IBGSW Chapter 69
The Malignant Ghost Appears
Zhang Chuanshi’s face changed.
He hunched his head and shoulders and began to tremble again.
Zhao Fusheng had grasped a good number of clues and was close to the truth. Seeing what looked like Wu Liren’s own handwriting, “There’s a ghost in my house,” on the human-skin quilt, she was only slightly startled, and soon calmed again.
“Could Wu Liren have sensed a ghost in his house while he was alive?” she thought, then shook her head. “But the ghost’s killing rule includes erasing memory...”
Affected by the ghost’s power, Wu Liren’s perception should have been wrong. How could he have discovered the ghost in his house?
Could the quilt not be his?
The thought had barely surfaced before she rejected it.
The villagers had confirmed that the main room deep in the inner courtyard of the Wu mansion was Wu Liren’s, no mistake.
Since it was Wu Liren’s room, nobody else would have used the bedding.
That left one last possibility.
Thinking this, Zhao Fusheng turned and called to Zhang Chuanshi, “Go find me brush and ink.”
Zhang Chuanshi, holding the lamp, was startled to hear she wanted writing tools and couldn’t guess her thinking.
But the gap in their positions was huge, and his life was now in Zhao Fusheng’s hands, so of course he dared not ask. He nodded repeatedly. “Right away.”
Then, forcing down his fear, he hurriedly glanced back at the human-skin quilt on the bed and said with false concern, “But this thing is ill-omened. Won’t you be in danger facing it alone, my lord? Maybe I should...”
“That we’re still alive doesn’t mean the ghost isn’t beside us. We haven’t died only because we haven’t fully touched its killing rule.”
Zhao Fusheng saw through Zhang Chuanshi’s little trick at a glance and smiled. “We were put on its list long ago. It’s not a matter of where we run, or whether we go in groups to be safe.”
Wu Dajing had been killed by the ghost in front of everyone, but the onlookers’ memories had been wiped the next instant.
Zhao Fusheng judged that this ghost’s killing method was of the marking-and-sensing type.
That is, anyone who mentioned it or knew of its existence was sensed by it, and anyone it sensed would sooner or later meet their end.
This characteristic meant the ghost attacked groups across a wide range, but with low lethality per attack.
So whether it was Wu Dajing’s mother back then, the villagers, or Wu Dajing himself, all had been caught by the ghost and then slowly “bled to death” over a period of time (as seen by the people around them).
That settled it for her, and she relaxed.
For her, it was like gaining room for error. She could hop back and forth within the ghost’s rule, find its characteristics, and resolve the ghost calamity!
“You mean...” Hearing her talk as if she already understood something of the ghost, Zhang Chuanshi brightened.
“Acting alone this time might actually improve our chances of survival,” Zhao Fusheng said meaningfully.
At those words, Zhang Chuanshi’s stooped back straightened, and for a moment he looked a lot less sleazy. “I’ll go find Wu Liyou and have him fetch the four treasures of the study.”
With that he slipped out.
Zhao Fusheng knew the old rascal wouldn’t stick to her side for the rest of the time.
But he feared death by nature, and he was also under the soul-life register’s influence, so he couldn’t hide far, and she could summon him when needed. She didn’t expose him.
She carefully rolled up the human-skin quilt on the bed.
Spread out on the bed, it had looked big, but it was extremely thin and light. Folded, it came to only two palms side by side, a thin stack.
She didn’t know yet what use it had, but Wu Liren had clearly lived with a ghost for years and been the last to die, which showed he was hardy and long-lived.
The human-skin quilt had kept him company all that time, and even if it had no effect, it must have picked up a bit of special “luck.”
But perhaps from having kept company with a ghost, the skin felt cold to the touch. With the room empty, Zhao Fusheng’s shadow, stretched long by the lamplight, slanted across the bed as if “lying” on the unpicked quilt cover, looking eerie.
In the shadows, a pair of invisible “eyes” watched her: the gaze of the unseen malignant ghost.
With all her memories restored, Zhao Fusheng knew she had long been marked by the ghost, and faced with this chilling scene she wasn’t alarmed. She looked at the human-skin paper and held it up to the lamp for a moment.
She had come to handle the Goutou Village ghost case for merit, but she also had to risk danger.
“The people of Goutou Village are so poor you couldn’t scrape the grease off a chicken’s toe. I made a long trek here, I’m staking my life, and I’m waiving taxes. Taking a human-skin quilt is fair, isn’t it?”
She said it to herself, then without ceremony tucked it into her robe.
Before long Wu Liyou, sheepish, brought in the four treasures of the study.
At Zhao Fusheng’s direction he laid them out but didn’t leave.
On a cabinet nearby was tea that had been steeped earlier. The weather hadn’t turned cold yet, so the tea wasn’t cold. He poured some into the inkstone and clumsily picked up the ink stick to grind.
“My lord...”
He had just heard the woman’s tearful account and learned what had happened in the room, and in a fret had come in to beg forgiveness.
“Don’t worry. Nothing was damaged.”
Zhao Fusheng cut him off.
The human-skin quilt was undamaged, and a single word from her could decide a country woman's fate.
Though Wu Liyou’s family, under the ghost’s influence, still hadn’t recovered their memories, Wu Dajing was already dead, and there was no need to add to this tormented family’s quarrels.
So Zhao Fusheng said lightly, “Tell her to be more careful next time. Grind the ink well.”
“...”
Wu Liyou froze for a moment. He didn’t know whether Zhao Fusheng truly hadn’t seen the woman’s little move or had magnanimously let the Wu family off.
Either way, the Wu family’s crisis was over.
He let out a great breath, and said gratefully, “Yes. Yes, yes! I’ll discipline her properly next time.”
Then he concentrated on grinding the ink and said no more.
When the ink was ground, Zhao Fusheng motioned for him to leave, and he backed out. At the door he paused and said sincerely, “Thank you, my lord.”
“Mm,” Zhao Fusheng replied absently, accepting his thanks. Wu Liyou was no fool, and smiled at her answer, then gently pulled the door shut and stationed himself beside it.
The room quieted again.
Zhao Fusheng sat at the simple table and moved the oil lamp closer, then spread the case scroll from her sleeve open again.
She picked up the brush, dipped it in ink, and first wrote a few large characters on the scroll: Ghost of Oblivion!
As soon as she wrote them, they overwrote the scroll’s original contents.
Zhao Fusheng was unused to the brush and her writing wasn’t elegant, but “Ghost of Oblivion” stood out, striking at a glance when the scroll was opened.
Beneath those words she added a note:
Specialty: invisible, cannot be captured, no physical form; mentioning its name triggers the taboo.
Killing method: itching, each itch sheds large amounts of skin; finally the body bursts and dies?
At this point in her writing, Zhao Fusheng began to doubt what she’d seen of Wu Dajing’s death.
If the ghost controlled perception and altered everyone’s memory, was the scene of his death she had witnessed even real?
The thought made her hair stand on end.
She turned and looked at her surroundings.
The room was bare. The walls were mud with many cracks, and above was a one-foot-square skylight, its opening facing the bed.
On the bed lay a spread-out quilt, its cover unpicked to expose the padding inside.
The whole room felt hushed, but was this scene real, too?
Slowly she drew back her gaze and forced herself not to dwell on it, then picked up the brush again:
Known to have died at the ghost’s hands: Wu Dajing’s mother, Wu Datong?, the Wu Liren family, Wu Dajing.
These few lines took up nearly all the space on the scroll apart from the pasted skin.
Zhao Fusheng scratched her head, then wrote on the pasted skin: 31st of the seventh month.
This was the birthday of Wu Datong’s eldest son, and the precious information Wu Dajing had bought with his life just before dying.
Though after entering the village Wu Jiu’s father had also sworn that it was Wu Liren’s birthday that fell on the thirty-first of the seventh month, he hadn’t been much affected by the ghost then, only scratching, and had not touched its taboo.
Wu Dajing, by contrast, in his panic had also said that Wu Datong’s eldest son was born on the thirty-first of the seventh month, and died horribly at the ghost’s hands.
A ghost’s killing follows a process, and Wu Dajing’s death had been so swift and so grisly that he had surely said something he shouldn’t.
By comparison, Wu Jiu’s father’s memory might have been distorted by the ghost’s rule and wasn’t necessarily reliable.
Wu Dajing’s perception could have been influenced, and he might even have lied, but a ghost doesn’t lie, and a ghost’s rule is the simplest, truest verification.
So Zhao Fusheng boldly concluded: Wu Datong’s eldest son was born on the thirty-first of the seventh month!
She thought, then recalled the father-and-son argument Wu Dajing had before his death, and added before the date: Year 2051 of the Great Han.
As soon as these characters landed, shadows gathered in the room.
The two oil lamps were suddenly suppressed, their flames shrinking by half, and Zhao Fusheng’s vision went dark.
In the darkness the ghost’s aura appeared, and her body itched to the bone.
The ghost had come!
Zhao Fusheng had guessed the ghost’s rule early, and wasn’t greatly flustered. The Goutou Village ghost was different from the Beggars’ Alley ghost, and couldn’t kill her in one blow. As long as it couldn’t kill her, she still had a chance.
The thought barely landed before she began scratching her body frantically, sending great quantities of fine skin flakes flying, but she kept a thread of reason, did not scratch wildly, forced down the itching, and held the skin she scratched off in her hand, trying not to tear it.
A slippery liquid dripped down from her nostrils.
Her nose itched to the bone too. Zhao Fusheng reached to scratch the tip of her nose and tore off another large piece of skin.
Her vision was blurry and she moved on instinct alone, hand trembling toward the case scroll on the table.
But in her flailing something was knocked over and hot oil splashed onto her hand, scalding her and giving her a moment of clarity.
In that moment of clarity, by the faint light she saw an overturned oil lamp, its wick fallen onto the tabletop, the oil spilling onto the case scroll.
A bean-sized flame was beginning to burn fiercely along the spreading hot oil. She snatched up the scroll and slapped on several pieces of skin she had torn off earlier.
As soon as the skin touched, something strange happened.
All the skin on the case scroll seemed influenced by a mysterious force. Like a reviving ghost, the scabs first stretched wildly and spread past the size of the scroll’s page, then began to shrink back, down to pieces as large as longans and as small as soybeans.
These skin fragments joined side by side and formed an incomplete paper figurine silhouette!
An ominous, uncanny aura clung to the figurine, inspiring dread.
But Zhao Fusheng had no time to notice any of this.
Her body itched to the bone, and ordinary scratching couldn’t relieve it. The itch was like a seed lodged between her bones.
The seed drank her blood, burst through, sprouted, and its leaves pressed against her bones, spreading wildly.
Pain and itch together tortured her. She wished she could tear the sprout out by the root.
Her body convulsed and curled up, bumping against the wooden table with a clatter, and the case scroll fell to the ground without her noticing.
But the torment didn’t last long. As the incomplete paper figurine took shape on the scroll, the bone-deep itch on Zhao Fusheng’s body stopped.
She stopped scratching and slumped over the table, drenched in sweat.
The chilling ghost aura in the room receded. As the uncanny presence faded, the suppressed lamp flames flared back with a whoosh, humming as they burned.
All was calm, as if nothing had happened.
Zhao Fusheng blinked her sore eyes, a puzzled look on her face.
But the next moment she saw the burning tabletop.
Putting out a fire now wouldn’t be easy.
Fortunately the flame was small. Zhao Fusheng pinched her sleeve and pressed it onto the fire.
With a hiss the flame went out. Lamp oil had soaked into her sleeve and tiny flames clung to it, so she swung her arm and rolled it until they were all smothered.
Then she reached out to right the fallen lamp, lifted the wick from the oil, and threw it back into the lamp.
Only after all this did she notice the tabletop was covered in splattered blood.
What had happened here a moment ago? Why was she sitting at the table, and why was there so much blood on it?
“Blood?”
Her voice was hoarse, and she tasted the thick tang of blood in her mouth.
Alarmed, she instinctively reached up and touched her face.
At her chin and between her upper lip and nose, her hand came away slick. A suspicion formed, and she held up her hand, and sure enough, her fingers were smeared with blood!
Just then someone knocked on the door.
“My lord, are you all right?”
Wu Liyou’s slightly anxious voice came through.
“Do you need me to send someone in to attend you?”
Zhao Fusheng was still stunned at having inexplicably started bleeding, and her memory of the moments before seemed gone.
She remembered only that she had gone with the others to Wu Liren’s house, taken a quilt, torn a human-skin sheet out of the quilt, and then that Wu Liyou had come in, ground the ink, and left.
After that, she had no memory at all!
