IBGSW Chapter 17
Investigating Ghost Cases
Having worked this out, Zhao Fusheng realized she had to take this case no matter what. It wasn't only to gain merit and open a divine position on the Investiture. She also had to complete the bureau's tasks so she wouldn't be punished by the ghost servant within the soul-life register.
Zhao Fusheng took a deep breath.
She knew nothing about the bureau and little of the consequences of defying a ghost curse. But where ghosts were concerned, lives were on the line, so she naturally had to exercise extreme caution and minimize her chances of making a mistake.
The situation was very bad for her. After sitting for a while, she suddenly stood.
She looked back at the original owner's parents and said softly, "I'll bury you first, then deal with the bureau's case."
She didn't know whether she'd come back safe from this trip, but sitting and waiting for death wasn't in her nature.
Her gaze hardened. She brushed the dust off her clothes, stood, and headed for the side-wing chamber where the bureau kept its past case files.
Fan Bisi was treacherous and cunning and half of what he said was false, but on this small matter of where the files were, he hadn't lied.
Following his directions, she stepped into the room.
After the original owner entered the bureau, she hadn't dared to wander because of her temperament and had mostly stayed in the places the Fan brothers had designated. Later, once the ghost calamity broke out, she'd had no energy or mind to explore, and she'd been scared out of her wits, jumping at every breath of wind.
This was Zhao Fusheng's first time in this room.
Her first impression was that the whole room was very messy.
In the faint light filtering from the high skylight, she could see spatters of dried, blackened residue covering the wooden shelves, the floor, the long table, and the stools. Instinct told her it was blood.
She looked up, and saw that even the ridge beam more than a zhang1 high was sprayed with blood.
A strand of cobweb, wrapped in fragments of flesh, hung down from the eaves, dried hard and black like an upside-down stalactite.
An accident must have happened here that day. When the ghost calamity started, someone from the bureau had probably been killed here by a malignant ghost.
Whoever had collected the bodies afterward hadn't possessed the heart to clean up thoroughly, settling for a rushed, careless job. Scrolls and documents lay strewn across the floor, and traces of old blood had never been properly cleaned away.
Even though no one else was in the room, the terror and horror of the bureau staff who'd been here when it happened had been preserved in the wreckage.
Shelves lined the wall in a long row. Apart from a few empty compartments, most were filled with scrolls and documents.
A long table stood in the middle with several waisted round stools, and at its head a high-backed square chair.
Zhao Fusheng counted the stools: eight in all.
The room was large, with space around it for many more people to stand.
From the arrangement, she could almost imagine the Wan'an County bureau at its height, when its commanding officers and envoys would gather here to discuss cases.
Sadly the glory had faded, and now only three people were left in the yamen.
That extreme contrast, set against the ghost-case scene in the room, struck her with a menacing, spine-chilling feeling.
As she pushed the door open, dust rose, the stillness of the room was broken, and a musty smell filled her nostrils.
That dreadful smell and the wreckage stirred the fear in her heart. Goosebumps rose across her back almost at once, and an impulse to retreat flooded her.
She hadn't eaten a grain since yesterday's incident, and hunger made her dizzy in waves.
But she had no retreat now. Finding clues about Beggars' Alley was her thread of survival.
She shook her head and forced the urge to flee and hide out of her mind. Pressing down the churning in her stomach, she steadied herself, pushed open the shuttered window to let air through and carry off the suffocating smell, and then casually unrolled a scroll from the table.
The document read:
Went to Yujia Village, Huarong Town, Wan'an County, and subdued a ghost in the village ancestral hall.
Then came some background on Yujia Village:
Most villagers were fishermen, hence the name.
Zhao Fusheng continued reading.
I took three order envoys, Wang Quan, Zhou Ling and Sun Wu. All three died one after another at the malignant ghost's hands.
When Sun Wu died, I finally found the ghost's killing rule and worked out the following pattern.
The ghost is Evil Spirit-tier, using water as its medium.
Wherever there is water, the ghost's shadow appears. Anyone who sees the reflection in the water is marked by the ghost and eventually has their life claimed.
After working out how the ghost kills, I risked looking at the reflection, then covered my eyes for the entire time, and in this way escaped the ghost's killing rule.
Once the method spread, all the survivors followed it in turn. In the end the ghost was left with "no one to kill" and so left Yujia Village.
...
The middle of the process wasn't written in detail, but Zhao Fusheng held the scroll and thought for a long time.
This case seemed simply handled, and the solution surprised her. But relief still lingered in the few terse lines left by whoever had recorded it that day.
She'd taken a scroll at random and found one case. The bureau had sent four people in total, and three had died.
So even though Fan Bisi's words were half true and half false, it was true that dealing with ghosts was extremely dangerous.
"Evil Spirit-tier..."
Fan Bisi had mentioned Evil Spirit-tier too.
He'd said that once a ghost entity broke past Evil Spirit-tier it gained the ability to create a ghost domain.
"I wonder whether there are more ranks between Evil Spirit-tier and Baleful-tier..." What she could be sure of was that a Baleful-tier ghost was more terrifying than an Evil Spirit-tier one. As for what Evil Spirit-tier itself was like, she didn't know.
Fan Bisi was set on running away. Until she agreed to take out their life souls, he couldn't be trusted.
She rolled the document up again and put it back on the table.
This record of exorcism gave her great encouragement, and also opened another line of thought.
Her strength was lacking for now, but she needn't necessarily fight ghosts to the death.
According to the document, as long as she found a ghost's killing rule and broke its pattern, the ghost would "believe" it had finished killing and, more than likely, leave.
"Isn't this basically a method of deception?" she murmured, her eyes brightening.
A ghost domain had appeared in Beggars' Alley, and the domain existed because of the malignant ghost's influence. So if she went in, found the ghost's killing rule and temporarily "tricked" the ghost away, the ghost domain would naturally vanish. Wouldn't that complete the case?
The thought greatly encouraged her.
She picked up another document and unrolled it. It read:
In the town...
The ghost is Evil Spirit-tier. Both accompanying order envoys died.
Two names followed.
...
She went through several more case scrolls. She found that most of these cases were handled by finding the rule and tricking the ghost away, and very few by driving the ghost away by force. She also noticed another thing they shared: every ghost was Evil Spirit-tier.
From this she roughly inferred that if ghosts had ranks, Evil Spirit-tier was probably the lowest rank of ghost that had become a real force.
Even so, it was still very frightening.
She realized that every scroll recorded deaths: at most all the accompanying envoys, at least one. The death rate was horrifyingly high, and it made her tremble.
This time, in going to Beggars' Alley, given Fan Bisi's attitude, he probably wouldn't go with her. With the two sides wary of each other and her having no trust in the Fan brothers, she was very likely to go alone. And judging by the death rate in the bureau's past files, her chance of death was one hundred percent.
"..."
Zhao Fusheng sank into quiet contemplation.
