IBGSW Chapter 44
Following the Ghost
Time trickled by, and soon the sky had gone dark.
Once again Zhao Fusheng forced open a tightly barred door. Under the resentful, startled glares of the people inside, she swept her eyes over the room. Then she heard the familiar sound of the gong in her ears.
Clang—
Clang—
Clang—
"Come and eat!" The gong shattered the stillness of the ghost domain, and Liu Yizhen's call came with it.
"Come and eat!"
For a moment Zhao Fusheng could not tell whether the call was meant for the survivors or for the ghost.
When it was time for the almsgiving, the ghost was about to hunt.
The survivor who had been shivering in the room froze for a moment, and despair filled his eyes. His body shook. After a long while he sprang up and burst out of the room, as if afraid of being last.
Zhao Fusheng sighed with disappointment and stepped into the street.
Apart from learning the layout of the place, she had gained nothing today. She would have to wait until the ghost went out that night and look for a chance then.
The streets that had been empty by day now slowly filled with figures. People who had hidden for a day and a night rushed out of their rooms as if let out for air. They caught their breath, filled their bellies, and used a bowl of thin gruel to buy a little more life.
They did not yet know that they were on the ghost's "list" and that sooner or later it would come to claim their lives. They still clung to hope, perhaps imagining that one day the court's Demon-Suppression Bureau would come to rescue them.
The thought made Zhao Fusheng frown.
A good number of people already stood scattered before the Confucian temple, and more were hurrying over from the distant lanes.
A great cauldron had once again been set on the stone table in front of the temple, filled with thin gruel. Liu Yizhen stood before it with a big ladle in hand, and the One-Name Register sat quietly at his right.
"Come and eat!"
Liu Yizhen called out again.
They had run fast at the call, but once they reached the front, everyone knew that whoever stood first might be the one eating the last meal before the chopping block.
So the scene from last night's opening played out again. Nobody wanted to be the first to receive alms.
"Sigh—"
Liu Yizhen's face showed helplessness and conflict. He sighed, put down the ladle, and was about to reach for the register.
Just then Zhao Fusheng stepped out from the crowd, "Serve me first."
She was a commanding officer of the Demon-Suppression Bureau, and she had come here precisely to resolve this ghost calamity. Running away would never solve anything.
Besides, she had basically worked out the ghost's killing rules by now. Dodging and dragging things out would only add to the casualties.
She was already in the One-Name Register and could not escape the ghost's claim sooner or later. Why waste more time here, watching more innocent people die?
Her appearance let everyone breathe again. Many faces showed wild joy and relief.
Liu Yizhen was taken aback, and his ladle hand hesitated, "You—"
He already knew who she was and why she had come. But he had explained the whole situation to her, and if she were smart she would know to hide and wait for a chance.
Was she stepping forward now because she thought controlling a ghost made her invincible? Or out of a pointless kindness, hoping to save lives?
"You know this ghost—" he began, frowning, but she cut him off before he could finish.
"It's fine."
Her mind was made up.
Zhao Fusheng was not an indecisive person. Once she had decided, she swept away her earlier hesitation.
Seeing that Liu Yizhen still hadn't moved, she calmly took a bowl from the side and put it into his hands:
"Serve me. I'm from the Demon-Suppression Bureau, and I came here to resolve the ghost calamity."
Of course, her motive was not entirely self-sacrificing righteousness.
The Investiture of the Gods had told her:
Uphold justice, rebuild Hell.
Rebuilding Hell and restarting the Investiture of the Gods both required merit.
And where did merit come from? From solving cases, naturally.
Back at the bureau, she had dealt with the revival of the Zhao couple and earned just 1 point of merit. Afterward she had wondered whether the amount was fixed.
If it were fixed, then ghost cases were dangerous and terrifying, and the rewards were clearly out of proportion to the risk.
Opening the first divine position on the Investiture took a full 100 merit. To unlock it she would need to solve a hundred cases, and along the way she might be affected by the ghost whenever she used its power and have to spend some merit to suppress it.
That led Zhao Fusheng to guess that the merit from each case was not fixed.
But if it wasn't fixed, did the amount depend on the size of the ghost calamity and how many lives were saved?
It was like performance numbers at a job in her previous life—
Of course this was all guesswork. She would have to verify it herself, and right now was a good opportunity.
Liu Yizhen knew nothing of her little calculation, but when she said this, his eyes took on a strange look.
After a while he looked at her deeply, his lips moved as if to say something, and in the end he said nothing.
Zhao Fusheng wasn't interested in what he was thinking. When she saw him put the ladle into the pot, she told him:
"Scoop from the thick part. I'm hungry, so give me an extra bowl."
Then she turned to the people around her, "I'm eating first, so I'll eat a bit more. That's fair, isn't it?"
Nobody dared speak.
"..."
Liu Yizhen's mouth twitched. He silently filled the bowls and handed them over. She drank two in a row and at last quieted her growling stomach.
While drinking, she suddenly thought of the old woman who sold soup at a stall before the entrance to Beggars' Alley.
That woman's soup had smelled good too. If she could resolve this ghost calamity, she would definitely eat her fill once she got out. The old woman had said she would treat her to a meal.
She finished the thin gruel in a few gulps, set down the bowl, and turned to leave under Liu Yizhen's complicated, worried gaze.
Having wandered around during the day to find her way, Zhao Fusheng had memorized the layout of the houses in Beggars' Alley.
Some of these houses had been modified by hand. Not everyone sat waiting for death when attacked by the ghost, and some had tried to find ways to fight back.
Among the few houses she had inspected, some had pits dug and traps set.
Unfortunately the ghost was ferocious, and the traps never caught it. Whoever it fixed on still died in the end.
Though earlier occupants had proven at the cost of their blood that traps could not catch a ghost, the houses they left behind remained sought-after. While wandering that day, Zhao Fusheng had noticed that people hid in these houses whether or not anyone had died in them.
Now the advantage of eating first showed.
The positions of several houses surfaced in her mind. She walked straight toward one and soon picked a place to hide.
The house she chose had a pit about two feet deep dug just inside the door, set with several sharpened bamboo spikes. A thick crust of dark brown dried blood had built up at the bottom of the trap and gave off a foul smell.
When she pushed the door open she carefully skirted the deep pit and jumped into the room.
Though she had been through last night's terror and knew a ghost's body lay somewhere between solid and insubstantial, she still could not resist finding a stick to brace the door tightly. Then she shrank into a corner and began to take stock of her things.
Even though she had prepared herself mentally to face the ghost tonight, when the moment actually approached she was still a little anxious.
She had only just been reborn and had few belongings with her.
A roll of human-skin paper, a box of lamp oil, and a half-finished ghost lantern. These were the life-saving items she had taken from Paperman Zhang.
Besides these, there was the Soul-Life Register.
As Fan Bisi had said, by entering the Soul-Life Register she had in a sense already "sold" herself to the ghost controlled by Jia Yi and become one of his ghost-servant avatars.
"I hope you'll protect your own interests and not give up easily."
Zhao Fusheng held the Soul-Life Register and spoke to it.
The ghost language talismans on the register crawled over her whole hand. She was not frightened. Instead she felt rather pleased.
If the register could perform just as outstandingly when the ghost came to claim her life, that would be perfect. Only with two ghosts fighting each other would she have a chance to survive.
But she couldn't rely on these two things alone. What she depended on most was the ghost she controlled herself.
According to the Investiture of the Gods, the ghost she controlled had already reached the Baleful-tier. In principle that made it equal in rank to the ghost of Beggars' Alley, provided it hadn't advanced from killing too many people. In a clash between the two, she would get one chance to act.
Having made up her mind, she took deep breaths and forced herself to calm down.
Outside, the people who had finished their gruel quickly went back to their places and found rooms to hide in. Night fell bit by bit.
At one point someone pushed at the door of her room.
After last night's killing by the knocking ghost, her scalp went numb at the sound of a knock, and she lost her composure and shouted:
"Get lost!"
The person outside heard her voice, perhaps remembered who she was, and did not pester her further. They left quickly.
Once things were quiet again, she clutched her pounding chest and remembered knocking on doors when she entered Beggars' Alley yesterday. No wonder the people inside had refused to open up no matter what. The person who later couldn't bear it and gave up a room was probably on the verge of a mental breakdown. In that light, the survivors yesterday had been very decent not to curse her out.
While she was still shaken, time slipped by quickly.
She couldn't tell how long it had been when everything fell into dead silence.
In the extreme stillness, that familiar pressure of last night returned.
An eerie, terrible atmosphere passed silently through the air under the black fog, and the heavy sounds of footsteps sounded once more.
The black mist grew steadily darker.
The malignant ghost had come again.
Thump, thump, thump—
She had prepared well in advance, but at this moment her heartbeat shot to its limit.
She gripped her belongings almost without thinking.
Before the ghost's footsteps sounded, she couldn't tell what direction it came from, so she had no way to work out where it hid. It seemed to appear from nowhere on the street not far away and move in this direction.
Her blood nearly froze. With stiff hands she stuffed the jade book into her mouth and bit down.
Whether it was the rumored Headless Ghost or the ghost that had gone from house to house last night, after each kill the ghost carried a head in its hand. She had to protect her own head first so the ghost wouldn't snatch it.
The ghost talismans quickly spread over her lips and cheeks. Her head felt cold, and at the same time the ghost presence hidden in her body seemed to sense the ghost's aura and threatened to revive.
Luckily the ghost curse receded quickly and the ghost's lingering will was suppressed.
She took out the human-skin lantern, shook it open quickly, and put the lamp oil box inside.
As she did all this, the sound of footsteps outside came closer and closer. From the sound, the ghost hunting in the night seemed to be heading toward where she was.
She forced herself to stay calm and held the human-skin lantern in her hand. Before she could take the next step, she suddenly heard the ghost's footsteps stop.
Anxious, she crawled up and crept toward the door.
Clang—
However light her movements, the gap in the door made a harsh noise when she pulled it open.
She held her breath.
The ghost stood in the middle of the street. After a long while it slowly turned around, revealing a cold, chilling face of mottled blue and white.
The ghost's eyes had lost their luster, but everywhere it "looked," those hiding in the houses felt a nameless dread.
Endless cold and malice hit her face. Affected by the ghost's presence, she felt the ghost hidden in her body stir.
She could not wait any longer.
With a thought she took out a fire-starter, and sparks flashed a few times in the air. Before a flame caught, something strange happened again.
The ghost, which had stood still for a long moment, dragged its heavy steps forward a few more paces.
Hoo—hoo—
Heavy breathing came from the next room. Only then did she realize with surprise that someone lived next door.
The person hiding there probably wasn't as reckless as she was and hadn't dared spy on the ghost's movements. But the ghost's aura was monstrously malevolent as it passed, and the person must have sensed that something was wrong. They probably hadn't yet realized disaster was about to fall on them.
Zhao Fusheng hadn't thought of this either.
Liu Yizhen had said that the ghost of Beggars' Alley killed according to the One-Name Register. By that logic, her name was on the register, and she had eaten first at the almsgiving, so her name should have come up first, and the ghost ought to have found her tonight.
Could the ghost choose its victims at random, rather than following the order of the almsgiving?
While her thoughts wandered, the ghost came on step by step. Its shadow pressed close, and black air seeped through the door crack into the next house.
The cold spread, making people shiver uncontrollably.
The footsteps stopped. In their place the ghost raised its arm stiffly.
Knock, knock, knock.
The familiar knocking sounded.
But it was not her door being knocked on. The person next door had been chosen and had become the ghost's sacrifice tonight!
Zhao Fusheng honestly didn't know whether to pity her unlucky neighbor or whether to marvel at her own sudden reversal of fortune.
The person in the next room panicked, and a desperate, helpless scream rang out.
The ghost pushed the door open and went in.
The tightly barred door was no obstacle at all to the ghost. The sound of it splintering was followed by a piercing scream that rang through the night.
Under the night sky Zhao Fusheng could see the wall shaking slightly as the chosen person struggled violently.
The next instant a great force pressed down, and she even heard the crisp snap of bones twisting.
Then came the scalp-tingling sound of flesh and bone being violently torn, and the screaming stopped abruptly.
A thick smell of blood slipped through the cracks in the wall, which meant another life had been harvested by the ghost.
The next room had no more life in it, but the noises had not stopped.
In the extreme, eerie quiet, a slick, wet sound came, as if someone were wolfing something down.
Compared with the noises of the ghost's killing a moment ago, this sound was fine and small, but it made her skin crawl.
Blood trickled through the cracks in the mud wall with a gurgle and soaked the soles of her shoes.
Only then did she snap out of her shock and realize that in that instant the ghost had not found her as she'd imagined, and had killed someone else.
The ghost, its killing done, slowly backed out of the house.
Amid the sound of its footsteps came the dripping sounds of blood.
The ghost was leaving!
The thought hit her nerves. In the dark, a struggle showed in her eyes. After a long moment she gritted her teeth, roughly stuffed all her things back into her robe, and yanked the door open with a bang.
In the silent alley the sound of the door was like a thunderclap on level ground.
But the ghost, having already completed tonight's killing rule, was not disturbed.
As last night, after killing, the ghost had pulled out entrails and draped them over itself. A head it had wrenched off was held in its hand.
Blood dripped from the severed neck and spattered the street as it walked.
Just then a crazy, reckless idea appeared in her mind: she wanted to follow the ghost and see where it hid.
Once the idea arose, she could no longer suppress the impulse.
At first glance it was sheer fantasy. When a ghost walks, ordinary people can't get away fast enough. Who would walk toward it? That was courting death!
But thinking boldly, she felt it might be possible.
A ghost kills by rules.
The ghost of Beggars' Alley was ferocious, but in two days she had found the pattern. It picked its victims at random according to the One-Name Register. After everyone received gruel in the evening, it went through the streets knocking on doors. Once it had killed, it took its "trophy" and left, and for the rest of the time there was a period of safety.
If the ghost didn't break its own rules, then following it after a kill shouldn't be very dangerous.
Even if something unexpected happened in the end, she was prepared. She had come to solve the ghost calamity, and she had braced herself to face the ghost tonight. If they met head-on, it would only push things back a little.
"No tiger cub without entering the tiger's den!"1 Zhao Fusheng gave herself a pep talk. How could she resolve a crisis without putting herself in danger?
Thinking this, she rode a surge of courage, dashed out of the house without giving herself a second to be afraid or turn back, and ran after the ghost carrying the head.
The ghost's hunt was over, and the others in Beggars' Alley had survived another night, living one more day.
But then every survivor heard another sound of running mixed in with the ghost's tapping on the street.
At night, Beggars' Alley had become the ghost's territory, especially after a killing. Who would dare go out and risk their life?
It might not be a person. It might be another ghost.
Many were frightened out of their wits by their own guesses. Meanwhile Zhao Fusheng hurried forward and stopped when she was two or three zhang behind the ghost.
In one hand she held the human-skin lantern, and in the other she gripped the fire-starter.
If the ghost suddenly went berserk, she would light the lantern at once and slip out of its sight.
But Zhao Fusheng's luck held.
Her first guess had been right. After completing its killing rule, the ghost no longer reacted at all to someone following behind.
It seemed not to hear the footsteps behind it, nor sense her spying. It simply carried the head and walked forward one step at a time.
The entrails hanging from its body swayed and tangled, making a hair-raising sound as it crossed the street with heavy steps, heading straight for the center of the alley.
The farther they went, the more she realized something was off.
To gain even a sliver more chance of survival in this confrontation, she had walked all around Beggars' Alley in the ghost domain that day and learned every lane. Since nobody stopped her, she had run through them several times and could now call herself familiar with the area.
And she recognized at a glance the direction the ghost was heading. It was the location of the Confucian temple.
"No way... no way..."
"A little temple... how could it hold three ghosts..."
She muttered to herself, and her scalp went numb at the thought of that possibility.
Doubts rising, she gathered her courage and moved a little closer to the ghost.
The ghost was unaware of her approach and walked on in silence, carrying the dripping head. She held her breath, closed the distance, and followed behind the ghost at an unhurried pace.
In the thick ghost fog, the streets of Beggars' Alley, covered by the ghost domain, were empty.
But on the street a person and a ghost walked quietly one behind the other.
Amid the heavy tapping of footsteps, Zhao Fusheng kept her own sounds as low as possible and walked quietly behind the ghost.
Everyone was hiding in their temporary shelters, still feeling the relief of surviving, and nobody witnessed this utterly terrifying scene.
Zhao Fusheng was dancing on the edge of a knife.
Her nerves were stretched to the limit, so much that her mind seemed to separate from her body.
Her body's instinctive fear made her steps heavy, but the more tense she became, the calmer she grew, and she walked with the ghost all the way without making a sound.
In the distance, the outline of the Confucian temple grew clearer even through the thick ghost fog. Ghost lanterns drove back the dark. Beneath the timbers, slightly blackened by the years, the three characters "夫子庙" (Confucian temple) in black on blue shone dazzlingly in the light of the lanterns on both sides.
"It really is here!"
Her heart sank.
