IBGSW Chapter 36
Open Up, Fellow Villager
A mottled, unfamiliar lane appeared before Zhao Fusheng.
The street was uneven and covered in a thick layer of brown blood. Blood that had not completely dried ran along the edges of the street into the ditches that joined the buildings on both sides.
Low single-story houses were packed along both sides of the lane, many of them ruined.
Broken walls had collapsed, mud mixed with severed limbs and scraps of flesh, exposing the dismembered corpses inside.
Next, a thick smell of blood mixed with feces, filth, and rot hit her face and made her eyes sting.
She took an unguarded breath and instantly felt dizzy and nauseous.
She held her breath at once, and it took a long while to force the churning in her chest down.
But the shock of the smell wiped out most of her fear and tension. She covered her nose with her hand and turned to look around.
It wasn't dark yet in the ghost domain. The empty street seemed wrapped in a layer of long-gathered gloom that never lifted, with no one in sight.
But she could sense that people were hiding here.
Zhao Fusheng looked at the houses on both sides of the lane. Most of those still intact had their doors and windows shut tight.
But from behind the gaps in the door planks, countless gazes seemed to be spying on her, as if guessing at her identity and her purpose.
There were still living people in Beggars' Alley!
Zhao Fusheng felt a surge of joy.
She didn't know why these people had hidden in the houses, but she could tell this street was still "clean" for the moment.
Under the influence of the ghost domain, the atmosphere here was suffocating, and torn-up corpses were everywhere. Both sight and smell were under assault, as if she had blundered into hell on earth.
But with the senses her ghost-control had given her, she felt no presence of any ghost entity at the moment.
That meant the malignant ghost had not yet appeared.
Since it hadn't, she decided to observe her surroundings first and take stock of where she was.
Her sudden appearance had many people in Beggars' Alley sneaking looks at her. The spying eyes made Zhao Fusheng uncomfortable, but she forced herself to ignore them as much as she could and looked into the distance.
Beggars' Alley was bigger than she'd imagined, its lanes crisscrossing. It was called a street, but all she saw were densely packed houses, and the whole of Beggars' Alley was as large as a whole village in a valley.
The light was dim, like six or seven in the evening outside, with the sunset glow swallowed by night. It was quiet and dark all around. Under the gray sky she could faintly make out layers of rooftops, like mountains in an ink painting, spreading outward.
But in that darkness a temple rose from the ground. Surrounded and embraced by a crowd of low single-story houses, it stood like a crane among chickens, striking to the eye.
The temple was at least seven or eight zhang tall, well over twenty meters, with several tiers. The eaves of each tier swept up toward the clouds like an eagle about to take wing.
It was magnificent. Even compared with the famous temples and old shrines she had seen in her previous life, it was in no way inferior. The low houses crowding around it made it look all the more imposing.
But what struck Zhao Fusheng and puzzled her wasn't the temple's exterior. It was that the surroundings were all dark and dim, and only this temple had a conspicuous lantern hanging at every tier.
They were deep in a ghost domain, where the ghost calamity had long since begun, yet every lantern under the temple's eaves was lit. In the dim light the temple glowed bright and brilliant, like a pearl in the night when seen from afar.
In that light she could see the carved beams and painted rafters. The paint had gone mottled with time and showed a little weathering, but the openwork carvings still showed how extraordinary this temple had once been.
Blue plaques seemed to hang on all four sides of the temple. One faced Zhao Fusheng, bearing three gilded characters: Confucian temple (夫子庙)1.
Confucian temple (夫子庙)
This was the goal of her trip, and the Liu Clan's Ancestral Hall where the ghost calamity had struck back then!
She had heard from the Fan brothers, from the Demon-Suppression Bureau's case scrolls, and from Liu Wu and the others that the Liu family had been wealthy. But only now, seeing this temple with her own eyes, did she truly grasp how great a household the Lius had once been in Wan'an County.
And yet a family once so glorious had fallen apart because of one ghost calamity.
"..." Zhao Fusheng's heart tightened. She turned her attention back to the temple and looked at it for a long while.
The temple alone was brightly lit in the surrounding darkness. The light drove the shadows back and let her make out the nearby houses.
Beggars' Alley was strange, but better than she had imagined. The people trapped here hadn't all died, and some survivors were hiding in the dark.
Normally people long for light, and with a malignant ghost prowling, they should all have gone to the light for shelter. Why were they scattered everywhere instead of hiding inside the temple?
Looking at the hanging lanterns, a guess formed in her mind: could these lanterns be like a fire, luring survivors to rush toward them like moths?
An important piece of information Paperman Zhang had mentioned surfaced in her mind: the corpse of the ghost Liu Huacheng had brought back that year was suppressed inside the temple.
In other words, there was a ghost in the Confucian temple right now, making it the most dangerous place in Beggars' Alley. The survivors probably knew this too, and didn't dare go near.
Still, this was a ghost domain. The malignant ghost hadn't appeared yet, but the oppressive atmosphere seemed to have soaked the cold and terror of the ghost into the air. After standing there only a moment, Zhao Fusheng felt coated in the chill, shivering and afraid from the bottom of her heart.
She had a ghost bound to her, but according to the prompts from the Investiture of the Gods, she could borrow its power at most once more. And after borrowing, if she didn't earn merit, she'd very likely be affected by the ghost's aura and lose her calm judgment.
In a place like this, losing her composure would mean certain death.
Realizing this, Zhao Fusheng didn't dare be careless.
Until she understood what was inside the temple, she wouldn't set foot in it lightly.
She hesitated for a long while, then decided to do what the other hidden people did: slip into a house and wait for her chance.
From Fan Bisi's warning and from how the cases in the case scrolls she had skimmed were solved, she knew that solving a ghost case required finding the ghost's pattern.
From the yamen runner Liu Wu, she'd learned the ghost here took people's heads to kill them. By Liu Wu's account, as long as she didn't knock the head off the ghost's neck, the ghost shouldn't kill at random.
She resolved to observe first. She looked around, chose a house, and strode toward it.
The door was shut tight. She stood in front of it and began pushing.
The door rattled and boomed. Something inside seemed to be bracing against it. She forced a crack open and heard a frightened gasp from within.
Hiss.
From that sharp intake of breath she judged there was only one person hiding in the house.
She felt glad. Living people were good!
If she could learn about this place from the living and work out the ghost's killing rules, it would be good for her.
"Fellow villager,2 open up."
She pushed a couple more times and called out, and the rattling and booming carried through the whole street.
The echo spread, and the faint breathing around them seemed to stop all at once, so the sound of her pushing the door was magnified several times.
Zhao Fusheng could feel many frightened gazes coming through door cracks and from behind barricades. These people had all been drawn by her actions and were staring at her without letting up.
But things were not as she'd imagined.
She knocked and shouted, yet the person inside seemed to have no intention of opening the door. She frowned and looked toward the temple. The lit temple stood silent, as though sunk in deathly stillness.
Zhao Fusheng wouldn't give up. She pushed the door again and called as she pushed.
"Fellow villager, quickly, open up."
After a few tries, the person behind the door couldn't hold out any longer and said in a low, fierce voice:
"Get lost."
She didn't budge, and called quietly back:
"Open up."
No more sound came from inside. The one who had just told her to "get lost" went back to playing dead.
Zhao Fusheng hesitated. Seeing no movement from the temple, determination flashed in her eyes. She made a fist and began pounding the door with all her strength:
"Hurry up and open the door. I'm human."
The door boomed under the blows, and her racket quickly drew the attention of the whole street.
Drawing attention was one thing. The danger was that the noise might draw the ghost.
From the blood spattered all over the street, the corpses left rotting in the mostly ruined houses, and the oppressive atmosphere, the malignant ghost in Beggars' Alley had killed a great many people. The people trapped in the ghost domain must have guessed they were in the middle of a ghost calamity.
Everyone was holding their breath now, probably to avoid the ghost's pursuit.
By making a scene, she might well bring disaster.
But Zhao Fusheng was sure someone would crack. All it took was one frightened person coming out first to break the deadlock, and then she could question them.
Sure enough.
She had only knocked a couple of times. The person in that house didn't move, but the door of the neighboring house opened soundlessly, and a short, thin man crept out, hunched over like a rat.
Suppressing anger and fear, he beckoned to Zhao Fusheng anxiously, inviting her into the house, while he himself dashed hurriedly toward another house with a broken door.
Zhao Fusheng's eyes lit up. She didn't go into the house the man had vacated. She chased after him instead.
The man was about to squeeze through the broken door, but out of the corner of his eye he noticed Zhao Fusheng had followed. Startled, he didn't even speak, but backed out again and headed for a house on the other side.
Zhao Fusheng followed behind him, and his face grew ugly. Still he ignored her and sped up, rushing toward yet another house.
The doors of the houses he chose had all been clawed apart long ago, splashed with old blood, with dried-up fragments of limbs lying on the ground. The blood had dried black and gave off a foul smell.
The man crouched and began to crawl in through a hole. Seeing she had followed him for so long and he still said nothing, Zhao Fusheng reached out and grabbed the man's feet.
He was startled and kicked hard with both legs, trying to shake her off.
But since she had taken on a ghost, her strength had grown. And the man, perhaps from being trapped in Beggars' Alley and living in fear for so long, had no strength to fight her, and was dragged right back out through the broken door.
What kind of monster is this!
The man had originally meant kindly to give up his house for her, but she had latched onto him. He'd wanted to find shelter to hide in, and now someone had grabbed him again.
He couldn't shake her off and couldn't run. Despair and terror came over his face, and he glared at Zhao Fusheng with deep resentment.
"I'm not a ghost. What are you running for?"
Under his hateful stare, Zhao Fusheng didn't know whether to laugh or cry. She crouched down and asked.
At the word "ghost" the man shuddered all over and, frightened out of his wits, lost control of his bladder on the spot.
"..."
Zhao Fusheng hadn't expected that an offhand remark would scare someone so badly. While she was stunned, the man, who a moment ago had been pale as death, scrambled up with a scurry, quick as a gray rat, and shot into the house.
A long wet streak was dragged across the ground.
She braced her hands on the ground and turned her head toward the big hole. The man stood there, fierce and savage, holding high a stick he had picked up from somewhere and baring his teeth at her.
His eyes were bloodshot and saliva ran down the corner of his mouth. Clearly, after so long in Beggars' Alley his mind was no longer sound, and it looked like he'd fight to the death if she dared follow him in.
People here turned pale at the mention of ghosts.
The same trick could probably only be used once. The others had seen her cling to this man and wouldn't fall for it again.
Zhao Fusheng hesitated, then chose to back off for now rather than face this man again.
He was only an ordinary person, and the commotion she'd made was already big enough.
She still had doubts about the malignant ghost of Beggars' Alley, and there was a lot she hadn't worked out. There was no need to keep making trouble right now. If she woke the ghost before she was ready, she might very well end up on the defensive.
Anyway, she had time. She could wait for the next opportunity.
She picked an empty house, slipped in, and closed the door. Then she began sorting out everything she'd seen since entering the ghost domain.
Blood stained the ghost domain everywhere, and quite a few people had died during the time they'd been trapped.
But the remaining survivors seemed to have kept to living one person to a house, which puzzled Zhao Fusheng.
By her experience from her previous life, people had a herd instinct, especially in times of danger. When security was lacking, they ought to huddle together.
Yet today she'd tried following someone to share a house for a while, and been rejected by the others.
She couldn't help guessing: could it be that staying alone in a house was safer?
From the time Beggars' Alley was covered by the ghost domain and everyone trapped, until the malignant ghost began killing, there must have been many bloody incidents in between. It was only through those that the survivors had been forced to feel out a way of coping with the ghost's killing rules, which was why they'd lived to this day after Beggars' Alley went bad.
And the one-person-per-house arrangement showed that the ghost in Beggars' Alley killed by the house, not by head count.
