IBGSW Chapter 34
The Headless Ghost Corpse
Zhao Fusheng's eyes went wide.
"Those two had that much strength?! Or did they pull knives?!"
Even as the words left her mouth, she realized something was off.
This world had malignant ghosts, and at Liu Huacheng's birthday banquet back then, a ghost entity had been at work. By the original Zhao Fusheng's memories, iron goods were tightly controlled here. Selling daggers, swords, and the like without the government's say-so was a crime, punishable by exile at the least and death at the worst.
Ordinary people owned few iron tools. A kitchen knife, a sickle, or a hoe was a household treasure that could be handed down for generations, not something anyone carried around, let alone brought into a flowing banquet at the Liu house.
If it wasn't knives, then a ghost entity had to be involved.
Her heart tightened. "Was it a malignant ghost's doing?"
This time she had asked the right question. Liu Wu's face went deathly pale. "Yes!"
The two men had fought, knocked over a table, and knocked off the head of a man at the next table. At first no one realized a ghost was at work. They thought it was a murder.
Back then Wan'an County had no ghost fog yet, and the commanding officer at the Demon-Suppression Bureau was Su Long, a capable man of fairly upright character. He had held the post and handled several ghost cases, earning a fearsome name. Under his rule Wan'an County had been quite peaceful, and no one lived in particular dread of ghosts.
"After it happened, my grandpa flew into a rage. He drew his blade and went to arrest the two thugs who'd made trouble. Then, then, then—"
He had reached the crux, and his fear surged again. Zhao Fusheng had to darken her face and bark, "Then what! Don't hem and haw!"
Her scolding worked better than comfort would have. The bureau's name carried terrible weight, and Liu Wu gave a start. "Then the body whose head had fallen off didn't fall down. It stood up from the bench and walked over to the two men who'd been fighting."
Liu Wu's expression went blank. "My grandpa was standing close. He saw the headless body walk up to them and stretch out both arms—" The muscles of his cheeks twitched. "And it twisted one of the fighters' heads off like picking a melon, and set it on its own neck."
Hiss.
Zhao Fusheng sucked in a sharp breath.
Headless Ghost! The name of the ghost entity recorded in the case scroll surfaced in her mind, matching the one Liu Wu had just described.
Liu Wu didn't say the rest, but she could nearly picture it. At a birthday banquet, a headless corpse suddenly stands up, tears off a living person's head, and fixes it onto itself. She could imagine the shock that must have gone through the banquet.
Still, Liu Wu's account had filled in what she'd been missing about the Liu family's ghost. She felt both uneasy and slightly relieved.
"After that the banquet was chaos. Everyone screamed. My grandpa and the others were badly frightened, and only then did they realize the Liu house was haunted."
Once a ghost calamity broke out, ordinary people could do nothing, and the matter naturally passed to the Demon-Suppression Bureau. "My grandpa's group prepared to split up at once. One part would tell the Liu family, and the other would notify the bureau so they could handle it." But to Liu Wu's grandfather's surprise, when he found Liu Huacheng, the man didn't seem very surprised at all.
"Liu Huacheng's first reaction was to notify the bureau."
Liu Huacheng had been prepared for this.
Hints in Liu Wu's account lined up with what Paperman Zhang had said. Liu Huacheng had lost his post and gone home because of a mistake made while in office. He had brought a fragmentary malignant ghost corpse back to the Liu house and suppressed it somehow, but in the end the ghost revived and rampaged through the banquet at his birthday.
"The banquet was set up near the Liu Clan's Ancestral Hall back then, which is the area of Beggars' Alley today. It wasn't called that yet."
"Wenchang Road?" Zhao Fusheng's heart stirred, and she asked.
Liu Wu nodded quickly. "Yes, yes, it was called Wenchang Road. The name Beggars' Alley came later."
Her face was grim. "Are you sure?"
"Sure! Sure." Liu Wu didn't know why she took the question so seriously, but he didn't dare be careless and answered right away. "That road's name has a story, too. This Master Liu held a high post at court back then. He'd been clever from childhood and became a juren (provincial graduate), like a Wenqu star come down to earth, so the road was named for it.1"
Then he flattered her. "In recent years a lot of people in Wan'an County don't even know that name. For you to know it, my lord, you really are well-informed. It shows you handle cases out of true concern for the people of Wan'an County."
Wenchang Road.
Zhao Fusheng ignored his flattery. Hearing him confirm that Wenchang Road was Beggars' Alley's former name, she let out a breath without meaning to.
The case scroll said the Liu house haunting forty years ago had occurred on "Wenchang Road." Now, forty years later, Beggars' Alley was haunted again. When she had gone to Paperman Zhang for information and he had flatly insisted the two cases were really one, she had had her doubts.
The ghost trouble in both cases was in Liu-related territory, but the old scroll named Wenchang Road while the present trouble was in Beggars' Alley near the Confucian temple. The two road names were completely different, and something strange might lie behind that.
But now Liu Wu's account matched the case scroll and cleared up the doubt, and her uneasy heart settled somewhat.
"My lord, is something wrong with Wenchang Road?"
Seeing her expression turn serious, Liu Wu asked in a trembling voice.
"Nothing. Go on."
She didn't trust him completely either.
She had gone to the yamen for help, and the magistrate had seemed to appoint someone on the spur of the moment to drive her. Yet this runner just happened to be distantly related to Liu Huacheng of the forty-year-old ghost case, and just happened to have a grandfather who had witnessed it.
Zhao Fusheng thought uneasily, This is a bit too much of a coincidence.
She knew she was being overly suspicious, but this was an unfamiliar era and she had no one she could use or trust. Since coming back to life, everyone around her, whether the Fan brothers, Zhang Chuanshi, or Paperman Zhang, had harbored ill intent. Without enough suspicion, she'd probably die without even knowing how.
Liu Wu had no idea what she was thinking.
Hearing her urge him, he answered, "Right."
When the ghost appeared, the crowd shook with fear and scattered in all directions.
"But the calamity had already begun, and a ghost domain had formed over old Wenchang Road. Everyone was trapped inside and couldn't get out."
"Running around in a panic only made things worse. Many people died one after another, and heads lay scattered everywhere, inside and outside the Liu house."
"……"
Zhao Fusheng pictured the scene. A celebration had turned into a mass funeral, and those who had lived through it must have been terrified.
Liu Wu paused, then continued. "But my grandpa said Master Liu had a plan. He actually left the Liu house and notified the bureau, and once the bureau's people arrived, they got the situation under control."
At this, Zhao Fusheng's heart moved. "How did your grandfather survive?"
Liu Wu perked up. "My grandpa thought he was done for, too. But Su Long, the bureau's commanding officer, was very capable. The moment he arrived he ordered everyone to stop scattering and gathered all the survivors together."
Zhao Fusheng was startled. Normally, if everyone clustered in one place it would be easier for the ghost to target them, and once it got into the crowd, wouldn't it slaughter them wholesale?
"Su Long said this ghost kills by hunting for a head."
When people first realized a ghost calamity had begun, it was because two men fighting over a coin had unintentionally knocked off the head the ghost had "taken," forcing the ghost to hunt for a head and kill.
Zhao Fusheng nodded and mused. "So this ghost's real goal is finding a head. The killing is only a side effect."
"What do you mean by that, my lord?"
Liu Wu's thinking was rigid, and he asked without understanding. Then he worried she might take it as questioning her and anger a bureau official, and he looked frightened again.
To his surprise, she wasn't angry. "I may not be explaining it clearly. Let me put it another way, and perhaps you'll understand."
She patiently explained, "From what you say, this malignant ghost has a body but no head. Its defining trait is searching for a head. It takes people's heads and fits them onto its own body, and anyone who loses their head dies."
"Yes..." Liu Wu still only half understood, but he nodded instinctively.
She smiled and went on. "Suppose a ghost had a head but no hands. Or a head and hands but no feet. Or it was missing eyes, a nose, ears. What it would be searching for is whatever it lost."
And a person who loses hands, feet, eyes, nose, or ears does not die.
At this explanation Liu Wu suddenly understood. "I see!"
He seemed to have found a great secret. "I always thought the bureau's work was mysterious and dangerous, but I never guessed there was such an interesting pattern in it. Lord Zhao, you're amazing. You weren't there for the ghost case forty years ago, and you've described it exactly."
She wasn't flattered by his deliberate fawning and shook her head. "I'm only summing up the pattern after the fact. It's nothing remarkable."
Still, Liu Wu's account of this case gave her new insight, and she dimly grasped what Fan Bisi had meant by "a malignant ghost's killing rules."
"Go on," she said, and Liu Wu nodded. "Yes!"
Perhaps Zhao Fusheng's calm composure had rubbed off on him, giving him a little more hope for this trip and chasing away his earlier dejection. "Lord Su gathered everyone and told them to sit tight and not move. Above all, no one should touch their own or anyone else's neck, or give the ghost an opening. In that case, the ghost might not kill at random."
Of course, malignant ghosts were not reasonable. Su Long's words were only a guess, and he was acting like a gambler.
Luckily, he had been fortunate and won the bet.
Once no one moved, the deaths at the Liu house stopped. Liu Wu's grandfather didn't know much about what came next, but it broadly matched the bureau's case scroll. In the end the envoys who had come with Su Long died, and Su Long survived by the power of the malignant ghost he controlled, retreating in disgrace from the Liu house's grounds.
Zhao Fusheng knew the rest.
Su Long had not dared to set foot in the Liu house again. But Liu Huacheng had been resolute enough to stake everything, offering half the wealth the whole Liu family had amassed as thanks. That moved Su Long and Zhang Xiongwu in the end. The two of them entered the Liu house together and resolved the calamity, and the Lius had known peace ever since.
When the story ended, Liu Wu fell silent for a while. He watched Zhao Fusheng out of the corner of his eye as she sank into thought, not daring to interrupt.
She was considering what he had told her.
Fan Bisi was one thing, but Paperman Zhang had also been hiding malice. As Zhang Xiongwu's descendant, he must know details of the Liu Clan's Ancestral Hall case that outsiders didn't, yet he had not mentioned them to her. That was only human nature, though. With a grudge between them and a fight to the death only a matter of time, from his standpoint, speaking half-truths and withholding the key information was the right move.
As a participant's grandson, Liu Wu had supplied a piece that the case scroll, Fan Bisi, and Paperman Zhang had all left out, giving her a bit more understanding of the ghost she was about to face.
A headless malignant ghost that hunts for heads, killing people through ghost calamity.
Wenchang Road back then was the predecessor of Beggars' Alley, which was now shrouded in a ghost domain.
"Forty years..." Zhao Fusheng's brows knit tightly as she wondered what had trapped the malignant ghost, keeping it lingering in one place and unwilling to leave.
By now she knew that the malignant ghosts of the Great Han Dynasty were not like the ones she knew. In her old understanding, legendary ghosts were mostly bound by cause and effect and didn't enter reincarnation until their grudges were settled. But this Great Han had no Hell and no reincarnation, and ghost entities seemed to have no feelings and no thoughts, acting only on instinct.
Ghosts like that were unlikely to stay behind out of "obsession," unless something was drawing them there, as with the ghost calamity at Wan'an County's Demon-Suppression Bureau, where the ghost wouldn't give up its territory until everyone within it was dead.
By that reasoning, the malignant ghost of Beggars' Alley probably remained because it hadn't fully completed its rule.
But all this was just a simple inference from her rough understanding, and not necessarily accurate. Dealing with ghosts demanded extreme caution, or she'd lose her life.
She steadied herself and looked up at Liu Wu. "Tell me why Wenchang Road was renamed."
She still felt there was some mystery in it.
Fan Bisi seemed cooperative but might not tell the truth, and Paperman Zhang went without saying: half truth and half lie, with something held back. She was at a disadvantage because she had only just been reborn and knew nothing about this era.
Her lack of information had left her passive, so she could only squeeze out as much talk as possible, then piece together clues from everyone's words and find a way to live.
