IBGSW Chapter 155
The Yellow Springs Ghost Boat1
The steps looked to have been dug out with a hoe, about a foot wide, with room for only one person and dense thorny weeds on both sides.
Wu Shaochun said:
“I’ll go first.”
He took the lead. Zhao Fusheng went second, and just before descending, she turned on impulse to look back toward where Zhuang Laoqi had died.
From where Zhao Fusheng stood, Zhuang Laoqi’s remains in the distance were no longer clear, but the flowers that had grown from his bones were blood-red and stood out brazenly in the gloomy village.
The flowers’ origin was uncanny and their purpose unknown.
But judging by Kuai Mancai’s death, Zhuang Laoqi’s death wasn’t a special case. That meant these black-red flowers were tied to the malignant ghost, and the group simply hadn’t yet found the link between flower and ghost.
Zhao Fusheng steadied herself, turned, and followed Wu Shaochun, with Gou Laosi and Zhang Chuanshi next, and Fan Wujiu at the rear to guard.
They went down the grassy slope and saw yellow river water rolling about a dozen zhang away, rushing downstream.
The sound of the water was loud. The surging river kicked up huge waves, and countless fine droplets became a drizzle that sprayed over the bank.
A few steps forward and their heads and faces were soaked at once with an icy dampness that chilled to the bone.
Wu Shaochun wiped his face and froze:
“Your Honor, what do we do?”
Zhao Fusheng looked troubled too.
The river was so fast that no small boat, not even a bigger vessel, could likely go forward steadily on that surface. One wrong move and it would capsize and everyone would sink.
If a ghost came, she had the Door Gods to help, and merit points to control a malignant ghost and resolve calamity. But against a natural disaster like this she had nothing.
“Let’s see how things go first. I feel there’s something off about this water.”
Zhao Fusheng turned to Gou Laosi:
“Gou Laosi, you’ve been to Zhuang Family Village many times. Has this branch of the Shangjia always been like—”
She’d been about to ask whether the river had always run this fast. But the instant she turned, her pupils dilated and a look of shock crossed her face as she stared at Zhang Chuanshi, who stood behind Gou Laosi.
Zhang Chuanshi was craning on tiptoe over Gou Laosi’s head, looking at the river.
Seeing the waves strike so fiercely that even Zhao Fusheng was daunted, he secretly rejoiced, thinking they probably couldn’t get to Kuailiang Village today.
That suited Zhang Chuanshi perfectly!
This Kuailiang Village ghost case was extremely fierce. Even Zhao Fusheng wasn’t sure of herself, and if everyone went, they were headed for disaster.
If they could turn back here, all the better. As for the case spreading later, that was a problem for later.
He sensed Zhao Fusheng had turned to speak to Gou Laosi, and her gaze seemed to have landed on him. He stepped sideways past Gou Laosi and said:
“Your Honor, how about we go back and take the carriage—”
He hadn’t finished when he saw the shock in Zhao Fusheng’s eyes, beyond hiding.
She seemed to have seen something very strange.
Zhang Chuanshi’s heart gave a thud.
He’d known Zhao Fusheng long enough to know her temperament. She was not a person to make a fuss. Even today at the Demon-Suppression Bureau, when Zhuang Laoqi was suddenly borrowed by a malignant ghost, she’d stayed cool and composed. If she looked at him that oddly now, something strange must have happened to him.
Zhang Chuanshi was panicking, not knowing what had happened, when Fan Wujiu behind him suddenly stepped forward and pointed at him in surprise:
“Old Zhang, why are you cradling that unlucky thing?”
“Cradling? Cradling what?”
Zhang Chuanshi answered uneasily.
As he spoke he looked down. His two hands were folded sideways in front of his chest, and a blood-red flower, with its slender stem, was clamped between thumb and palm and held up level before his chest.
The petal edges were red to the point of black, opening in layers and giving off an odd smell, neither quite sweet nor quite fishy.
It was undeniably the ghost flower he’d picked from Zhuang Laoqi’s remains!
But Zhang Chuanshi had thrown it off at once after picking it. Afterward Zhao Fusheng had checked his back and found no ghost mark, and nothing strange had turned up while they searched Zhuang Family Village. When had the ghost flower come back into his hand without him noticing at all?
The more he thought, the more frightened he got. He threw the flower down hard with both hands.
Then it seemed wrong, so he quickly stepped up, picked it up with his sleeve wrapped around the stem, hurried to the river and tossed it into the water.
The raging river swept the flower into its undercurrent, and in an instant that spot of red was swallowed by the yellow water and carried rapidly downstream, slipping out of Zhang Chuanshi’s sight.
“Whew—”
He let out a big breath.
Zhang Chuanshi shook his arm. His forearm ached because he’d thrown the flower too hard.
He had watched the flower get swept away with his own eyes and still wasn’t quite at ease. He hurried back, turned his back to Zhao Fusheng:
“Your Honor, check my back again for me.”
And he tore his clothes open.
His back was clean, still without a trace of purple-blue ghost marks. Zhao Fusheng said:
“No ghost mark.”
That calmed Zhang Chuanshi noticeably, and he put his clothes back on:
“That’s good.”
He turned around, a bit awkwardly:
“This flower is truly strange. I’ve thrown it into the water now. I don’t believe it can still be so uncanny and come back to my hand.”
That was what he said, but clearly he still wasn’t entirely reassured. He turned toward the river, rubbing his hands without stopping, unable to calm his mind.
“Don’t worry, Old Zhang, it should be fine.”
Seeing his anxious face, his right leg slanted out and jittering, his foot scuffing the gravel on the ground, Fan Wujiu tried to comfort him.
But Fan Wujiu would have done better to keep quiet. The moment he spoke, Zhang Chuanshi’s anger flared:
“You’ve got some nerve! If you hadn’t made me grab that flower, you plague-ridden little calf, would I have got entangled with this uncanny thing?”
The angrier Zhang Chuanshi got, the more he pointed and cursed:
“If I die, I’ll revive as a ghost at once, and you’ll be the first I kill.”
“Ghost cases are Your Honor’s duty. If you revive as a ghost, Your Honor kills you first!” Fan Wujiu refused to lose and shot back.
“Hey! You little mutt—”
“...”
Zhao Fusheng looked on in speechless exasperation, and Wu Shaochun, not knowing what to do, called awkwardly from the side:
“Stop arguing, you two.”
“Shut up, all of you!”
Zhao Fusheng had run out of patience, her fist clenched:
“Is this really the time to keep bickering?”
“Your Honor—” Zhang Chuanshi felt wronged and was about to speak when Zhao Fusheng barked:
“Not another word!”
Fan Wujiu put on a smug look. The next moment Zhao Fusheng turned and gave him a cold stare, and he hunched his head and shoulders and didn’t dare get carried away.
Once she’d settled this internal quarrel for the time being, Zhao Fusheng turned to Gou Laosi:
“Gou Laosi, was the river outside Zhuang Family Village like this before?”
“No, Your Honor.”
Gou Laosi shook his head quickly:
“If the river were always this rough, it’d be a disaster!”
He said:
“My home isn’t far from Zhuang Family Village, just a mountain between, and near this river too. Except in the flood season in the fifth and sixth months, the water’s never this fast.”
“Kuailiang Village is right across from Zhuang Family Village.” Saying this, Gou Laosi pointed far into the distance.
But the river’s surface was a sea of surging waves, and the far bank was shrouded in black fog. As far as the eye could see there was only the muddy yellow river and, where the river ended, a blackness that swallowed everything. How could anyone make out the outline of a village?
“Kuailiang Village produces white perilla, so there are many outsiders, merchants and peddlers going there, and so there’s a ferry that picks people up here to cross every morning and evening.”
Gou Laosi pointed toward a spot in the distance:
“When Zhuang Laoqi’s cousin Fourth Madam Zhuang married, we went to see her off too. The landing’s over there.”
Everyone looked in the direction he pointed, but saw no landing, only a stretch of rolling yellow water.
Gou Laosi said, embarrassed:
“It’s just a flat stretch of beach where everyone comes ashore. It may be underwater now, so we can’t see it.”
“What hour does the boat usually come?” Zhao Fusheng asked.
Gou Laosi said:
“Usually at the end of the Mao hour and the start of the You hour (around seven in the morning and five in the afternoon).”
Zhao Fusheng said:
“Then it must be past the end of Mao now, and not yet the start of You.”
That morning, while she’d been talking with Magistrate Pang and the others, she’d heard Zhuang Laoqi and Gou Laosi quarreling, and by then it was at least the middle of the Chen hour (around eight in the morning).
Between hearing the case and preparing the carriage and setting out, a good double-hour or more had passed, so it should now be around the middle of the Wu hour (around noon).
“Yes, we may need to wait a while—” Gou Laosi nodded.
But Wu Shaochun had doubts:
“Your Honor, Gou Laosi is talking about the normal situation. But I think Kuailiang Village is not in a normal situation now. Will the boat still come?”
“It will.”
Zhao Fusheng nodded firmly.
The group was startled, and all felt a chill down their backs, a vague unease.
“Why?”
Wu Shaochun scratched his head, puzzled.
“We’re ‘guests’ invited by Zhuang Laoqi,” Zhao Fusheng explained. “Zhuang Laoqi was a ghost vessel, and also a ‘curse source’ that spreads the ghost’s invitation. Wherever he goes, the people around him are easily marked by the ghost, and once marked it’s as though they’re on the ghost’s list.”
In other words, once on the list, you are the ghost’s guest.
“Wouldn’t the ghost be in a hurry to find a way to invite us to Kuailiang Village?” Zhao Fusheng said, quite confident:
“Otherwise what kind of hospitality makes the guests find their own way there?”
“...” Fan Wujiu was speechless, then murmured:
“I don’t want to go as a guest.”
“There’s another question, and I’ve been thinking about it: the flower Old Zhang picked.”
Her words made Zhang Chuanshi’s scalp tighten, and he hurried to beg:
“Your Honor, please don’t mention that flower, all right?”
“This flower is clearly uncanny. You threw it away yourself, so how did it end up back in your hand? I think you can’t throw it away. It’ll come back.”
Then Zhao Fusheng thought of Kuai Mancai’s corpse in the chief’s house:
“If Kuai Mancai and Zhuang Laoqi died the same way, then if flowers also grew on his corpse, where did those flowers go?”
Her words sent Zhang Chuanshi pacing in circles, and he had no mind for the flowers that grew on Kuai Mancai after his death. He just kept saying:
“That flower can’t be so uncanny, can it? It can’t come back, can it? I threw it into the river. The water’s so fast, I figure it goes dozens of li in a quarter-hour. By the time we’ve been talking, it must have been swept far off—”
He was fretting restlessly when Gou Laosi, who’d been preoccupied, suddenly seemed to sense something. He turned toward the river and shuddered heavily, shouting:
“Your Honor, look!”
Following his pointing hand, they saw a small black boat far out on the vast river, tossing on the crests of the waves, being carried slowly by the current toward Zhuang Family Village.
“A boat!” Fan Wujiu exclaimed softly.
“The boat did come.”
Zhao Fusheng said with a smile.
She looked relaxed, but inside she was extremely cautious.
Compared with her smiling face, Zhang Chuanshi looked anxious and uneasy.
The boat on the river had no helmsman, only an empty hull, but that wasn’t what unsettled him. He had a feeling that this boat was a deadly menace to him2, that its arrival would take his life.
“Your Honor—”
Zhang Chuanshi called uneasily.
“Don’t panic.”
Zhao Fusheng answered steadily. She thought, then said:
“Old Zhang, turn around and take off your top.”
Zhang Chuanshi was normally a slippery slacker and deeply suspicious, always on guard that Zhao Fusheng’s orders were a trap, never failing to haggle with a few oily words.
But now, when she told him to strip and turn around, he hesitated only a moment, then took off his shirt and turned his back to her.
Though Zhang Chuanshi had chosen to trust Zhao Fusheng, he was still uneasy and asked:
“Your Honor, what are you going to do?”
Zhao Fusheng didn’t answer. Instead she asked:
“Old Zhang, are you afraid of pain? Do you mind getting hurt?”
Ordinarily Zhang Chuanshi minded being hurt a great deal. But now he might already have been marked by a ghost, and his life on this Kuailiang Village trip hung in the balance. What room was there to care about pain or injury?
“As long as it saves my life!”
Zhang Chuanshi thought it through and said readily:
“Could it hurt worse than when I got skinned in Goutou Village?” He recalled the agony of waking up after the ghost had skinned him in Goutou Village, and shuddered.
Then he said with a bitter face:
“Your Honor, what are you going to do? I’m a bit scared.”
Zhao Fusheng didn’t answer and asked instead:
“Which of you will fetch me a branch or a sharp stone?”
Wu Shaochun, Fan Wujiu and Gou Laosi kept glancing at the little boat on the river. That eerie black boat, carrying an ill omen, rode over the waves toward them.
At Zhao Fusheng’s words Wu Shaochun said quickly:
“Your Honor, I have a dagger.”
“Perfect,” Zhao Fusheng said, pleased. “Give it to me.”
Hearing she wanted a blade, Zhang Chuanshi grew uneasy. He couldn’t help looking back at her, felt a chill on his back, and glared at Wu Shaochun:
“You brat, you dared carry a blade.”
The court expressly forbade ordinary people from carrying blades. If someone reported you, you’d be exiled and have a hand cut off, and in a strict year you might lose your life.
Wu Shaochun chuckled:
“It’s a rule from when I hauled goods at Huanggang Village.”
He didn’t explain further. He bent, rolled up his trouser leg, unstrapped a dagger from his calf and handed it to Zhao Fusheng.
Zhao Fusheng took the dagger, slid off its grimy sheath of unknown hide, and said to Zhang Chuanshi:
“Hold the pain in, turn around, and keep your back straight.”
The boat was getting closer and time was short. She had to be quick.
Things had come to this point, and Zhang Chuanshi had no room for regret or fear. Zhao Fusheng wasn’t going to kill him now. Besides, with her strength, if she wanted to kill him, there’d be nothing he could do.
Zhang Chuanshi’s expression shifted uncertainly. In the end he gritted his teeth and said in a muffled voice, “Your Honor, go ahead.”
