IBGSW Chapter 38
A Register of Names
"Time to eat."
Seeing the crowd shrinking back and not daring to approach, the young man lowered his head.
The pale lamplight fell on his face. His brow bone was slightly deep-set and his eye sockets were pools of shadow, which made him look rather gloomy.
After a while the muscles of his cheek clenched hard, and he called out again.
A murmur of unrest ran through the crowd, but still no one dared step forward on their own.
He was silent for a moment, then finally sighed and put the ladle down with a 'clunk.' He wiped his hands on his clothes and took several deep breaths. Only then did he raise his head, calmly pick up the booklet at his left hand, and casually flip it open.
The scene was extremely strange.
The Liu family had been known for their generosity, with a good reputation in Wan'an County. Beggars' Alley had even gotten its name because of the Liu family's continued almsgiving after they moved, which drew the poor from all around.
After the ghost domain covered the place, people could get in but not out, and many were trapped here with no food or drink. Yet the Confucian temple still kept giving alms, which had become almost the only source of food for the trapped.
By rights the people should have mobbed the food. But now the meal was ready and brought out, and no one dared to be the first to step up for it. Someone had to call out names.
A question slowly rose in Zhao Fusheng's mind: could the people of Wan'an County in the Great Han Dynasty really be this well-mannered?
While she was musing idly, she saw that as the young man flipped through the booklet, everyone around him took on a look of unease and terror.
Many clasped their hands together as though they couldn't sit or stand still. After a moment his eyes landed on one spot in the booklet and he called, "Wang Shuicai—"
"Is Wang Shuicai here?"
When the people around the temple heard the name "Wang Shuicai," many looked as if they'd been granted a pardon.
Just as everyone was about to smile, the young man waited and waited without hearing any answer from "Wang Shuicai."
The scene went quiet for a while, and the smiles of many who had looked relieved stiffened. A strange tense atmosphere settled over everyone's hearts again.
The young man called again.
"Is Wang Shuicai here? Still alive?"
"..." The words were odd. Zhao Fusheng turned to look around. Everyone's face was numb. They seemed used to it.
The young man sighed: "It seems Wang Shuicai has already—"
He didn't finish, but everyone understood that this "Wang Shuicai" was probably dead.
Expressionless, he turned to another page of the booklet and called again:
"Sun Fu—Sun Fu."
As soon as he finished, someone in the crowd suddenly fell to the ground with a thud.
The man collapsed on the ground, his face bloodless with fear, shaking nonstop.
But the instant it happened, the dead-still crowd suddenly "came alive."
The earlier awkward silence was broken. Quite a few people stepped forward warmly, hauled the fallen man up, and dragged him toward where the gruel was.
The man being hauled shook violently and shouted:
"I don't want it, I don't want it, I don't want food—mercy, mercy—Ghost Grandpa, spare my life!"
His outburst revealed quite a bit of useful information, and Zhao Fusheng's eyes lit up as she began to see the outline of things.
The almsgiving at the Confucian temple definitely had a problem. The people whose names were called were devastated, as if they'd lost both parents. The first person called hadn't answered, and from the look of things was already dead.
The second person called was frightened out of his wits, as if being called meant his time had come.
He kept crying "Ghost Grandpa, spare my life!"
Could it be that the ghost killed according to a register?
The absurd thought rose, and even Zhao Fusheng herself could hardly believe it.
Then the young man giving alms showed a wooden look. He stared at the man for a while, then put down the booklet, took a bowl, and ladled a big scoop of thin gruel from the pot into it. He handed it to the man.
"I'll give you a bit more—"
"I, I don't want it—I don't want to die—"
But Sun Fu's screaming did no good. The moment his name was called, it was like the King of Hell demanding his life.
He slumped on the ground, fists clenched, his two stick-thin legs kicking so violently that his bare feet scraped blood on the ground.
But the people around didn't care whether he wanted it or not. Several of them joined forces to wrench his arms back, with such force that his bones gave off crack sounds of breaking.
A flicker of hesitation crossed the young man's eyes, but in the end he still placed the brimming bowl of gruel in his palm.
The moment Sun Fu received the bowl, he burst into loud sobs.
The bowl fell to the ground with a clang and shattered into pieces, and the thin gruel spilled everywhere, with a few grains of rice floating in it mixed with some unidentifiable millet.
"I don't want to die, I don't want to die—"
He screamed in a frenzy. But the instant he took the gruel, the others shrank back from him as if from a plague god.
With the first person having taken gruel, the people who had been avoiding the almsgiving like the plague suddenly came alive and crowded toward the young man.
Zhao Fusheng hurriedly pushed into the crowd too. She'd realized there was something odd about this ghost calamity, and she wanted to watch the relationship between the young man's almsgiving and the ghost.
The crowd pressed in fiercely. Unlike earlier, when everyone had kept away from the gruel stall, the survivors now scrambled to be first to take gruel, and the scene turned chaotic.
Zhao Fusheng was squeezed nearly breathless. The surging crowd swept her up so that her feet didn't touch the ground. She hadn't died of the ghost calamity, but she nearly died at the hands of these people jostling for gruel.
"Cough, cough, cough—"
She coughed until her face turned red. Most people drank their gruel in a flash and rushed off. She was left standing in front of the gruel stall, and as time went by, the young man gradually lost his composure and grew anxious.
He kept glancing around as though watching for something. Mechanically he took bowls and ladled gruel, and as he handed a bowl to Zhao Fusheng he seemed to realize something at last.
He turned his head, looked at her carefully, and said, "Hm?"
"You look unfamiliar!"
After he said it he seemed to remember something and said in surprise:
"Were you the one who was pounding on doors and shouting this afternoon?"
When Zhao Fusheng first entered the ghost domain she had made a great racket. The ghost domain was silent, and the noise had carried through all of Beggars' Alley. It seemed the young man giving alms in front of the temple had heard it too.
Since entering Beggars' Alley she'd tried several times to communicate with people, but they had all been terrified or hostile, and none would talk to her.
Now that someone finally spoke to her, her eyes lit up and she was about to answer, but the young man's face fell and he quickly pulled the bowl back.
"You—get out of here quick—"
After saying this, he himself seemed to realize something was off.
"Once you're in here, there's no getting out."
"You—" He held the bowl of thin gruel, looking troubled.
"Hurry up, hurry up!"
The others urged him on. The young man, who'd looked wooden since the almsgiving began, now showed a subtle change of expression, perhaps because he was seeing Zhao Fusheng for the first time.
He seemed unable to decide, as if he didn't know whether he should put the bowl in Zhao Fusheng's hands.
His expression kept shifting, but under the crowd's urging he still handed it over.
"You're new, aren't you?"
Zhao Fusheng nodded, and the young man said in a flustered voice:
"You don't know this place. After you drink the gruel, quickly find an empty house and go in. Even if you hear sounds, don't come out. Hold out until tomorrow and you'll be fine."
"I have something to ask you." Zhao Fusheng hesitated and carefully did not reach for the bowl.
But she didn't take it, and someone shot out of nowhere like lightning, grabbed the bowl, and shoved it into her arms.
"Fuck!"
She cursed, and the gruel sloshed out and splashed over her.
The one who had done it sneered, looking at her with ill intent, his bloodshot, sleepless eyes full of undisguised malice.
"It's fine, it's fine."
The young man hurriedly tried to comfort her, but Zhao Fusheng sensed that something was wrong.
The instant she took the bowl, a cold chill spread across her whole body, as if a pair of icy eyes in some hidden corner had fixed on her, waiting for the chance to take her life.
She knew this feeling of being watched all too well.
It was the same as when she had touched the Soul-Life Register, and when the ghost bound to her had been about to revive.
And of course, what made her feel despair was the alert from the Investiture of the Gods.
In her sea of consciousness, the Investiture of the Gods announced:
The host's name has been entered into the One-Name Register.
"What's a One-Name Register?"
Her eyelids kept twitching, her body shook, and her face showed blank confusion, but her body was far more honest than her words. She glanced at the booklet beside the young man, and her eyes slowly turned to despair.
From what she'd seen so far, that must be a register of names. Perhaps people who accepted alms from the Confucian temple had their names recorded in it, and after being called, they might face a ghost attack.
!!!
Zhao Fusheng was furious. She raised the bowl to hurl it and reached to grab the man who had just framed her.
But he wasn't stupid either. After setting her up, he'd melted straight into the crowd and vanished without a trace.
The young man, seeing her mutter to herself while staring at the booklet, thought: Damn.
"It can't be."
He reached out to touch the booklet, but the instant his fingertips touched it he jerked them back, hissing in a sharp breath.
The booklet had had no temperature, and he'd held it earlier, but now when he touched it, it was ice-cold.
After so long in Beggars' Alley, and involving so many lives, the thing had turned sinister.
The young man's face was very ugly. He drew a deep breath and picked the booklet up.
In a moment his hands were frozen blue-black. He hurriedly opened the booklet, flipped through several pages quickly, then his eyes stopped at one spot.
He had given alms here for a long time. He was familiar with every face and name of everyone who came for gruel.
His eyes lingered on one name for a moment, then he looked up at Zhao Fusheng.
"Is your name Zhao Fusheng?"
Wang Shuicai Sun Fu Zhao Fusheng
Hope still lingered in his eyes, but Zhao Fusheng's face was even worse than his.
She said nothing, but her expression had already answered the young man's question.
"Hurry! Hurry! The ghost is coming!"
Just as the two were about to say more, someone nearby shouted frantically, and Zhao Fusheng's head buzzed.
She'd been forced to accept a bowl of gruel, and the moment she took it, her name went into that booklet. The booklet carried a heavy baleful aura and seemed connected to the ghost.
But this was not the time to question him. People beside her were yelling "the ghost is coming," and a crisis was about to arrive.
Things had gotten as bad as they could, and Zhao Fusheng calmed down instead.
If it's a blessing, it's no curse; if it's a curse, you can't dodge it.1
She looked down at the bowl in her hand with only a little soup left, and suddenly laughed:
"Looks like I'm fated to eat this meal."
After she said it, she thrust the bowl in front of the young man and called:
"Hey, give me another bowl."
Her name had been branded into the One-Name Register already. No amount of rage would help now. She'd gone without a grain of rice since being reborn. She had taken this bowl whether she wanted to or not, and if she didn't even get to eat, she'd die of spite.
She added, "Scoop from the bottom, the thick stuff. I'm hungry."
"..."
The young man was stunned by her reaction, then finally gave a wry smile and ladled another bowl for her.
As she had asked, he scooped from the bottom of the pot, mostly millet. Seeing her take the bowl, he said in wonder:
"You take it well."
"What good is taking it badly? You could cross my name out."
"..." The young man, shot down, didn't dare make a sound.
Zhao Fusheng downed the bitter, coarse millet gruel in a few gulps, then said:
"I have things to ask you."
He was busy serving others, handing out each bowl and glancing at the person in front of him, as if confirming who they were. Hearing Zhao Fusheng's question, he nodded:
"Not now, I'm very busy. Hurry and find an empty house and hide. Once the night is over, come find me here tomorrow—"
Then he seemed to remember something and warned, "Don't come in. Don't go into the Confucian temple."
"Just at the door." He repeated it over and over.
"As soon as you call my name, I'll come out."
The place was covered by a ghost domain, he couldn't escape anyway, and it seemed he had to cook gruel and give alms here. Zhao Fusheng nodded at his words, put down the empty bowl, and turned to leave at once.
Beggars' Alley was built around the Confucian temple and was very large. After the ghost calamity had gone on for a while, less than half the houses were empty. She picked one at random, slipped in, and locked the door.
After all this was done, scattered footsteps and the sound of doors being barred started up outside.
Soon she heard the sounds of people moving bowls and odds and ends, and then everything fell quiet.
Darkness fell, and the malignant ghost arrived.
In the extreme stillness, Zhao Fusheng heard her own heartbeat start to thud.
Each beat shook her chest. She held her breath, and whether from extreme tension or not, a strange sound suddenly reached her ears.
Besides the thumping of her heartbeat, another sound seemed to be mixed in.
Thump thump thump—tap—thump—tap—
The blood in Zhao Fusheng's body froze. A cold ghostly aura invaded the street, and at some point thick black energy had rolled in through the crevices of the door planks into the ruined house.
Tap, tap, tap.
Heavy footsteps began to sound.
