IBGSW Chapter 143
Origin of the Ghost Case
Zhao Fusheng had asked a few questions earlier and already formed a fixed impression of Fourth Madam Zhuang. Hearing of her death, she wasn't surprised, but she still felt a pang of pity.
But this was a ghost case. She quickly pushed down her personal feelings and asked Zhuang Laoqi:
"Your elder cousin had been married only seven or eight years. She must still have been young. Why did she suddenly die?"
Zhuang Laoqi's gaze wandered. Zhao Fusheng gave the ghost arm a warning shake.
The hand opened and closed, and Zhuang Laoqi flinched, then spilled everything like beans from a bamboo tube:
"She, she drowned."
"Why would she just drown like that?" Zhao Fusheng asked, puzzled.
Beside him, Gou Laosi looked shocked at the news of Fourth Madam Zhuang's death.
He seemed to have a fairly good impression of her, and they were related, yet he reacted as if he'd never heard of her death before. That showed her death was not an honorable one.
"You've been evasive about this from the start. Just say it. Was your elder cousin murdered, and then the malignant ghost revived?"
"No."
Zhuang Laoqi was plainly uneasy. He didn't want to answer, but the ghost arm frightened him too much, and the pain in the back of his legs reminded him that today this matter couldn't be settled quietly. He let out his breath and glanced around:
"Could my lord have the others step out?"
This touched Fourth Madam Zhuang's reputation, so Zhao Fusheng thought it over and signaled the menial workers not handling the case to leave the hall. Magistrate Pang and Zhang Chuanshi and the others from the bureau stayed.
Zhang Chuanshi wanted to slip out. He didn't want to work ghost cases, and the more detailed the clues he heard, the more likely Zhao Fusheng was to grab him for the case.
Unfortunately Zhao Fusheng hadn't said he could go, so he didn't dare, and stayed with a miserable face.
"The unconnected people have left. Everyone remaining may be handling this ghost case, so no one leaves."
Zhao Fusheng said it flatly.
She had her own principles for how she worked, and she wouldn't let Zhuang Laoqi lead her around.
Zhuang Laoqi hadn't expected his words to matter either, but Zhao Fusheng's gesture gave him a way down. The string that had been drawn tight in his heart loosened at once, and he lost the will to resist. He answered honestly:
"My lord, my elder cousin, she, she took a lover."
"How could that be?"
Before Zhao Fusheng could speak, Gou Laosi beside him, listening intently, cried out in shock, losing his composure.
The whole hall was filled with big shots who couldn't be crossed by two country folk, and Gou Laosi had still shouted out in his agitation. It showed how little he believed it.
"It's true!"
Zhuang Laoqi stressed it in a low voice.
The answer took Zhang Chuanshi and the others by surprise. Magistrate Pang had first heard the two men say Fourth Madam Zhuang was virtuous and beautiful, and had felt sorry on hearing she was dead. Now he heard Zhuang Laoqi say that such a woman had a lover outside, and he was stunned.
Since the most embarrassing part was already out, Zhuang Laoqi simply said:
"At first we didn't believe it either. We thought Mancai was talking nonsense. The village chief didn't believe it at first and called my uncle over, and when my uncle heard it, he flew into a rage."
"Ah."
At this point Zhuang Laoqi heaved a long sigh:
"Not just you, Cousin. To this day I still can't believe it."
Then he clutched his head in anguish.
"My uncle thought the Kuailiang Village people were talking rubbish. He said if you told him Kuai Wu had been caught committing adultery with someone in the village and beaten to death, fine, but there was no way my elder cousin had a lover."
Before she married, Fourth Madam Zhuang had a famous name, and her character was more famous than her looks. In those days in Zhuang Family Village, even the pickiest old women had to give her a thumbs-up when she was mentioned.
"But she really did have a lover. He was an outsider, who came to Kuailiang Village to buy medicinal herbs."
Magistrate Pang seemed to remember something at this and added:
"Kuailiang Village is surrounded by mountains on three sides and a river on the fourth. Behind the mountain grows an herb called baisu1, which treats insomnia, vivid dreams, palpitations and sleep paralysis, and has remarkable effect when taken."
"The herb is very well known and many outsiders go to buy it. Before the ghost fog appeared in Wan'an County, Kuailiang Village could pay their taxes with this herb."
Magistrate Pang truly knew the county's affairs. With his addition, Zhao Fusheng understood Kuailiang Village much better.
"Yes, yes, yes," Zhuang Laoqi nodded. "This gentleman is right. Baisu is very famous, but it grows with miasma, and the mountain behind Kuailiang Village is steep and treacherous. Only the locals know it best."
On top of that, it was the village's very livelihood, so Kuailiang guarded it strictly, with organized watches, and only their own villagers were allowed up the mountain to pick it. The yield was therefore small and the price high.
Every year around the fifth or sixth month, when the baisu picking season came, many outsiders heard about it and came.
They would lodge for a while with Kuailiang families, and after the villagers had picked and dried the baisu, they bought it at a high price. During their stay the outsiders paid, or worked to cover their room and board, and the villagers were warm toward these god-of-wealth guests.
This had gone on for years, but this year it went wrong.
"This sixth month a group of outsiders came, and one of them started an affair with my elder cousin."
Zhuang Laoqi said it with indignation.
"At first it wasn't exposed. Later Kuai Huaide of Kuailiang Village reported it. Mancai said that when Sixth Uncle first heard from Kuai Huaide he didn't believe it either, had Kuai Huaide beaten, tied him up, and said he'd take him to apologize to my elder cousin."
But the outcome wasn't what Sixth Uncle expected.
Sixth Uncle, afraid of ruining Fourth Madam Zhuang's name with too many eyes in the daytime, planned to tie up Kuai Huaide and go to apologize at night.
But by terrible luck, the lover seemed to have heard word during the day, and mysteriously vanished from the village.
Until then no one had suspected anything between the two of them, but once the man ran off, everyone felt something was wrong.
Afterward Third Madam Kuai barged into Kuai Wu's house to search and found, in Fourth Madam Zhuang's chests and cabinets, some gifts from the lover, and even a man's sweat towel.
With that, the affair was proven.
The lover had slipped away and left Fourth Madam Zhuang to take the blame alone.
Perhaps because Kuailiang Village had been so harmonious all these years, and ties among its people so close, they couldn't tolerate this betrayal.
Sixth Uncle turned his earlier pity into anger.
Considering that Zhuang and Kuai were neighbors and had twice married into each other's families in recent years, Sixth Uncle Kuai did not make a public scene, fearing it would escalate into a blood feud between the two villages.
So he privately arranged to deal with Fourth Madam Zhuang.
After the villagers talked it over, they decided to put Fourth Madam Zhuang in a pig cage and drown her.
It might have ended there, but something unexpected happened. After Fourth Madam Zhuang was drowned, she seemed unable to rest. Her body floated in the water and would not sink even with stones tied to it. In the end the villagers hauled it out and prepared to burn it, but her body turned into blood mist and vanished without a trace.
And after her body disappeared, strange things began in Kuailiang Village.
"When Mancai came for help, he said Kuailiang Village was full of fog, the sky wouldn't brighten, and for several days afterward everything stayed in darkness."
This naturally disrupted the villagers' daily lives.
They couldn't go out to work, and worse, they found they couldn't leave Kuailiang Village at all.
At first some grew afraid and wanted to go out to ask for help.
"They clearly went out with torches, circled around, and either disappeared, or walked a whole day and ended up back in the village."
So fear spread through the village.
Worst of all was not just that. The village was pitch black, so dark that even lamps couldn't drive the darkness away.
In the dark, and with Kuailiang Village being large, at some point the villagers smelled a faint scent of blood, as if some family had slaughtered a pig and the blood had splashed all over the ground.
Sixth Uncle, worried something would happen, had the villagers call the roll and gather everyone together.
"In a crisis like that, he showed some sense," Zhao Fusheng nodded.
Country villagers had no way of dealing with ghosts. When the village suddenly fell into darkness and a thick smell of blood appeared when they couldn't see their surroundings, even a fool would know something big had happened.
As a respected village elder, Sixth Uncle making everyone call the roll was a last-ditch gamble, the only method he could think of in desperation.
"My lord is right," Zhuang Laoqi nodded.
But he said it entirely insincerely, simply a reflexive flattery.
Fear rose in his eyes.
"Mancai said that once they called the roll, they found a number of villagers missing, and nobody knew whether they'd gone out after dark and not come back, or something terrible had happened to them—"
And the roll call brought a terrible consequence.
"The people who had been called ran into strange things. They kept hearing someone calling their name behind them, as if someone stood behind them poking at their back with something."
His voice trembled as he spoke.
Since being paddled, Zhuang Laoqi's voice had trembled the whole time, but this tremor was different from the pain-induced one before.
It was as if a fear had sprouted from the bottom of his heart and spread through every limb.
"Those who were poked in the back soon said they had to go home to receive a guest, and before long, those people disappeared."
At this, Zhao Fusheng and the others finally understood why Gou Laosi had angered Zhuang Laoqi by joking with him, poking him with a bamboo stick and calling his name: it was because of the ghost calamity.
With all of this told, many things were clear.
But he had kept these things bottled up inside for so long, and the longer he'd hidden them, the greater his fear had grown. Now that he had finally spoken, and no one was questioning him, he couldn't stop:
"When Mancai came to Zhuang Family Village for help, he said all this. Right in front of the village chief, he suddenly turned his head."
Fear filled Zhuang Laoqi's face as he told it.
"He said someone seemed to have poked his back. At first he was a bit frightened, and then suddenly a strange smile came over him—"
Gulp.
Zhuang Laoqi swallowed hard.
"He seemed to smile with deep satisfaction. He said someone at home was waiting for him and he had to hurry back to Kuailiang Village, so he wouldn't say more."
As soon as Kuai Mancai finished, he turned and left without hesitation.
His behavior was both strange and rude, as if he had forgotten even to say goodbye to the village chief.
But in the moment he turned, big drops of blood streamed down his arms.
"His arms hung at his sides and the blood came out of his sleeves, flowing from his wrists to his palms and dripping all over the floor. He left several bloody footprints, but seemed to feel nothing at all."
Kuai Mancai had come bearing news of Fourth Madam Zhuang's death, which touched the reputation of a Zhuang daughter, and the village chief had been deeply worried, so he'd made a great show of summoning Zhuang Laoqi's uncle's family.
But when everyone had been called, Kuai Mancai suddenly said, out of nowhere, that he was leaving, and the chief had been furious.
When Kuai Mancai first said the Zhuang woman's name was stained, the chief had been startled, and now he suspected Kuai Mancai had gone mad and come to Zhuang Family Village to talk nonsense on purpose.
Seeing Kuai Mancai about to leave, everyone moved to stop him, wanting justice from him.
Before they could stop him, they saw Kuai Mancai's hands dripping blood.
Then, before everyone's eyes, blood poured from all seven of Kuai Mancai's orifices, and a hole suddenly split open at his back.
"Blood sprayed from his back. The village chief was sitting in the seat of honor and got drenched, and he fainted on the spot from fright."
Zhuang Laoqi trembled as he spoke.
He used no florid language when recalling the scene, but together with the terror on his face and the tremor in his voice, it was enough for everyone present to feel roughly how horrifying it had been.
"Our village chief fell ill that very day. His son hurried into Wulidian to fetch a doctor, and the whole family borrowed half a qian2 of silver from Pockmarked Er in town to buy two slices of ginseng to prolong his father's life."
Hearing this, Magistrate Pang and the others in the room felt a chill.
Zhao Fusheng, however, remained calm and asked Zhuang Laoqi:
"Were you there when Kuai Mancai died?"
She sounded so composed that she might have been chatting idly, not discussing a ghost case.
Recalling the weird incident had made Zhuang Laoqi's hair stand on end, but affected by her manner, he grew somewhat steadier.
"I was there."
He explained:
"Everyone knew what my elder cousin's character was before she married."
In recent years Fourth Madam Zhuang's life hadn't been good, and she'd been ashamed to visit her parents' home, but since it concerned her reputation, if they let the Kuailiang people slander her like this, it could affect the reputation of all Zhuang Family Village.
"So when my uncle heard this he was furious, suspecting Kuailiang Village was bullying us because we had no one to stand up for us, and he called a few of us younger ones to go over together."
Who could have known they would witness such a terrible scene?
"Mm," Zhao Fusheng gave a nasal sound, then asked:
"Did you see a ghost then?"
"No."
The terror still lingered on Zhuang Laoqi's face, and he shuddered and shook his head.
"Then how are you sure this is a haunting?" After Zhao Fusheng asked, Zhang Chuanshi nodded too:
"You didn't see a ghost in this case. How do you know it's a haunting?"
From what Zhuang Laoqi had said so far, the case could just as well be a human calamity.
"Maybe Kuailiang Village killed your elder cousin, your Zhuang Family Village folk wouldn't take it, killed Kuai Mancai who came to report, the two villages fought, and they told outsiders it was a haunting."
"We wouldn't dare, we wouldn't dare—"
Zhuang Laoqi waved his hands hastily.
At the word "kill" he tried to prop himself up in alarm, moved too fast and pulled his injuries, and winced with pain.
His anxiety didn't look feigned. Zhao Fusheng felt surer, and asked again:
"Then how are you sure it's a haunting?"
"Because after Kuai Mancai died, our village chief was so frightened he took to his bed, and he was about to breathe his last. They only revived him after pinching his philtrum raw."
Zhuang Laoqi said urgently:
"His sons went into debt to buy old ginseng to hang on to his breath, and that saved his life." He swallowed. "The day before he was half dead, and the next day he got up from the bed, saying someone was calling him and he had to go to Kuailiang Village."
