IBGSW Chapter 179
Summoning the Door Gods
It was a one-sided massacre.
Before a revived malignant ghost, humans had no resistance at all.
The female ghost’s corpse split apart, and big and small crimson blood drops hung in mid-air. Countless long black threads linked the drops, stringing them into an enormous web of blood.
When the web fell, the villagers under it were like fish netted, their lives swiftly harvested.
As the villagers’ bodies collapsed, flowers red as blood bloomed in a flash.
In moments, a strange sea of flowers formed on the far shore of Yellow Springs1.
Blood rain scattered across the sky, dyeing the ghost fog pink.
The white perilla that had once held back Fourth Madam Zhuang’s steps in life, now stained with a great deal of human blood, held back the revived malignant ghost’s steps.
The female ghost moved among the flowers, trapped here by the dying villagers.
......
The reenactment of the truth was too shocking.
Fan Wujiu and Wu Shaochun were stunned, unable to speak for a long time.
But Zhao Fusheng had expected the scene.
She realized all of Kuailiang Village had died the night Fourth Madam Zhuang’s malignant ghost revived.
The dead villagers had become something else, a strange kind of existence.
From the replay of the ghost case, Sixth Uncle, as he lay dying, had realized Kuailiang Village had brought down an enormous disaster and wanted to make amends.
That extremely strong conviction had perhaps let flowers grow from his bones after death, to trap the ghost.
“Your Honor, what do we do now?” Wu Shaochun asked, his voice dry.
His eyes were full of fear as he looked toward that boundless sea of flowers in the distance and the female ghost walking slowly through it.
At the far side of the sea of flowers, Yellow Springs was beginning to boil.
Red mist and glowing clouds, which should have been a beautiful sight, instead grew cruelly terrifying because it was a malignant ghost walking there, with countless bones under its feet and a heavy bloody stench lingering in the air.
“Will it notice us?”
The ghost Fourth Madam Zhuang had become was a great evil!
Kuailiang Village was big, with several hundred villagers, and they’d all been wiped out in an instant. The party had gone against her at the bottom of Yellow Springs and still got away, which was sheer luck.
Only now did Fan Wujiu realize how important the Door God imprint Zhao Fusheng had put on Zhang Chuanshi’s back was.
Even at that distance, the three inside the ancestral hall could feel the female ghost’s great, overbearing menace.
“Don’t panic.”
Zhao Fusheng shook her head and hesitated.
“In principle, it shouldn’t notice us...”
Wu Shaochun, who usually seemed honest and simple, seemed to have been enlightened, and asked, “Your Honor, what does ‘in principle’ mean?”
“I mean that if the village’s balance isn’t broken, it shouldn’t notice us,” Zhao Fusheng said.
“Why?” Fan Wujiu had heard her say the female ghost couldn’t find them. He should have relaxed, but something felt wrong, and he couldn’t say what. He pressed the question.
“The dead villagers, led by Sixth Uncle, should have revived as malignant ghosts too, forming Kuailiang Village into a special domain.”
At that, Fan Wujiu and Wu Shaochun shuddered.
“But because they were influenced by their lives, after the ghosts revived they formed Kuailiang Village into a ghost domain and trapped Fourth Madam Zhuang inside.”
The killing rule of the ghosts that the villagers had become was probably to keep carrying out the lynching in the ghost domain, such as the earlier drowning of Zhang Chuanshi.
Strangers who strayed in would be killed one by one, until Fourth Madam Zhuang appeared, slaughtered the villagers, and the cycle began again.
What she said shocked the two men. She went on, “Seen that way, the villagers and Fourth Madam Zhuang have formed a standoff, and they should be restraining each other.”
Fan Wujiu was a veteran of the Wan’an County Demon-Suppression Bureau, and understood at once. “In other words, both sides are held in check.”
“Right,” Zhao Fusheng said, nodding.
Fan Wujiu relaxed and smiled. “If that’s so, we’re safe.”
Since Sixth Uncle’s dying wish had been to settle this calamity, and he’d used Kuailiang Village itself to trap Fourth Madam Zhuang, with the two ghost forces mutually restraining one another, outsiders ought to be unaffected.
“It should have been like that,” Zhao Fusheng said, shaking her head.
Wu Shaochun’s heart jumped at her words. “Has something changed?”
“We still haven’t found Manzhou.”
“Kuai Manzhou? Fourth Madam Zhuang’s daughter?” Wu Shaochun asked.
When he finished, he suddenly realized he’d remembered the child’s name. He was about to speak, but Zhao Fusheng said:
“Right.”
“She’s not dead?” Fan Wujiu put in.
“From what we’ve seen, at least when Fourth Madam Zhuang’s malignant ghost revived, she hadn’t died.”
Kuai Manzhou seemed to be the sole survivor of this terrible ghost case.
She hadn’t been part of the lynching, and that probably was why she escaped.
“Maybe she...”
As Zhao Fusheng spoke, her mind was racing through every clue she’d gathered since taking on this case.
Just then her peripheral vision caught the bronze lamp in Fan Wujiu’s hand.
The extinguished wick suddenly flickered and lit with a red flame.
Her pupils contracted sharply. She shouted at Wu Shaochun and Fan Wujiu:
“Hide!”
The two didn’t know what had happened, but they obeyed her completely, moving the instant she gave an order.
Given the massacre at the village’s edge, both instinctively ran in different directions into the ancestral hall.
At the same moment, in the distance the ghost flowers were still blooming, but at some point ghost fog had spread out.
The ancestral hall entrance, empty a moment before, suddenly filled with people standing in neat rows.
“...”
The sight was shocking.
The villagers, led by Sixth Uncle, all stood at the hall entrance, facing Zhao Fusheng, who hadn’t yet run.
The villagers stood packed ring upon ring2, surrounding the hall so tightly water couldn’t leak through.
The bronze lamp that had been in Fan Wujiu’s hand was now held by Sixth Uncle.
He looked as he had in life, hollow-cheeked, dark-skinned, his hair tied up, a sweat cloth wrapped around his forehead.
The cloth should have been white, but it had long since been dyed red with blood, and when dried had turned a blackish brown.
The malignant ghost’s face was expressionless, crisscrossed with dense blue-black lines, as though its whole face were shattered porcelain pieced back together.
How had these ghosts of the villagers appeared here?
The thought flashed through Zhao Fusheng’s mind.
Then the Investiture of the Gods prompted her:
Disaster-tier malignant ghost detected. Qualification for investiture reached. Confer godhood on the great ghost?
The moment the prompt rang out, Zhao Fusheng reacted.
“Wrong!”
There was no time to think. She turned her mind and activated the Investiture of the Gods: Summon the Door Gods!
500 merit points were deducted at once.
A cold yin wind howled through her sea of consciousness, the Investiture of the Gods started, and the ghost forms of the Zhao couple, carrying the ghost door plank on their backs, appeared silently behind her.
At the two ghosts’ appearance, the villagers of Kuailiang instinctively took half a step back.
The Investiture of the Gods prompted:
The Door Gods have appeared.
They want to carry you on their backs. Spend 500 merit points to appease the Door Gods?
No!
Zhao Fusheng refused to spend merit on appeasing the Door Gods. The malignant ghosts formed from Mother and Father Zhao came forward grimly and both reached out their hands to Zhao Fusheng.
At the same moment, pink fog had spread over the entire ancestral hall gate.
A shadow with red light flashed, and an odd smell appeared, something like blood, something like a cloying flower fragrance.
The malignant ghost formed from Fourth Madam Zhuang appeared in front of Sixth Uncle.
The female ghost’s hair was loose.
Her pitch-black long hair grew wild as seaweed, covering her pale, naked body.
Loop after loop of hemp rope bound the ghost’s body, and dead fish and shrimp were caught in the ends of her hair, giving off a faint stench of rot.
Her face was waterlogged and swollen pale, her eyes blue-green, her pupils filling the entire eye socket.
She took a step forward.
A bright red footprint was left on the ground, but the moment her toe touched down, the ghost’s body disappeared.
Above the ancestral hall’s threshold, countless blood drops suddenly gathered.
Thousands of strands thin as hair strung the drops together, forming an enormous ghost net that fell toward Zhao Fusheng.
The female ghost could enter the ancestral hall!
Zhao Fusheng’s earlier guess had been wrong.
Fortunately, there was still time to save things.
After she refused to appease the Door Gods, the revived Zhao couple’s first reaction was to carry Zhao Fusheng on their backs. Mother Zhao’s ghost had already moved.
It stepped forward and seized Zhao Fusheng in an embrace.
The malignant ghost’s strength was enormous, nearly enough to snap the bones of Zhao Fusheng, who controlled a ghost.
Father Zhao wanted to step forward too. Just then the female ghost, Fourth Madam Zhuang, appeared in the hall.
Two Disaster-tier ghosts of the same rank appeared, and it was a genuine clash of ghost against ghost.
Father Zhao, carrying the door plank, sensed the female ghost’s arrival as the ghost net came down on his head. He suddenly abandoned the attempt to seize Zhao Fusheng, turned his back, and pointed the door plank at the ghost net.
The blood net came down and covered the ghost door plank and Father Zhao with it.
Father Zhao’s body quickly melted under the door plank, and then a corpse lying flat suddenly appeared above the plank.
The malignant ghost reached out with both hands, grabbed a corner of the blood net, and ripped.
After seizing Zhao Fusheng, Mother Zhao’s ghost swung her onto its back.
The Investiture of the Gods prompted again:
You have been carried by the Door Gods. Spend 200 merit points to escape?
Note: The Door Gods’ wish has been fulfilled.
At the prompt, Father Zhao on the plank became even fiercer.
A cold yin wind whipped up, and the lying door plank suddenly stood upright. Father Zhao tore at the ghost net with both hands, hands so hard that in an instant they snapped a great many black threads tangled with blood drops.
Blood sprayed and splashed to the ground, but didn’t vanish. It wriggled across the ground like long thin worms, gathering into one place and forming a crimson stream.
True to her Disaster-tier rank, Fourth Madam Zhuang lifted her head again from that stream of blood.
After carrying Zhao Fusheng on its back, Mother Zhao’s ghost stood beside Father Zhao. Its body merged into the plank, then emerged from the other side of the ghost door plank, and it too began frantically tearing at the blood drops still flying in the air.
The ghost blood net shattered and fell.
The blood drops gathered, and Fourth Madam Zhuang again walked out of the pool of blood.
As she did, the blood quickly shrank and vanished. The ghost net appeared again and covered the two ghosts and Zhao Fusheng together.
The moment the malignant ghost covered her, the cries of Kuailiang Village rang in Zhao Fusheng’s mind: Cleanse the household, enforce the family rules...
At the cry she suddenly felt something trying to stab at her back.
But the instant that cold aura touched her back, it made a hard, ringing peng, and could go no further.
Zhao Fusheng grinned.
“Sorry, I’m being carried by my mother.”
After Mother Zhao’s ghost carried her, her back was pressed tight against the door plank, and an invisible ghost hand wrapped around her body, trying to squeeze her into the plank.
If Fourth Madam Zhuang hadn’t appeared and drawn Mother Zhao’s ghost away, then the moment she was carried, without merit points spent to suppress the two ghosts, she’d probably have been killed by the door plank.
The deadly door plank, now her savior, blocked Fourth Madam Zhuang’s first wave of killing.
The malignant ghost’s strike failed, but on Zhao Fusheng’s arm and shoulder the skin suddenly split, and a strange bone flower pushed out of the wound and was about to bloom in the wind when...
The power on the door plank snapped the ghost flower, leaving the ghost hand Fourth Madam Zhuang had stretched out to pluck it with no target, and then it was wrapped and held by the Zhao couple.
Seizing the moment the malignant ghost reached to pluck the flower, the Door Gods grabbed Fourth Madam Zhuang by the head and body, and the two ghosts tore, both trying to dismember the malignant ghost and carry her on their backs.
Both sides were ghosts of Disaster-tier or above, and for the moment neither could do anything to the other, and a stalemate set in.
But the Zhao couple had been enshrined as gods, and they held a slight advantage.
Given time, the two Door God ghosts would sooner or later dismember Fourth Madam Zhuang, who hadn’t been enshrined, and seal her into the ghost door plank.
But breaking the balance was not what Zhao Fusheng wanted.
After summoning the Door Gods she had only 744 merit points left, and since the Door Gods had carried her, she needed to save some merit points to break free from the plank’s control.
If the Door Gods devoured Fourth Madam Zhuang completely, unpredictable changes might occur, and she worried she wouldn’t have enough merit points to keep things from spiraling out of control.
Thinking of this, Zhao Fusheng’s eyes darted, and a plan formed.
The Investiture of the Gods was still prompting:
You have been carried by the Door Gods. Spend 300 merit points to escape?
As the Door Gods gradually reached a balance with the malignant ghost formed from Fourth Madam Zhuang, and time passed, the merit points she needed to escape went up.
Zhao Fusheng’s mind turned: she wanted to break free, but not break free completely.
Yes!
The merit points were deducted, and the link between her and the ghost door plank that had forced itself onto her was cut.
Zhao Fusheng slid down from the malignant ghost’s back.
Once she was out of Mother Zhao’s control, Mother Zhao’s ghost turned.
The Door Gods’ obsession with carrying her was so strong it even outweighed their suppression of other ghosts.
Mother Zhao’s ghost turned and reached for her. Zhao Fusheng shook her sleeve and caught a ghost arm in her hand.
The already-rotting ghost hand was held out toward Mother Zhao’s ghost.
“Come, hold my hand.”
The malignant ghost reached out without any awareness and gripped the ghost hand held in Zhao Fusheng’s.
The ghost hand became the tether between Zhao Fusheng and the malignant ghost: she held the ghost hand, the ghost hand linked to Mother Zhao’s ghost, and Mother Zhao’s ghost held Fourth Madam Zhuang’s hair.
And the other end of Fourth Madam Zhuang’s body was held in Father Zhao’s embrace.
Holding three malignant ghosts by their tether, Zhao Fusheng strode deeper into the ancestral hall.
