IBGSW Chapter 31
The Ghost Lantern Acquired
"Yes. The Emperor at the time was furious, and he thought Liu Huacheng deserved to die, too." Paperman Zhang took Zhao Fusheng's sigh to be about Liu Huacheng's sins. He privately disagreed, but given how unpredictable she was, he made a show of agreeing anyway.
Zhao Fusheng let him believe it and couldn't be bothered to correct him.
"After that Gold General died, did the situation get out of control?" she asked, curious enough to pry.
"Naturally it did." Paperman Zhang nodded. "With two ghost calamities side by side, the Son of Heaven himself nearly died in that catastrophe."
Pfft.
The oil lamp pressing down on the human-skin paper atop the table sputtered and threw off a spark. The light flickered twice, and in the shifting shadows the cruel malice between Paperman Zhang's brows showed through.
He realized he had let his composure slip and quickly rearranged his face into a rather insincere smile.
"In any case, the Demon-Suppression Bureau paid a heavy price in the end. They dismembered the newly revived malignant ghost, but then how to seal its corpse became a headache for everyone."
"By rights, if the Capital had people capable of dismembering this ghost, they should have had a way to suppress its corpse as well," Zhao Fusheng guessed. "Could it be that after being dismembered, the ghost's power turned out to be special?"
Paperman Zhang already had some measure of her sharpness, so he wasn't surprised. He simply nodded. "Yes. The dismembered corpse of this ghost entity could counter a certain amount of other ghosts' power."
Zhao Fusheng froze.
She had been reborn only recently, and everything she knew about this world had been crammed into her head in a rush. What little she understood of malignant ghosts came from the Fan brothers and, now, Paperman Zhang's partial accounts. She still wasn't clear on how ghosts' power or killing rules worked. But in a dream she had witnessed "herself" being killed by a malignant ghost, so she knew how terrifying they were.
And now Paperman Zhang was saying that the revived malignant ghost Liu Huacheng had created back then possessed the power to suppress ghost entities.
"Nearly every commanding officer or above in the Demon-Suppression Bureau controls a ghost entity, and every last one of them was countered. The whole Capital came close to disaster. That should tell you how special this ghost was."
Paperman Zhang could see how shaken she was. He gave her a meaningful smile.
"Ghosts can't be killed, and a calamity like that couldn't be left in the Capital. But subduing it was beyond ordinary people."
That was when Liu Huacheng, who had been certain he was as good as dead, saw a sliver of hope.
The man was decisive and bold. He petitioned the Emperor, offering to atone for his crimes through meritorious service.
"You've probably guessed the rest. He took the ghost's remains away and suppressed them in the Liu Clan's Ancestral Hall, using the Liu family's fortune to hold it down. Things went smoothly for more than ten years. He never expected the ghost to revive on the very day of his sixtieth birthday."
With that, Paperman Zhang had finally laid out the full story behind the ghost calamity that had struck the Liu family.
It involved old events from the Capital and the Demon-Suppression Bureau's headquarters. No wonder Su Long's records hadn't gone into detail and had passed over it in a single stroke.
But having understood the cause, Zhao Fusheng felt new doubts rise in her chest. Paperman Zhang's ancestors had dealt with ghosts and evil for generations. He was plainly no pushover, and the two of them even had a grudge. Even if she had cowed him by suddenly going berserk, that couldn't have frightened him into handing over every clue at once.
When something is out of the ordinary, there is a demon behind it1. Zhao Fusheng grew wary, sensing that something was off here.
She was on high alert, yet her face wore a smiling look. Paperman Zhang seemed to see straight through that smile into the depths of her eyes.
"You don't believe me?"
"Do you think I should?"
Paperman Zhang laughed. "What would I gain by lying to you?"
Once he'd said it, even he seemed to find the line hilarious. He gave a few "heh-heh" laughs, his voice hoarse and dry, as if he had a handful of sand stuck in his throat.
"I know what you're thinking."
"What am I thinking?" Amused, Zhao Fusheng asked with a smile.
"You're afraid I'm tricking you into getting yourself killed."
His eyes flashed with a dim glint as he spoke.
"Do you know? Dealing with ghosts requires sacrifice, too."
Ghost-controllers sacrificed their own lives, feeding them to the malignant ghost in exchange for its abilities.
And the malignant ghost Jia Yi controlled was no benign thing either. That it produced the Soul-Life Register through ghost language wasn't merely because Jia Yi controlled it for the time being.
"Under the court's rules, Demon-Suppression Bureaus everywhere are largely free of court supervision. They're independent of the local county yamen and government offices and not subject to their control. But they answer directly to the court, and each year they must handle three ghost cases, or they violate the rules."
He smiled maliciously as he spoke.
"Did Fan Bisi ever tell you any of this?"
Paperman Zhang was deliberately sowing discord. He remembered that Zhao Fusheng had earlier called Fan Bisi "Big Brother Fan," and wondered whether the two had reached some temporary understanding and agreed to cooperate.
Zhao Fusheng's heart stirred. She had already guessed as much, though not as clearly as Paperman Zhang had just laid it out.
She said nothing, and Paperman Zhang didn't mind. He went on.
"If Jia Yi wants to keep himself alive, he has to make regular sacrifices to the ghost he controls. And anyone who fails to finish the bureau's yearly quota becomes that malignant ghost's 'delicacy.'"
The two sides complemented and checked each other, forming a perfect restraint.
"Every year, who knows how many people who avoid dying in ghost calamities still end up as ghost servants2."
Paperman Zhang smiled as he spoke. "I'm guessing Fan Bisi didn't tell you any of this. Smart as you are, your rush to get into Beggars' Alley probably means you sensed trouble, too?"
He thought himself clever, sure he had hit her weak spot. He had no idea that Zhao Fusheng's hurry to enter Beggars' Alley came not only from the need to satisfy the court's rules and settle a ghost case, but also from the Investiture of the Gods she carried, with which she hoped to earn merit.
She gave Paperman Zhang a long look, then simply played along, letting him believe he had missed nothing.
"Yes. Since you know I'm bound to go into Beggars' Alley, but we weren't friends before this, why would you help me? Why tell me about this ghost's traits?"
"You think I'm helping you?" Paperman Zhang's eyes suddenly went wide, then the corners of his mouth curled up exaggeratedly into a mocking smile.
"You want to handle a ghost case. Once you step into Beggars' Alley, do you really think you'll find a way back out?"
"Hahahaha." He roared with laughter, his voice shrill and tinged with a wheezing quality, like a leaky bellows letting out a strange hoh-hoh sound.
"Don't you know that dealing with ghosts means nine deaths for one survival3? Even if you control a ghost and somehow survive, the moment you use its power you're affected by it, and in the end you either go mad or lose control. Overusing a malignant ghost's power is simply seeking your own death."
He bared his teeth. "So what if you died and came back and managed to control a ghost? You can't solve this case. What's the harm in telling you!"
Unwilling to be swayed, Zhao Fusheng asked the key question.
"When the malignant ghost the Lius suppressed revived back then, how did Su Long and Zhang Xiongwu deal with it?"
Paperman Zhang meant her no good, but he was convinced she was as good as dead, so he answered.
"My grandfather used up five 'ghost lanterns,' went deep to where the ghost's remains lay, and repaired the seal."
"What was the seal?" Zhao Fusheng asked.
Paperman Zhang paused, then smiled. "A special coffin. Rumor has it a great personage in the Capital made it with his own hands back then."
Zhao Fusheng nodded. "Where was this coffin kept?"
"Inside the ancestral hall." Paperman Zhang cooperated again, then asked her, "That ought to be your last question, no?"
She ignored his question and threw out another. "The Liu Clan's Ancestral Hall has since been turned into the Confucian temple. So there's a ghost in the temple?"
Paperman Zhang's brow twitched involuntarily. After a moment he suppressed his irritation and nodded. "Yes."
"You..." He was about to say more, but Zhao Fusheng suddenly darkened and cut him off.
"Enough. Give me some ghost lanterns. I'm leaving."
"You really don't stand on ceremony." Paperman Zhang grinned at that. "But I have plenty of lanterns. Pick whatever kind you like."
Zhao Fusheng didn't quit while she was ahead just because he was being accommodating.
Her eyes darted as a thought struck her. "Don't lanterns need lamp oil?"
Paperman Zhang's room was piled high with all kinds of specially prepared human skins, so clearly he had no shortage of lanterns.
She suddenly remembered the two split-open human-skin lanterns she had seen outside the Demon-Suppression Bureau's gate when she woke up. When the human-skin paper had torn, the lamp oil inside had spilled out.
That oil had been eerie, with an indescribable rotten stench, and thinking back now, it had seemed to carry a trace of "ghost" energy. But the energy was faint, and she had only just been reborn and hadn't reacted. Now, remembering it, she realized at once that the oil was no ordinary oil.
The smile vanished from Paperman Zhang's face. His expression stayed dark for a long while, murderous light seeping into his eyes.
Zhao Fusheng refused to back down and met his gaze.
After a long moment, Paperman Zhang let out a long sigh. "Fine."
As he spoke, he slowly extended one hand into the opposite sleeve. A shrill, hoarse snarl came from inside it, and the sleeve shook violently twice, as if two "little people" hidden within were quarreling.
It lasted only a moment before the strange noise vanished and the sleeve fell still.
Paperman Zhang's complexion had turned slightly waxy yellow. His hand came out of the sleeve holding a jet-black box. He swept an elbow across the table, shoving a pile of human-skin paper aside to expose the stone tabletop beneath, then set the lamp-oil box down with a soft thud and pushed it toward Zhao Fusheng.
"The lamp oil's in here."
The box wasn't large, two inches tall, about the size of a child's palm. She couldn't tell what it was made of, but from the sound it made when set down, it was heavy. It was black all over, the lid and body fitted so tightly that the seam was invisible to the naked eye. Sitting amid the human-skin paper, it gave off an unease that made one shiver to the core.
"This little?" Zhao Fusheng's gaze fell on the oil box, and she studied it for some time before speaking.
She wasn't cowed by the box's eeriness. So far Paperman Zhang clearly meant her ill, but he wasn't foolish enough to play tricks on her right now. And she trusted the ghost within her enough to boldly reach for the box.
Seeing this, Paperman Zhang forcibly brushed aside the displeasure her words had stirred. "Aren't you afraid I'll ambush you?"
"No." Zhao Fusheng didn't even look up.
Paperman Zhang froze, then twitched the corner of his mouth, scorn showing in his eyes. He thought she was no different from any ordinary ghost-controller, arrogant the moment she gained any power, forgetting her own limits. People like that probably never even learned how to write the word "death."
Zhao Fusheng sensed his contempt but didn't bother explaining.
Paperman Zhang was no good person. He treated ordinary people's lives as grass, kept corpse slaves at home, and pasted human skin onto lanterns, a cruel and eerie business. A man like that couldn't possibly act openly. Her confidence rested less on trusting his "character" than on trusting the "ghost character" of the malignant ghost within her.
Having spoken with Fan Bisi and Paperman Zhang today, she had also drawn another hint from their words. A ghost clinging to you was hard to handle. Of the bureau's past ghost-controlling commanding officers, a small number had died in ghost calamities. Most had died when their own malignant ghosts went out of control, or at the hands of people sent by the court. And ghosts could counter each other's power.
She, for instance, was bound to a malignant ghost while also afflicted by Jia Yi's ghost servant curse, which meant two ghosts were both waiting to take her life.
At that moment, Zhao Fusheng realized she was a rare commodity worth hoarding4.
With two ghosts both after her life, the two effectively held each other in check. Even as she trembled in fear, she suddenly realized she might exploit this rule to pull off something.
If Paperman Zhang tampered with the box, it would surely provoke the ghost within her to strike back. Then everything would fall apart. She'd still have about two-thirds of her life to gamble with, but Paperman Zhang would certainly die. If he was smart, he'd know this was no time to play tricks.
……
The moment the box was in her hand she knew something was wrong.
Unlike the warm feel of human-skin paper, the box holding the lamp oil was icy to the bone and carried a chilling ghost aura, even stirring the ghost within her, to the point where it threatened to revive again. The oil inside the box was like a "low-tier" ghost itself!
The Zhang family's heirloom recipe for making ghost lanterns probably revolved around this eerie lamp oil, with the human-skin paper secondary.
Holding the oil in her hand and thinking it over, she said aloud, "So stingy."
"Hmph." Paperman Zhang's face was thoroughly ugly. He gave a cold laugh.
"This stuff is extremely hard to come by. Once lit, wherever the light falls becomes a dead zone. Even if you're standing inside a ghost domain, a malignant ghost will treat you as a dead thing."
He was thoroughly displeased at being forced to hand over a whole box of the oil.
"But I'll warn you, the supply is limited. It's fine against minor ghosts, but against a great ghost it won't hold for long. Flee before the light goes out, or you're still as good as dead."
