IBGSW Chapter 50
The Sealing Object
In this world malignant ghosts ran rampant and ordinary people lived hard lives. Among everyone Zhao Fusheng had met since her rebirth, from the Fan brothers to Paperman Zhang, all were cunning, cruel, cold people.
Liu Yizhen was not a purely good person either, but he was clever and steady, and the easiest of them to deal with.
And he had shown her some goodwill at the right moment and indicated a willingness to cooperate. Zhao Fusheng smiled and nodded.
"Good."
After this small interlude, the two of them talked with much more relaxed expressions.
Liu Yizhen was curious about her origins and asked how she had come to head the bureau.
It was no great secret. Zhao Fusheng told him how "she" had been bought into the bureau by the Fan brothers as a scapegoat, and how her parents had been killed by a malignant ghost.
Her borrowing of a corpse to return her soul was her great secret, and she naturally couldn't tell anyone, so she made up an excuse.
"...I was lucky not to die, and I ended up controlling the bureau's ghost."
"I see."
After hearing her out, Liu Yizhen was also surprised by her experience.
Those who survive catastrophe have good fortune ahead. She had escaped from a ghost's hands and even subdued the ghost in return, so it wasn't without reason that she had dared to enter Beggars' Alley alone and managed to resolve the Beggar Ghost.
"But be careful," Liu Yizhen warned.
"After a ghost is dismembered, it falls silent for a while, but that doesn't last long. Once it revives, its killing rules may change."
"Into searching for its lost ghost arm?"
Zhao Fusheng's mind stirred and she asked.
Talking with clever people saved effort.
A smile appeared in Liu Yizhen's eyes, and he nodded slightly.
"The Confucian temple's ghost back then was made by Su Long, by pointing a person into a ghost—"
He had a good impression of Zhao Fusheng. Now that the two had exchanged registers and were bound by each other, he thought well of her and was willing to be friendly, and naturally he didn't want her to die too soon, so he was ready to offer her a few pointers.
Of course, this was also because the ghost calamity in Beggars' Alley had been completely solved. Zhao Fusheng had proven herself with her strength.
But that wasn't the most important thing.
Liu Yizhen sensed that this new commanding officer of the bureau was quite different from the ghost-controllers he'd heard about in rumors.
Zhao Fusheng carried the aura of a ghost. Even though she hid it well, he was naturally very sensitive to ghosts, and he could still sense that she had used a ghost's power.
But her eyes were calm and her speech restrained, and her mind and reactions were sharp.
Liu Yizhen didn't know why she had borrowed the ghost's power without being driven mad by it, but everyone had their own secrets, and he did not intend to pry.
But he knew that with Zhao Fusheng's intelligence, she might already have guessed the origin of the Beggar Ghost from its killing rules, its form, and the scattered clues from their conversations.
When the Beggar Ghost returned, it had lost the arm that asked for things—
Liu Yizhen's eyes fell on Zhao Fusheng. He felt that on her, besides the ghost's aura, there was another kind of ghost entity's aura.
"Back then none of us knew whether this method would work. We just tried it at the risk of our lives."
The Great Han had suffered from ghost calamities for a long time. Everyone knew how terrifying malignant ghosts were and that ghosts could not be killed or destroyed, but no one knew how ghosts came to exist, and no one could control a malignant ghost.
"Back then Zhang Xiongwu's family had spent generations studying how people turn into malignant ghosts, and Su Long urgently needed a ghost to suppress a ghost. And with my grandfather paying, the three parties hit it off and reached an agreement."
He recalled the past calmly.
"There's no shortage of beggars in Beggars' Alley, so using the Liu family's resources, my grandfather picked a beggar whose birth date and eight characters were suitable, and Zhang Xiongwu killed him using the corpse-making method."
During this, Su Long also used a ghost's power for "ghost-pointing." The three parties agreed that once the beggar was killed by the special method, he would be enshrined in the temple, and with the Liu family's wealth the almsgiving would draw countless homeless poor to stay here, "buying lives" to feed the ghost.
Many innocents, grateful for the gruel from the Liu family's Confucian temple and seeking to survive a little while, did not know they were buying their brief survival by selling their own "fortune, longevity and rank," the blessings of fate.
This method of "ghost-pointing" was cruel and bloody, but by luck it succeeded.
The beggar, killed in a special way, successfully revived as a malignant ghost, but was then suppressed by the Headless Ghost and held inside the Confucian temple.
Because the two ghosts' strengths were in fact unequal, Liu Huacheng had increased the Beggar Ghost's stake through the almsgiving's "borrowing lives," and so the two ghosts reached a balance.
And Liu Huacheng, who in his life dealt with two malignant ghosts, was surely no ordinary person.
Perhaps because it touched on his own grandfather, Liu Yizhen did not give details of Liu Huacheng's past and passed over his life in a sentence, up to the day of his death.
"That day was my grandfather's hundredth birthday. Before the celebration he already knew the day he would die, which is why he told me to go to the bureau."
She already knew what happened after that, so he didn't elaborate.
When Liu Huacheng died, he and the Headless Ghost held each other in check, and the Beggar Ghost, suppressed for forty years, revived at once.
In life it begged for food, and in death it demanded lives.
When a person turns into a malignant ghost, there are no rules to follow, but some of the ghost's killing rules can be glimpsed from its life.
"Every night it patrols the street, picks a household at random, and knocks and goes in to ask for 'food.'"
Everyone in the chosen household died by the ghost's hand.
Over those forty years, the Beggar Ghost was suppressed by the Headless Ghost and had come to certain rules with the Confucian temple and Liu Huacheng. Liu Huacheng bought lives with gruel to feed the Beggar Ghost, and the Beggar Ghost in turn used the life energy of all those households to nourish the Headless Ghost.
So when it revived, besides killing, after "feasting" it also took a head, to appease the Headless Ghost.
The whole truth was clear.
Raising a malignant ghost with human lives to suppress another malignant ghost—
Zhao Fusheng let out a long sigh.
It was not honorable. Perhaps Su Long had retained a bit of shame back then and hadn't written the whole story into the record.
"The arm it begs with represents its killing rules."
Whether knocking or carrying the head, that ghost hand was crucial.
Now Zhao Fusheng had forcibly dismembered it and torn off its arm, leaving the Beggar Ghost's corpse incomplete, so when the ghost revived again, the first thing it would do would be to look for its own body.
"In other words, it will kill people to take hands, but its final goal is to find me, take its ghost hand back, and put its corpse back together."
Her words were as good as admitting that the ghost's arm was in her hands.
"Yes." Liu Yizhen wasn't surprised to hear her say so, and only nodded.
"So you still have to be careful."
"I'll worry about that later," Zhao Fusheng said breezily with a wave of her hand.
Liu Yizhen smiled and didn't take her attitude to heart.
She seemed careless, but she was actually careful and extremely suspicious.
She had surely taken the Beggar Ghost's business to heart and was only putting on this act to fool others.
"Besides that, ghost things are evil. You carry it with you, so take care of yourself," he reminded her again.
Her mind stirred and she nodded.
As Liu Yizhen said, she kept the ghost hand on her but hadn't been affected. Was it because the ghost hand hadn't revived for now, or because the Investiture of the Gods had deducted merit earlier to clear the effect?
But these questions could wait. She had more important questions for Liu Yizhen.
She was thinking how to steer the conversation to what she wanted to ask when Liu Yizhen broke the silence.
"But I'm staying in the temple. If a ghost is about to revive, I'll notify you."
"You're not afraid of trouble?" Zhao Fusheng asked offhandedly.
"No." Liu Yizhen hesitated, then said.
"I have my own way of protecting myself. The ghosts can't 'see' me."
"The ghost lanterns?" Hearing this, she followed up by lifting her head to look at the top of the temple.
Many lanterns were hung there, still lit.
This was also what puzzled Zhao Fusheng.
The ghost lanterns passed down in Paperman Zhang's family had a very strange property. When no ghost was near, the lamp oil seemed never to burn dry and the flame never went out. But as soon as it met a ghost, it burned fiercely, and the lantern would soon break.
She remembered going to the Confucian temple after spending her first night in Beggars' Alley, trying to peek at the temple's interior, and sensing the ghost's presence. The lantern had changed strangely then, gushed a stench, then the ghost's presence came again, and the lantern soon shattered, the box holding the lamp oil breaking and the foul oil spilling on the ground.
She hadn't understood then. In hindsight, the ghost lantern had protected her from the ghost's gaze.
From this angle, however treacherous and cruel Paperman Zhang was, he did have some skill at dealing with ghosts.
At this thought, another doubt rose in her.
"There are so many ghost lanterns in the Confucian temple—" Her eyes darted, and she put on a sly look and asked deliberately.
"Paperman Zhang isn't a good man. Why would he give you so many ghost lanterns?"
Such things were precious. Every commanding officer of the bureau had been willing to befriend the Zhang family for them, which showed the Zhang family's skill at making Ghost Lanterns was not ordinary.
And Zhang Xiongwu was no good man.
Zhao Fusheng didn't know where the ghost lanterns came from, but just from the name there was something eerie about them.
Besides, "pointing" a person into a ghost was itself an evil art.
She had dealt with Paperman Zhang. He was vicious, skilled at flaying people to make lanterns, kept half-corpse half-human ghost servants at home, and had blood on his hands. A man like that didn't do good deeds out of simple kindness.
"Back then your grandfather paid half of the Liu family's savings to bring in Su Long—"
Su Long still retained some humanity (not in the sense of conscience), so it was natural for him to feel greed when faced with the Liu family's vast wealth.
Zhao Fusheng smiled and asked.
"But what price did your grandfather pay to move the Zhang family, so that old man would again and again disregard his own safety and accompany Su Long into and out of the ghost-infested Liu Clan's Ancestral Hall three times?"
She tilted her head and looked at Liu Yizhen.
"You said yourself that the Headless Ghost here is no ordinary ghost and suppresses malignant ghosts to some extent."
A ghost-controller like Su Long had his strength constrained in front of the Headless Ghost. For Zhang Xiongwu to go in and out with him under those circumstances was practically staking his life.
"You've worked it out?" Liu Yizhen was a little surprised and raised an eyebrow. In the end he smiled as if it weren't surprising.
"Paperman Zhang offended you. That isn't good news."
Her insight was astonishing. No trace of a clue escaped her eyes.
Anyway, he'd already told the old story, this "dishonorable" matter couldn't be hidden from Zhao Fusheng, and the two had exchanged registers, which in a way made them bound to each other and cooperating.
After pondering for a moment, he answered, "My grandfather gave him an object."
"It's no ordinary object, is it?" Zhao Fusheng smiled.
The Zhang family was ruthless and had killed countless people. For something to move Zhang Xiongwu to step forward several times at the risk of his life and give a lantern afterward, it had to be something good.
"It's a very powerful, extremely malevolent object."
Liu Yizhen nodded.
Having already said both what he should and shouldn't have, he simply went on, "It's actually a coffin lid."
He knew Zhao Fusheng was suspicious by nature, and in matters of ghost cases that involved lives, she was even more careful and pursued every detail.
Rather than have her try to get information out of him by tricks and end up letting slip more without meaning to, he might as well tell her everything from the start.
"After the Headless Ghost's body was dismembered back then, its corpse was placed in a coffin." He put the "alms" sign he'd been holding on a nearby stone table so he could concentrate on speaking to her:
"The coffin was a peerless malevolent object. It was probably a powerful item that accompanied the awakening of some great ghost, and once a ghost entered the coffin, it would be suppressed."
Afterward, the coffin somehow fell into the court's hands and became one of the court's important treasures.
"The Headless Ghost's rules are special, so to deal with this threat the court took out this treasure and put the Headless Ghost's corpse in it."
He sighed.
"That's also why the court has since taken Wan'an County quite seriously."
Besides worrying that the Headless Ghost would revive again, they also worried that someone who learned the truth might take a desperate risk and steal this treasure with no regard for the lives it would cost.
After Liu Huacheng returned to his hometown, the commanding officers posted to the Wan'an County bureau were mostly extraordinary figures, so Wan'an County enjoyed a long period of prosperity and stability.
"It's a pity—" Liu Yizhen paused after saying this.
Zhao Fusheng continued, "It's a pity the coffin went wrong in the end?"
"How do you know?" Liu Yizhen asked reflexively.
But after asking he smiled wryly.
"Sometimes I really wonder whether the ghost you control can read people's minds."
"No," Zhao Fusheng said, shaking her head solemnly.
"..." Liu Yizhen gave her a strange look, and Zhao Fusheng immediately grinned.
"Just joking with you."
Then she said seriously, "As the saying goes, you can be a thief for a thousand days, but nobody can guard against a thief for a thousand days."1
"That makes sense." Liu Yizhen nodded, and Zhao Fusheng asked.
"Which part of the coffin was lost?"
He said quietly.
"A coffin nail was lost."
The coffin was a whole, and only as a whole could it form a perfect, peerless malevolent object that sealed ghosts.
Once even a single part was lost, even just a tiny coffin nail, its sealing power was greatly reduced.
After the coffin nail went missing, the ghost sealed inside revived.
