IBGSW Chapter 54
Figuring Out the Rules
Meanwhile the chill came and went quickly. The wind blew the clouds apart and sunlight spilled down again. Fan Bisi was baffled, unsure whether the strangeness of that moment had been his imagination.
Inside the carriage, Zhao Fusheng listened with some regret to the prompt in her sea of consciousness:
Failed to capture the Malignant Ghost.
The Investiture had already told her that this level of Hell was too low to hold ghosts of Vicious-tier or above, but she had still tried to use Hell's property to send away the ghost she controlled. It failed, as she'd expected.
She was not discouraged, since she had foreseen it. Instead she thought for a moment, took out the ghost hand hidden in her sleeve, and used Hell again.
The shadow swallowed the ghost hand silently.
The instant the shriveled hand entered Hell, it swelled quickly, and the human-skin paper in its palm fell away with a pat. But after the hand recovered, it did not move and was restrained by Hell's power.
Zhao Fusheng's consciousness was tied closely to Hell, and she could clearly feel that she could "touch" the ghost hand and the fallen paper at any time. Everything in Hell was within her will. The feeling was wondrous.
But she could also vaguely sense that the ghost hand was uncontrollable. It opened and closed as if instinctively searching for its body, trying to break through Hell's confinement.
The Beggar Ghost itself had reached the Baleful-tier. Though Zhao Fusheng had dismembered it, the hand embodied the Beggar Ghost's killing rule and was the strongest part of its body. So for the first level of Hell to fully control this ghost hand was still somewhat difficult for Zhao Fusheng at present.
Hell's advantages were also obvious. Once a ghost hand was taken into Hell, it was as if completely isolated from this world, as though they belonged to two different times and spaces.
As she pondered, she sensed the ghost hand's struggles and with a thought "grabbed" it, pulling the hand and the paper out together.
The moment the ghost hand was pulled out of Hell, it instinctively moved to kill. Zhao Fusheng's face darkened and she shoved the paper into the hand. At the same instant the Investiture prompted in her sea of consciousness:
Ghost hand revival detected; consume 5 merit to suppress.
Hell overused, provoking the host's controlled ghost entity; consume 10 merit to pacify.
"..."
She hadn't expected that in that one trip in and out, her remaining merit would be docked another 15 points, leaving just 25. She frowned at the ghost hand in her palm, which had shrunk back into a miniature arm, a sheet of human-skin paper clamped tightly in it.
From the test, though Zhao Fusheng lost some merit, she learned several important things:
Hell could not be used without limits. Especially while her merit was insufficient and her own leverage too thin, frequent use of Hell might provoke the ghost she controlled to revive. And when a controlled ghost was taken into Hell and then released, it would go out of control again. This ghost hand, for example, she had already subdued with the rules of her controlled ghost, but going in and out of Hell had triggered its rule again.
Most important, once the ghost hand revived, its "appetite" seemed to have grown, and human-skin paper could no longer satisfy and pacify it. If the Investiture had not used merit at the crucial moment to suppress it, the ghost hand might have gone out of control again.
Having sorted out these rules, Zhao Fusheng let out a long breath. The test had been entirely worth it. The experience she'd gained at the cost of merit up front would help her avoid mistakes at critical moments later.
Merit was truly a precious thing, and she did not have nearly enough.
"Fusheng, just now—"
Outside the carriage, Fan Bisi had thought it over and felt that gust of cold wind had been uncanny.
Wan'an County was no ordinary place now. It was a place of great ill omen. The appearance of the ghost fog had led the court to abandon it, and ordinary ghost-controllers hardly dared set foot there, afraid of going in and not coming out, since the ghost fog hastened the revival of the ghosts they carried and they would die there. In such conditions, at the slightest stir Fan Bisi was on tenterhooks, worried a ghost was acting up.
The wind had come and gone fast, but the more he thought, the more uneasy he felt, and he steeled himself to ask.
Zhao Fusheng calmly tucked the re-shrunken miniature ghost arm into her sleeve.
Hearing Fan Bisi speak, she said, "It's nothing. I was just testing the ghost's power. There's no problem."
Hiss!
Gasp!
Magistrate Pang and the others sucked in cold air, and Fan Bisi's doubts were choked back in his throat. The two brothers turned and looked at each other, both with shock in their eyes.
The two had been adopted by Zhao Duan, grown up with Zhao Qiming, and followed Zhao Qiming to his post in Wan'an County. They had seen with their own eyes Zhao Qiming take on the ghost and then lose control to its influence. Every bit more of the ghost's power one used meant being assimilated by the ghost, becoming cold and cruel, losing human feelings, with instinct and the urge to kill getting the upper hand.
The ghost Zhao Fusheng controlled was the very one that had made Zhao Qiming lose control. At the bureau she had suppressed the revived Zhao couple and already used the ghost's power. And this time, to enter Beggars' Alley and dismember the ghost there, she must have used it again.
How could a newcomer who had only controlled a ghost by luck subdue such a fierce ghost so completely, and use its power twice in a row, apparently unaffected? She even dared fiddle with the ghost when she had nothing better to do. Wasn't she afraid of a backlash?
Fan Bisi's mind was full of questions but he dared not ask, afraid of angering her. He even thought, a little uneasily and darkly: Zhao Fusheng's behavior was too strange. She could read and count, was shrewd and calm, and after controlling a ghost she was unhurried. Was she a hidden, extraordinary ghost-controller? And did Paperman Zhang know?
If Paperman Zhang knew nothing, how could such a coincidence arise in this world? And if Paperman Zhang had known of Zhao Fusheng's extraordinary nature all along, then when he took the goods that day and taught the brothers the trick of diverting the disaster eastward, had he deliberately wanted to make enemies of the brothers and Zhao Fusheng?
The more he thought, the more uneasy he grew, and his gaze at Zhang Chuanshi carried some hatred.
Zhao Fusheng had no idea what he was thinking. After testing Hell's uses, she could not help trying to open the second level of Hell.
In her sea of consciousness, the Investiture of the Gods responded:
Host's merit is under 1000 points; failed to open the second level of Hell.
The failure was within her expectation, but when she learned the second level took 1000 merit, she still frowned.
By now she could basically confirm that merit gained depended on the size of the ghost case she handled, the tier of the ghost, the extent of its reach, and the number of people saved. 1000 merit was not small, but to her it was not an astronomical figure beyond reach. What made her slightly uneasy was that the cost of opening the second level was exactly ten times the first. If every subsequent level followed this multiple, she would be busy indeed.
"Not enough money, and not enough merit either—" she muttered.
"Looks like I have to work hard at catching ghosts."
Outside the carriage Zhang Chuanshi vaguely heard her mention "money," then "catching ghosts," and shuddered, wondering if he had misheard.
After that nothing strange happened. Magistrate Pang and his party went back to the bureau as Zhao Fusheng had instructed.
Zhao Fusheng had been in Beggars' Alley for three days and needed to wash up. She got down from the carriage and, without exchanging pleasantries with Magistrate Pang and the others, went straight to her temporary quarters inside the bureau.
Having handled the matters she had assigned, the Fan brothers had evidently had the bureau swept out. The bloodstains in the main hall of the yamen had been cleaned, and broken places had been simply patched. Her room had also been tidied in advance, with clean clothes, socks, and shoes laid out on her bed and the bedding all changed. The Fan brothers had not known whether she would make it back, but they had done the outward show anyway.
In this world, the strong are respected, and once she showed a power to be feared, life became much more convenient.
She washed up simply and changed into clean clothes. When she came out, the runners and some onlookers had temporarily left. In the courtyard outside the main hall a big table had been set with food, and Magistrate Pang and several elderly gentry were still waiting. Seeing her come out, they hurried to greet her, and Magistrate Pang said:
"We meant to hold a welcome banquet for you, but fearing you are tired, we'll save the grand feast for later. Today a few of the county's elders, grateful for your service in driving off the ghost, have brought some modest gifts and hope you'll do them the honor of accepting."
As he spoke, Magistrate Pang beckoned. The secretary called out, and five or six people filed in carrying a foot-long wooden chest each. They stood in a row, and the secretary stepped forward with small steps and opened the lids one by one. They were filled with gleaming silver ingots.
It was an unwritten rule that when a commanding officer took up a post, local gentry made offerings. It was the hidden "protection fee."
Fan Bisi stole a look at Zhao Fusheng from the corner of his eye. She came from a poor family. She had once had her life bought for five copper coins, and afterward she'd been so strapped she couldn't afford coffins for her parents and had to wheedle and threaten Zhang Chuanshi into "lending" them.
Generally, some of the bureau's commanding officers were from ghost-controlling lineages like Zhao Qiming and his father, but many more were ordinary people who had succeeded in controlling a ghost by chance. Such people were from modest backgrounds, and the poor who suddenly became rich had one trait: at first they were crazy for money. Later most turned to extortion and fleecing the people, then feared death and looked for a way to save their lives. And once they found they had nowhere to turn and were certain to die, they stopped restraining their nature, became cruel and violent, and as frightening as ghosts.
Fan Bisi saw her gaze pass over the silver once. She remained calm and showed no trace of greed or delight. She just nodded.
"Put it away."
Fan Bisi was dumbstruck for a long moment, then snapped out of it, bumped his brother's shoulder, and the two hurried forward to gather up all the silver.
Seeing her accept, Magistrate Pang and the elderly gentry showed delight. Magistrate Pang, eager to show loyalty, said.
"Lord Zhao, you now know the situation in Wan'an County. Ghost cases are frequent everywhere. I know you're busy with official duties, so for ordinary ghost cases I'll tell the towns and villages beforehand to avoid troubling you, but if it's truly—"
Before he finished, Zhao Fusheng waved a hand and said gravely: "No!"
The faces of the gathered men fell. By contrast, the Fan brothers and Zhang Chuanshi, who was cowering to one side, looked delighted. Ordinary people and the bureau took opposite attitudes toward ghost cases.
Magistrate Pang and the county's gentry and wealthy households feared ghosts and feared the ghost-controlling commanding officers too. The former wanted your life, the latter would suck your very bones1. But sometimes with a knife at the throat, even knowing the commanding officers of the bureau were hard to deal with, money was nothing next to one's life, and sometimes you had to spend it.
For the bureau's people, money was easy to come by, but life only came once. Especially since order envoys had always had an extremely high casualty rate, the Fan brothers now sought no money, only to save their lives. For Zhao Fusheng not to take ghost cases was enormous good news for them.
"Then—" Magistrate Pang, sweating heavily and mouth dry, was at a loss for how to curry favor when Zhao Fusheng smiled and added.
"Report any ghost cases promptly. If I have time, I naturally won't stand idly by."
From the Beggars' Alley trip she had earned merit and opened Hell, and now she could hold one ghost for the moment, and she also had a ghost hand. Naturally she now had grounds to speak up. Having been through this, she realized the Investiture's potential and naturally wanted to catch more ghosts for merit, aiming to advance the ghost she controlled and enshrine it as soon as possible.
The twist in her words changed the faces of both groups. Magistrate Pang and the others went from joy to shock; Fan Bisi and his two companions from shock to dread. They did not know how to respond and for a while just stared at each other, not daring to speak.
The meal passed without anyone tasting it. Magistrate Pang and the others hardly touched their chopsticks. Zhao Fusheng had had soup to line her stomach, but good as Granny Meng's soup was, it hadn't filled her, and she had been hungry the whole way back, so she kept eating at the table. Only when she had eaten her fill and put down her chopsticks did the others who had been keeping her company let out a breath and put down theirs.
After a few pleasantries, Magistrate Pang and the others took their leave one by one.
Once they were gone, Fan Bisi's expression changed.
"Fusheng, are you really going to take more ghost cases?"
He hadn't known the reborn Zhao Fusheng long, but in their dealings he had come to know her temperament, and knew she had not been joking with everyone earlier. Magistrate Pang and the rest thought she had spoken off the cuff, but only the bureau's three knew she meant it. So they had been on pins and needles, and only now that the guests were gone did Fan Bisi speak up.
"Yes." Zhao Fusheng nodded.
As she spoke she leaned back against the chair and put one leg up on another chair. Zhang Chuanshi, standing to one side, quickly stepped forward and pushed the chair to let her lie more comfortably. She watched him with a cold smile and said nothing. The old rascal laughed dryly, his eyes glinting, but didn't dare meet her gaze.
"But—" Fan Bisi began, but Zhao Fusheng waved a hand.
"No buts."
Her manner was forceful. Having solved the Beggars' Alley case, she had firmly established her position at the bureau, and no one dared question her decision:
"I said before: we eat the sovereign's pay and serve the sovereign's cause. As commanding officers and order envoys, protecting the people of a region and upholding justice is what we're supposed to do."
"..."
"..." The Fan brothers exchanged helpless glances, but had no intention of giving up trying to talk her out of it.
Zhao Fusheng ignored them and turned to Zhang Chuanshi.
"Old Zhang."
At this call, Zhang Chuanshi shuddered and his shoulders sagged. Before Zhao Fusheng could say more, his knees gave out and he fell to the floor with a thud, then scooted forward on his knees to kneel beside her:
"Lord Zhao, spare my life, spare my life, none of this has anything to do with me—"
Zhao Fusheng nearly laughed. She hadn't even asked and Zhang Chuanshi was already crying for mercy.
"What has nothing to do with you?" she asked him with a smile, relaxed, her mood unreadable.
But the more relaxed and casual she was, the more wary Zhang Chuanshi became.
