IBGSW Chapter 148
A Temporary Calm
"There. You see it now?" Zhao Fusheng said, taking a quiet breath and looking at Zhuang Laoqi. "Your back looks like this too."
"So that's it."
Zhuang Laoqi patted his chest twice.
At those two pats, the sound of rippling water rose again.
Whether Zhao Fusheng's words had soothed him, or seeing his cousin's back had made him choose to fool himself, he didn't dwell on the sound of water any longer. Instead he said:
"That scared me to death. I thought I was going to die."
No one answered, and Zhao Fusheng didn't take up his remark.
"My lord, this thing on my cousin's back—"
Once relieved, his face visibly looked better.
No more ghastly droplets and black mud seeped from his face. Though the veins still stood high on it, the situation hadn't worsened further, and everyone looked better.
"It's the ghost's mark."
Zhao Fusheng said:
"Once marked by a ghost, you'll be killed by it. The only solution is to settle this ghost case and eliminate the ghost calamity at its source."
Believing himself safe for now, Zhuang Laoqi slid back into his old timid, useless self.
At the word "ghost case," his eyes instinctively darted away and he tucked in his chin, looking fearful and eager to run:
"I, I don't dare go back—"
"No!"
Zhao Fusheng refused flatly: "You must come with us."
Then she added:
"Not only you. Your cousin has to come with us too."
This ghost's killing rule in Kuailiang Village was uncanny, and its way of spreading the mark was eerie, so she had to keep these two sources of calamity by her side and take them back to Kuailiang Village.
"Once marked by a ghost, it will sooner or later come for you, and you can't hide."
"In Wan'an County, I'm the one who deals with ghosts. Stay by my side and you have a thread of hope."
"But—"
Zhuang Laoqi still felt uneasy and wanted to refuse.
Zhao Fusheng barked:
"No buts! Zhuang Laoqi, I'm not discussing this with you. If you keep refusing, believe me, I'll have you dragged out and paddled again."
Her threat quickly cowed him.
He instinctively touched the back of his thigh.
His wounds should have long since lost all feeling, but the fear left over from when he was alive remained and made him afraid, and from then on he didn't dare make a sound.
He accepted Zhao Fusheng's arrangement, and she breathed a sigh of relief.
"Second Brother Fan, fasten his clothes for him, take him out and put him on the carriage."
She stayed composed.
"Old Zhang, Shaochun, you two wake Gou Laosi afterward and carry him onto the carriage too."
Zhuang Laoqi's gaze fell on Gou Laosi. He had wanted to ask why Zhao Fusheng didn't take his cousin up with him, but hearing her, he dropped his doubts.
He rose obediently and saw Fan Wujiu take off his own jacket and hand it to him.
Fan Wujiu belonged to the Demon-Suppression Bureau.
The bureau lacked neither food nor clothing now. Fan Wujiu's jacket wasn't silk, but it was seventy or eighty percent new, made of good cloth, sturdy, with no patches.
Taking it, Zhuang Laoqi couldn't help showing joy and surprise.
"Is this for me? Such fine clothes—"
His hands, bloated pale from soaking, touched the jacket, still warm, and the silt in his fingers and the dampness of his palms soon left visible marks on it.
"Oh no!"
Zhuang Laoqi let out a wail as if his heart would break.
Where the hole in his back had opened, the water surged violently, and Fan Wujiu watched in terror as the burning-red edge of the wound spread a little wider with Zhuang Laoqi's agitation.
"What a waste! My lord, I won't wear it, I'm afraid I'll get it dirty—" He hadn't noticed anything strange in his own body and was only full of regret that his clumsy hands had stained the clothes.
"Put it on!"
Zhao Fusheng ordered firmly.
Then she gazed at Zhuang Laoqi for a long time, and suddenly her expression softened:
"There's a ghost's mark on your back. It wouldn't look right if people saw it."
"It's only a jacket. If you like, afterward the two brothers have old clothes, and you can pick a few."
Zhuang Laoqi's eyes lit up:
"Really, my lord?"
"Yes, yes."
Fan Wujiu nodded repeatedly.
"My brother and I have several sets of clothes we don't wear. If they fit, take your pick."
Then he said: "Put it on quickly."
"Yes, yes, yes."
With that, Zhuang Laoqi had no more doubts and hurriedly put it on.
The moment the jacket touched his back, water stains soaked through it.
A bowl-sized blood-red mark appeared on the left side of his back. He didn't notice, still beaming as he stroked the cuffs:
"Such fine clothes. My father never wore anything like this in his whole life—"
Fan Wujiu forced himself to stay calm and led him out of the hall.
As soon as he was gone, Zhang Chuanshi dashed to the side halls and pulled open the shut doors, and fresh air rushed in and drove out the faint stench of a corpse.
"Whew—"
Everyone who'd been holding their breath for a long time let out a long exhale.
"My lord—" Zhang Chuanshi called, and Zhao Fusheng said:
"There's not much time. Don't bother packing. Wake Gou Laosi up right now. I have something to tell him, so he doesn't give it away."
Wu Shaochun nodded at her orders, crawled on his knees to Gou Laosi's side, pinched his philtrum hard, and quickly revived him.
"Ghost—"
As soon as Gou Laosi woke he was about to scream, but Wu Shaochun clapped a hand over his mouth.
"Don't talk and don't ask questions. Listen first," Zhao Fusheng said coldly:
"If you don't understand, I'll kill you right now."
Gou Laosi was frightened. He'd also seen the ghost behind her, and nodded desperately with tears in his eyes, but with his mouth and nose covered by Wu Shaochun, only muffled sounds came from his nose.
"You saw Zhuang Laoqi's condition. He's now a living dead man. The reason I say he isn't fully dead is that he doesn't realize he's dead, and a single breath is holding him up."
Zhao Fusheng said it all in one go, not caring whether Gou Laosi could take it, or how much:
"But he can't be told. The moment he is, he dies. As the ghost's vessel, there may be two outcomes after he dies. One is what happened at Zhuang Family Village when Kuai Mancai delivered word."
Zhuang Laoqi's corpse would become one of the sources of contamination, and anyone who saw him die would be marked at once.
"The other is that he revives as a malignant ghost and becomes a ghost servant of the Kuailiang ghost1, and harms the people of the county town."
Zhao Fusheng wasn't sure which. She had handled many ghost cases and among the Great Han Dynasty's Demon-Suppression Bureaus, she could count as experienced, but she had actually dealt with a limited number of cases, and much of what she did was guesswork.
The Kuailiang Village case had come without warning, and it was a great test for her too.
"It's best to act as if nothing's wrong, so he doesn't realize he's dead."
When she'd finished, she looked at Gou Laosi:
"Did you hear clearly?"
"Mm— mm—"
Gou Laosi nodded desperately to show he understood.
Wu Shaochun took his hand away, and Gou Laosi, free to speak, said through tears:
"Have mercy, my lord. I really don't dare go to Kuailiang Village. Spare my life. I won't speak to my cousin, so nothing will leak out—"
"It won't work."
Zhao Fusheng looked at him calmly.
"I've told you, you've been marked by a ghost. Even if I let you go, you'd end up the same as Zhuang Laoqi, a source of calamity, bringing misfortune to everyone you touch."
"You saw Zhuang Laoqi's back, didn't you?" She looked straight into Gou Laosi's eyes.
Gou Laosi's eyes gradually filled with despair.
The scene he'd just seen rose in his mind: a bowl-sized hole in an emaciated back, its edges like burned paper, wrapped around a belly full of reeking black water.
Zhuang Laoqi's dead-man face echoed in his memory and finally shifted into his own.
"Does my lord mean I'm beyond saving?" he said in despair.
"I wouldn't say you can only die. But if the ghost case spreads, the ghost will sooner or later come for you, and that will be the day you die," Zhao Fusheng said.
"Come with us to Kuailiang Village and see what happened. If the case is solved and you haven't been killed by the ghost by then, there may be a thread of hope."
At that, a glimmer came into Gou Laosi's eyes.
Then Zhao Fusheng added:
"But if you have other designs, I'll have to kill you before we set out."
Her tone was calm and her gaze gentle, but the firm intent showed in her eyes. Gou Laosi shivered, and the hope in his eyes faded.
He'd die either way, and going to Kuailiang Village at least offered a thread of life.
Gou Laosi knew what to choose.
...
Zhao Fusheng had him taken out and loaded onto the carriage with the others, then told Magistrate Pang to look after the county's government affairs.
As she finished, Fan Bisi hurried in.
"My lord—"
He hadn't finished packing his bag when he heard Zhao Fusheng was leaving immediately. He'd rushed over to ask what had happened and found her turning to look at him:
"After I leave, the bureau is yours to manage for now."
"My lord, this trip to Kuailiang Village—" Fan Bisi wanted to ask how sure she was, but the words that came out were:
"When will my lord return?"
"I can't say."
Zhao Fusheng answered.
The words made Fan Bisi and Magistrate Pang tremble. They exchanged a look, anxiety in their eyes.
"The Kuailiang Village matter is more troublesome than I expected."
The malignant ghost could kill at a distance.
Zhuang Laoqi had only been marked, and had long left Zhuang Family Village and fled into Wan'an County, yet under the bureau's plaque he'd been silently wiped out by the ghost.
And after death, his body had become the ghost's vessel and nearly made Zhao Fusheng's malignant ghost revive.
Though the Baleful-tier ghost of "give first, take later" had appeared and suppressed the ghost's aura clinging to Zhuang Laoqi, the thought of it left Zhao Fusheng far from optimistic.
This wasn't the Kuailiang ghost's home ground.
Just a wisp of the ghost's aura had been able to disregard the plaque's suppression to kill at a distance, to overpower the damaged ghost arm, and to make Zhao Fusheng's own ghost revive. It showed how fierce "Fourth Madam Zhuang" had become in death.
"This will be a hard fight." Zhao Fusheng looked down and straightened her clothes.
"I can't say when I'll be back. If it goes smoothly, we'll return as soon as we can."
As she said this, Fan Bisi's hands shook a few times, and then he lifted a simple bundle he'd packed.
"Don't worry, my lord. We'll wait for you at the bureau. The bureau still has no one to keep the case scrolls, and I need to find an accountant—"
He chattered on:
"And there's a lot of other work—"
Before he'd finished, tears suddenly filled his eyes:
"My lord, I only have this one brother left."
"If it's convenient, please don't forget to bring him back—"
Zhao Fusheng looked up at him, and he stared at her too.
They looked at each other for a long moment. Fan Bisi's eyes slowly turned despairing, and then Zhao Fusheng said calmly:
"I will."
She made no further promise, but the words made Fan Bisi's dim eyes light up.
It was as if a boulder had been lifted from him.
Several people escorted Zhao Fusheng out of the hall.
Outside, the carriage was ready, and its driver was a strong man in his prime.
Zhao Fusheng frowned:
"Have him get down. Old Zhang drives."
"My lord?" Fan Bisi, holding the bundle, hurried up. "This case is dangerous, and more people means more chances—"
The burly driver turned pale at this but stayed in his seat. Zhao Fusheng said:
"Do what's to be done as it's meant to be done. The rules can't be broken."
"This Kuailiang Village case really is dangerous—"
At that, Magistrate Pang chimed in:
"My lord, Kuailiang Village is run on the clan system, and with something like Madam Zhuang's matter happening, they're very likely to turn hostile to outsiders. If you take a few more people with you, you can protect yourself."
He had spent years dealing with people and the point was sound.
The Fan brothers and Zhang Chuanshi nodded too. Zhao Fusheng said:
"I did think so."
Kuailiang Village's people were fierce, and the victims of the ghost were pitiable and hateful at once.
Once the village's secrets were involved, local people would very likely resist.
That was why Zhao Fusheng was taking Zhang Chuanshi, Fan Wujiu and Wu Shaochun along: more hands made work easier.
But she had a malignant ghost under her control and had also conferred godhood on the Door Gods, so against ordinary villagers she was no helpless weakling.
"More hands do help, but bureau cases are still handled by the commanding officer and order envoys. That rule can't be broken."
She said:
"If we're short-handed, once we reach Wulidian we'll have the local precinct chief recruit help."
This was Precinct Chief Zhou's dereliction of duty.
He had governed the territory under his charge badly, letting Kuailiang Village use private punishment and so creating this ghost calamity by human hands, which had led to this tragedy.
"For this case, they bear the blame. We shouldn't be spending the Wan'an County Bureau's manpower."
At that, Fan Bisi understood what she meant and nodded.
The burly driver, as if reprieved from death, let out a long breath and scrambled down from the driver's seat, drenched in sweat:
"Thank you, my lord."
Zhao Fusheng ignored him and looked at Zhang Chuanshi.
