IBGSW Chapter 30
Origin of the Malignant Ghost
"I heard Brother Fan say that the conditions for a malignant ghost to revive are harsh, and that an ordinary person's chance of turning into a malignant ghost after death isn't high," Zhao Fusheng said.
Paperman Zhang, interrupted, did not look displeased and nodded:
"Right. Forming a malignant ghost isn't so easy—" As he said this, he couldn't help sighing, brows knit tight, and a look of sorrow and unwillingness appeared in his eyes. The hand exposed outside his sleeve trembled once but was quickly drawn back into his broad black sleeve.
Zhao Fusheng knew at once that these words came from the heart and carried some regret and disappointment. She felt a stir of interest. The old man was sly and cunning and good at putting on an act. From the moment they'd met, whether he was laughing and scolding or radiating killing intent, he had given Zhao Fusheng a sense of artificiality, like a disguise worn over the skin. But when he mentioned how malignant ghosts form, for a moment his emotions had slipped out.
Yet Paperman Zhang quickly got his expression under control. His eyes went blank again and he gave Zhao Fusheng a deep look.
"But as luck would have it, that man turned into a malignant ghost after death, and reached Baleful-tier or above!"
Having said that, he went on to explain.
"You probably don't know much about ghost calamities. Has Fan Bisi told you that ghosts have ranks?"
Zhao Fusheng didn't speak, and he frowned again:
"Though that isn't accurate either. A ghost has no likes or dislikes, no thoughts, no feelings or awareness, so how would it know about rank? Those grades are judged by experience, by the people who deal with ghosts."
From his words, Zhao Fusheng picked up another piece of information about ghosts: ghosts had no likes or dislikes or feelings, and perhaps acted only on the impulse to kill and spill blood.
"Generally speaking, the conditions for a malignant ghost to revive may be harsh, but the world is vast and strange things abound, so malignant ghosts will always take form. Whether the dead died violently, unjustly, peacefully, or even of old age in their beds, any of them could revive as a malignant ghost. No one can say why, and the court hasn't found any rule for how a malignant ghost revives."
Paperman Zhang looked at Zhao Fusheng. His eyelids drooped and pulled down the outer corners of his eyes into a triangular shape. The gaze was dull, but anyone under it felt uncannily that his sight was everywhere, and it made one very uneasy.
"But for a newly dead person's revived malignant ghost to reach Baleful-tier or above is unheard of."
Zhao Fusheng committed all of what he said to memory.
"When that Baleful-tier ghost calamity formed, it blanketed the Capital and killed many people," Paperman Zhang said, smiling so that the skin of his face creased.
"Fortunately it happened in the Capital, under the Son of Heaven's feet and the bureau's main base, full of men of rare ability, many of them controlling ghost entities of Baleful-tier or above."
"In the end, together they suppressed the ghost, and the corpse of the revived malignant ghost was dismembered."
"A ghost can be dismembered?" Zhao Fusheng asked.
Fan Bisi had mentioned earlier that the bureau had two ways of dealing with malignant ghosts: driving them off, or suppressing them. But now Paperman Zhang had brought up another approach, dismemberment.
"If you're able, a malignant ghost can be dismembered," Paperman Zhang said with a nod.
"From what we understand of ghost entities, malignant ghosts fall into five tiers."
With a rustling, he again unhurriedly drew his hand out of his sleeve. Zhao Fusheng had already noticed something odd about the texture of his hand, but seeing Paperman Zhang's snow-white, smooth hand still took getting used to. She always felt that the hand was "brand new" and didn't match his old face. This time Paperman Zhang didn't mind her looking at his hand, and even deliberately spread his fingers wide.
"Evil spirit, vicious, baleful, calamity, disaster."
With each word he folded a finger, until his five fingers closed into a fist.
His words resolved Zhao Fusheng's doubts, and she finally had a rough idea of how ghosts were ranked. In other words, the ghost clinging to her, ready to take her life at any moment, was already a truly malevolent one among ghosts. But a new doubt arose. Did the people of Great Han really understand ghost entities that well? Did malignant ghosts truly have only five tiers, as Paperman Zhang said?
"How are the five tiers judged?" she asked, unable to help herself.
Paperman Zhang gave two cold, contemptuous laughs.
"The bureau's people are the experts on that. Rather than have me say too much, you'd do better to figure it out yourself." Aloof and cold, he went on: "If you're lucky and live, you'll meet different ghost entities in time and you'll naturally know which tier each belongs to."
The old man still seemed to bear a grudge over her earlier threat and deliberately withheld it. Zhao Fusheng said nothing. She carried the Investiture of the Gods, and in fact the Investiture had its own judgments on ghost tiers, but its judgments seemed to require her to have dealt with the ghost first, which made it of no use for collecting information ahead of time. It was a pity Paperman Zhang wouldn't say more, and she filed this away mentally.
After he finished, that eerie sense of being watched came again, and Zhao Fusheng frowned and looked around. The room was full of "human-skin paper," and apart from the two of them there was no one hidden in it, but the gazes seemed to be everywhere, with no telling where they came from.
Seeing her look around, Paperman Zhang twitched the corners of his mouth and didn't dwell on her question. He steered the conversation back on track.
"The higher the ghost's tier, the harder it is to deal with. And the stronger the ghost a ghost-controller commands, the easier it is for them to lose control and die early."
Zhao Fusheng pushed down the unease of being watched and took up his words.
"And ghosts can't die, so that throws the balance off."
Paperman Zhang nodded.
"But people are people. What sets them apart from ghosts is that they think, cooperate, and have reason. So even before the Former Han, some people discovered that though ghosts can't be killed outright, they can be dismembered, which lowers their tier and weakens their power."
A complete malignant ghost was powerful and could cause slaughter on a wide scale, but once the ghost was dismembered, its killing power fell sharply and its abilities dropped greatly.
"The ghost in the Capital was like that."
After talking for so long, he finally brought the conversation back to the ghost calamity Liu Huacheng had met.
"After the ghost was dismembered, one part of its corpse was suppressed in the Capital, and another part went elsewhere."
"It was taken by the Liu family back to Wan'an County?" Zhao Fusheng asked.
"Yes." Paperman Zhang had not dealt with her long, but he'd begun to grasp her temperament. She was nothing like what he'd imagined: clever and careful, quick to read a situation, yet capable of ruthless resolve at a crucial moment. The Fan brothers had misjudged her, and not only had they failed to divert the disaster eastward, they might have brought it back on themselves. He sneered inwardly and went on:
"The whole business began with Liu Huacheng. It ended in a ghost calamity that killed many people, and the bureau suffered too. At that time, a major figure of Gold General rank who controlled a Calamity-tier ghost died."
Hearing this, Zhao Fusheng could picture the disaster in the Capital then. Fan Bisi had said that if a bureau ghost-controller died abnormally, the ghost they controlled would inevitably run out of control, forming a new ghost calamity and turning into a new ghost catastrophe.
"..."
One wave had barely passed before another rose. She had been reborn, unluckily, into a world like this and was now tied to the bureau. She might someday face such a mess herself. The thought made her vision go black, and she let out a long sigh.
"Ugh... damn it all."
