IBGSW Chapter 183
The Ghost Case Ends
In that flash of insight, Zhao Fusheng suddenly understood why Paperman Zhang had left so casually even after losing the coffin nail.
“That old coot!”
She suddenly burst into curses:
“I bet he’s wanted to leave all along but was stuck. When I showed up, the Door Gods and Fourth Madam Zhuang checked each other, and that let the old geezer slip away.”
“...”
Fan Wujiu and Wu Shaochun saw her lose her temper and had no idea what to do. They worried that after meeting so many ghosts tonight in a row, their lord’s mind had broken.
While the two were panicking, Zhao Fusheng suddenly stopped swearing and said calmly:
“Forget it. I’ll settle accounts with him later.”
“Hmph, I still have a way.” As she spoke, she looked at the coffin nail in her hand and gave a cold laugh:
“He never thought I’d kept a way out.”
“...”
“...”
Fan and Wu looked at each other, shivering. To them, her raging, cursing and laughing all at once seemed not quite right.
Zhao Fusheng suddenly began tearing at her clothes.
“My lord...”
Fan Wujiu hesitated, and Wu Shaochun clenched his fist:
“Don’t worry, my lord. At worst we fight it out with the ghost. If we die, we die.”
“Don’t be rash,” Zhao Fusheng said mildly. “Throwing your lives away means nothing.”
She tore the cloth from her cuffs, ripped it into strips about two fingers wide and tied them around the pitch-black coffin nail.
“What is my lord doing?”
Fan Wujiu asked carefully.
“A present I want to give Fourth Madam Zhuang.”
The child sitting beside her, who had said nothing all this time, shook when she heard “Fourth Madam Zhuang.”
Zhao Fusheng didn’t speak. She tore off a dozen or so strips, until both sleeves were ripped to the elbow, and an odd, ill-assorted cloth flower appeared in her hand. The coffin nail, which could subdue malignant ghosts, was the “stem,” and the sleeves she had torn off were the “petals.” Zhao Fusheng held the nail and spun it between her fingers, and the strips wrapped around it whirled.
When she had finished, the ghost flowers blooming around the group suddenly grew thicker and more lush.
In the distance the villagers were worriedly shouting:
“We can’t get into the ancestral hall.”
Their faces were stiff and blue-tinged, and they carried torches and held ghost lanterns. Corpse spots had already appeared on their faces, but they didn’t seem to realize they were dead. Nor did they see that, at the well in the inner court opposite the hall entrance, several people were looking out at them.
“Sixth Uncle, what do we do now?”
A villager who had long been dead turned painfully and looked coldly at Sixth Uncle Kuai.
“Have people guard the village entrance first. At dawn we’ll report to the Demon-Suppression Bureau in the city. We can’t let the ghost leave the village and harm others.”
“...”
The “villagers” murmured among themselves. They still hadn’t realized they were dead, with the stitched-together wounds still on their faces and bodies.
Wuu.
The child sitting against Zhao Fusheng suddenly sobbed softly. She tucked in her toes, pressed her knees against her chin, wrapped her thin arms around her shins and buried her face in her knees.
“Sixth Great-Uncle—”
She wept quietly.
At her crying, a sharp shout came from far off:
“Who? Who’s in the village?”
Fan Wujiu’s heart leapt into his throat. He thought the conversation in the ancestral hall had caught the ghosts’ attention. His scalp prickled, and he turned to look toward the hall entrance—
But after that shout from afar, all talking cut off abruptly. The “villagers” at the door of the hall, right before everyone’s eyes, turned into black air and melted into the ghost fog. The packed crowd vanished in an instant, and vague voices drifted from afar. Time reset in the ghost village, and a new round of the loop began.
...
And inside the ancestral hall, a faint pink ghost mist had spread at some point. A light sweet, bloody smell drifted in the air, like diluted blood mixed with an uncanny floral scent.
The bribe of the ghost coin had run its course. Fourth Madam Zhuang had gone and come back.
Zhao Fusheng’s back was tense, but she didn’t panic. When she finished the strange flower she held it up, looked at it, and spun the coffin nail between her fingertips with a calm look.
The child who had been sobbing quietly beside her had at some point raised her head. She stared blankly at the odd flower in Zhao Fusheng’s hand, her eyes brimming with tears.
“What are you looking at?” Zhao Fusheng asked her calmly.
The child’s face was blank, and she said nothing.
Fan Wujiu, looking at the ghost flowers swelling all around, grew anxious and quickly asked:
“My lord, will this flower work on Fourth Madam Zhuang?”
“It will.”
Zhao Fusheng looked at the strange flower in her hand and nodded.
“This is a flower made from the coffin nail I took from Paperman Zhang.”
At the words “coffin nail,” Wu Shaochun didn’t understand, but Fan Wujiu’s face changed slightly.
“Liu Huacheng?”
“Mm,” Zhao Fusheng replied. “It should be something stolen from the coffin that suppressed the Headless Ghost.”
The Headless Ghost’s rules were special and could suppress malignant ghosts, and the ghost coffin was the vessel that controlled the Headless Ghost’s corpse. The coffin nail, one with the ghost coffin, might well have unexpected effects on malignant ghosts too.
If a great malevolent object like a ghost coffin nail fell into Fourth Madam Zhuang’s hands, she would surely be brought under control. With her rank and power, the nail might not hold her long. But if it could put her into a brief slumber, that was enough for them to leave in safety.
As she spoke, Zhao Fusheng noticed the child beside her listening quietly all along. She paused and turned to Kuai Manzhou.
“Scared?”
The child said nothing, like a puppet. After a long moment she shook her head.
“I heard from your Big Aunt and the others that your mother was supposed to go that day.”
As she said this, an idea came to Zhao Fusheng, and she went on:
“It was a flower you gave her at the last moment that changed her mind and made her stay.”
Kuai Manzhou bit her lip and said nothing, but her face grew paler.
“Sometimes being alive isn’t necessarily a good thing, and being dead isn’t necessarily bad.” Zhao Fusheng smiled faintly. “But because her obsession at the moment of death didn’t fade, the malignant ghost revived and became what it is now, a catastrophe that could ruin Wan’an County.”
As she said this, her expression gradually went cold, and she stared at the child.
“The people of Kuailiang Village are dead.”
The child’s body tensed. Her blank face finally changed, and she laced her fingers tightly together.
“Your Sixth Great-Uncle, your Sixth Great-Aunt, your aunts and your relatives are all dead.”
Kuai Manzhou buried her head between her knees, but Zhao Fusheng’s words still reached her ears.
“On top of that, there’s no one left in Zhuang Family Village. All your relatives and acquaintances died because of this ghost case.”
She looked at the child and paused.
“I sympathize with what your mother went through in life. But this calamity must be put down. I have to think of Wan’an County.”
The child kept her head buried in her knees and said nothing.
It grew colder and colder around them. The ghost flowers blooming all around had ringed the four of them. From the well, against which Zhao Fusheng and Kuai Manzhou were leaning, came the sound of running water. Fan Wujiu’s and Wu Shaochun’s expressions changed in an instant.
“My lord—”
Fan Wujiu said in a quiet, frightened voice.
Zhao Fusheng stayed seated.
Sometimes this is how cruel the world is. A person dies and the lamp goes out; everything in life is wiped clean. But the living must bear enormous pressure and walk the rest of the road. When Fourth Madam Zhuang, because of the flower her daughter gave her, changed her mind about eloping and came back, she may well have foreseen her own end, and perhaps death felt like a relief to her. But she never imagined what would follow: that after her death the malignant ghost would revive and slaughter the villagers of Kuailiang Village, and that the calamity would go on.
And for Kuai Manzhou, she herself might never have imagined that a flower holding a child’s heart would lead to consequences so grave. This child was the village’s only survivor. She must have seen the villagers’ deaths that Zhao Fusheng had witnessed earlier. And as time was reset again and again, the scenes of Sixth Uncle Kuai and the others dying played out before her eyes over and over. When she heard Sixth Uncle Kuai speak, her feelings would break loose and she would cry quietly. As time passed, this ghost calamity might become a huge shadow pressing on the child’s heart.
“The malignant ghost must be suppressed,” Zhao Fusheng said to herself.
“I can’t let the calamity spread. I can’t let Fourth Madam Zhuang keep growing and keep going out of control.”
She suddenly sighed.
“I really do hate kids.”
Having said that, as if she’d made up her mind, she lifted the strange flower and, with some effort, took the child’s hand.
“It’s your mother. You see to the aftermath.”
At this, Kuai Manzhou looked up with an odd expression. Zhao Fusheng pressed the “flower” into her palm.
“You kept her here once with a single flower. Now give her another and send her away.”
“My lord!”
Fan Wujiu was alarmed at once. Fourth Madam Zhuang was a great malevolent presence. Zhao Fusheng herself had said she could no longer summon the Door Gods, and the coffin nail in her hand might be the one thing that could keep the ghost down and let them escape with their lives. How could she, as if playing a game, hand a matter this important to a small child? And what did a child know? If she was close to her mother, and Zhao Fusheng had just said this was an item for subduing ghosts, then in a moment of emotion she might fling it away, and the rest of them, facing the ghost, would die for nothing.
Zhao Fusheng understood Fan Wujiu’s terror, but she ignored his protest. She looked at Kuai Manzhou, whose eyes were swimming with tears. Their eyes met, and Zhao Fusheng said coldly:
“Our lives are in your hands.”
The moment she finished, the spring in the well, with its gurgling water, began to boil. The red flowers on the ground burst into full bloom. Countless fine black strands of hair swung up from the well and drew the female ghost’s body slowly out of the well mouth.
Thud-thud.
At that moment, everyone seemed to feel their backs shudder, as if some uncanny presence had patted each of them on the back.
Kuai Manzhou held the odd “flower” in her hands and sat leaning against the well without moving.
“It’s over,” Fan Wujiu thought. “We’re going to die in Kuailiang Village today.”
The female ghost’s body had reached the spot behind Zhao Fusheng. But the instant it touched Zhao Fusheng’s body, the child sitting beside her suddenly moved.
Wuu-wuu.
She wept in a thin, small voice, held the “flower” in both hands, turned her head, gazed blankly at her “mother” and called:
“Mother.”
The malignant ghost no longer answered her words. It would not hold her tenderly in its arms as it had in life, would not show her a gentle expression, would not stroke her head again. The moment the ghost saw the “flower,” it was drawn in by instinct. It gave up on Zhao Fusheng and turned to look at Kuai Manzhou.
Tears streamed down the child’s face as she held out both hands.
“Mother, go.”
This scene had happened once before, but in just a few days everything had changed.
The ghost’s bound hands reached out and closed around the child’s, and a chill instantly seeped through her whole body. The coffin nail was seized along with them. The “petals” of cloth strips torn and tied around the “flower” corroded away under the ghost’s baleful aura and turned to black ash on the ground, leaving only a bare “stem” in the ghost’s hand. The great malevolent object that could subdue malignant ghosts took effect the moment it touched the ghost.
The ghost’s body did not split apart. It stopped dead in place.
Fan Wujiu and Wu Shaochun’s faces lit up with joy, and Zhao Fusheng’s taut nerve slackened. The consciousness that had been ready to sink into Hell stopped.
But Fourth Madam Zhuang had already grown too strong. Powerful as the coffin nail was, it was only one part of the ghost coffin. The malignant ghost’s movements halted only briefly, then it stepped forward again and embraced Kuai Manzhou.
At this change Zhao Fusheng’s pupils contracted sharply. In almost an instant her consciousness sank into Hell, searching for the Golden Bell. But before she could take it out, Kuai Manzhou reached out and slowly hugged the ghost back.
The child was not torn apart.
The malignant ghost, still gripping the coffin nail in a “holding flowers” pose, walked to stand behind Kuai Manzhou. The two figures, one large and one small, stood back to back, and the ghost’s form gradually merged with the night and became a faint shadow that vanished behind Kuai Manzhou.
In life, when her daughter held out a flower, she had chosen to stay. In death, when her daughter held out a flower again, she chose to keep watch.
A great many prompts rang out at once in Zhao Fusheng’s sea of consciousness: The malignant ghost has chosen a ghost-controller.
The instant the ghost vanished, Kuai Manzhou seemed to realize something and wept without restraint. In her hand, a brown sprig that should have withered days ago appeared from nowhere in her palm. The child held her pose of embracing her mother.
At the same moment, the villagers’ shouts in the distance ceased the instant the malignant ghost that Fourth Madam Zhuang had become was brought under control. It was as if all the villagers’ cries and noise vanished at once, without a trace.
The clump of ghost flowers by the well began to sway, and ghost shadows appeared one after another among the flowers. Sixth Uncle Kuai, who had been split apart by the ghost, Sixth Aunt leading her child by the hand, Kuai Changshun, the four Kuai daughters-in-law—each familiar face, each numb and cold, chose to stand where its body had lain before death.
The ghost flowers suddenly bloomed, and great swirls of ghost aura wrapped the petals into layered phantom images, drawing the ghosts one by one inside. Once the flowers had taken in the ghost entities, they drew back. In a blink, the petals shrank rapidly and curled back into the shadows. As Fourth Madam Zhuang’s ghost shadow faded from view, they sank into the dark along with her and vanished without a trace.
As the malignant ghosts of the ghost village disappeared, a gorgeous black-red ghost flower, almost bewitchingly beautiful, suddenly bloomed from the withered sprig in Kuai Manzhou’s hand. But the flower lasted only a moment. Then it wilted, its leaves fell, and it became a dry twig, then the twig crumbled to powder and vanished.
The Zhuang Family Village ghost case was over.
This case began at chapter 135 and ends at chapter 183, nearly 50 chapters, and I’ve written one complete ghost case.
In my original outline, Fusheng’s trip was actually a failure: she could only drive the malignant ghost off for a while with ghost coin and would collect it later. But partway through I revised this story’s outline again and again, and I chose to give it a beginning and an end. By the cause and effect of “whoever tied the bell must untie it” (解铃还须系铃人, a proverb meaning the person who caused a problem must be the one to resolve it), Fourth Madam Zhuang’s daughter becomes a special little ghost-controller by offering her mother flowers once more, and that is how the case is closed.
I found this story fairly complicated to write. I believe human nature is itself complicated: goodness and cruelty can exist together, and one moment’s lapse can lead to consequences no one could foresee. In a hard world, every supporting character who flashes past in the story is struggling to get by. I hoped to write fuller, more three-dimensional characters, not just stand-in Person A, B and C who exist only to serve the plot.
I actually like telling stories at a slow pace, but I pushed hard on this one. I wanted to give everyone a fairly complete story while keeping the length under control. In my own view, what a story gives a reader doesn’t have to be a single kind of thrill. Being moved, joy, sighing over it, pity and regret are all kinds of emotion, and I hope you can enjoy these feelings too.
Also: thank you for following the updates. I Became a God in a Strange World is now at 750,000 characters. Please keep accompanying Fusheng on her road ahead.
Thank you, everyone.
