IBGSW Chapter 73
The Dead Return
“You seem a bit tired, my lord. Is it from the journey?”
Wu Liyou had just seen her hang her head and then suddenly snap awake, and asked with concern, “Would you like to rest in the room first?”
Zhao Fusheng shook her head.
She was sure she’d met a ghost.
The Goutou Village case was more complicated and thorny than she’d imagined. Her merit points had dropped inexplicably and were now only six, so something had happened in between and she must have spent them herself.
And worst of all, not a trace of it remained in her mind.
This ghost could control people’s memory and perception, and had wiped out a part of her memory of the ghost.
She frowned and looked at what she held in her hand.
What was this?
It was very thin and slightly transparent, with fine white specks on it, rather like a thin scab that had peeled off after an injury...
Since she had been gripping it in her hand, its importance to her was obvious, and it was likely a clue to this ghost case.
She thought, glanced at the scroll in her other hand, and stuck the scab into the scroll.
She had meant only to keep it as a bookmark, on the principle that clues related to a ghost case shouldn’t be discarded. But the moment the skin stuck to the scroll, it vanished without a trace, as if the entire scroll had swallowed it.
Zhao Fusheng shuddered.
She hurriedly flipped the scroll over and saw that it was entirely ordinary, with nothing strange about it.
It recorded an old Demon-Suppression Bureau case. She had looked at it while at the bureau, and had no idea why she was carrying it, or why she’d brought it to Goutou Village.
Strange things kept happening, but Wu Shaochun, Wu Liyou and the others showed not the slightest oddity.
“Did anyone come by just now? What happened?” she asked.
Wu Liyou and Wu Shaochun exchanged a look, both at a loss, and shook their heads. “No, no...”
Wu Shaochun said, “After we came back from Uncle Liren’s, Uncle Liyou started killing chicken and cooking. You went into the room for a while and came out saying you’d chat with us a bit, and somehow you fell asleep...”
“You must be tired, my lord. Why not go rest in your room? We’ll call you when the food is ready.”
Then Wu Liyou shouted loudly, “Ligong, Ligong! Tell your wife to come right away and cut up this chicken and put it on to cook. Who left it lying here like this...”
When Wu Liyou got this far and saw the cut meat tossed about, he felt a pang.
After he shouted, he sensed something off and froze instinctively. “Huh...”
What he’d said felt vaguely familiar, as if the same thing had happened some time before and he’d shouted the same words.
Zhao Fusheng’s sense of familiarity with this scene was even stronger, but however she racked her brains, she couldn’t think when Wu Liyou had shouted the same thing.
This time no one answered Wu Liyou’s call, and his tone grew irritable. “Ligong...”
Something had happened to Wu Ligong!
The thought had barely formed before her heart chilled.
Wu Liyou hadn’t imagined his brother had met with trouble. He was only angry at calling without an answer. “Father’s out and hasn’t come back, which is one thing, and this brother of mine is no help either. Guests have come to the house, so why’s he running around everywhere?”
As he cursed and grumbled, a woman soon came over and sat down at the chopping board, then started chopping the meat again.
Dinner time was still far off. By now Zhao Fusheng had sensed that something was wrong.
The ghost might be right around them and had already shown itself. Though she couldn’t remember anything about the ghost, she could clearly feel her body growing weak.
She stood up. “I’m going for a walk. I’ll be back later.”
“My lord, it’s dark out...” Wu Liyou hurried to advise. “Walk tomorrow.”
“No.” Zhao Fusheng shook her head and said, “Go on with your work. Don’t mind me.”
Wu Shaochun, holding a chicken, quickly said, “It’s hard walking in the dark. Let me get a torch and walk with you.”
“No need.” Zhao Fusheng shook her head again and called, “Old Zhang! Old Zhang!”
She had sent Zhang Chuanshi away earlier, and the old rascal had gone who knew where.
Another thought crossed her mind: why had she sent Zhang Chuanshi away? What had she said that made him dare hide by himself even with a ghost about?
The memory disorder brought on a terrible headache. At the slightest effort to think, not only her head swelled with pain, her whole body ached.
Fortunately, Zhang Chuanshi’s answering voice came quickly.
He had hidden in the dark, not daring to be too near the others, nor to go too far.
Unfamiliar place, strangers all around, a ghost in the village. He was afraid that if he met a ghost he’d cry out to Heaven and Earth in vain, and die with nobody knowing where.
Hearing Zhao Fusheng’s call, he hurriedly crawled out of a woodpile behind the house. “What is it, my lord?”
“Come out for a walk with me.”
Zhao Fusheng saw that he was a mess.
He had burrowed into some woodpile, and his hair was tangled, with grass leaves stuck all over him. His exposed face and hands had fine cuts from the sharp edges of dry grass.
It was hot, and he had sweated in his hiding place without daring to move, and as sweat ran into the cuts he winced.
At the word “walk,” Zhang Chuanshi at once looked unhappy.
“It’s, it’s dark, and there are ghosts in the village...”
“You’re bold, my lord, but have you thought about whether others dare go out...”
“Stop talking. Take a torch and come with me,” Zhao Fusheng cut him off.
Zhang Chuanshi didn’t dare show his anger and could only curse silently. He took a torch and followed Zhao Fusheng with a tearful face.
The two left Wu Liyou’s gate and walked until they reached an empty spot, where Zhao Fusheng asked, “Where did we leave the carriage when we came?”
Zhang Chuanshi hadn’t expected that her hurry to leave was to ask about the carriage, and looked surprised, but kept walking. “At the time...”
He recalled the scene when they entered the village, which should have been firmly in mind, but his memory suddenly seemed muddled. After a while he said, “There were a lot of people in the village then, all in a mess. Someone suggested leaving the carriage at Wu Lifu’s house near the village entrance, and the horse would be tended there, so there’d be no problem.”
Goutou Village wasn’t big. Most houses were built clustered together inside the village wall, and the village had only one real gate, bolted at night. Even thieves couldn’t easily get in.
“There wasn’t anything important on the carriage. Are you worried?” Zhang Chuanshi asked tentatively.
Zhao Fusheng didn’t answer this and only urged him to hurry.
When they reached Wu Lifu’s house, Wu Lifu’s family had just washed their feet and lain down. At the knocking they were a little angry at first, but hearing Zhang Chuanshi’s voice, the family rushed to get up and open the door.
“The carriage is parked in the back courtyard. My father was afraid of the heavy dew at night, so I put a straw mat over it. Don’t worry, my lord.”
“Don’t panic. I’m just coming to look over the carriage. I seem to have lost something when we rode in the daytime. Go back inside. I’ll sit here a while.”
Zhao Fusheng sent the anxious Wu Lifu family away.
They were uneasy and frightened by her purpose, but dared not contradict her. The family went back to the main hall and sat, glancing this way from time to time.
“My lord...”
Zhang Chuanshi had no idea what she was up to and asked, “What did you lose? Should I help you look?”
Zhao Fusheng’s expression was cold.
Whether it was Zhang Chuanshi’s imagination or not, her face looked ghastly white, her lips had a bluish tinge, and her eyes were eerie, and as he watched, his courage failed and his voice died away.
“Come up with the torch and look in the carriage for...”
She thought of the piece of scab that had vanished into the scroll and tried, “See if there are any fallen skin shavings.”
“What do you want that for?”
Zhang Chuanshi was baffled.
But Zhao Fusheng had handled ghost cases and shown her methods, so he dared not resist. Though puzzled, his body complied readily and he climbed into the carriage, already looking down as he spoke.
He had muttered the remark casually and didn’t expect an answer, but Zhao Fusheng replied, “I suspect the ghost is already following us.”
Her words were a shock. Zhang Chuanshi shuddered and the torch in his hand fell with a clang.
“Don’t set the place on fire,” Zhao Fusheng glanced at him.
Quick of eye and hand, he picked the torch back up, stamped out the scattering sparks with his foot, and said, lips trembling, “Don’t scare me.”
“Someone from Goutou Village went to the city to report a ghost calamity in the village, and that’s why we came here,” Zhao Fusheng said calmly.
Hearing this, Zhang Chuanshi looked at her with a strange look in his eyes.
Zhao Fusheng felt it was strange too.
This conversation with Zhang Chuanshi had a feeling of déjà vu, as if the two of them had discussed the same topic at some other time and place, but neither of them could recall it.
“I asked around. The man who reported the case was Wu Liyou’s father, the village elder, named Wu Dajing. He went into the city three days ago and hasn’t been seen since.”
On the carriage the two looked at each other, and Zhang Chuanshi understood in an instant what she had left unsaid.
Goutou Village was remote, and without someone leading the way there was no chance the two of them could have come here for no reason.
The village elder had gone into the city to report a case. Since they had come, the report had succeeded. So where was the village elder now?
Suppressing her post-amnesia unease, Zhao Fusheng put on a calm face. “We must have come back by the same road, but neither of us can remember traveling with Wu Dajing.”
This was clearly the ghost’s doing.
Even after losing her memory again and again, with her keen instinct she had reasoned out an important truth.
She thought of how she’d suddenly lost consciousness at Wu Liyou’s house and had just as suddenly awakened.
What had happened in between she didn’t know, but Wu Dajing’s strange “disappearance” rang an alarm.
If the ghost could manipulate perception, then during her “amnesia,” had other villagers “disappeared” again without anyone noticing?
The more she thought, the more chilling it was, and with her memory gone she felt even more uneasy. She was impatient to investigate the ghost’s clues again.
After the amnesia, Zhao Fusheng was in a passive position. Not only was her body weak, the disorder in her memory kept her nerves tight.
When she woke, she’d been gripping a piece of scab, and that skin’s eventual vanishing was also bizarre.
Given her character, she liked to keep important things on her. Though she couldn’t remember, she was certain: the scroll held a secret, and the appearance of the scab might also be related to the ghost’s killings this time.
That was why she’d been so keen to return to the carriage and see if she could find an important clue.
People’s sight and memory could be affected, but clues left behind couldn’t be wiped out from nowhere.
If Wu Dajing had traveled with them, he would surely have left marks on the carriage.
It concerned a ghost case and their own lives, so Zhang Chuanshi dared not be careless and immediately began looking all over the carriage.
“Don’t rush.”
Zhao Fusheng called him back calmly and sat down in the spot she had occupied on the way here. “I sat here when we came. If someone traveled with us, with you driving, the person speaking to me must have been sitting to my left or right.”
She had sat in the middle of the carriage, to look out the open door on all sides. Wu Dajing wouldn’t have dared sit level with her and would have taken a lower seat.
“You look left, I’ll look right.”
At her words, Zhang Chuanshi nodded hastily. The two searched along the carriage’s sides, afraid of missing a single clue.
Before long, Zhao Fusheng did find several faint smear marks in the right-hand lower seat.
“Bring the torch over.”
She called calmly.
Zhang Chuanshi’s heart gave a thud, and he turned, trembling.
Under the blazing torchlight, several of Zhao Fusheng’s fingers pressed against one spot of the carriage.
Her fingertips were long and slender, her nails trimmed short, but that wasn’t what drew Zhang Chuanshi’s attention.
Under her fingertips were several dark brown marks, stretching an inch long, slanting upward from bottom to top.
“This looks like blood.”
She leaned in close by the lamplight, and a faint smell of blood hit her nostrils.
That smell could not have come from the marks on the carriage.
Even if the bloody fingerprints on the carriage had been Wu Dajing’s, after many hours of evaporation the smell would have been fainter, not this strong.
The scene of smelling blood seemed more like her body’s instinctive memory triggered by seeing the blood before her.
She thought, pursed her lips, and breathed deeply through her nose. Sure enough, she sensed that the smell of blood came from her own airway.
She seemed to have bled, or perhaps vomited blood.
At the thought, her hair stood on end.
She had vomited blood, and she herself had no memory of it. If the bloody prints hadn’t revived her body’s memory, she’d probably never have noticed.
She steadied herself and pushed down the chill in her heart, then looked again at the bloody streaks.
“There are four.”
Two were deeper, one lighter, and the last was thin, as if a fingertip had incidentally touched and left a streak.
Zhao Fusheng tried sitting on the right-hand bench, reached back with a hand to the carriage wall, and casually swept it upward.
Zhang Chuanshi’s eyes lit up. “That’s exactly how it looks.”
That is, someone had sat here, perhaps hurt somewhere and bleeding, wiping it with a hand, and the blood had ended up smeared on the carriage.
And that person was...
“Wu Dajing.”
“Wu Dajing!”
The two said it with one voice.
The instant they said the name, both of their faces turned ugly.
“My lord, is Wu Dajing dead?”
Zhang Chuanshi asked uneasily. He seemed to think of something and shuddered twice. “Did he die on the carriage, right in front of us, and we...”
Thinking it that way was terrifying.
The ghost might have killed someone right in front of them, and neither had any memory of it.
Sometimes seeing with your own eyes was better; pure imagination could scare you to death.
Before Zhao Fusheng could speak, she suddenly noticed that the several bloody streaks inside the carriage were gradually fading, as if about to vanish.
“Old Zhang...” The sight was truly chilling, and she raised her voice.
Before Zhang Chuanshi could speak, there was a sudden banging at the outer gate.
“Who is it!”
Wu Lifu, woken in the main hall by the two’s noise, draped a coat over his shoulders and bellowed toward the outside in a bad temper.
Goutou Village was remote, and strangers rarely came. Occasionally outsiders asked to stay the night, but it didn't happened even a few times a year.
On an ordinary night it would have been fine, but tonight a lord of the Demon-Suppression Bureau was in their house, and the Wu Lifu family were already uneasy, so with someone knocking at night his tone was unfriendly.
When he finished asking, the knocking outside paused.
After a while a voice, unfamiliar yet with a strange sense of familiarity, an old man’s voice, rang out. “It’s me.” He spoke slowly, as if his mouth were full of sand, a little muffled, and finally coughed lightly twice and said, “Wu Dajing.”
The words made Zhao Fusheng and Zhang Chuanshi, on the carriage, freeze where they stood.
