IBGSW Chapter 12
Debts Must Be Paid
The two brothers were clearly going to stand by and watch.
Zhao Fusheng gave a cold laugh.
"My parents died unjustly. Aren't you afraid that might trigger a corpse transformation1, giving birth to yet another malignant ghost?"
Fan Bisi laughed aloud at that.
"Fusheng, you don't understand," he explained. "As the saying goes, one mountain can't hold two tigers2. Ghosts have their own laws. A high-ranking malignant ghost suppresses other ghost entities within its domain. If your parents turned into malignant ghosts, they'd most likely hold each other in check, which would actually be the perfect outcome."
He paused, then went on.
"And if only one of them revived, with the other truly dead, then you're the bureau's chief commanding officer. You said yourself you want to revive the bureau. Dealing with a ghost calamity would be your duty. What does it have to do with us?"
From his words Zhao Fusheng drew two useful clues.
First, in this era, people truly could turn into ghosts after death. That explained where malignant ghosts came from, but it only made her situation feel worse. If anyone dying with deep grievances or resentment turned into a ghost, a ghost could spawn at any place, at any time. To make matters worse, Fan Bisi had mentioned a ghost fog, a phenomenon that seemed to nurture the birth of ghosts while proving deadly to living humans.
By his account, the only way for humans to fight malignant ghosts was to borrow a ghost's power to strike another ghost, and dealing with ghosts carried heavy costs and a high death rate. If malignant ghosts kept reviving at this rate, Wan'an County had almost no chance of survival.
She frowned, feeling a headache coming on, then thought over the second possibility he'd raised.
Fan Bisi had said that if her parents became malignant ghosts, they might restrain each other.
By her old understanding, a person who turned into a ghost should keep their memories from life. But from Fan Bisi's words, people here seemed to lose both memory and reason after death, and knew only to kill by instinct.
That was all based on conjecture. With her refusal to surrender their life souls, Fan Bisi was bound to keep any further secrets to himself. But that didn't matter; she would have plenty of opportunities to confirm it through future encounters with ghosts.
"So ghosts really do come from the dead," she said.
Fan Bisi's expression soured. He gave a cold laugh and said nothing more.
"Since the bureau has no money, neither of you can do anything, and you aren't afraid of a malignant ghost reviving, my parents' funeral still needs to be held," Zhao Fusheng said calmly.
Fan Wujiu started to speak, but Fan Bisi glanced at him and shook his head.
Zhao Fusheng pretended not to see the exchange, and went on.
"Why not ask Boss Zhang at the coffin shop to lend us two coffins on credit for now? When the bureau is back on track, we'll pay him."
...She'd been timid and cowardly before. For her to dare ask someone for goods on credit now gave Fan Bisi some new regard for her.
"We can't borrow." But even so, Fan Bisi shook his head, sounding a little regretful.
"Can't borrow?" Now Zhao Fusheng was truly annoyed. "You're supposedly the Demon-Suppression Bureau, and you don't look like kind, courteous men. How can you not manage two coffins on credit?"
"We really can't," said Fan Wujiu. "Why do you think the coffin shop hasn't moved away yet?"
The bureau was now notorious. In a short time almost its entire staff had died, and the merchants nearby had been so frightened that they'd packed up and moved away overnight.
"The only reason Old Zhang hasn't gone is that he can't."
"Wujiu's right," said Fan Bisi.
"Whenever we arranged funerals, we bought coffins from him on credit. We owe him a lot by now, so he's stuck here against his will." His tone shifted.
"Since you've decided to revive the bureau, there's something convenient. Old Zhang says we owe him a great deal, and now that you're the bureau's commanding officer, he wants you to settle the old debts when you have time."
"I have to pay too?" Zhao Fusheng raised her voice.
"We don't dare not to." Fan Bisi twitched the corner of his mouth. "His surname is Zhang."
"Zhang?" Hearing this, and watching Fan Bisi's expression, she suddenly thought of someone.
"You mean Paperman Zhang?"
She'd only just arrived in the Great Han and knew nobody here, but "Paperman Zhang" was a name the Fan brothers had mentioned to her several times. Fan Bisi seemed wary of him, and had even offered to introduce her to him as a condition of their deal.
"Right." Fan Bisi didn't hide it. "They're of the same clan. I'd advise you not to offend him. As for the coffins, think of some other way. We can't borrow. These days Boss Zhang takes only cash and never gives credit."
His manner was arrogant, his words provocative, as if deliberately trying to provoke Zhao Fusheng into a real fury.
After listening, Zhao Fusheng said nothing for a long while. Then she gave a sudden cold smile.
"Call this Old Zhang from the coffin shop over here."
Her reaction caught Fan Bisi completely off guard. He froze for a second, then let out a scoffing laugh and turned his head.
"Wujiu, go and call Boss Zhang."
Fan Wujiu obeyed. He stepped to the gate and shouted at the top of his voice.
"Old Zhang, come settle your account!"
His voice was big and ringing, and when it faded everyone nearby had heard it. Not only did Old Zhang of the coffin shop poke his head out, but even someone from the joss stick and ghost money shop popped out.
Fan Bisi smiled, with ill intent in his eyes.
"Fusheng, I forgot to tell you. Because of the funerals we arranged earlier, it's not only the coffin shop we owe. We owe the joss stick and ghost money shop a good deal too—"
"No problem. Call him as well."
Zhao Fusheng thought for a moment, then nodded.
She looked calm and unhurried. Fan Bisi eyed her suspiciously, frowned, and said no more.
Old Zhang of the coffin shop soon arrived with a bone-thin assistant.
Old Zhang was half bald on top, with a reddish nose and slitted eyes that flashed with cunning from time to time. His head was pointed and his gaze shifty, a face you disliked on sight.
Summoned suddenly to the bureau by the Fan brothers, he had no idea what they were plotting, and stared at Zhao Fusheng in uneasy suspicion.
He knew her well enough. Through his connection to Paperman Zhang he had long known that Zhao Fusheng was merely a scapegoat the Fan brothers had brought in. Yesterday's deaths of the Zhao family of three at the malignant ghost's hands hadn't been kept from him, but he never expected the dead girl to appear before him early this morning.
When he saw her, he thought he'd seen a ghost in broad daylight, and it gave him a terrible fright.
"You..."
He stared at her in alarm.
Up close he could tell that although Zhao Fusheng's face was pale, her eyes were bright and alert and her breathing even. She was clearly a living person.
"I hear the bureau owes you quite a bit of money?" Zhao Fusheng ignored his probing look and asked in a low voice.
She was slight, wearing clothes that obviously didn't fit. But her manner and tone were completely unlike before. Her eyes no longer dodged, and she looked at people calmly.
Old Zhang hadn't gotten to run a coffin shop on this street by being ordinary. Considering her state, the same thought came to him that had come to Fan Bisi: a ghost-controller.
Could this girl, who was meant to draw off the disaster, have turned misfortune into "fortune" and succeeded in controlling that runaway malignant ghost?
He mulled it over while rattling off agreement.
"Yes."
"How much? Work it out."
Old Zhang was puzzled, but called over the big-bellied assistant at his side.
The man was expressionless, carrying an account book as he shuffled forward. His build was strange: limbs long and thin, cheeks nothing but skin over bone, eyelids drooping, and yet a belly swollen as big as a basket, which made his movements slow.
When he stood before Zhao Fusheng he lifted his lids. The whites of his eyes were yellowed and his eyes looked murky.
Close up, Zhao Fusheng caught a faint smell of corpse rot on him.
Maybe because there was already a ghost wrapped around her, she was unusually sensitive to ghost aura. His look made her hair stand on end, and she felt that the figure in front of her was not a living person.
But the assistant was even more uneasy than she was. He made a wheezing "hoo-hoo" in his nose, and something in his big belly seemed to squirm, lifting his clothes and moving around under them.
Seeing this, Old Zhang relaxed. He signaled the assistant to set the ledger down and waved him back.
The assistant retreated woodenly. Only when he was outside the gate did he recover some composure, and stop turning aimlessly like a headless fly.
"Everything the bureau owes is in here."
Zhao Fusheng drew her attention back from the assistant and looked at the account book. She didn't check the entries. She asked:
"How much in total?"
Old Zhang was a little startled by her bluntness, then smiled.
"Since last year, when the bureau started having trouble..." He glanced at the Fan brothers as he spoke. Fan Bisi gave an almost imperceptible nod, and he breathed a silent sigh of relief and went on. "Thirty-two coffins in all. By the usual rate, three taels3 of silver each. That makes thirty-two coffins, ninety-six taels." Once money came up, the old man shed his timidity.
He sneaked another look at Zhao Fusheng. "Please check whether that's right."
Zhao Fusheng knew nothing about prices in the Great Han, but her intuition was sharp and she was observant.
She turned to look at Fan Bisi, with a meaningful smile.
In an earlier conversation Fan Bisi had mentioned something crucial: he'd spent five copper coins to buy Zhao Fusheng to die in her place.
If a human life was worth five coppers, then one coffin could buy six hundred Zhao Fushengs. That was clearly absurd.
But prices weren't her aim. Hearing this, she nodded cheerfully.
"No problem!"
Old Zhang was thrown by her agreement and took a while to raise his voice and ask.
"Are you serious?"
"Yes."
Zhao Fusheng nodded.
"Add two more coffins, for a total of 102 taels. How's that?"
Hearing this, Old Zhang was at first delighted, then uneasy.
Either Zhao Fusheng was quick-witted, or she'd prepared beforehand. He'd named the coffin price off the cuff, so how could she know what he'd set it at? Now her arithmetic was exact to the penny, so she was clearly no one who couldn't count.
But the Fan brothers had found her in the countryside, and the Zhao family of three were supposedly illiterate. He'd seen her before, and she'd really been timid, afraid to deal with people. How was she now answering him so fluently?
His doubt put him on guard.
"I can do that, but how will you pay?"
"I have no money."
Zhao Fusheng said it plainly.
"What?" Seeing her say "no money" with such a calm face, Old Zhang felt the absurdity of it. "So you're making fun of me?" He made as if to call his assistant to carry off the ledger.
"Not at all." Zhao Fusheng pressed her hand down on the ledger and stopped him. "We can talk it over. I have no money right now, but in the bureau's name I'll borrow 110 taels of silver from you first—"
Her words made Old Zhang laugh in exasperation. He even forgot she had a ghost on her and said quickly:
"That won't do. To tell you the truth, what authority does the bureau have now?"
In the old days, when Zhao Qiming and the other commanding officers were alive, they were experienced and highly capable. When they called it "borrowing," Old Zhang believed they'd pay it back, and he didn't dare refuse either.
But now...
The coffin shop's Old Zhang kept shaking his head.
"Can't lend, can't lend—"
The Fan brothers stood with arms folded, watching the show.
Zhao Fusheng wasn't angry. She said, "Then I'll borrow two more coffins and pay later. How about that?"
"Not that either." Old Zhang kept shaking his head.
Refused again, Zhao Fusheng still wasn't angry. She made another suggestion.
"How about this. Give me a bit more time. Once I have control of the bureau, I'll borrow silver from Wan'an County's rich households and gentry and pay you back."
"I can't wait for later. Wan'an County doesn't look right. As soon as I collect this debt, I'm taking my whole family out of here..."
He plainly had no faith in Wan'an County's future.
While they were talking, the owner of the joss stick and ghost money shop came too.
He was a hunchbacked old man with a gloomy expression. Most uncanny of all, he was followed by two eerie "child attendants." Both had bright red cheeks, grinning mouths and stiff expressions, not like real people, and they too carried ghost aura.
As Fan Bisi had said, most of those who'd stayed on this street probably had their own means of self-protection and were not to be underestimated.
Zhao Fusheng glanced at them but paid no attention. She fixed her eyes on Old Zhang.
"You say no to this and no to that. So what do you want?"
"What I want is..."
Hearing this, Old Zhang's eyes gleamed and he opened his mouth by reflex, then saw Zhao Fusheng's faintly smiling expression.
The moment he saw it, he knew something was wrong.
"When the bureau met with a ghost calamity, everyone else left, and only you stayed. You really do have other plans."
Zhao Fusheng smiled.
"I wonder what the bureau still has that's worth your attention. Go on. What do you want?"
"..."
Old Zhang's expression kept shifting, regret in his eyes. He cursed himself for letting her pull the information out of him with a few words.
2 A Chinese idiom meaning two powerful, dominant forces or rivals cannot peacefully coexist in the same territory; one will inevitably destroy or drive out the other.
3 A historical Chinese unit of weight used primarily as currency measured in silver. One tael of silver was historically worth roughly 1,000 copper cash coins, representing a significant sum for ordinary civilians.
