IBGSW Chapter 160
Disembarking and Entering the Village
The Demon-Suppression Bureau group had left Wan’an County in the first place heading for Kuailiang Village.
But along the way both local guides had died, and after the four had passed through danger they’d thought reaching Kuailiang Village would not be easy. They hadn’t expected that after narrowly escaping death they’d arrive at Kuailiang Village directly.
For a moment Fan Wujiu and the other two didn’t know whether to be alarmed or relieved.
“...”
The three looked at each other and fell silent for a while.
“Since we’re here, let’s make the best of it.” Zhao Fusheng wrung out her wet hair, looked at the village in the distance and laughed:
“The village still has light, which shows there are still living people. That’s more than I hoped for.”
She wasn’t afraid the village had living people. She was afraid everyone in it had died, and that, like at Zhuang Family Village, finding even a clue would be extremely hard.
Hearing this, Zhang Chuanshi said nothing.
Fan Wujiu, strong in limb and simple in head, asked at once without thinking:
“Your Honor, are those really living people?”
His question sent a chill through Wu Shaochun, whose face showed fright.
Zhao Fusheng’s heart sank too.
The Kuailiang Village case was more complicated and more savage than she’d expected. The ghost case had been raging for so long that Zhuang Family Village had become a dead place. Kuailiang Village, the origin of the case, had lights burning and seemed to have survivors, but as Fan Wujiu said, were those really living people?
Zhao Fusheng couldn’t answer his question.
“Whether they’re alive or not, we’ll know once we go into the village and ask.” Unable to figure it out, she decided not to think about it for now.
Since there was no way around, they had to face it head on.
“Come on, first we dock the boat, and then we go ashore.”
Zhao Fusheng flicked her wet hair and ordered in a low voice.
Zhang Chuanshi and the others didn’t dare enter the village but had no other choice. Sitting in the boat, Zhang Chuanshi turned and looked toward the other end of the river: before him lay only a vast river.
The calm river’s far side was shrouded in endless fog, as though joined with the black of night into one whole.
The malignant ghost’s ghost domain covered this place, and until the case ended, the group had no way of escaping.
“Yes.”
Zhang Chuanshi steeled himself and agreed.
He picked up the two clean human bones he’d tossed into the black boat, and thinking of what Zhao Fusheng had said, felt both panicked and uneasy. His eyes darted and he passed one to Wu Shaochun:
“Shaochun, many hands make light work. Come on, let’s row together.”
Wu Shaochun was new, simple and obedient, easier to boss around than Fan Wujiu.
And having been saved by Zhao Fusheng, he was devoted to the Demon-Suppression Bureau and certainly wouldn’t refuse his request.
Sure enough, the moment Zhang Chuanshi finished, Wu Shaochun took the bone without hesitation and answered:
“Yes, Master Zhang.”
He was young and had fewer tricks than Zhang Chuanshi. After taking the bone he planted it in the water, and with a splash his arms heaved, and the black boat shot forward like an arrow, sliding a good way ahead.
Seeing this, Zhang Chuanshi breathed a huge sigh of relief.
Zhao Fusheng gave Zhang Chuanshi a meaningful look, as though she saw clearly the calculation in his heart.
Zhang Chuanshi chuckled:
“Row, row.”
And he waved his own bone and paddled hard, and under their combined effort the boat soon neared the shore.
Once they drew close, everyone on the boat could see what was on the bank.
Earlier, in the river, seeing the bank all red, Zhang Chuanshi had darkly speculated whether many had died there, so that the closer to the water, the redder from blood.
Now, looking close, he saw that the bank was covered with large, uncanny red flowers.
“Your Honor, ghost flowers.”
Fan Wujiu reminded her.
The banks of Kuailiang Village were covered with ghost flowers!
Blossoms piled on blossoms covered the whole riverbank without a gap. From afar the shore was red as fire, and in this haunted village, under the glow of the distant lights, it had an uncanny, fierce beauty.
The flowers stretched along the bank as if endless, their stamens dripping red and their outer petals red to the point of black, joined at the far end with the night to form an eerie sea of flowers that gave off a sweet, fishy smell.
The smell was like blood, and after smelling it a while, once used to it, it stirred a sweet feeling in the heart, as if some craving were born, or as if something regrettable were unfinished, making one impatient to seize something, though unsure what one needed.
When one thought about it, the thing craved seemed right before one’s eyes yet somehow couldn’t be remembered, and one wished to take a few more breaths of the flower’s fragrance to recall the regret and fill the emptiness within.
This feeling was naturally very abnormal.
Zhao Fusheng grew wary and reminded them calmly:
“Be careful. The smell of these flowers may be poisonous and make one restless.”
“More than restless.”
Zhang Chuanshi muttered, “I’m trembling with fear.”
He was already bound to the ghost flower and had nearly died at the river bottom because of it, so he was already frightened of the flowers. Seeing the whole bank covered with ghost flowers, his wariness ran deeper than that of the other three.
The ghost boat was the sort of malevolent object he should have avoided like the plague, but at the sight of the flowers all along the bank he didn’t even dare disembark and wished he could stay in the boat.
Unfortunately, in the midst of his misgivings the black boat kept drifting toward the shore.
A shudder ran through the hull’s bottom, as if the boat had touched sand and stones at the riverbank, and at last it stopped.
Zhao Fusheng held her breath. Counting on having a ghost in her body and the enshrined Door Gods to back her up, she was the first to leap from the ghost boat into the flowers.
Crunch.
Many ghost flowers were trampled, and from the broken stems gushed large amounts of blood-red sap.
Zhao Fusheng’s soles and trouser legs were quickly dyed red as though soaked in blood. She frowned, shook out her trouser legs, then turned her eyes to the river in the distance.
At that moment the other three on the boat held their breath and went still for a while.
After a long time, the river and the bank were both quiet, and nothing happened.
The woman ghost that should have lain dormant at the river bottom did not appear, as though the ghost flowers growing along the bank had lost their attraction for the malignant ghost.
Zhao Fusheng let out a long breath without a sound and said softly to the three on the boat:
“Nothing’s happened. Get off.”
Wu Shaochun was the most obedient. At once he tossed aside the human-bone paddle in his hand, rose and jumped down after her.
After he got off, Fan Wujiu leaped after him into the flowers.
Fan Wujiu was sturdy and moved big, and his landing trampled many ghost flowers. The bursting crimson sap splashed his face and body, and he wiped it off without hesitation.
That left only Zhang Chuanshi on the boat, dragging his feet and unwilling to get off, muttering:
“We haven’t even confirmed whether there are survivors in the village. Why don’t you go scout, Your Honor, and if it’s just an empty village, you’ll have to come back.”
“There’s something odd about this boat. If everyone leaves and the boat drifts away, with a ghost in the river, how will we get back?” He smiled at Zhao Fusheng with a fawning face:
“How about you go ashore first, Your Honor, and I’ll stay here and wait—”
After he said this, his eyes flickered, and he looked at Zhao Fusheng.
Zhao Fusheng smiled and saw through his thought at once.
The old man was timid as a mouse.
Just the thought that the strange black boat might be bound to him had unsettled him. If the three left and he stayed alone on the boat, with a malignant ghost lurking at the river bottom, it wouldn’t take long to frighten him witless.
His saying this now might be a ruse.
Zhao Fusheng’s mind turned, and she nodded gladly:
“Fine. You stay here and watch the boat.”
Zhang Chuanshi broke into a grin.
Seeing this, Fan Wujiu said, unconvinced:
“Your Honor, I think Old Zhang just wants to slack off.”
Zhao Fusheng said nothing, simply turned to walk up the bank, and Fan Wujiu, seeing she wasn’t commenting, had no choice but to follow.
Only Wu Shaochun, with a kind face, warned Old Zhang:
“Master Zhang, there’s a ghost in the river. Without Your Honor at your side, be careful when you’re alone.”
“...” Wu Shaochun’s warning made Fan Wujiu bare his teeth in a laugh, and Zhang Chuanshi’s smug look froze on his face.
He grew visibly flustered, as if sitting on a red-hot iron, and leaped from the boat at lightning speed:
“Your Honor, I’ve thought about it, and I want to go with you.”
“Old Zhang, aren’t you going to watch the boat?”
Fan Wujiu laughed until his eyes disappeared:
“Why come with us? Go back on the boat. Maybe the village is empty and we’ll be back after one turn.”
Wu Shaochun chimed in:
“Or there may still be living people in the village, and we’ll need a place to stay for the night and something to eat.”
Thinking of this possibility, Zhang Chuanshi grew even more determined to go with the other three.
If the village still had people, and Zhao Fusheng stayed in the village for a while, wouldn’t he be left alone on the boat?
And there was the woman ghost at the river bottom...
“I’ll go with you, Your Honor. If there’s danger in the village, how could I let Your Honor take the risk? I, Old Zhang, now have a ghost-deity imprint on my back, so I can run errands for Your Honor1...”
Fan Wujiu said bluntly:
“You’re just afraid to die, aren’t you?!”
“Get lost! Go on, get lost!” Zhang Chuanshi spat at him.
Zhao Fusheng smiled and said lightly:
“You may come along, but if we meet danger later and you ask to go back, I won’t be polite with you.”
Zhang Chuanshi said dejectedly:
“How could I—”
And with a skeptical look, he stared at Wu Shaochun, suspecting the kid had said it on purpose to scare him.
After a few more exchanges, the fear of the ghost flowers and Kuailiang Village was mostly dispelled in the four.
They walked over the flowers, snapping countless blooms and soaking themselves in red sap, and when they came out of the flower field, they saw the village in the distance.
Compared with the deserted, ruined Zhuang Family Village, Kuailiang Village was clearly grander and neater.
The first thing to meet the four’s eyes was a big gate arch with three big characters, “Kuailiang Village.”
On each side of the arch there was a stone niche with an oil lamp inside.
The lamps burned brightly and lit up the area. The light Zhao Fusheng had seen earlier came from here.
Not far past the arch stood rows of houses.
The houses stood close together with crisscrossing lanes, built against a hollow in the hills. Kuailiang Village looked rather large, and from afar Zhao Fusheng even saw signboards hanging outside these houses.
“This doesn’t look like a village. It’s more like a township.”
Zhao Fusheng looked at a small flag sticking out from one house’s roof, a flag with a character “wine” on it, and sighed.
It was deep night and quiet, and Kuailiang Village, big as it was, was so still you could hear a pin drop.
Her voice seemed to break the silence. With hills on three sides, the sound spread out and even echoed.
Fan Wujiu’s eyes fell on the arch. Behind it stood a small thatched hut, and just after Zhao Fusheng spoke, the little door of the hut was pushed open and a sturdy man holding a manure fork emerged from it and looked around warily.
“Your Honor, a person.”
Seeing someone appear in the village, Fan Wujiu’s eyes lit up and he called out.
His voice quickly turned to echo and carried:
“A person—”
“A, a, a person—”
At this the dead-still village instantly woke.
From afar, though many houses hadn’t opened their doors, in the dark night an anxious feeling seemed to travel through the village.
The fork-wielding man under the arch roared:
“Who? Who’s come to the village again?”
He brandished the fork in his hand and asked tentatively:
“Is it friends from Wulidian Precinct?”
The man stood in the firelight, while Zhao Fusheng and the others had come from the dark river, one bright and one dark, so the villagers of Kuailiang Village couldn’t really see where anyone stood.
But as he spoke his face did not turn left or right, as though he already knew from which direction the “guests” would come. His gaze fixed straight on where Zhao Fusheng’s group stood, and carrying his fork he took two steps forward and said warily:
“Come out right now, or we’ll kill you.”
“Hey!”
Fan Wujiu rolled up his sleeves:
“Why, you insolent lout!”
Zhao Fusheng stopped him and shook her head:
“Don’t start a fight yet.”
Before she left, Magistrate Pang had told her that Kuailiang Village was ruled by its clan, the villagers close-knit and intimate.
A village like that had a fierce temperament, and once blows were exchanged it wouldn’t be easy to reconcile.
She was here to solve a ghost case, not to fight or pick quarrels, and there was no need to make enemies the moment she entered.
“We’ll go into the village first,” she said, then answered loudly:
“We’re people invited by Precinct Chief Zhou of Wulidian.”
She invoked Zhou of Wulidian Precinct. “We heard something happened in Kuailiang Village and came especially to find out what.”
Her words made the fork-wielding man pause.
In the firelight from the stone niches, the man turned uneasily, glanced toward some direction in the village behind him, and seemed hesitant.
Zhao Fusheng saw his reaction and called:
“Call your village elders out!”
Her voice was calm, carrying an unquestionable authority.
The man retreated half a step. Zhao Fusheng said again:
“Where’s Kuai Jusheng? Have him come out and talk to me.”
“Kuai Jusheng” was Sixth Uncle Kuai’s name, something Zhao Fusheng had gotten out of Zhuang Laoqi on the way to Kuailiang Village.
The moment she mentioned “Kuai Jusheng,” the man couldn’t hold still and said in a hurry:
“Wait there, I’ll go call Sixth Uncle—”
With that he carried the fork and ran into the village, and in a moment was gone.
After he left, Zhao Fusheng said with a smile:
“Looks like Kuai Jusheng isn’t dead yet. We got here in time for once.”
Then she said to Fan Wujiu and the others:
“We’ll go into the village too.”
