IBGSW Chapter 145
Sudden Change
"This ghost case is no small matter. From what Zhuang Laoqi said, Kuai Mancai's death was bizarre. No trace of the ghost was seen before he died, which means it's very likely the ghost didn't strike in person but that he triggered a rule."
This was crucial.
To break a ghost case, to capture or even dismember a malignant ghost, you had to at least see the ghost.
Kuai Mancai had bled without stopping before he died, and a hole as big as a bowl had opened in his back. But no ghost had appeared, so it didn't count as a killing by the ghost itself.
Without seeing the ghost, you couldn't know its killing rule, and without that you wouldn't know how to avoid danger when dealing with it. That meant a high chance of triggering the rule, being marked by the ghost, and dying without ever knowing why.
"Once we reach Zhuang Family Village, everyone must be careful. Don't wander around."
Zhao Fusheng said.
"Yes!"
"Yes!" Fan Wujiu and Wu Shaochun tensed, and they committed her words to memory.
Fan Bisi didn't know whether to feel relieved or to keep his nerves strung tight.
This case sounded like a female ghost reviving, but Zhao Fusheng's face was grave, which meant the case was extraordinarily difficult and dangerous.
He wouldn't be going and didn't have to worry about being hurt. But his younger brother was among the investigators, and that couldn't help but worry him.
He steadied himself and said:
"I'll have someone pack my lord's things, and prepare the carriage."
Zhao Fusheng nodded. Zhang Chuanshi, hearing there was no escaping this case, put on a face of despair and said:
"It's so dangerous. Why is my lord sending so many people? They're going to their deaths anyway. In my view, Wu Shaochun alone would do. Second Brother Fan and I have both already worked a ghost case."
Then, as if remembering something, he added quickly:
"Wan'an County is short of order envoys these days, but I remember there's still Liu Yizhen. That kid has hidden in the Confucian Temple and won't show himself, the sly fox1. We should drag him along to work the case too. We can't always rely on the same few of us—"
The more ghost cases he handled, the higher his chance of death. Zhang Chuanshi said, trembling:
"Or this old body of mine will end up buried in these cases sooner or later."
"Don't worry."
Zhao Fusheng turned to him with a smile.
At "don't worry," he thought Zhao Fusheng had a plan, and his eyes lit up. He was about to speak when she said:
"After repairing the bureau's façade and shops, there's still money left over. If anyone dies in a ghost case, there's a generous death benefit—"
Before she finished, Zhang Chuanshi, finding it ill-omened, hastily cut her off:
"How can my lord say such unlucky things?"
"What would you like to hear instead?"
She raised an eyebrow at him. He remembered that he himself had raised the topic, and under her gaze he felt a little guilty and muttered:
"I was just saying. Besides, if I die, I've no children, and the only relative I have is missing. What use is a death benefit to me..."
"Then we'll give you a lavish burial," Zhao Fusheng teased. "We'll arrange a splendid funeral for you."
Zhang Chuanshi said with a woeful face:
"I don't want to die."
Wu Shaochun took it more lightly:
"A lavish burial is fine with me. My life was a lucky find anyway, and my mother's gone, so no one would collect the benefit. If it's all spent on me, it's money well spent."
The three of them bantered for a moment. Then Gou Laosi, whom they had forgotten, suddenly spoke up timidly:
"My lord, will we, will we be all right—"
His one sentence shattered the relaxed mood in the bureau.
Zhao Fusheng's smile vanished. She turned serious and said:
"I can't be sure."
They still hadn't worked out the malignant ghost's killing rule. They only knew that Kuai Mancai's delivery of the message carried a certain "message" unique to the ghost.
The people of Zhuang Family Village who had witnessed his death received the ghost's "notice" one after another and went of their own accord to Kuailiang Village.
Put more seriously, Zhuang Laoqi should have been on the ghost's "kill list." He was the ghost's prey. But because Gou Laosi had wandered into Zhuang Family Village by accident, he had unintentionally carried Zhuang Laoqi away and saved him.
An unmarked person, not on the ghost's list, had entered Zhuang Family Village and, without meaning to, taken Zhuang Laoqi away.
"But judging from how Kuai Mancai ended up, you'll probably be implicated too."
In other words, Zhuang Laoqi now played the same role as Kuai Mancai had when he went from Kuailiang Village to Zhuang Family Village for help: a vessel for conveying the ghost's mark.
"So you must come with us on this trip."
This was the best way to keep the ghost's rule from spreading.
If Zhao Fusheng's guess was right, then taking Gou Laosi along carried two outcomes. If the case was resolved smoothly and he survived, all would be well. If the case ran into trouble, or Gou Laosi died in it, the ghost's vessel for transmission would end there and the case wouldn't spread outward and harm more people.
The method was somewhat cruel, but for the sake of the other innocent people of Wan'an County, Zhao Fusheng had no other choice.
"I, I don't want to go—"
Gou Laosi had understood what Zhao Fusheng meant. His face went white and he waved his hands frantically:
"I don't want to go."
"You have no say in this."
Zhao Fusheng said coldly:
"Until we've confirmed the ghost's real killing rule, we can't tell whether your existence will harm others. You have to come with us on this trip to Zhuang Family Village and Kuailiang Village. Otherwise I'll kill you before we set out."
"But, but that's not fair, I haven't done anything—"
Hearing this, Gou Laosi's face filled with despair.
"I just, I didn't know—"
"What's fair about any of this?"
Zhao Fusheng looked at him calmly.
"A ghost case isn't fair to anyone. Look around my bureau. Does anyone here want to go?"
She pointed at Wu Shaochun and Zhang Chuanshi.
"A malignant ghost's appearance isn't fair to the dead, either. We have no choice."
"Have mercy, my lord, I don't want to go—"
Gou Laosi didn't listen and just repeated the same words over and over.
Zhao Fusheng didn't waste more breath on him and turned to Fan Bisi:
"You saw today's situation. Detain everyone Zhuang Laoqi and Gou Laosi have had contact with lately. Don't let them leave the bureau's grounds. Ideally they should eat and sleep nearby, and not spread to other parts of Wan'an County."
Fan Bisi understood the stakes at once. His heart tightened, and he answered:
"Yes."
Having finished that instruction, she turned to Magistrate Pang.
The old magistrate already understood her meaning. He was a little uneasy but said:
"Don't worry, my lord. When I return to the magistrate's office, I won't go out or receive visitors until you're safely back, and I'll keep my contacts with people to a minimum."
Zhao Fusheng nodded.
"In short, until we've confirmed the ghost's marking rule, it's never wrong to be careful."
When she finished, Gou Laosi was still crying out his innocence.
Unexpectedly, Zhuang Laoqi, who had just been so frightened and uneasy, was now strangely calm.
Everyone was talking in a flurry, but he seemed an idle bystander.
Zhao Fusheng hadn't overlooked him.
He was one of the key figures in the Kuailiang Village case, having seen the people of Kuailiang die with his own eyes, and his every move deserved attention.
While speaking, she had kept watching him from the corner of her eye.
Just as she finished giving orders, Zhuang Laoqi, who had been slumped on the floor all this time, suddenly propped himself up.
He turned around, looking a little dazed, and looked about.
It was as if someone had suddenly appeared behind him and greeted him.
The movement made Zhao Fusheng's heart sink.
But there was no one beside him except Gou Laosi.
The bureau's menial workers had withdrawn. Magistrate Pang and the Fan brothers sat in chairs on either side, and she sat in the main seat, with Wu Shaochun and Zhang Chuanshi standing behind her.
Zhuang Laoqi and Gou Laosi knelt in the middle of the hall. Gou Laosi, hearing he must go with them, had broken down and was weeping, and hadn't noticed anything unusual about his cousin.
When Zhuang Laoqi turned and saw nothing strange, he absently lay back down on the floor.
But in the next moment, it was as if someone had poked him in the back again. He pushed himself up on both arms, painfully turned his head to look around again, and asked:
"Who is it?"
Zhuang Laoqi's sudden words stunned everyone in the hall.
Everyone in the Wan'an County Demon-Suppression Bureau now, apart from Zhuang Laoqi and Gou Laosi, had been through a ghost case themselves and dealt with malignant ghosts.
Their sense of danger was far sharper than ordinary people's.
As soon as Zhuang Laoqi spoke, Zhang Chuanshi realized something was wrong.
Everyone except Gou Laosi instinctively turned to look at Zhao Fusheng. Magistrate Pang quietly got up and walked toward her.
Fan Wujiu leaned out to look at the sky outside.
At some point the sun had been covered by thick clouds.
The eaves jutting out beyond the yamen hall cast shadows, and the room suddenly seemed to have dimmed.
Fine droplets of mist seemed to float in the air, mixed with an eerie atmosphere, drifting in and out of the yamen hall and carrying a dread that made people uneasy to their bones.
Gou Laosi still hadn't grasped how serious things were. He was lost in the unhappy news that Zhao Fusheng was making him go to Kuailiang Village.
Hearing Zhuang Laoqi's words, he felt both irritated and afraid and looked around too:
"There's nobody there."
"Zhuang Laoqi, what's happening?"
Zhao Fusheng asked without changing expression.
Zhuang Laoqi raised his head, looking dazed and confused.
He scratched his head and mussed his dusty hair. Hearing Zhao Fusheng's question, he said hesitantly:
"I feel like someone just poked my back."
Hearing that, Gou Laosi's temper boiled over:
"Who's poking your back now? I think you do nothing all day but stir up trouble—"
In his view, if Zhuang Laoqi hadn't made a fuss over nothing today, their cousins' scuffle wouldn't have been caught by these big officials of Wan'an County, and there'd have been no talk of haunting at Kuailiang Village, let alone Zhao Fusheng ordering him to come along.
Zhao Fusheng dropped her earlier forceful questioning manner and spoke much more gently:
"Zhuang Laoqi, who do you think poked you in the back?"
"I don't know—"
Zhuang Laoqi shook his head.
As he spoke, in full view of everyone, his body suddenly lurched forward.
His backside had been paddled, so he lay prostrate on the floor. But since "something" had poked him in the back, he had braced both palms against the floor and lifted his upper body, so when he lurched forward everyone saw it plainly.
Zhang Chuanshi, panicking, shrank behind Zhao Fusheng.
Zhao Fusheng kept her face calm and asked him:
"Was it your cousin who poked you?"
Zhuang Laoqi and Gou Laosi both knelt in the hall, with no one else around them but the two.
As soon as Zhao Fusheng asked, Gou Laosi was about to protest his innocence, but she silenced him with a sharp look.
"Cousin?"
Zhuang Laoqi's tone had slowed.
Gou Laosi was drenched in sweat and was seething with resentment when Zhuang Laoqi, finally seeming to have settled something, shook his head: "No, no, not my cousin."
When he said that, Gou Laosi's heart settled and he smiled.
He was about to speak when the formerly slumped Zhuang Laoqi rolled over and sat up.
The movement startled Gou Laosi:
"Laoqi, doesn't your backside hurt?"
Not only did Zhuang Laoqi's backside no longer hurt, his color was far better than before.
Since the ghost case broke out in Zhuang Family Village, though he'd luckily escaped the ghost domain, he'd had no peace day or night. His face was pale, he woke several times each night, his eyes were ringed with black, and the bags under them were shocking. Anyone could see he hadn't slept well.
But now Zhuang Laoqi's cheeks were flushed and his skin had lost its dullness, even glowing a little, as if happy events were near.
It looked eerie, and it unsettled Zhang Chuanshi.
Zhuang Laoqi ignored his cousin's call and got up from the floor.
Zhao Fusheng made a decisive call: "Shaochun, shut the door at once. Second Brother Fan, stop him."
"I knew there'd be trouble—"
Zhang Chuanshi murmured with a woeful face.
Gou Laosi didn't understand, but from the grim faces around him he could tell something was wrong.
Zhuang Laoqi got up beside him and started toward the door. Remembering what Zhao Fusheng had said, Gou Laosi instinctively reached out to stop him:
"Cousin, where are you going?"
"To Kuailiang Village."
Zhuang Laoqi answered cheerfully.
"Something good's happening over there. They sent someone to tell us to go together."
At these words, Gou Laosi, who had been confused a moment ago, shuddered all over, and the hand gripping Zhuang Laoqi's arm let go.
"He, he—"
When Zhao Fusheng had been questioning Zhuang Laoqi, Gou Laosi had heard it all clearly.
He had mentioned the ghost case in Zhuang Family Village, how Kuai Mancai from Kuailiang Village had gone to Zhuang Family Village to report, then suddenly and bizarrely stood up and died in the chief's house.
Afterward the chief and his son and other Zhuang Family Village people each began acting as if they had to go to Kuailiang Village, just like Zhuang Laoqi now.
Only now did Gou Laosi finally grasp how serious it was.
At that very moment, Wu Shaochun had already rushed to the gate and shut it with a bang.
Zhang Chuanshi and Magistrate Pang, without waiting for Zhao Fusheng's orders, also blocked the side doors on either side of the yamen hall.
Fan Wujiu took a quick step forward and blocked Zhuang Laoqi.
He was big and strong, far stronger than an ordinary man, and had thought this block would surely stop Zhuang Laoqi.
But Zhuang Laoqi had clearly been marked by the malignant ghost.
His actions were no longer his own. It was as if he'd lost control of his body.
Faced with Fan Wujiu's block, he seemed not to see Fan Wujiu at all and slammed straight into him.
Thud.
At the collision, Fan Wujiu felt as if he had been struck by something heavy. He staggered back two steps, while Zhuang Laoqi, dragging his heavy feet, kept moving forward.
"Shaochun, stop him with me!"
Zhao Fusheng ordered loudly.
"Yes!"
Wu Shaochun shouted, turned and hurried over.
Once Fan Wujiu had steadied himself, he realized he had been knocked back by Zhuang Laoqi. In a contest of strength, he had lost a notch, and unwilling to accept it, he thrust out his chest and cried:
"Again!"
As he cried out, he reached to grab Zhuang Laoqi's arm.
