IBGSW Chapter 128
Arrival at the Ghost Mausoleum
Right before the four's eyes, a malignant ghost had revived!
Apart from the initial shock, Zhao Fusheng's experience of several confrontations with ghosts let her quickly settle.
Though the coachman had revived as a malignant ghost, his rank was not high, and he was probably only able to move thanks to this particular ghost domain.
Judging by the ghost's aura, the coachman's presence was probably below Baleful-tier, perhaps only an Evil Spirit-tier entity.
Her Hell had already risen to the second tier and she had enough merit. In an emergency she could try putting the coachman-turned-ghost into Hell.
If that failed, she still had a life-buying coin on her. If the malignant ghost ever ran wild, she could produce this coin to make the coachman leave.
But that was the last resort.
This was Wan'an County's territory. If the coachman left, he might drift to other regions and become a danger there, so unless absolutely necessary Zhao Fusheng did not intend to send him away.
The malignant ghost stood.
The other three had blank minds and didn't dare blink, staring at the newly revived ghost.
Ahem.
While everyone's nerves were taut, Zhang Chuanshi suddenly cleared his throat, nearly stopping Magistrate Pang's heart.
Zhang Chuanshi looked at Zhao Fusheng:
"I have something to say, though I don't know whether I should."
The old man seemed timid as a mouse, yet when the ghost revived and everyone else stood frozen, he could still produce a coherent sentence.
Zhao Fusheng looked at him with somewhat new regard and said without hesitation:
"Then don't say it."
Half of Zhang Chuanshi's face, the part that still looked like its old self, was blank:
"But my lord, I have to say it—I can't walk, I feel like I'm about to faint right here."
His expression was calm, but his body gave him away, shaking nonstop.
Hearing this, Zhao Fusheng immediately said:
"If you faint, the three of us leave at once. Nobody will carry you."
On Fan Bisi's face, blue with fear, a look of gloating appeared.
"...Hiss."
Zhang Chuanshi drew a cold breath and gave up at once on fainting.
After swaying several times, the dead man had steadied his feet.
He still gripped the coachman's whip in his hand. With his arm bent at a ninety-degree angle at the elbow, he seemed to stand for a moment in place.
Clang—
Clang—
Tapping sounded in the distance.
Hearing it, the dead man seemed to receive a signal. He mechanically moved one leg and slowly walked forward.
Tap!
At his step, the others let out a great sigh of relief.
"What do we do now?"
Zhang Chuanshi had been holding his breath. Seeing the dead man turn and leave, with no apparent intention of killing the four, he gasped theatrically and suggested:
"Why don't we go back—"
"Let's go back, my lord?" he begged.
Fan Bisi held the lamp and said nothing.
Magistrate Pang was both afraid and flustered, his mind blank.
He had held his breath when the dead man moved, not daring to breathe, until his lungs had emptied and his chest was pressed against his spine. From lack of air, his whole chest and back hurt.
His shoulders had been clenched too hard and now his whole body was weak.
He had known the bureau's cases were dangerous, but never imagined they were this dangerous. Fear gained the upper hand, and he too leaned toward leaving at once.
"What kind of ghost talk is that!"1
Zhao Fusheng scolded.
If she hadn't said the word "ghost" it would have been fine, but the moment she said "ghost," Zhang Chuanshi stamped his foot in distress.
"My lord, oh my dear lord, how can you say that word—"
"What word? Ghost?" Zhao Fusheng asked.
"..."
Zhang Chuanshi didn't dare speak.
"What do we do now?" Fan Bisi looked at Zhao Fusheng and asked.
The coachman's death and revival had been a great shock to him, but in the bureau he had seen enough strange and terrible things, and even last night in Baozhi County he had watched the Zhao couple revive as ghosts.
So though shaken, he held steady and did not go mad as Zhang Chuanshi had.
But having spent time with Zhao Fusheng, Fan Bisi had begun to see how she worked. Just as he finished speaking, he saw her turn to look in the direction the coachman had gone.
A fantastic, terrible thought surfaced in his mind: Zhao Fusheng wouldn't want the party to follow the ghost, would she?
When this thought appeared, whether from extreme fear or not, it didn't strike him as absurd. He even felt a little like laughing.
"Let's follow it and see."
Zhao Fusheng's voice reached everyone's ears, and it exploded in Zhang Chuanshi's head like a thunderclap.
"W-what?"
Zhang Chuanshi poked an ear pitifully:
"I didn't hear that clearly."
"Heh heh heh." Fan Bisi laughed dryly and helpfully repeated:
"Lord Zhao says we follow the dead man."
"..."
Zhang Chuanshi wanted to faint, but Zhao Fusheng had warned him that if he did, the three would leave and no one would carry him.
At the thought, Zhang Chuanshi forcibly stopped himself from falling over.
Zhao Fusheng looked at the three:
"We're lost."
This was a ghost domain.
The West City ghost case was no small affair, and its ghost domain was far larger than Beggars' Alley's had been.
West City's layout was also unlike Beggars' Alley. On that day Zhao Fusheng had used the safe hours to tour the Confucian Temple and committed Beggars' Alley's layout to memory.
She had never been to West City, and its terrain was more complex than the Confucian Temple's.
She had missed the chance to learn the road, and it was now the ghost's active hours.
The coachman, killed by a ghost, seemed after hearing the tapping to assume a "revived" state too, being drawn by the sound toward the depths of the fog.
Zhao Fusheng reasoned:
"He's revived as a ghost, but the baleful aura on him is faint. I'd guess he's Evil Spirit-tier, or a walking corpse that hasn't amounted to much."
"..."
Whatever the rank, a ghost was still a ghost. Zhang Chuanshi shook all over and dared not speak.
Zhao Fusheng went on:
"I've handled several ghost cases, and I think a ghost's rule has some connection with what it did in life."
The Beggars' Alley ghost was a beggar in life and kept up begging after death.
The Goutou Village ghost's concealment attribute and killing rule were tied to its own origins;
and the Zhao couple, because of the door plank on which they were laid, marked and killed in a way tied to doors.
"The coachman was driving a carriage before he died, and we were originally heading to the Ghost Mausoleum in West City. Most likely, now that he has revived as a ghost, he'll head for the Ghost Mausoleum too—"
As she spoke, she strode after the coachman.
Fan Bisi was afraid too, but he had seen Zhao Fusheng's methods in handling cases, and was more afraid of being abandoned by her.
Of the four, Zhao Fusheng alone had the means to handle ghosts. He had his youth, Zhang Chuanshi was useless, and Magistrate Pang, old and frail, was good for little beyond holding a lamp.
If Zhao Fusheng left them behind, the three would be lost in the ghost domain, and for him, burdened with two dead weights, it would be nothing but waiting for death at the ghost's hands.
So Fan Bisi didn't hesitate. Lamp in hand, he followed behind Zhao Fusheng.
Zhang Chuanshi didn't want to go.
But he was equally afraid of being left. Above all, once Zhao Fusheng had gone and Fan Bisi had followed, only the old and weak Magistrate Pang remained at his side, and he panicked even more.
"Wait for me, my lord!"
In his terror, his heart no longer raced and his breath no longer caught, his legs stopped shaking, and he strode forward.
Magistrate Pang, abandoned alone at the back, was uneasy too. He started running with his lamp and even overtook Zhang Chuanshi, who ended up behind him.
"..."
Jostling to keep up, they soon caught up with Zhao Fusheng.
Fan Bisi and Magistrate Pang carried the lamps, one on each side lighting the way, while Zhang Chuanshi, shoulders and head hunched, was wedged in the middle, glancing anxiously around.
"That's not quite right either."
Fan Bisi looked carefully around.
The brass lamp in his hand lit a circle a little under half a zhang across around the four, and beyond this bit of light all of West City was sunk in endless dark.
The four were like a lone drifting boat on a black sea, surrounded by unknown danger and terror.
Fan Bisi didn't dare let his mind go empty, afraid that once he stopped thinking, fear would take over his brain:
"My lord, ghosts suppress one another."
As he spoke he fixed his eyes on Zhao Fusheng, trying not to look at the coachman walking ahead, waving the whip in the empty air.
Clang, clang—the tapping sounded from time to time, and the coachman reeked of blood.
In the lamplight the ghost's figure looked sinister, and one could see half-dried drops of blood at the hem of his short jacket.
His steps were heavy, and his blood-soaked shoes left bloody footprints on the ground, as if he, even in death, were faithfully leading the way for the four.
"By rights, once a ghost revives in the Ghost Mausoleum, within the same ghost domain a second ghost shouldn't be able to exist."
Ghosts suppress each other. When ghosts of the same rank appear in the same domain, they most likely check one another and eventually both fall into perfect slumber.
The Zhao couple were the exception.
When the two ghosts had revived at the same time, they formed a unique double-ghost case, unprecedented in the history of the Great Han Dynasty.
Zhao Fusheng looked at him approvingly and nodded:
"You're right."
"By rights, ghosts can't coexist. West City has already formed a ghost domain, which shows the ghost in the Ghost Mausoleum has grown strong."
From the extent of the ghost domain, the Ghost Mausoleum's ghost was not weaker than Baleful-tier.
At this, Magistrate Pang and Fan Bisi both felt their hearts sink.
Zhang Chuanshi froze, and a grave look came into his eyes.
Though ghosts ran rampant in the Great Han, not every calamity was Baleful-tier.
If all ghosts were this strong, the bureau would have been beaten long ago.
In fact most ghost cases were below Baleful-tier, and Baleful-tier ones had until then been rare as phoenix feathers2.
Anything at Baleful-tier or above was a major case to be reported to the prefecture, and at Calamity-tier one had to ask the generals for help.
But thanks to the ghost fog, in little more than a month Wan'an County had produced several major ghost cases at Baleful-tier or above. It was truly Wan'an's calamity.
"Under this ghost domain, if someone dies and a ghost revives, it should be suppressed by the Mausoleum's ghost and fall straight into slumber. Or else the newly revived ghost is extremely malevolent, with a rank that was high from birth, and it in turn suppresses the Mausoleum's ghost."
Perhaps Zhao Fusheng's composure had affected Magistrate Pang and Zhang Chuanshi. Though still afraid, the two tried to curb their instinctive panic and keep up with her and Fan Bisi.
"My lord, is every ghost's domain the same?"
Magistrate Pang asked the key question.
Zhao Fusheng smiled:
"Not necessarily. But what's certain is that the Mausoleum's ghost has not been suppressed."
The Mausoleum's ghost had not been restrained by the coachman who had revived. By the rules, the coachman should have been suppressed by the Mausoleum's ghost, yet he moved freely.
"Could these two ghosts be in cahoots?"
Zhang Chuanshi suddenly blurted.
He and Magistrate Pang had put aside their mutual disdain and, like companions in misfortune, were leaning on each other's shoulders as they walked.
Zhao Fusheng said:
"Old Zhang is right." Then she paused:
"Look at what the coachman is doing."
The others dared not look at the coachman.
It was already chilling enough to follow a ghost with lamps and not run away; how could they dare look at a man who had been alive and kicking and then had died before their eyes, only to revive and lead the way?
But Zhao Fusheng's smiling face seemed infectious.
Her expression was confident, as if she were very sure of this ghost case.
Fan Bisi froze a moment, then braced himself and looked up.
He saw the coachman's body walk stiffly forward, the whip in his hand raised, his arm swinging forward again and again, so that at a glance he seemed to be walking and striking at something with the whip as he went.
"..."
Seeing it, Magistrate Pang's beard trembled in fright:
"M-my wife did that too—"
Only when Madam Pang had her fit, she had pounded a mirror with a hairpin, unlike the coachman, who struck at empty air.
"His motion looks like hammering something, and he died from a hole through the chest. That he revived as a ghost and does this makes me suspect his revival came from the influence of the Mausoleum's ghost." In other words:
"He may have become a ghost-servant duplicate of the Mausoleum's ghost."
At her words the others widened their eyes and didn't dare speak.
A ghost that could summon ghost servants was no ordinary ghost.
Like the ghost controlled by Jia Yi, who held the Soul-Life Register in the court of the Great Han.
Fan Bisi was alarmed and drew a deep breath:
"My lord—"
"Don't panic."
Zhao Fusheng waved a hand: "We follow him. If I'm right, he'll join up with the ghost."
Then she summarized:
"I suspect this ghost is destroying something."
"The seal?"
"The ghost seal!"
Magistrate Pang and Fan Bisi spoke together.
They both grew anxious at once.
The Ghost Mausoleum had imprints laid by court generals in past years, and those imprints restrained the Mausoleum's ghost to a degree.
If the revived ghost was breaking the imprint now, it surely meant to leave the Mausoleum.
Once the imprint was broken and the ghost got out, calamity would spread fast.
"Yes."
Zhao Fusheng sighed:
"We can't let the calamity grow, or all of Wan'an County will be in danger."
So the only way was to follow the coachman, find the Ghost Mausoleum hidden in the ghost domain, and find a way to seal the ghost again.
After that the four didn't speak.
In the silent night, a newly revived ghost servant kept swinging a whip at nothing.
And behind the ghost, four people huddled together, holding up lights, quietly following the ghost.
But the lamps Fan Bisi and Magistrate Pang held had lost most of their oil when taken down, and in this environment the oil was consumed fast.
How long it had been, no one knew, but the light kept shrinking, from barely lighting their surroundings at first to a flame the size of a soybean, nearly out. The four's hearts leapt into their throats.
This was a ghost domain.
Once the light went out, all the fear they had forcibly suppressed would surge up and drive out reason.
The muscles in Fan Bisi's arm were stiff and trembling. He anxiously raised his palm, instinctively trying to shield the little flame.
In the midst of the fright, Zhang Chuanshi suddenly cried:
"My lord, we're here!"
