jade, icy throughout, and gave off an ominous air.
But now was no time to study it.
Holding the black divine tablet, as the Investiture had prompted, she shouted at the two ghosts standing one in front and one behind her, who were about to pull her apart:
"Investiture of the Gods, open! By decree, I confer these two ghosts as gods!"
The instant her decree was complete, the black air on the two ghosts shuddered heavily.
The motion of hauling and tearing stopped. That moment's pause gave Zhao Fusheng a chance to breathe.
A dim light flickered on the black tablet, and then a thread of blood-light seeped out and crawled across it, as if branding some shadow into it.
She caught her breath and shouted again:
"Investiture complete! Both gods, return to your positions now!"
Her life hung by a thread. Fearing the investiture might go wrong, she said it once, then at once cried again in urgency:
"Both gods, return to your positions at once! Do not delay!"
The divine position was open. The rite of invitation was complete.
The two ghosts stood rigid on the spot.
Wuuuu—
A cold wind blew.
As soon as her words ended, a great torrent of baleful air poured out of the black tablet. In an instant it wrapped around the two ghosts.
The two ghosts' killing rules were suppressed on the spot. The mother ghost released the hands that had been wrenching at her head. The father ghost loosened his hands. Zhao Fusheng's body, limp as a noodle, dropped to the ground with a thud.
The two ghosts were swathed in baleful air, and their shadows, the planks still on their backs, gradually merged into that dense shadow.
The black tablet Zhao Fusheng gripped in her palm grew colder and stranger.
As the two ghosts' forms were hidden in the fog, the originally smooth surface of the tablet was suddenly carved by an uncanny force.
In floating blood-light, ghost images struggled inside, trying to break free of their bonds, but were in the end suppressed by the tablet.
In a moment, the blood-light had drawn on the tablet the rough outline of a pair of ghosts shouldering door planks. The miniature ghost shadows enclosed in the blood-light stopped struggling.
The images of the two ghosts grew clear and soon became relief carvings, branded onto the black divine tablet.
With the ghosts sealed, the Investiture prompted again:
Please name the ghost-god.
Zhao Fusheng gripped the black tablet tight, watching warily and fearfully the two ghosts, wrapped in shadow, who stood behind her and in front of her feet.
The ghosts stood silent, waiting for her to complete the last step, the granting of the name.
She gasped for breath, bore the pain, and moved her lips:
"Door Gods!"1
The Investiture's prompt sounded:
The Investiture of the Gods is complete!
The Disaster-tier great ghost has been successfully conferred as a god and named as "Door Gods"!
The host has successfully conferred a ghost as a god for the first time and has been rewarded 3,000 points of merit!
Obtained 1 Investiture Token.
Notes:
- The Investiture Token can summon the gods (but if your merit is not enough to suppress them, the summoned god may take your life)!
- The Investiture Token lets the host use a part of the Door Gods' abilities (merit points required)!
- Use this token with great care. If the merit offered to sustain the gods is insufficient, the gods may also turn on you!
Obtained the Door Gods' power to duplicate ghost door planks.
Note: The host can draw ghost shadows on door planks and briefly borrow the malignant ghost's power to block other malignant ghosts.
Successfully resolved the case of the malignant ghosts searching for their door planks in Baozhi County, prevented great ghosts from massacring a city, and saved the living beings of the entire city. Obtained 2,000 points of merit!
Used the common people as bait. Public sentiment in Baozhi County fell. 1,000 points of merit deducted.
Forcibly requisitioned Ding'an Tower, lowering public sentiment. 200 points of merit deducted.
...
Hell stands empty; evil ghosts walk the earth.
Sensing the host has a tendency toward death. 500 points of merit consumed to restore.
Hell has been affected by the Investiture of the Gods. 200 points of merit consumed to settle it.
Reminder to the host: please open Hell as soon as possible, to balance the divine positions of the Investiture of the Gods.
...
A string of prompts exploded in Zhao Fusheng's mind. She had no time to calculate carefully, so she just forced all of the Investiture's notices into her memory.
As merit points flowed in and out, her terrible injuries repaired one by one.
Broken bones set themselves, then knit. Torn skin wriggled and closed. Her organs, ground to pulp by the ghost door planks, were restored one by one. Her chest and belly puffed back out like inflated bags. Her numb legs regained feeling...
Zhao Fusheng sat up from the ground.
The black ghost tablet in her hand sank into her palm and hid in her sea of consciousness.
When the investiture succeeded and the tablet vanished, the two ghosts enveloped in the two shadows were sealed into the ghost tablet too.
"..."
When she got up from the ground, still shaken, she turned her neck experimentally.
Crack, crack. The broken bones were already mended. Flesh and blood were full again. Nothing of the horrible condition in which the mother ghost had nearly snapped and twisted her could be seen.
The Fan brothers, who had escaped death, stared in terror and shock as Zhao Fusheng, who had been twisted and thrown about by the two ghosts for so long, stood up again in perfect health on the spot. They could hardly believe their eyes.
The brothers had believed this was the end of them.
After all, even the strongest person among them, Zhao Fusheng, had fallen into the ghosts' hands and been treated like a toy. The two brothers were not ghost-controllers and had not the slightest chance against the malignant ghosts.
But somehow, with Zhao Fusheng on the brink of death, a great quantity of ghost fog had welled up out of nowhere, wrapped around the two ghosts, and in an instant they had vanished without a trace.
At the moment of crisis, Zhao Fusheng had sealed the ghosts again?
How had she done it?
She only controlled a Baleful-tier ghost entity!
Even with the ghost arm, the Beggar Ghost was only Baleful-tier. How could two Baleful-tier malignant ghosts defeat the Zhao couple, who had advanced to a level beyond reckoning?
Countless questions flashed through Fan Bisi's mind.
He knew Zhao Fusheng had handled several ghost cases. She had handled Beggars' Alley alone. She had taken Zhang Chuanshi to the Goutou Village case, and the two had come back alive. She had escaped the Ghost Carriage, a Disaster-tier catastrophe.
But none of that came close to the shock of watching her drive away the two ghosts with his own eyes.
The Fan brothers had been close to ghosts before and could feel how fierce Zhao Fusheng's parents were. They were nothing like ordinary malignant ghosts. Their aura was far fiercer than that of the malignant ghosts at the bureau that day.
Yet in this hopeless situation, Zhao Fusheng had found a way to live.
Although on this Baozhi trip Zhao Fusheng had said she had some means to save her life, and the brothers had held on until now on the strength of her earlier successes, once the two ghosts appeared, no one believed they'd come out alive.
And yet Zhao Fusheng had won again, as if by a miracle.
She wasn't dead!
"This—"
Fan Bisi opened his mouth. He watched Zhao Fusheng turn her head and waist and kick her legs, flexing her joints as if nothing had happened. After a long moment he seemed to find his voice again and called out carefully:
"Fu—Fu—Fusheng—?"
"Hm?"
Zhao Fusheng, who had been readjusting to her revived body, turned her head at the call.
Fan Bisi was clutching Fan Wujiu's collar, and Fan Wujiu was barely standing, held up by his brother's strength. Their eyes were wide as they looked at her anxiously, in a haze about the situation.
Zhao Fusheng touched her neck. Seeing that the two couldn't get a word out, she said:
"The ghost case is over. The two malignant ghosts have been subdued by me."
"..."
Although the moment the ghosts vanished, the brothers had already guessed this outcome, hearing it from Zhao Fusheng's own mouth was another matter. The weight of those words struck their ears like Mount Tai pressing down, leaving them light-headed, their thoughts briefly cut off.
Only two sentences kept going round and round in their minds:
The ghost case is over.
The two malignant ghosts have been subdued by me.
The case is over—
The ghosts are subdued—
"The case is over—"
After a while, Fan Bisi's soul wobbled back into place. Feeling the ground solid beneath his feet, he said dazedly:
"The case is over?!"
When he'd finished the cry, he came fully to himself.
"It's over."
Zhao Fusheng glanced at the brothers and laughed:
"We'll rest for a day, and then we can set out back to Wan'an County!"
"The case is over!"
Wild joy surged in Fan Bisi's chest.
The joy of surviving a disaster flooded his heart, far greater than Zhao Fusheng's own. After all, before handling these two ghost cases, the two sides' expectations had been unequal.
Zhao Fusheng's confidence came from the Investiture of the Gods, which gave her a certain assurance about this case from the beginning.
His own confidence came from Zhao Fusheng, and that was not much, since the two sides had a grudge from before. The Zhao couple were special: they were Zhao Fusheng's parents, and the brothers were partly responsible for their deaths.
For all these reasons, the Fan brothers had been uneasy all along, and had followed Zhao Fusheng to Baozhi expecting nine deaths for one survival.
She had promised to take both home. They didn't dare fully believe her.
Only now that the dust had settled, having watched with their own eyes as the ghosts took form, joined the ghost door planks, and then vanished completely, did they truly believe the case had ended for good and that they had survived the ghost calamity.
"The case is over, Wujiu."
He turned to his brother, but saw that Fan Wujiu's face was pale, his whole body trembling, as if he were still lost in the ghosts' awe.
Fan Bisi gripped his collar and shook him hard:
"Wujiu, the case is over!"
"The case is over!"
The runners and envoys in the distance, the people who had been forced to serve as bait, Liu Rong of Ding'an Tower, and Xu Yachen and the others in the tower all heard Fan Bisi's shout at once.
"The case is over?"
Zheng He was squatting among the crowd. When Zhao Fusheng had been pulled apart front and back by the two ghosts, he had thought this commanding officer from Wan'an would be torn in two.
But suddenly the ghosts' movements stopped.
Rolling black fog blocked his view, and when the fog cleared a moment later, the two ghosts wrapped inside it had mysteriously disappeared.
And Zhao Fusheng, whom he'd thought certainly dead, had somehow stood up again, looking vigorous and alive.
Then the Fan brothers had spoken with her, and Fan Bisi had shouted, "The case is over."
All this left Zheng He as if lost in a cloud of mist, without a shred of certainty.
What exactly had happened?
How could ghosts that had advanced to Disaster-tier or higher vanish out of thin air?
Had they left?
What method had Zhao Fusheng used to turn a certain death into a chance to live?
Was Baozhi's ghost case really at an end?
Had he survived?
"..."
Zheng He still couldn't believe it.
But as the ghosts left, their baleful aura was fading. The torches, suppressed by the ghosts, grew steadier after the two vanished and flared up strongly, and light returned to the surroundings.
The ghost fog that had blanketed the whole garden of Ding'an Tower was scattering, and the ghost domain that had formed was lifting.
Far off, the Shangjia River and the painted pleasure boats and other vessels moored on it emerged from the mist one by one.
All of this meant that Fan Bisi hadn't lied. The double ghost case that had troubled Baozhi County had, in Zhao Fusheng's hands, formally ended.
