IBGSW Chapter 51
Dismantling the Ghost Coffin
With the whole chain of cause and effect laid out, Zhao Fusheng fell into thought.
After a long while she lifted her head, as if she had worked something out:
"A coffin missing a part can't hold a malignant ghost. When the ghost revived at the Liu estate and its ghost domain covered the place, it would kill the Liu family first."
Going by her rough understanding of ghosts so far, she said: "After it had killed off every descendant of the Liu bloodline, then, going by what you said about the Beggar Ghost, it would surely search for its own head and piece its ghost body back together, wouldn't it?"
"Yes," Liu Yizhen agreed again.
"And the key moment of the calamity was your grandfather's sixtieth birthday."
According to the case scroll, Liu Huacheng was the wealthiest man in the region, and his nephews and sons had been planning his birthday banquet for a long time. The Liu family had laid on a flowing banquet and invited people from all over Wan'an County. Anyone who wished could go to the Liu estate and drink a cup of wine.
Zhao Fusheng pursed her lips and murmured, "A banquet like that would take advance preparation, wouldn't it?"
Liu Yizhen was extremely sharp. Hearing her, he seemed to grasp her intent. He glanced at her and nodded.
"Right. The Liu clan started preparing for my grandfather's birthday a full year ahead."
In other words, word that Liu Huacheng's sixtieth would be a grand affair had spread across Wan'an County long beforehand. With the Liu family's reputation at the time, if not everyone knew, at least most people in the county seat must have heard. So it was no secret.
"Could someone have learned of your grandfather's birthday in advance and deliberately stolen the coffin nail at that critical moment?"
Zhao Fusheng speculated.
"First, the Liu family was busy with your grandfather's birthday and neglected to guard the ghost coffin. Second, whoever stole the nail picked the moment on purpose, wanting the ghost to revive on your grandfather's birthday."
"Whoever stole the coffin nail wanted to cause a great disaster," Liu Yizhen said calmly.
Judging from his tone and manner, Zhao Fusheng's guess matched what he, or rather Liu Huacheng, had suspected. The pair, grandfather and grandson, might have guessed something.
After the Headless Ghost revived, its ghost domain immediately covered the Liu estate of the time. And the estate then held not only the Liu clan and their servants but also most of the well-wishers who had come to the banquet from all over Wan'an County.
Once this calamity broke out, it might have touched thousands.
So the moment it happened, nobody could sit still.
Liu Huacheng could not bear to see the Liu bloodline wiped out, which led to his later cooperation with Su Long and Zhang Xiongwu.
Getting Su Long to move was easy enough. He was a ghost-controller who would sooner or later die a violent death, but he was still a man, and men do not escape the pull of profit. Su Long's days were numbered, yet he had family and descendants, and half the Liu fortune was enough to let his heirs live in comfort and extravagance for a lifetime. Most important of all, he sat at the Wan'an County bureau, and with a ghost case this large at the Liu Clan's Ancestral Hall, he could not avoid it.
Persuading Zhang Xiongwu was harder.
The Zhang family excelled at making ghost lanterns. A ghost lantern worked in mysterious ways and could save a life at a critical moment. People in the bureau who dealt with ghosts year in and year out would stake their entire fortunes to obtain a single one. The bureau's men, who held sway over their regions and squeezed the common people for their own pleasure, would never be stingy about trading money for a ghost lantern. So the Zhang family looked unremarkable on the surface, but worldly wealth was probably nothing to them. What they wanted was something rarer.
Liu Huacheng acted decisively and thought at once of that ghost coffin.
The coffin had already lost its nail and could no longer hold the malignant ghost, so he dismantled the object further. With the coffin lid as his bargaining chip, he proposed that Zhang Xiongwu join forces with Su Long.
Liu Yizhen might not know the details of that process, since the one person who knew it all, Liu Huacheng, had already passed away. But the cooperation had gone smoothly, which showed both sides had been quite satisfied with the deal.
The ghost coffin had lost its nail and then its lid, and could hold the Headless Ghost corpse even less. So Su Long and Zhang Xiongwu found another way. They "enshrined" the Beggar Ghost, which in effect replaced the functions of the coffin nail and lid and sealed the Headless Ghost again.
Su Long's method was bloody and cruel. But at the time his handling was a success. At the price of the lives of countless innocents in the future, it had saved the Liu clan's bloodline forty years ago, along with the ordinary people attending Liu Huacheng's banquet.
Zhao Fusheng could not judge what Su Long had done. In an age when human life was cheap as grass, his method might even have been praised as the "best plan." But in the end Su Long had retained some "humanity," or perhaps other factors were at play, and so he had not put the process on record.
This ghost case exposed something cruel. Ordinary people's lives were cheap as mud, while the rich could buy their lives with wealth.
People are not born equal.
"Pfft." She laughed, and every emotion in her heart came out in that sneer.
But Zhao Fusheng was no saint. She had no power to reverse the past, and no way to save the innocents who had died to ghosts.
She turned her mind back to the ghost coffin. Now that she had straightened out the causes and effects, a line of thought was forming. She asked Liu Yizhen with a smile, "Yizhen, who do you think stole the coffin nail?"
"I don't know," Liu Yizhen said, shaking his head with a blank face.
She raised an eyebrow and asked again with a smile.
"Do you really not know, or do you just not want to speculate?"
Liu Huacheng's life had been full of hardship, and he was no pushover. He had vision and nerve, held Wan'an County for many years, and in connections and seniority was far beyond ordinary men. He had dared take the coffin lid to trade with Zhang Xiongwu, so there must have been inside information.
The Zhang family had great standing in Wan'an County, and everyone feared them like tigers, but Zhao Fusheng did not fear Paperman Zhang.
Seeing that Liu Yizhen was cautious in his words, she asked straight out.
"Was it Zhang Xiongwu who stole the coffin nail?"
"I dare not speculate. There's no evidence," Liu Yizhen said again, seriously.
But he was no fool, and that answer gave away plenty. He only said he dared not speculate and had no evidence, but he surely harbored some suspicion. In other words, there was a good chance Zhang Xiongwu had stolen the nail.
Thinking it through further: Zhang Xiongwu had coveted the ghost coffin, but he knew the Liu family guarded it tightly, and the bureau had probably received an imperial order to protect it strictly. Ordinary means would not work for getting the coffin. Stealing the lid would be too conspicuous and easily exposed, and once the lid was lost, the ghost sealed inside would wake at once. But stealing just a nail from the ghost coffin would be relatively easy. A nail was a small target, and since the coffin sealed a malignant ghost, the guards Liu Huacheng posted probably would not dare to approach it often. If one went missing, it would hardly be noticed.
And once the ghost coffin was no longer whole, its power would fall. In time the Headless Ghost would revive and make trouble, and once the Liu clan started dying, Liu Huacheng would be like an ant on a hot pan.
The Liu family back then was not an ordinary household in Wan'an County. According to the case scroll, the Liu clan together with its servants numbered 592 people. If Liu Huacheng wanted to save his people, he could only seek help from those with the ability to clean up the mess. And once you are in someone's power, you can only let them take what they please.
At the time, the only people in Wan'an County who could clean up the aftermath were Su Long and Zhang Xiongwu. One controlled a ghost and the other could make lanterns to ward off ghosts, and either might have been the thief of the coffin nail.
The reason Zhao Fusheng did not suspect Su Long was that, aside from Su Long's own duties, Liu Yizhen had admitted that Liu Huacheng had moved Su Long with money, while Zhang Xiongwu, who took no money, had received the ghost coffin lid, something money could not measure. The hidden value of such an object was far greater than silver. If not for such a ghost calamity, it would not have been easy for Zhang Xiongwu to get his hands on the ghost coffin lid.
So Zhao Fusheng suspected a thief crying "stop thief."1
Her thoughts grew clearer, and she even laid out the general outline of events in her mind:
With Zhang Xiongwu's position, he might have known long before that a Headless Ghost corpse was sealed in a ghost coffin beneath the Liu Clan's Ancestral Hall.
(This was not a baseless guess. She had deduced it from an offhand remark by the Fan brothers, Zhang Chuanshi, and others: the Zhang family had always kept a good relationship with Wan'an County's commanding officers.)
But Zhao Fusheng was no simple person and was not to be fobbed off with the phrase "good relationship." Beneath that light wording, the cooperation between Zhang Xiongwu and the bureau was probably a tangle of interests and shared secrets.
Having learned the Headless Ghost's past, Zhang Xiongwu set his sights on the ghost coffin. He bided his time patiently, and Liu Huacheng's birthday was his chance. Taking advantage of the Liu family's celebration, he found a way to steal the nail. The ghost revived soon after, and the Liu estate was covered by a ghost domain. Once the calamity broke, Liu Huacheng would certainly have to ask help from whoever could resolve it. Zhang Xiongwu then needed only to sit at home, and Liu Huacheng would come to his door, bearing what he wanted.
......
From Liu Yizhen's reaction, Liu Huacheng too had perhaps suspected in life that Zhang Xiongwu had engineered this ghost case. But from his position, if he wanted to save the Liu family, he had to hold his nose and jump into the trap knowingly.
Thinking of this, Zhao Fusheng suddenly remembered something, and her face changed slightly. Without thinking she pulled the jade book from her robe, and Liu Yizhen watched her fingertip rub a few times over a name until the black-red, resentful little figure gave off streaks of blood-red light. Rubbing, she smiled and cursed.
"You bastard."
"..." He began to doubt Zhao Fusheng's mental state.
The next moment, she calmly tucked the jade book back into her robe and said, putting on the air of someone without a care in the world:
"I understand everything here now. The ghost calamity at the Confucian temple is resolved for now, and it's good that you're staying—" By now the two had laid their cards on the table, and Zhao Fusheng understood the temple's situation fully.
Liu Yizhen absolutely could not leave the temple.
He was in effect carrying the heavy duty of guarding the Headless Ghost and Liu Huacheng. The former was still lying in its coffin, and the latter was suppressed by the Headless Ghost for now and had not fully revived. The ghost coffin was no longer whole, but it still mattered greatly. Wan'an County could not stand any more upheaval, and until she had fully activated the Investiture of the Gods and had overwhelming strength, these two great ghosts absolutely could not be allowed to awaken.
"Don't leave. Keep watch over them. I'll handle the bureau's affairs myself as much as I can, and I won't trouble you unless I must."
She made her intent clear.
The two had swapped registers precisely to hold each other in check, but now that she knew the inside story, she naturally could not treat Liu Yizhen like an ordinary order envoy.
"Good." Liu Yizhen's gaze softened a good deal, and a faint smile appeared on his face.
He had not misjudged her. Zhao Fusheng was clever and quick, not a mindless reckless fool.
"Be careful yourself," he said with restraint, then added.
"Try to live a while longer."
Chief commanding officers at the bureau changed constantly. Su Long had not lasted long in Wan'an County either, before his ghost revived and he died at the hands of Shao Wenxun. It had to be said that nearly all ghost-controllers at the bureau led tragic and short lives.
His wish for her to live longer was not a curse. It came from the heart.
"A scourge lasts a thousand years. It's not easy to get rid of me," Zhao Fusheng said with a slight smile.
Liu Yizhen laughed lightly too.
Their earlier suspicion and wariness of each other were set aside for the moment. Perhaps they could not yet fully trust each other, but through talking they had come to respect each other a little more.
The two were silent for a while, both savoring a rare moment of peace.
After a long while Zhao Fusheng gathered herself and said.
"Before I go, I need to ask you for a favor."
"Go ahead." Liu Yizhen nodded.
Zhao Fusheng said, "The ghost calamity here is resolved, but I think the survivors were frightened out of their wits by the ghost and won't believe what I say."
Under the ghost's menace, the survivors' minds had stiffened, and their bodies kept up the mechanical routine of hiding and eating. Facing the ghost, they dared not go out and dared not try to flee.
"All right," Liu Yizhen agreed. He went back into the hall, found the bronze gong behind the corner of the door plank, brought it out, and struck it with a few clangs.
The sound was a signal.
Suddenly the silent streets filled with the sound of doors opening one after another. Survivors who had been huddled in the houses came out one by one and surged toward the Confucian temple like walking corpses.
"..." The smile on Zhao Fusheng's face slowly disappeared. Her upturned lips pressed together, and her expression gradually turned grim.
Liu Yizhen stole a glance at her from the corner of his eye.
Since she entered Beggars' Alley and they began dealing with each other, she had been laughing and cursing, a bit of a rogue, hard to read, never showing her feelings. The origin of the Beggar Ghost had not angered her. Liu Huacheng's identity had not shocked her. She had even taken the news of three ghosts in the Confucian temple well...
Only now, seeing the common people shuffling toward them in the distance, did her face turn ugly for a moment.
At that moment her fists were clenched, as if she were holding back her feelings.
But soon she recovered her usual flippant air, as if that moment of sternness had been something Liu Yizhen imagined.
