IBGSW Chapter 132
Door God Imprint
"Forget him."
Zhao Fusheng shook her head:
"If he's really in danger, he'll just hand the life-buying coin to the ghost."
Zheng He handled his ghost cases on the strength of ghost coins. With one in hand, Zhang Chuanshi had a good chance of surviving unless his luck was truly rotten.
The pressing matter was to repair the seal at once.
The malignant ghost had gone, but the ghost servants were moving with strange sluggishness. And there were a great many of them, packed rank upon rank around the stone pillar, so the three of them couldn't easily squeeze through.
Zhang Chuanshi's legs were certainly not slow, but he was a man, not a ghost, and no one could say how long he'd last with a malignant ghost chasing him.
The coin drew malignant ghosts, and this was the Ghost Mausoleum besides.
His blundering around like that could well end in disaster.
"Fix the seal first."
The first priority was to restore the seal.
Once it was restored, the malignant ghost would be suppressed again and everything would return to peace.
At the word "seal," Fan Bisi pulled himself together:
"What would you have me do, my lord?"
He didn't ask whether Zhao Fusheng could truly strengthen the ghost seal. He just offered his help, plain and direct.
Zhao Fusheng said:
"You and Magistrate Pang, push these ghost servants out of the way!"
"Yes." Fan Bisi nodded.
"...Yes!" Magistrate Pang was afraid, but he had come this far and had made up his mind to face the malignant ghosts head-on.
His wife was still at home waiting for him.
The two exchanged a glance, as if to spur each other on, then gave a great roar and charged into the horde of ghost servants!
For the moment these ghost servants were controlled by the malignant ghost. Apart from the dread of the dead "coming back to life," they showed no urge to kill; at most they held things in their hands and chiseled at the seal.
Pang and Fan plunged into the horde and soon scattered it, forcing open a gap wide enough for Zhao Fusheng to pass through.
Zhao Fusheng slipped in among the ghost servants and approached the seal.
The moment she was close to the stone pillar, she saw a strange black imprint in the middle of it.
The mark looked scorched, shaped like a bolt of lightning. It had been dark with ghost aura, but now, ruined by the random chisel marks, the lightning mark was nearly severed in two.
Tentatively she took out the ghost arm and touched the ghost seal with its finger. She could sense that the broken seal still held a faint, fading trace of ghost breath.
As soon as the ghost arm was out, it tried to reach for more.
But the aftereffects of forcibly seizing the ghost register earlier had been severe. The broken bones in the arm left it willing but unable to grip, and its fingers drooped.
Having confirmed the seal was there, Zhao Fusheng put the ghost arm away.
She drew a deep breath and steadied her mind. She no longer paid attention to Zhang Chuanshi's faint, far-off ghostly howling, nor to the panicked panting of Fan Bisi and Magistrate Pang.
"Invite the Door Gods!"
At a thought, the Investiture of the Gods in her sea of consciousness was activated in an instant.
Blood light and baleful aura began to stir together on the Investiture, and the two Door God silhouettes in the divine positions slowly opened their eyes.
A phantom of a black token appeared in her palm.
"..."
Meanwhile, Fan Bisi and Magistrate Pang, shoving at the horde of ghost servants, suddenly felt an indescribable chill and terror, as if some supremely malevolent god had descended in an instant.
The ghost servants that had been blocking their way fell like wheat stubble cut at the root, one after another, losing all ability to move and becoming true corpses in a moment.
It was utterly unnatural.
Fan Bisi felt uneasy. Along with his terror, he turned his head on instinct toward Zhao Fusheng.
The sight that met his eyes terrified him out of his wits.
Zhao Fusheng stood with her back to him and Magistrate Pang, facing the seal on the stone pillar.
And behind her, plain as day, stood the shadows of the malignant ghosts of the Zhao couple, whom she had driven off in front of Ding'an Tower last night!
Each carried a door plank on its back, standing left and right behind her like two uncanny, malevolent Door God figures.
On the ghost door planks lingered a strange blood-red light, and it lit the entrance to the Mausoleum, which should have been pitch black, with a sinister, terrifying red mist.
"Aaaaaaaah!!!"
Fan Bisi let out a scream even more piercing than the one Zhang Chuanshi had made while being chased by the ghost:
"Ghost!!!"
At the appearance of the Zhao couple, Fan Bisi's composure collapsed at once.
Magistrate Pang had been forcing his courage up all along. With Zhang Chuanshi screaming in the distance and Fan Bisi screaming beside him, he panicked like a headless fly and burst into tears too.
But the two ghosts simply stood quietly behind Zhao Fusheng. The screaming did not make them rampage and kill.
A flash of insight struck Fan Bisi. He suddenly remembered something Zhao Fusheng had said in Ding'an Tower last night: that she had already subdued the ghosts of the Zhao couple.
At the time everyone had thought she was boasting. She'd even asked Zheng He whether he wanted to see the couple's malignant ghost forms.
Everyone, the Fan brothers included, had taken it as a joke.
Seeing the Zhao couple now, door planks on their backs, standing behind her, Fan Bisi finally realized she had been telling the truth.
Zhao Fusheng had really subdued the malignant ghosts that the Zhao couple had become!
It was simply unbelievable.
For one person to control one ghost was already a life-staking gamble. After taking on a ghost, your life was no longer yours, like Zheng He now.
And yet after controlling the malignant ghost Zhao Qiming left behind, Zhao Fusheng had managed to subdue two great ghosts, both Disaster-tier or higher.
"Why is that?"
His mind went blank. However he turned it over, he couldn't work out how she had done it.
Could it be because the Zhao couple were her parents?
But when a person dies and the malignant ghost revives, everything from life is wiped away and only instinct remains. That didn't hold up either.
Fan Bisi's thoughts were a tangled mess, but on one thing he was certain: Zhao Fusheng hadn't been bragging.
She really had subdued the Zhao couple!
With two great ghosts of Disaster-tier or higher under her control, no wonder she had said so confidently before setting out for the Mausoleum that she could solve this case and layer on the seals.
Now it appeared "layer on" was putting it mildly.
Last year, the ghost general Zhu Minghui, who had come here to stamp the seal, had reached the level of a Silver General. The malignant ghost he controlled had died by lightning, then revived and reached Calamity-tier.
The malignant ghosts of the Zhao couple, though, had reached Disaster-tier, far above the rank of Zhu Minghui's ghost.
Once Zhao Fusheng stamped a ghost seal, the Mausoleum would settle at once.
These thoughts flashed through Fan Bisi's mind. His screams died down, and then he cried out in righteous tones:
"My lord, careful, there's a ghost behind you!"
After he cried out, Magistrate Pang finally came back to himself.
Pang looked past Zhao Fusheng's back, and sure enough, there were two ghost shadows with door planks on their backs.
"Aaaah, my lord, there really is a ghost behind you, two ghosts, my lord, be careful—"
Magistrate Pang was anxious and afraid, shouting over and over, yet not daring to step forward.
Zhao Fusheng paid the two no mind.
Fan Bisi's words of concern held the reason of a man who had weighed his position, and Magistrate Pang's warning held the fear of someone who could do nothing.
But none of that had anything to do with her.
The Investiture of the Gods prompted her: The Door Gods' imprint has been activated.
The Door Gods have appeared.
They want to carry you on their backs. Spend 500 merit points to placate the Door Gods?
Spend 1,000 merit points to use the Door Gods' power?
Zhao Fusheng didn't hesitate: Yes!
1,500 merit points were deducted.
At her thought, the black ghost tablet in her palm, in which the Door Gods were sealed, surfaced. She stepped forward and pressed her palm gently against the stone pillar bearing the remnant lightning-shaped ghost seal.
The lightning seal sensed her approach, and the remnant malignant ghost power inside it seemed to want to resist.
But the god-invested ghost outranked the remnant seal.
The Door Gods' power seeped silently into the pillar.
The half-destroyed lightning ghost seal was wiped away in an instant.
As Zhao Fusheng's hand drew back, a pair of dark red ghost shadows carrying door planks had been imprinted on the stone pillar.
The shadows were lifelike and seemed to glint with a blood-red baleful light. Their four eyes brimmed with towering resentment, glaring with ill intent at their surroundings like duplicates of malignant ghosts, suppressing the Mausoleum.
With the seal in place, Zhang Chuanshi's screams in the distance grew even louder, tinged now with the relief of one who has survived a disaster.
Zhao Fusheng closed her hand, and the black ghost tablet in her palm vanished without a sound.
The shadows of the Zhao couple, carrying their door planks, reluctantly dissolved into gray mist and were forcibly drawn back by the Investiture of the Gods, settling once more into the divine tablet.
At the same moment, the Investiture's prompt sounded:
Seal stamped!
Reinforced by the Door Gods' imprint, it can suppress any malignant ghost of Disaster-tier or below.
"Door God Imprint"!
Note: This is the mark of ghost deities. Wherever it lies, their aura is displayed and the hundred ghosts retreat.
First use of the Door Gods' power: reward of 500 merit points.
Successfully sealed the Ghost Mausoleum, preventing its collapse and averting a night march of malignant ghosts: reward of 2,000 merit points.
Successfully resolved the West City Ghost Mausoleum case and returned the revived malignant ghost to slumber: reward of 500 merit points.
...
With the ghost seal stamped, the chiseling ghost that had revived in the Mausoleum was suppressed at once, and the clang-clang of pounding ceased.
The ghost domain that had blanketed Wan'an County began to lift.
As the black aura dispersed and Zhao Fusheng turned around, Magistrate Pang and Fan Bisi, who had been scared half out of their souls, could now see her cold face.
Fan Bisi's gaze went past Zhao Fusheng to the stone pillar behind her and landed on the pair of black-and-red ghost seals glowing with blood light.
Though he had guessed the truth already, seeing the seal with his own eyes still shook Fan Bisi deeply.
"My lord—"
He murmured.
The call woke Magistrate Pang.
When he looked at Zhao Fusheng again, he was startled to find that the two malignant ghosts who had been standing behind her had vanished without a trace.
"My lord—" Magistrate Pang looked left and right, and no sooner had he spoken than Zhao Fusheng said:
"The ghost case is solved."
"What? Solved?"
Magistrate Pang was taken aback.
Only then did he realize, slowly, that the ghost fog had dispersed.
The place was astonishingly quiet.
With the chiseling gone, the Mausoleum had gone still, and the suffocating, uneasy ache in Magistrate Pang's chest disappeared with it.
Whoo— He let out a long breath, then suddenly raised his head:
"Just now I saw a pair of ghosts standing behind my lord—"
"Oh, those are a pair of ghosts I newly took on, which I subdued in Baozhi County on this trip. They happened to be just right for stamping the ghost seal and suppressing the Mausoleum," Zhao Fusheng explained.
When she'd finished, she looked at Magistrate Pang's pale face, then at Fan Bisi's flickering gaze, and asked with a smile:
"I didn't frighten you, did I?"
"N-no." The two were stunned for a moment, then shook their heads reflexively.
Her words carried a great deal of information. Magistrate Pang wanted to ask more, but seeing that Fan Bisi said nothing, he swallowed his curiosity and decided to ask later.
Even so, that Zhao Fusheng had managed to take on another malignant ghost on this trip to Baozhi County, and that this newly controlled ghost could subdue the revived ghost of the Mausoleum with a single seal, showed its rank was not low.
And that she controlled so many ghosts and yet was not affected by them, nor showed any sign of losing control...
The more Magistrate Pang thought about it, the more excited he became. He even sensed vaguely that, now that this commanding officer had come, Wan'an County might gradually change and recover the glory of its former prosperity.
"My lord—"
He was about to speak when he heard a pit-a-pat of running footsteps in the distance.
After the terrifying experience of walking through the dark earlier, Magistrate Pang shivered slightly at the sound of footsteps.
Fortunately, accompanying the footsteps was the sound of heavy panting.
Zhang Chuanshi's half-dead voice was mixed in with the gasps:
"M-m-my lord—"
Zhang Chuanshi, who had run off clutching the ghost coin, had come back.
Through the gray, hazy mist, Zhang Chuanshi staggered toward the three of them, hand on his waist, gasping for breath. The moment he saw them, he seemed to lose his last bit of strength. With a thud he sat down, then lay flat, limbs sprawled, panting desperately with his mouth open.
After a good while, having caught a breath, Zhang Chuanshi sat up, trembling:
"My lord, you nearly got me killed."
His face was full of resentment.
"You're still alive, aren't you?" Zhao Fusheng glanced at him and keenly caught a faint stink coming off Zhang Chuanshi.
The smell was familiar somehow, as if she had smelled it somewhere before.
"If I hadn't lit the Ghost Lantern, I'd have been dead!"
Zhang Chuanshi complained:
"That ghost was too fast. If I hadn't reacted quickly, he'd have caught me long ago—"
"Why didn't you just give it the money?" Zhao Fusheng replied.
"Give it the money?" Zhang Chuanshi cried out:
"How could I have a hand that gives money away?"
After coming back he hadn't asked whether Zhao Fusheng had succeeded in stamping the seal, as if he had great confidence in her strength.
Now that "money" had come up, the old man seemed to have shaken off the shadow of being hunted by the ghost. The brows on the half of his face that was undamaged lifted, and a self-satisfied look appeared:
"Since I opened my shop, money has only ever gone into my pocket. Nobody has ever pulled even half a coin out of my hand—"
He hadn't finished when Zhao Fusheng held out a hand to him:
"Hand it over."
Uh-oh!
Zhang Chuanshi thought, This is bad, and played dumb:
"H-hand what over?"
"The life-buying ghost coin. Hand it over." Zhao Fusheng beckoned with four fingers held together, motioning for him to give it up.
"I—"
Zhang Chuanshi bitterly regretted boasting so quickly. His eyes darted around as he racked his brains for an excuse to keep the ghost coin.
Zhao Fusheng warned him:
"If you keep this ghost coin on you, it can call a malignant ghost to revive. You saw what happened when the ghost chased you—"
Before she'd even finished speaking, the miserly Zhang Chuanshi, picturing being chased by the ghost again, shuddered. He hurriedly pulled a copper coin from his clothes and placed it in Zhao Fusheng's hand.
