IBGSW Chapter 42
Exchanging Names
Since the young man was so certain, he must have his reasons.
Zhao Fusheng was like a clay Bodhisattva crossing a river1, unable to save even herself. She had no spare energy for other people's business.
She gave up digging for the root of it. Her first priority was to solve the ghost case in Beggars' Alley.
"Fine. Since you say the ghost case from forty years ago won't start up again, I'll take your word for it and leave it alone for now. But I still have to find a way to deal with the ghost in Beggars' Alley."
"There's no way," the young man said, shaking his head.
"What does that mean?" Zhao Fusheng asked, startled.
"You came too late."
"Ah," the young man sighed regretfully. At that, a surge of anger flared up in her chest.
She turned on him at once and started cursing, "What the hell kind of nonsense are you spouting? How was I late?"
Since being reborn she had opened the Investiture of the Gods, left her host's parents' funeral unhandled, and run nonstop around this case. She had rushed into Beggars' Alley before dark and had not even stayed for the soup the old woman at the mouth of the alley had offered her.
"I don't mean it like that—"
He was startled by her scolding and by how ugly her expression had become. Then he explained:
"I mean the ghost domain has already formed and is very hard to break."
He thought for a moment and said: "The ghost here has already reached the Baleful-tier and isn't easy to deal with. I think you've seen it too. The ghost's killing rules follow the list of people given gruel here."
She tacitly agreed, then remembered the Investiture's alert from last night's almsgiving and asked:
"That 'One-Name Register'?"
"What 'One-Name Register'?" The young man's brows knit. The name puzzled him.
Zhao Fusheng said, "The book that was by your hand last night."
"One-Name Register?" the young man murmured.
"That's a rather odd name. But that's not a One-Name Register—" He trailed off, seemed to think something over, and nodded.
"Yes... that is what it is, in a sense."
"In fact, that is the almsgiving register my grandfather left behind—"
He glanced at Zhao Fusheng, and regret crossed his face.
"Go on." A bad feeling rose in her.
Hearing her urge him, the young man sighed again and said, "Over the years, everyone who has ever received gruel from the Confucian temple has been recorded in it."
At this, Zhao Fusheng seemed to realize something, and her face changed slightly.
The young man went on:
"After the malignant ghost here revived and the ghost domain covered the place, the ghost began killing according to the register. It's an unsolvable situation."
By now she vaguely understood what he was driving at.
From the few ghost cases the bureau had solved in the past that she had seen, there were two ways to resolve a situation like this.
"There are two ways to resolve this calamity." Soon the young man said aloud what she was thinking.
"Either a general-rank figure from the imperial court, who controls a great ghost, steps in and forcibly drives the malignant ghost away, or—" He paused, looking reluctant.
Zhao Fusheng finished the sentence for him, "Or just let the ghost kill everyone on the register, and it will leave on its own."
The young man did not flinch at her blunt statement of what he had in mind. He nodded without embarrassment.
"...Yes."
Then he added, "After this, I won't hand out gruel again. I'll put the temple's business on hold, and then this ghost won't appear anymore."
That way the problem of the temple would be neatly resolved.
In fact this was one of the bureau's standard approaches to ghost calamities. Ordinary people's lives were cheap, and once a ghost had killed enough, it would vanish from the place.
When the young man mentioned the two solutions, Zhao Fusheng had already guessed his plan.
But when she actually heard him say it, and say it so casually about those people's lives, a nameless anger still flared in her chest.
Fan Bisi was always saying that human life was worth no more than grass in this age, and that you lived one day at a time in this world.
She had not understood it when she heard it. Even now it struck her as unbelievable.
In this world the strong treated human lives like ants. The weak, if they were schemed against and lost their lives, had to accept their bad luck.
Displeased, she reminded him coolly, "There are still at least a hundred people left in there."
Beggars' Alley covered a vast area, which showed how wealthy the Liu family had been back then.
After being trapped for more than a month, and slaughtered by the malignant ghost, the survivors still numbered over a hundred, so one could imagine how populous the alley had once been.
During the time they had been trapped in the ghost domain, who knew how many innocents had fallen to the ghost.
The more she thought about it, the angrier she got, and her tone gradually sharpened.
"And even if everyone inside Beggars' Alley's ghost domain is killed, as you say, where will the ghost go after it finishes them?"
Rebuked so sharply, the young man froze.
He had always lived in the Confucian temple and had little dealing with the Demon-Suppression Bureau, but he had heard its reputation. Most of the bureau's commanding officers were ghost-controllers, people who command malignant ghosts. Influenced by the ghosts, they became gloomy and cruel and acted no differently from "ghosts," treating human lives like grass.
But this Zhao Fusheng did not seem like the ghost-controlling commanding officers of rumor.
He recalled their first meeting last night. She had been quick-witted and responsive. After she was framed and her name was entered on the almsgiving register, making her a possible target of the malignant ghost, she had not flown into a rage over it, nor used the ghost's power to slaughter innocent commoners.
After the ghost had killed, she had come out early in the morning to look for him, which showed remarkable courage.
In their conversation since, he had found her calm, restrained, and sharp.
If she had not said she was the chief commanding officer of the Demon-Suppression Bureau and controlled a ghost, the young man would never have believed she lived alongside a ghost.
Most important of all, she was courteous and well-mannered. When he mentioned the ghost calamity in Beggars' Alley, she had even been angered by the slaughter of innocent commoners—
In other words, even though this chief commanding officer controlled a ghost entity, she not only stayed clear-headed but was also compassionate.
For the first time the young man's face lost its calm and composure. He stared at Zhao Fusheng with some curiosity and asked her:
"Are you really a ghost-controller?"
Ghost-controllers were moody and had lost their humanity, which was in stark contrast with her behavior.
And if she did not control a ghost, how had she dared to enter this dangerous place alone?
Zhao Fusheng ignored the idle question. Seeing him change the subject made her even less pleased, and she barked in a low voice:
"Stop beating around the bush!"
As a ghost-controller, she had been laughing and chatting with him earlier. Now that she scolded him sternly, she carried some of the dignity of a chief commanding officer of the Demon-Suppression Bureau.
The young man lowered his eyes and answered:
"It may leave this place and look for other survivors who were once on the register—"
The Confucian temple had stood for forty years.
In those forty years the people who had received its alms were beyond counting.
They weren't only beggars. Quite possibly merchants and passersby who had come through the area in earlier years had also taken a bowl of gruel and had their names entered in the register.
The people who took gruel and gave their names back then had never thought that far. To them, they had probably just come because they admired the Liu family's name, taken a bowl of gruel in passing, and left their names.
After drinking the gruel and leaving their names, many of them might have forgotten the whole thing, never imagining that a careless act years ago could bring disaster.
And the killing rule of the malignant ghost in Beggars' Alley did not kill just one person but went by "household."
If it got out of Beggars' Alley, the damage this ghost could do was not to be underestimated.
Most important, ghosts advance in rank as they kill.
The young man himself had said that after more than a month of hunting and killing, the malignant ghost in Beggars' Alley had reached at least the Baleful-tier.
If it was allowed to keep killing, it would certainly advance again. And once it advanced, how would the ghost calamity it created be dealt with then?
She absolutely could not let that situation worsen!
For the first time, Zhao Fusheng felt a sense of conviction. She finally understood what the Investiture of the Gods had meant when it said: As a commanding officer of the Demon-Suppression Bureau, the host is responsible for the safety of a county and must faithfully fulfill his duties to protect the peace of the common people.
Fan Bisi had remarked offhandedly that once a ghost calamity left your own territory, it became someone else's headache.
When the prefectures and counties could not handle a ghost calamity, the imperial court was left to rack its brains. When the court couldn't solve it either, the people were left to fend for themselves.
When Fan Bisi said it, Zhao Fusheng had felt nothing concrete.
But she had seen a malignant ghost kill last night and watched a human life vanish before her eyes. That shock was not something a few offhand words could capture.
This ghost could not be allowed to advance, and could not be allowed to escape!
"That won't do," she said coldly.
"Other ghost calamities have been resolved this way before—" The young man was not stung by her rebuke and answered quite openly.
Zhao Fusheng cut him off, "I don't know how other people handle their cases. I'll look again tonight and see if there's a way to solve this."
At her words, the young man was first surprised, then smiled faintly.
He did not comment on what she said. Clearly he did not believe that a newly appointed chief commanding officer could handle a Baleful-tier malignant ghost in Beggars' Alley.
He did not say so, but she could sense his skepticism. She did not argue with him about it.
She changed the subject and asked suddenly, "By the way, what's your name?"
Now that the serious business was done, Zhao Fusheng suddenly remembered a critical matter.
As she asked, her hand moved unconsciously to her waist and touched the jade book.
A chill crept along her fingertips and up her palm. In an instant her hand was cold and numb. The ghost talismans on the Soul-Life Register must have sensed her movement and begun crawling toward her wrist.
But soon the sensation receded like a tide.
The young man was unaware of what she had in mind and answered, "My name is Liu Yizhen."
"Liu?"
Zhao Fusheng caught the significance of his surname and asked:
"Are you a descendant of a collateral branch of the Liu family back then?"
The case scroll had said that after the Liu family's troubles, Liu Huacheng sold off the family fortune and moved the whole household out of Wan'an County.
She had not expected that the person Liu Huacheng left behind to guard the Confucian temple would also be named Liu, and very likely a blood descendant of the Liu clan.
But once she learned his surname, she felt Liu Huacheng's arrangement made sense.
After all, the temple had carried on its almsgiving for forty years. Though all it handed out was thin gruel, over so long a time the expense came to no small sum.
Such a windfall was naturally safer in the hands of one of their own than in an outsider's.
Still, one doubt remained. Money moving people's hearts was secondary, since the work was to suppress a ghost. What sort of Liu descendant would carry out Liu Huacheng's orders so loyally, neither pocketing funds out of greed nor fleeing with the money out of fear, but staying put forty years as if it were a single day?
Such a man valued his promises and kept his word. Calling him a living saint would not be an exaggeration.
The doubt had barely risen in her when Liu Yizhen nodded.
"Yes—"
Zhao Fusheng still doubted whether he was telling the truth, but she had her own way of checking.
Thinking this, she suppressed her doubts and her anger at learning the whole story of the ghost calamity.
With a grin, she took the jade book out of her robe again, "Here's the thing: you see, my name has been entered into that One-Name Register of yours."
She thought of how last night her name had been recorded in the register, and how the ghost killed by name. She had so many problems already that one more made no difference to her, but this thing was always tied to the ghost, and the more she thought about it the more uneasy she felt. She felt she had to find a way to balance and restrain it.
"..." Liu Yizhen stared at her, apparently not understanding what she meant.
Zhao Fusheng sneered inwardly. She did not care whether he was truly dense or only pretending, and thrust the Soul-Life Register in front of him:
"I can see you have rare talent. The other day you went in and out of Beggars' Alley while it was haunted—"
Liu Yizhen explained, "The ghost domain hadn't formed yet when I came and went."
"That doesn't matter. Anyway, you stayed in the ghost domain and kept handing out gruel while the malignant ghost was out on its rounds. You've got courage and brains, and I could tell at a glance you're exactly the kind of talent our court is looking for."
"..."
Liu Yizhen's lips moved, but he said nothing.
Zhao Fusheng smiled warmly and reached for his wrist.
"Come join our Demon-Suppression Bureau. We have plenty of openings now and need young people like you, so you can put your talents to use and realize your ambitions."
"And once you've joined, if you earn merit later, the court will not treat you unfairly. If it hands out rewards in the future, I won't hog the credit or the work. What's yours is yours!"
Liu Yizhen instinctively pulled his hand behind his back.
Her smile did not fade, but her eyes turned cold, "You know what happened in Beggars' Alley. It's tied to the Liu family, and we'd better solve this disaster together."
She had made up her mind to recruit Liu Yizhen, and she would not let him refuse.
"If we can reach an understanding, all the better. We're all civilized people, and I'd rather not resort to force."
She drew out her tone and looked at Liu Yizhen with a smile:
"However—"
"You misunderstand."
Hearing this, Liu Yizhen smiled slightly and said seriously: "We really are at fault in this matter."
He went on:
"You're right, I should clean this up. Joining the Demon-Suppression Bureau to atone for my crimes through meritorious service is acceptable too. It's not that I'm unwilling. It's just that I still have something unfinished, so I can't go back to the bureau with you for now."
