IBGSW Chapter 41
Things Look Bad
Their meeting had been short and the conversation brief, but Zhao Fusheng had still learned a good deal from the young man.
First, she had confirmed who he was.
He lived in the Confucian temple and had taken over the work of handing out almsgiving gruel. That meant his ties to the temple and to the original temple keeper must run deep.
He knew about events of forty years ago and had mentioned an old agreement. From that, Zhao Fusheng could conclude that whoever took charge of this place as the keeper must have been someone Liu Huacheng trusted completely.
That was why, after the Liu family pulled out, Liu Huacheng had felt safe leaving the keeper behind and entrusting him with a good part of the family fortune.
Liu Huacheng had been an official first and a merchant afterward. A man like that had an extraordinary mind and would have been extremely cautious in his dealings. Yet he had trusted the keeper with this place and its money, which showed how unusually close the two were. The keeper might even have learned part of the inside story of the Liu family's ghost calamity.
Forty years on, the keeper and this young man must also be very close, since the young man had inherited the post and learned some of the secrets.
Two key pieces of information had come out of his answers. One was "It's too late." The other was his exact reply to Zhao Fusheng's follow-up question: "It used to have some connection."
Did "used to" mean there had been a connection at first but none now, or not much of one?
In that instant, countless thoughts turned over in her mind.
She looked around. The place was empty and silent, and the temple was just as hushed, with no sign of anyone living inside.
Counting back, the ghost case at Liu Huacheng's birthday banquet had happened forty years ago. The keeper who had been entrusted to hold the temple for him could not have been a naive child. He must have been between twenty and forty to take on such a charge in a crisis.
Forty years later, that young man would have grown old, and perhaps already—
"It used to have some connection?" Her thoughts ran deep.
She had noticed that the young man's brows were tightly knit as he spoke, as though something troubled him. Now that he knew who she was, he was guarded. He seemed worried that if she pressed on a crucial point, he would dodge it or fob her off.
So she circled around the subject and deliberately followed his lead.
"Do you mean there's no connection now?"
His lips twitched. He gave her a long look, as though he had guessed what she was after.
To her surprise, he answered readily, "Yes."
His attitude surprised her a little. She thought it over and did not press the point. Instead she changed the subject to a question that seemed to have nothing to do with it.
"Where did the temple keeper who used to hand out the alms go?"
She asked it as if idly, as if the two questions were unrelated, but every line was aimed at the heart of the matter.
The young man suddenly pressed his lips into a smile.
His expression had been gloomy, but now that he smiled, the shadows cleared from his brow and a touch of his true age showed.
"You've worked it out?"
Before Zhao Fusheng could answer, he went on, "My grandfather has died."
It was exactly what she had expected.
The way the young man referred to the temple keeper confirmed her guess. She asked again:
"Did your grandfather die around the time you went to the Demon-Suppression Bureau to report the case, last month?"
The young man stayed calm. He neither wept nor looked evasive as he spoke of his grandfather's death. He gave a slight nod.
"Yes."
When he finished, he turned his head and glanced at her.
She combined this information with the clues she already had, and a bold hypothesis surfaced in her mind.
"I understand now."
"What do you understand?" the young man asked.
"You said yourself that the ghost calamity here had some connection with the one forty years ago," Zhao Fusheng said. Their eyes met, and both instantly grasped what the other meant.
The young man knew she had guessed it, and nodded:
"Right."
"But then you said the ghost calamity in Beggars' Alley has nothing to do with the one in the Liu Clan's Ancestral Hall forty years ago," Zhao Fusheng continued.
"Yes," the young man answered in turn.
"Su Long was very capable. The case he settled back then kept the peace for forty years without breaking."
The fact that the case had flared up again after forty years meant something unexpected must have happened in between.
"And nothing major had been heard of in Beggars' Alley before now. The only unexpected event is your grandfather's death."
Zhao Fusheng summed it up, "In other words, your grandfather's death is the main reason the ghost calamity has appeared in Beggars' Alley."
She was part guessing, part bluffing, and she spoke bluntly. She expected him to push back at least a few times. Instead he fell silent, apparently conceding that her guess was true.
"So Beggars' Alley really was caused by your grandfather's death?"
The clues about Beggars' Alley surfaced one by one in her mind. The Fan brothers, Paperman Zhang, Liu Wu, and what this young man had told her all converged, and her gaze grew sharp:
"Decades ago, Liu Huacheng stirred up a great disaster in the Capital. In the end he brought back to Wan'an County the dismembered, sealed remains of a malignant ghost."
After that the seal had stayed quiet, "until the day of Liu Huacheng's sixtieth birthday, when for some reason the ghost suddenly awoke."
As she laid out the clues she had pieced together, she kept her eyes on the young man's face.
His expression did not change. He listened quietly as she went on.
The pale lamplight fell on his face. His lips were pressed together, and when she said "the malignant ghost revived," his eyelashes trembled slightly. Clearly he was not as calm inside as he looked.
"After the ghost revived it began killing, and the Liu family suffered countless casualties. Then Liu Huacheng asked the Demon-Suppression Bureau and Zhang Xiongwu to join forces and put an end to the calamity."
The young man did not object, which meant that what she had learned from Paperman Zhang was indeed true.
Her mouth kept moving while her mind kept working.
Putting down the calamity probably had not gone as smoothly as the case scroll recorded.
"Su Long may have tried at first to drive out the ghost using the bureau's standard methods—"
The young man's body jolted, and his hands clenched.
His chest heaved sharply once, as if he were tense and uneasy.
She had only been guessing wildly, but his reaction confirmed her idea, so she went straight on:
"—but in the end Su Long failed, so he looked for another way."
She paused there for a moment.
Unfortunately the young man's slip lasted only a moment. He lived in the Confucian temple and dealt with ghosts, and his composure was surprisingly good. Before long he had steadied himself and made no sound.
"And that method of suppressing the ghost must have something to do with the Confucian temple."
Zhao Fusheng's mind raced as she recalled the scroll on the ghost case at the Liu Clan's Ancestral Hall forty years ago, which she carried in her robe.
She had not read many scrolls, but the bureau's records of ghost cases through the generations generally set out the background and aftermath of each exorcism, including the ghost's method of killing and the features of its rules, as a reference for those who came after. Even for cases left unresolved, they tried to leave behind enough clues before shelving them.
Yet Su Long's record of this case was strikingly sparse. It passed over the ghost's killing method in a single line and did not describe in detail how he had subdued it. It merely warned successors not to set foot in the south of the city lightly. That was completely at odds with the image Su Long left in his records.
Could it be that the way Su Long handled this case was not honorable?
The thought made her frown.
At that moment the young man let out a long breath, "Yes."
His voice broke her train of thought.
"When the Liu family was haunted back then, Commanding Officer Su and Zhang Xiongwu joined forces and went deep into the Liu estate twice at great risk. In the end they came up with a way to suppress the malignant ghost."
"What way?" Zhao Fusheng's spirits lifted. She felt she was nearing the truth.
This young man was actually someone who knew the inside story of the ghost case at the Liu Clan's Ancestral Hall forty years ago. Once she had the truth, she might be able to trace the origin of the malignant ghost that had appeared at the Confucian temple, fully understand where it came from and how to break its killing rules, and drive it out.
"..."
The young man had been quite cooperative since they met. Now, to her surprise, he shook his head at her question.
"I can't tell you the specific method. I can only tell you that the almsgiving at the temple is connected to how the ghost was suppressed back then."
He was unwilling to reveal Su Long's method of exorcism, but he did not hide anything else:
"Back then the Liu family turned the ancestral hall into the temple and left the keeper to stay behind. As long as the keeper is here, the ghost from forty years ago will never revive."
Hearing this, Zhao Fusheng could not help smiling.
The young man did not understand why she had suddenly started laughing.
While he stood there bewildered, she said, still smiling, "You're quite the comedian."
Then her face went cold. She could turn on a dime.
"If that's the case, Beggars' Alley shouldn't be haunted at all."
By the young man's account, as long as people kept receiving alms through the Confucian temple, the Headless Ghost would stay suppressed. Zhao Fusheng had no idea how this worked, but it had kept the peace for forty years, so she was willing to grant that Su Long's handling of it had been skillful.
But now the old temple keeper was dead, and the young man in front of her must have taken over the heavy duty of the almsgiving.
The almsgiving had not stopped, so why had another malignant ghost revived?
This place was extraordinarily strange. A ghost lantern had been lit in front of the Confucian temple, and a malignant ghost was suppressed inside it.
Beggars' Alley was suffering a ghost calamity and was shrouded in a ghost domain, and that was inseparable from the death of this young man's grandfather.
Most important of all, the youth hiding in the ghost domain lived alongside ghosts without panic and seemed steady and unafraid. Did he have some means of protecting himself?
She thought of the "One-Name Register" in his hands, the book the Investiture of the Gods had taken the trouble to mention. It had a deep connection with the ghost that had revived last night. Once a name was entered in it, the ghost came to the door at night according to the register and killed.
"It was an accident. We didn't want this either," the young man said. He was not angry at her accusation and explained calmly.
"When my grandfather was dying, we were afraid something would go wrong. So he sent me to the Demon-Suppression Bureau to ask them to step in and clean up afterward—"
He paused, then added, "The bureau promised us this back then."
He stressed the word "us."
Zhao Fusheng's eyes flickered, and she filed the small detail away.
"But you know what happened after that. The bureau was haunted too, and almost everyone in it died. It could no longer keep the promise from forty years ago." He gritted his teeth and sighed heavily:
"After I got back, my grandfather breathed his last that very night—"
"And that's why the malignant ghost in Beggars' Alley revived?" Zhao Fusheng asked.
The young man nodded, "Yes."
"So after that, Beggars' Alley was covered by the ghost domain, and every day after the almsgiving a malignant ghost appears, knocks on a door, and kills." She deliberately kept her wording ambiguous, then added:
"And all of this is the work of your grandfather's revived malignant ghost?"
"Yes—"
The young man answered reflexively. Then he realized what she had said, and his head snapped up. His gaze sharpened. But after a long moment he said calmly:
"No. He is not my grandfather."
His reaction was both expected and unexpected. Her heart sank to the bottom.
A terrible truth was about to come out.
Cold rose from beneath her feet and spread through her limbs, rapidly draining the warmth from her body until her hands trembled uncontrollably.
The young man's words hid too many meanings, and whatever he was bringing, it was certainly not good news.
"If it's not your grandfather, then who is it?"
She forced herself to stay calm as she asked.
Now that it had come to this, the young man was the calmer of the two.
He was silent for a moment, then gave a soft laugh:
"Someone as clever as you, commanding officer, must have guessed it by now?"
Her back went numb and goosebumps rose. A sudden splitting headache hit her, and she sucked in a sharp breath.
"I don't want to guess—"
The answer was within reach, but fear kept her from touching it.
But once the arrow has left the bow there is no taking it back, and running would solve nothing. She had already entered Beggars' Alley. If she did not resolve the calamity here she could not leave. Even if she found a way to escape, failing the task meant no reward from either the Demon-Suppression Bureau or the Investiture of the Gods, and she would not escape death in the end.
Thinking this, Zhao Fusheng calmed down at once. She took a deep breath and forced herself to face reality.
The most urgent thing was to clarify the most important question.
"Suppose the almsgiving at the Confucian temple formed a balance with the ghost calamity at the Liu Clan's Ancestral Hall forty years ago. Now that your grandfather is dead, the balance is broken. The malignant ghost in Beggars' Alley is still unresolved, and the ghost sealed forty years ago may revive—"
"It won't."
The young man raised his voice and cut her off before she finished.
His words confirmed the guess in her mind, and the stone she had been holding up in her chest finally dropped. The corners of her mouth lifted, and she tilted her head to study him.
His eyes were clear and his expression firm as he said it. He was absolutely certain that the ghost sealed forty years ago would not revive. It must have something to do with the death of his grandfather.
"Are you sure?" she asked again.
"I'm sure," he said firmly.
Zhao Fusheng felt a rush of relief.
It roughly matched what she had guessed, but hearing it from the young man's own mouth let her set down the weight in her heart at once.
