IBGSW Chapter 151
The Ghost Road Ahead
Zhao Fusheng smiled and said, “Shaochun, now that you know how the whole ghost case came about, do you still hate malignant ghosts?”
“I do!” Wu Shaochun answered without hesitation.
Then he faltered, a vague sense that something was off:
“...Your Honor, what do you mean by that?”
“I don’t know about the old cases. Without having lived through them, I have no right to speak.” The case files recorded a ghost case in a few sparse strokes. For most commanding officers, controlling a ghost was both a stroke of luck and a curse.
Dealing with ghosts brought fame and fortune, but it also meant dying a miserable death in a very short time.
Every time they took on a ghost case, they carried a greed for life and a terror of death. They resented, hated and loathed malignant ghosts, but above all they feared them, and they had no wish to learn where the ghosts had come from.
If not for the need to find out a ghost’s rules, they wouldn’t even have wanted to know what these revived ghosts had gone through while alive.
Under those conditions, the files rarely recorded a malignant ghost’s whole life.
From the moment a ghost revived, it brought the world only blood and left behind only fear.
Zhao Fusheng could draw some experience from the files, but not much deeper understanding. Goutou Village, though, she had handled in person, and the impression it left on her was profound.
Hearing Wu Shaochun now, she said calmly:
“I think the Goutou Village case proves one thing: malignant ghosts are not a natural disaster. They come from human wrongdoing.”
“Human wrongdoing?” Wu Shaochun was stunned. He murmured the words back to himself.
“Calamity and fortune have no gate; people bring them on themselves.”1 Zhao Fusheng smiled faintly.
She was different from her usual overbearing self just then. Fan Wujiu scratched his face and started to say something, but on second thought he found her words quite reasonable.
“If Wu Datong hadn’t kidnapped a woman by force, none of this calamity would have happened,” Zhao Fusheng said flatly.
“But, but that was Wu Datong’s fault. What did the rest of us villagers do?” Wu Shaochun wasn’t convinced:
“My parents were kind. They never harmed anyone. If there really is karmic retribution, let the ghost take her revenge on Wu Datong. Why kill people at random?”
“When the girl was taken, her family came to look for her.”
Zhao Fusheng’s expression turned somewhat stern:
“But the villagers held their clan close and huddled together for warmth. I won’t pass judgment on that.”
In a world like this, a village that was a pile of loose sand would very likely be bullied.
The chaos of the age had bred clans. Only a village united could survive such a terrible time.
“When her family came looking, the villagers knew full well Wu Datong had done wrong, and they covered for him anyway. That led to the girl dying in childbirth, and it is also why the substitute ghost’s unspeakable killing rule took shape.”
Everyone knew he existed, yet he could not be spoken of or mentioned. Once someone spoke of him, they were marked and skinned.
“Anyone who knows the ghost exists gets marked by it. That’s the main reason all of Goutou Village was marked together. And the skinning is the erasing of one’s own existence: your appearance, your face, your identity wiped away until you die. All of it matches the position the ghost was in when she was alive.”
Her words were a revelation to everyone in the carriage. Even Zhang Chuanshi, driving, seemed to have been enlightened, and a thoughtful look crossed his face.
“So that’s how you can crack a ghost case—” Zhang Chuanshi blurted, then began spitting nonstop, “Pfft, pfft, pfft!”
“I don’t want to understand any more than I do. The fewer of these cases the better. Best not to call me next time. I can’t do anything.”
Zhao Fusheng couldn’t be bothered with him and went on:
“So Goutou Village was bound to have trouble. The seed of the disaster was planted long before.”
What does a ghost understand?
Once a person dies and the malignant ghost revives, it has no thoughts, no memories, no hatred, no likes or dislikes. Everything is reduced to instinct.
“So the Goutou Village case was something the village brought on itself. Saying it came from human wrongdoing is not wrong. The villagers planted the bitter seed and in the end ate the bitter fruit.”
“...”
Wu Shaochun was badly shaken.
Zhao Fusheng’s words overturned everything he had believed. He wanted to argue, but he didn’t know how.
Reason told him she was right. Emotion could not accept it: his own kind parents had once been accomplices who enabled evil. He couldn’t bring himself to admit it.
“My mother wasn’t like that.”
All he could manage, awkwardly, was:
“I don’t think she deserved that ending.”
As he spoke, Wu Shaochun didn’t dare meet Zhao Fusheng’s eyes, afraid of the contempt he might see there.
But after a long while he heard no mockery. He looked up and saw Zhao Fusheng sitting opposite him, expression calm and still, as though his protest hadn’t bothered her.
“...” Wu Shaochun lowered his head, and suddenly his eyes stung.
He had been unable to let go of his mother’s death. Now, for some reason, he felt he understood it a little better than before.
“We can’t dictate how a malignant ghost acts.” She couldn’t win justice for the dead. Among those caught up in ghost cases there were innocents, and there were silent accomplices like the villagers of Goutou Village:
“After all, we can’t kneel and beg a ghost for mercy. All we can do is make up for the regret as best we can once the calamity has formed, and reduce tragedies like your mother’s.”
Wu Shaochun’s nose prickled and tears rolled in his eyes. After a long while he answered softly:
“Mm.”
“...”
Fan Wujiu and Zhang Chuanshi both shuddered.
They weren’t Wu Shaochun, who’d been talked clean out of his bearings by a few easy words from Zhao Fusheng.
Sitting beside Wu Shaochun, Fan Wujiu even felt that in this moment the young man had developed boundless reverence and passion for the order envoy’s calling because of what she’d said...
It wasn’t an illusion, because Wu Shaochun’s next words confirmed it: “Don’t worry, Your Honor. From now on I’ll go with you on every ghost case, so that regrets like this happen less!”
“...”
“...”
“...”
Now it wasn’t only Fan Wujiu and Zhang Chuanshi who shuddered. Zhao Fusheng gave a start too.
She hadn’t expected a casual remark to fire him up like this.
Wu Shaochun’s eyes were bright and his expression devout. She felt a rare flicker of awkwardness and guilt and, under his gaze, rubbed the tip of her nose twice without meaning to:
“G-good—”
“This kid’s gone mad,” Zhang Chuanshi said under his breath.
“...Shut up!” Zhao Fusheng turned and snapped at him.
“Fine, fine, I won’t say it—” he muttered, then looked ahead in bewilderment:
“Huh? This road looks a bit strange.”
While they’d been chatting, the carriage had long since left Wan’an County town and set out toward Kuailiang Village.
After a long stretch, at some point a thin fog had appeared ahead.
Mixed into the mist was the faint smell of blood and river mud.
This wasn’t Zhang Chuanshi’s first ghost case, and having once been related to Paperman Zhang, he was particularly sensitive to the aura of ghosts and baleful things.
The instant he saw the mist he groaned inwardly, instinctively pulled the reins and called:
“Whoa—”
He went to turn around, but the moment he did he saw Zhuang Laoqi sitting motionless beside him. He jolted in terror, hastily twisted his body the other way by force and looked into the carriage:
“Your Honor, something seems off.”
“Off?”
Zhao Fusheng had also caught the faint smell of blood. Zhuang Laoqi’s corpse stench had been masking it, and with everyone chatting, they’d overlooked it.
She leaned out toward the carriage door and, past Zhang and Zhuang, saw that fog had appeared ahead of the carriage.
“Your Honor—”
Fan Wujiu was about to speak, but Zhao Fusheng pressed her left index finger to her lips:
“Shh.”
Fan Wujiu fell silent at once.
Silence settled over the carriage. In that eerie quiet they seemed to catch a faint sound in their ears: splash, splash.
Like flowing water.
“It’s a branch of the Shangjia River.”
Zhuang Laoqi, who hadn’t said a word since telling the old story of Fourth Madam Zhuang and the wedding feast, as if sunk in an eerie silence, suddenly broke the silence that filled the carriage.
“The Shangjia River?”
Gou Laosi was startled and spoke up too, but Zhuang Laoqi seemed not to hear him, and his voice rose a little:
“Almost to Zhuang Family Village.”
Speech was already hard for him, and it came with a gurgling of water, as if bubbles had risen to his throat and were getting in the way. Each word took effort.
Just now he seemed rather happy. His tone carried a stiff, lilting lightness:
“Your Honor, I’m almost home.”
“So soon?”
Zhao Fusheng was surprised and glanced at Zhang Chuanshi, who was driving:
“Have we passed Wulidian Precinct?”
“N-no, I don’t think so—”
Zhang Chuanshi said, terrified.
He shook all over as he spoke:
“By my reckoning we left Wan’an County town only two or three quarter-hours ago. Magistrate Pang said Wulidian Precinct is over twenty li from town.”
The mountain roads were hard going. At the current pace it should take at least two double-hours or more (over four hours) to reach Wulidian Precinct.
And after Wulidian they’d still have to find a way to Kuailiang Village, which would be another double-hour or more.
But Zhang Chuanshi remembered clearly that they’d only just left the city. Wulidian Precinct should still have been far off, so how was it that in the blink of an eye Zhuang Laoqi was saying they were nearly at Zhuang Family Village?
Zhang Chuanshi only ever doubted other people, never his own judgment. So he forced down his fear, turned and glared at Zhuang Laoqi:
“Are you talking nonsense to scare me to death?”
“No, glug—no, glug—”
Zhuang Laoqi waved his hands, and that dead man’s face actually showed a trace of grievance:
“We really are almost at Zhuang Family Village. Look, old master—”
The moment his words ended, something strange happened.
In the space of a few breaths, the mountain forests and open fields on every side were swallowed by gray, murky fog.
The way ahead had been a blur of white, the path unclear, and the road behind was sealed off by fog too.
But the moment Zhuang Laoqi finished speaking, the fog ahead was torn apart as if by some mysterious force.
A black road pierced through the mist, stretching from far away and running right under the carriage.
Its far end was endless darkness, like a bottomless abyss, giving off a terror that set the heart pounding.
Yet within the deepest dark there seemed to be a strange point of light holding the black back with all its strength, so that the road was no longer pure darkness but carried a tint of red.
“W-what is that—” Zhang Chuanshi gasped.
“A black-and-red road.”
Zhao Fusheng glanced at it and gave her assessment.
“...”
She still had the leisure to say pointless things at a time like this. Zhang Chuanshi, feeling that strange pressure on his body, was already honestly trembling.
“Y-Y-Your Honor, what do we do now?”
“What do you mean, what do we do?” Zhao Fusheng asked him.
“Do we go, or not?”
Zhang Chuanshi, flustered by her question, asked another. The road ahead was obviously a dead end, and going down it probably meant never coming back.
But if they didn’t go, where could they retreat to?
His backside was glued to the driver’s seat. He turned to look behind, trying to find a way back.
But behind the carriage was nothing but thick fog, and in it lurked a malicious gaze, as if the carriage would plunge into the abyss if it dared back up even half a step...
“Your Honor, what do we do?”
Zhang Chuanshi was plainly anxious now, wearing the look of a man who regrets boarding a pirate ship he couldn’t get off2.
When water had dripped onto Zhuang Laoqi’s head, turning him into the malignant ghost’s vessel and pushing Zhao Fusheng to the brink of her own ghost reviving, Zhang Chuanshi had known this Kuailiang Village case would be extremely dangerous.
But Zhao Fusheng had solved several ghost cases cleanly and neatly, which had given him a hopeful, lucky feeling.
Now, sunk into a ghost domain, he panicked at once.
It was dead quiet all around, but the gurgle of water kept coming from every direction. For a moment the carriage seemed to sway, and Zhang Chuanshi had the illusion of being caught in a whirlpool.
He was dazed for a moment. Just then Zhao Fusheng’s calm, composed voice reached his ears:
“What else can we do? Go straight ahead, of course.”
Her voice had a cold, sharp edge that instantly shattered the illusion that the flowing water had conjured.
“Straight ahead?”
Zhang Chuanshi looked at the blood-red road in front of him and flinched.
The road ahead was clearly the entrance to a deeper ghost domain, perhaps with a terrifying malignant ghost inside, and beside him sat a living dead man. No, he couldn’t even be called a living dead man anymore.
Zhang Chuanshi’s sideways glance swept over Zhuang Laoqi’s face.
After they entered the ghost domain, Zhuang Laoqi’s complexion had grown worse, almost no different from a corpse’s.
A ghost ahead, a ghost beside him. He regretted taking the job of driving the carriage and racked his brains for a way to get out of it.
“Yes.”
Zhao Fusheng nodded:
“We came to Kuailiang Village to handle a ghost case in the first place. By a twist of fate we’ve entered the ghost domain and reached our destination earlier than expected. That’s a good thing.”
“I don’t think it’s a good thing at all...” Zhang Chuanshi grumbled softly. “We haven’t even passed Wulidian Precinct, and we don’t have enough people—”
“We have enough.”
Zhao Fusheng said patiently:
“Handling ghost cases is the Demon-Suppression Bureau’s duty to begin with. I’d planned to borrow men from Wulidian Precinct only to cow the people of Kuailiang Village, but now it looks like there’s no need to cow anyone.”
The road to the ghost domain was deathly still, with not a trace of living breath.
The worst possible outcome rose in Zhao Fusheng’s mind: the ghost case at Kuailiang Village had erupted, and in these seven or eight days Zhuang Family Village and Kuailiang Village might already have been killed by the ghost, wiped out to the last person. The ghost domain might even have spread to the surrounding area and covered all of Wulidian Precinct, and people might already be dying in large numbers.
At the thought, her heart sank and her expression darkened.
