IBGSW Chapter 181
Driving Back the Opponent
Thick threads of blood trickled from Fourth Madam Zhuang’s mouth. The malignant ghost’s body dissolved into a pool of blood that poured down from midair and splashed, stream after stream, over the crown of Paperman Zhang’s head.
His human-skin paper head was pierced through by the ghost’s blood.
From where Zhao Fusheng stood, the translucent head looked like a lantern. With the light burning inside it, the blood became a single stream that poured down through the opening in his skull and into his body. It was like sand running backward in an hourglass under lamplight.
If Fourth Madam Zhuang got inside him, even with the ghost coffin lid clinging to him, Paperman Zhang would likely be in serious trouble.
At the critical moment, a thick, rotten stench suddenly rose from inside his skull.
As the stench spread, the firelight within his body flared up. The ruined head swelled again, until it was about the size of a bamboo basket.
The Ghost Lantern!
The moment the light that drove off malignant ghosts blazed up, the ghost blood that had been poured into Paperman Zhang’s body was forced back out. It seeped, bit by bit, from the human-skin face. Inside the torn paper head, a cold, uncanny ghost head flickered in and out of sight.
“Give me back the ghost nail!”
As Paperman Zhang gave this shrill, venomous shout, countless pale blue flames burst from his facial features and turned into long, thin tentacles. Wherever the firelight reached, the black ghost blood flinched and dodged back instinctively, as if from a natural predator.
The thing was in her hands now. She wasn’t about to give it back.
Zhao Fusheng shook her head. Bearing the pain of the ghost’s grip, she grinned at him.
“Where’s Manzhou?”
“Give me back the ghost nail!”
Inside the broken paper head, Paperman Zhang’s baleful eyes glared at her. As he spoke, he crossed his arms over his chest and wrapped the pitch-black robe tight around himself. The strange black blood seeped out of his human-skin head and slid down his powdered white face. Inside his skull the fire crackled and popped, and he looked like one enormous ghost lantern.
The two ghosts that had once been the Zhao couple were still pulling at his arms, and Fourth Madam Zhuang had not given up trying to burrow into his body. Paperman Zhang ignored all three ghosts grappling with him. He kept his eyes on the strange iron nail in Zhao Fusheng’s hand.
A cold wind blew, and his sleeve stirred.
The sleeve, which had been closed seamlessly, opened like double doors. A snickering laugh came from within, and a jade-white hand reached out. The arm was as soft as a noodle, and it lashed toward Zhao Fusheng.
She raised the ghost nail and swung it with a whistling roar, stabbing and jabbing wildly. The nail left black afterimages as it whirled, and it grazed Paperman Zhang’s hand.
“Aaah!!!”
“Wuuu!!!”
The nail had not even pierced his palm. It had only brushed the edge. Yet the jade-white hand withered at once, like a rotting plant root. The fingers, knuckles and all, turned black, curled up and quickly broke off.
At the break in the severed wrist there was a sudden whoosh, a roar of flame. A rotten stench came with it, and uncanny pale blue fire erupted from the stump and engulfed the Ghost Mother, along with Zhao Fusheng on its back.
The fire carried a fierce corrosive force. But the instant it began scorching Zhao Fusheng’s body, red light flickered on the ghost door plank. The baleful aura of the Disaster-tier malignant ghost snuffed out the flames at once.
The Ghost Mother’s figure faded from in front of Paperman Zhang and shifted to the back of the ghost door plank. Red light surged within the plank, and a ghost hand reached out to seize Paperman Zhang again.
The red baleful aura sealed off all the flames. The arm in the door plank began tearing mercilessly at Paperman Zhang’s hair, face skin and clothes. Wherever the ghost palm passed, great clumps of his hair were ripped out and scattered through the air. The strange blue flames swept them up, and they burned with an acrid stink. His face skin was torn too, and flames poured out of the rips, scorching the wounds red and glowing.
A heavy stench gushed from those tears. At the smell, the two Door Gods seemed to be provoked, and both stepped back in unison.
Taking advantage of the Door Gods’ retreat, Paperman Zhang raised a hand. His wide sleeve covered his wind-riddled “head” and gave it a light wipe. The ghost fire went out, but it left countless scars from the damage.
In this brief clash between the two, neither had gained the upper hand.
Zhao Fusheng had seized the strange iron nail and seemed to hold the advantage. But she had been taken onto the Ghost Mother’s back and was using the ghost’s power to dodge Paperman Zhang’s ghost fire, and that put her in danger as well.
The Ghost Mother carried her.
The ghost’s back was cold and hard and carried the breath of death. The power of the ghost door plank bound her firmly and sought to drag her down into the abyss of death.
The Investiture of the Gods in her sea of consciousness kept prompting her: The Door Gods have taken you onto their back. Spend 300 merit points to escape?
She had only 444 merit points left. If they ran out, the consequences would be unthinkable.
But Paperman Zhang did not know the inside story, and he had gotten no advantage either. A moment of carelessness had cost him the coffin nail, and now he was under siege from the two Door Gods and Fourth Madam Zhuang. The Ghost Lantern’s protection could drive the ghosts back for a while. But he was being attacked by two Disaster-tier malignant ghosts, and he might not hold out for long.
The Ghost Mother’s frenzied counterattack earlier had wounded him. The faster the lantern’s aura leaked, the faster his strength drained. She could read as much in how quickly he had used his black robe to smother the flames.
A person who controls a ghost can borrow its power. But a person is still a person, and using a ghost’s power brings backlash. That is different from a ghost killing, which comes easily to it. Pitted against the Door Gods, Paperman Zhang was at a natural disadvantage.
He had swallowed a loss like this, and he was seething with rage. He bitterly regretted leaving this one survivor alive that day, which had grown into the great scourge he faced tonight. He wanted to tear Zhao Fusheng apart. Yet he saw her calm as ever, lying on the ghost’s back and wielding its power as easily as her own limbs, and he grew wary. For the moment he did not dare strike first.
His pause gave Zhao Fusheng a chance to breathe.
The palm gripping the ghost nail throbbed with piercing pain. A person who borrows a great malevolent object suffers backlash, but that backlash was wiped away once 20 merit points were deducted.
“A coffin lid that suppresses malignant ghosts?”
Forcing herself to stay calm, she ignored the Investiture of the Gods’ prompts. She looked at Paperman Zhang and smiled.
“You got that coffin lid from the Headless Ghost’s corpse, didn’t you? It suppresses and isolates malignant ghosts to some degree?”
Her expression was calm. Nobody would have guessed she was close to death.
Half of Paperman Zhang’s body was wedged in the well, and the hem of his black robe sealed the mouth of it tight. As the fire in his head burned fiercely, the initial stench was fading. She could tell because the two Door Gods were coming forward again to grab at him.
At the same time, the female ghost was regrouping. The blood that the ghost fire had driven apart scattered, then strands of it drew together and knotted into an enormous blood net that closed over Paperman Zhang’s head again. Countless streams of black blood bored into the cracks of his powdered, fermenting head and into his skull, lit by the firelight.
At that moment, a hair-raising sight appeared once more.
Inside the face that looked like lantern skin, Zhao Fusheng saw a black head-shaped shadow rise out of thin air above Paperman Zhang’s neck. The head gave off thick ghost aura and an overwhelming pressure.
A ghost head!
The thought flashed through her mind. The Door Gods, about to advance, also felt the suppressing force of the head. They took another involuntary step back and then stood rooted in place.
The moment the cold ghost head appeared, it opened its mouth wide and clamped down on the threads of blood that had bored into the human-skin head. The threads recoiled with a violent jerk. The ghost head bit them in two, chewed them and swallowed them. The rest of the blood threads, badly hurt and torn apart by the ghost head’s power, turned into scattered blood and flowed back out of the head. It dripped down Paperman Zhang’s broken head, neck and robe.
Paperman Zhang now looked like a malignant ghost himself, and a terrifying one.
His expression was stiff, his features dragged out of shape by the swelling of his skull. His hair had been torn ragged by the Door Gods, and countless black holes gaped in his face skin. His distorted pupils were wide open, and his lips held an eerie smile. Within the broken skull the firelight blazed. A heavy black ghost-head shadow, dense as ink, loomed within; and another gaze, through those warped eyes, was fixed coldly on Zhao Fusheng.
His sleeves stirred without any wind, and chilling laughter, heh-heh, ha-ha, kept coming from inside them. He seemed ready to strike.
Zhao Fusheng’s nerves went taut at once, but she showed nothing. She smiled at Paperman Zhang.
“Want to fight me?”
She bore the agony of her bones being wrenched by the ghost’s crushing hold, lay on the Ghost Mother’s back and met his gaze.
“My parents are Disaster-tier ghost entities, and I’ve already brought them completely under my control. They’re carrying me right now. You can’t touch me.”
She gave a scornful snort and arched an eyebrow.
“Fourth Madam Zhuang is Disaster-tier too, and its obsession is finding its daughter.”
Crack!
Bones snapped one after another. Zhao Fusheng’s back was soaked in cold sweat, but her face stayed composed and she smiled warmly.
“You do have real skill. The ghost nail, the ghost door plank...”
He had taken a good portion of the parts of the ghost coffin that suppressed the Headless Ghost.
Her gaze moved to Paperman Zhang’s head.
“And the Ghost Lantern. How long can the ghost lantern oil in you keep burning? You lay low in Kuailiang Village for seven or eight days. Facing off against the ghost village and Fourth Madam Zhuang, how long can you last, however many Ghost Lanterns you have?”
“Two Disaster-tier malignant ghosts are on you from both sides. When that fire goes out, you’ll die right here. What do you have to fight me with?”
Having said that, Zhao Fusheng gritted her teeth against the pain and raised her hand. A pitch-black iron nail sat in her palm, and she held it up for Paperman Zhang to see.
“This great malevolent object isn’t yours anymore.”
The moment she finished, the blood of Fourth Madam Zhuang, which the hidden ghost head had bitten apart, spread out quickly and vanished into the dark. At the same time, a gurgling sound of water seeped from beside the well inside the ancestral hall. Thick surges of crimson blood welled up over the rim.
In the glow of the Ghost Lantern on Paperman Zhang’s body, one eerie red flower after another bloomed in the pool of blood. The ghost villagers who had been standing outside with the bronze lamp, led by Sixth Uncle Kuai, suddenly appeared among the ghost flowers. They began pulling at Paperman Zhang’s body, trying to drag him into the sea of flowers.
The whole ancestral hall seemed to shudder. Then Zhao Fusheng’s vision swam. In a daze, the world seemed to turn and the house to change. Kuai Wu’s shabby little courtyard replaced the inner court of the hall, the two scenes overlapping. Countless cold-faced villagers of Kuailiang Village clutched at Paperman Zhang as though time had reset to the night of the lynching, as though they meant to bind him and stuff him into a pig cage1!
At the same time, the Door Gods, no longer cowed by that mysterious force, advanced again. Ghost Father and Ghost Mother both reached out and seized Paperman Zhang’s left and right arms. They pulled with all their strength, trying to tear him in two and seal him into the ghost door plank.
It all happened very fast, but Paperman Zhang reacted just as quickly. As the ghost villagers closed in around him and the scene shifted before his eyes, the fire on his head flared, and the dim blue flames burst from his eyes, ears, nose and mouth. They seemed to carry a natural power to subdue malignant ghosts. Sixth Uncle Kuai and the others pulling at him were scorched and snatched their hands back in a flash.
The pale blue ghost fire poured down like flowing water, smooth and soft, along his chin, chest and shoulders, and in an instant covered every part of him.
The illusion shattered in a heartbeat!
The cluster of ghost flowers was burned away and vanished without a trace. The farmhouse courtyard disappeared. The ghosts pulling at Paperman Zhang turned to black smoke in an instant and dispersed into the blue flames along with Kuai Wu’s yard.
The firelight grew fiercer. Paperman Zhang turned his head, and the ghost head inside him gave Zhao Fusheng a long, deep “look”. Then he spread his arms, and from his sleeves a pair of snow-white, jade-like hands reached out again and slapped at the Zhao couple who were clawing at him.
The Zhao couple let go the instant he struck them. The spots he had slapped left pale black scorch marks on the ghosts’ arms and gave off a foul stink. The two ghosts froze in place again.
Zhao Fusheng stayed calm outwardly, but her heart rate spiked. She was already working out how to escape if Paperman Zhang meant to fight her to the death—
Just then, Paperman Zhang let out a cold, sinister laugh.
“Heh heh heh—”
As he laughed, the fire in his head blazed ever higher until it burned through the eerie head made of human skin. Through the countless firelit holes, the face hidden beneath his face skin flickered in and out of view. It was a livid, blue-white face with narrow, gaunt cheeks, and a long black shadow ran slantwise from his temple across the center of his brow and through the bridge of his nose. One look was enough to suffocate a person.
Zhao Fusheng was shaken. She could not bear to look straight at it and turned her head away by instinct.
As she closed her eyes, Paperman Zhang’s aged voice rang out.
“We’ll meet again2. One moment of weakness back then, and I never dreamed I’d raised a tiger.”
As he spoke, his wide robe filled with wind and his body lifted lightly out of the well, just as it had in the Zhang residence in Wan’an County. His whole person turned into an enormous sky lantern3 and drifted slowly into the air.
“I’d like to see how you subdue that female ghost, and how you leave this place alive, once I’m out of this ghost domain!”
He was remarkably decisive. Having realized the situation was out of control, he refused to be pinned between two sides of ghosts. He abandoned even the ghost nail that had fallen into Zhao Fusheng’s hands and escaped on the spot, without a moment’s delay.
With Paperman Zhang airborne, the well mouth fell empty. The great stone that had been stuck in Zhao Fusheng’s throat dropped away, and her tight nerves eased. She grinned up at him, already a zhang above the ground4.
“Hey, hey, hey, don’t go!”
The more she shouted, the faster Paperman Zhang flew. He looked down at her coldly. His head was in tatters, his wide black robe swayed in the night wind, and his black-shod feet dangled in midair.
Zhao Fusheng shouted up at him:
“Let’s talk some more. Why not turn enemies into friends, each give a little? I burned you back then because I had no choice, so understand me, be big about it—”
“How about joining my Demon-Suppression Bureau? If the two of us work together, we can clean up—”
“...”
Paperman Zhang sneered and rose higher and higher. In a moment his figure vanished into the sky, a single point of starlight, and he had left the ghost domain.
The instant he was gone, Zhao Fusheng’s face turned grim.
In her sea of consciousness the Investiture of the Gods prompted again: You have been taken onto the Door Gods’ back. Spend 400 merit points to break free?
Yes!
Zhao Fusheng chose at once.
The merit points were deducted, and the link between the ghost door plank and Zhao Fusheng was cut again. She slid to the ground, summoned the Investiture of the Gods and invited the two gods back to their divine seats. The two ghosts left reluctantly and returned to their places on the register.
Her bones were broken in all sorts of places and pain shot through her whole body. But this was no time to check her wounds. She gritted her teeth, crawled back to the edge of the well and looked down into it.
The ghost flowers on the ground had been driven back by the Ghost Lantern Paperman Zhang burned as he left. The lingering aura of the Ghost Lantern could cow malignant ghosts for a short while. But Fourth Madam Zhuang and the villagers of Kuailiang Village were no ordinary ghosts, and that residual aura wouldn’t hold them down long.
She had little time left.
Zhao Fusheng looked down into the well. Ripples shimmered on the water, and nothing looked strange.
Had she guessed wrong? Was Kuai Manzhou not hidden in the well after all?
As time slipped by, with most of her cards played, she began to lose her composure.
Just as disappointment rose in her chest, something strange happened again.
