IBGSW Chapter 76
The Last Night
When Zhang Chuanshi saw the empty bed, he let out a long breath. “That ghost is finally gone.”
Zhao Fusheng gazed at the empty bed, thoughtful. “Whether we really saw Wu Dajing and traveled with him is hard to say.”
“...” Zhang Chuanshi didn’t dare think about what she meant and asked instead, “My lord, what do we do now...”
“Go back to Wu Liyou’s first. Having come this far, I have a rough idea.”
Though she’d lost her memory repeatedly, by guesswork and speculation Zhao Fusheng had grasped some clues. She smiled. “We’ve been hungry all day. As you said, we should have a decent meal first, then a good sleep. Tomorrow we’ll gather the villagers, and the problem should be solved.”
Hearing this, Zhang Chuanshi was overjoyed. “You have a lead, my lord?”
“A little.” She nodded.
Zhang Chuanshi breathed out. “You’ve thought of a way to drive off the ghost?”
“Not that.” Zhao Fusheng smiled. “I do have some leads, but I’m not at all sure I can drive the ghost off.”
“Then you...” Zhang Chuanshi didn’t understand, and Zhao Fusheng said, “What I mean is, our time is short. If we can’t solve the ghost case tomorrow, we might be the ones the ghost solves.”
Goutou Village now had ghost fog, and this case’s ghost rule was exceedingly fierce.
Zhao Fusheng had not only forgotten the clues about the ghost, she might have been harmed by it and not remembered at all.
The situation was extremely dangerous and couldn’t be delayed any longer.
“...”
Zhang Chuanshi couldn’t appreciate her dry humor.
He looked aghast and was about to speak, but Zhao Fusheng urged, “All right, hurry. It’s dark. Let’s go back early, eat, and wash up.”
With that she turned and left.
Once she was gone, Zhang Chuanshi was left standing alone.
Though the torch was lit, this room had been the dwelling of the vanished Wu Liren, and Wu Dajing had come straight into it without a word and lain down on Wu Liren’s bed, a scene that looked uncanny from any angle.
Zhang Chuanshi stood stiffly for a while and was soon surrounded by an invisible dread.
He shivered. How could he stay any longer? He shouted, “Wait for me, my lord.”
When the two came out, the other villagers were still putting things back in place.
They didn’t know there was a ghost in the village, nor that Wu Dajing, who had met with trouble, had just gone back into this house, so they weren’t afraid, and some even greeted Zhang Chuanshi warmly when he burst out running.
Zhang Chuanshi ignored these villagers completely and caught up with Zhao Fusheng in three strides.
The two left Wu Liren’s house, walked for about seven minutes,1 and returned to Wu Liyou’s courtyard.
Before they even reached the door, they could hear the sound of chatter and laughter coming from the courtyard. It was loud, but in the rather cold, quiet night it carried a certain human warmth that eased Zhang Chuanshi’s taut nerves, so badly frightened tonight.
Hoo...
He breathed out unobtrusively and then caught the smell of food in the air.
As Zhao Fusheng had said, since the two had come this far and his name was on the Soul-Life Register so he couldn’t escape anyway, he might as well enjoy the food first and rest well for a night and deal with things tomorrow.
The door stood open. Zhao Fusheng walked in front, and as she stepped in, she saw something and paused.
Zhang Chuanshi had been worn out today.
In the daytime he’d reluctantly boarded the carriage to Goutou Village, frightened all the way.
After arriving, he’d gone with Zhao Fusheng to investigate at Wu Liren’s house, then accompanied her out, and even met a ghost...
Now his heart was tired and panicked, and he was exhausted, wishing only to lie down somewhere right away.
Seeing Zhao Fusheng stop at the doorway, he said anxiously, “Why aren’t you going in, my lord? The meal’s cooked, and I’ve been starving...”
Before he finished, as soon as he saw what was in the courtyard, he froze where he stood.
In the yard, Wu Shaochun and Wu Liyou’s sons were busy working around a bonfire with a big pot set over it.
Chicken soup simmered in the pot, the white broth bubbling, and a rich, fatty aroma filled the whole courtyard as the bubbles rolled.
By the fire, Wu Liyou was adding firewood, and beside him, legs spread, sat an old man in a loose blue short jacket.
It was the eighth month and hot, but he seemed cold and held both hands over the fire to warm them.
His cheeks were gaunt and his waist tied with a bright blue sash. Who else could it be but Wu Dajing, who had just mysteriously vanished from Wu Liren’s bed?
“...”
The breath Zhang Chuanshi had finally let out stuck in his chest again.
His breathing suddenly quickened, and he felt thoroughly unwell.
“I knew I never should have joined the bureau...”
He was related to Paperman Zhang and kept corpse slaves in his shop, so he was far bolder than most, yet at the sight of Wu Dajing again he was still frightened out of his wits, even regretting ever getting mixed up with a devil like Zhao Fusheng.
“I, I, I...”
While Zhang Chuanshi was still stuttering “I,” Wu Liyou, talking in the yard, noticed the two returning.
His eyes lit up and he hurriedly stood up. “The two lords are back!”
He said warmly, “It’s a coincidence today. Just after you left, my father came back. So that’s why he said he parted ways with you midway: he went to pay respects to Uncle Datong.”
By the fire, Wu Dajing also stood and smiled guilelessly at Zhao Fusheng and Zhang Chuanshi.
This Wu Dajing had shed the eeriness he had when traveling with Zhao Fusheng and Zhang Chuanshi. It was as though he had forgotten his memories of a moment ago and become a country farmer a little stiff in front of the bureau’s commanding officer.
“This...”
To Zhang Chuanshi, this terrifying scene was nothing less than an asura battlefield. He lost all ability to react and could only turn, his face ashen, to stare at Zhao Fusheng.
Zhao Fusheng had been shaken at first sight of Wu Dajing too.
But she had handled a ghost case, had fought the Beggar Ghost hand to hand at Beggars’ Alley, and moreover controlled a malignant ghost, so she herself stood at death’s edge. She accepted the strange events before her quickly.
She steadied herself and walked calmly into the courtyard. “Wu Datong? Wu Liren’s father?”
“Yes.”
Wu Dajing nodded repeatedly.
As he nodded and bowed respectfully, this Wu Dajing gradually merged with the village elder in Zhao Fusheng’s memory, seeming far more real than the “Wu Dajing” who had knocked at the door earlier.
But this didn’t make Zhao Fusheng relax her guard.
She realized the ghost’s power was advancing: its ability to disturb perception had grown stronger. Perhaps due to the ghost fog, or perhaps all the people, suppressed by the ghost, were losing their independent awareness and being toyed with.
For her, this was not good news.
“I wondered why you suddenly said you had something to do this afternoon and wanted to leave. So you went to pay respects to an old acquaintance. Why, out of the blue, did you think of paying respects to him?”
She deliberately spoke up.
As soon as she said this, a strange memory was again planted in her consciousness out of thin air.
In Zhao Fusheng’s mind rose the scene of Wu Dajing’s sudden look of difficulty in the afternoon, saying he’d remembered something he had to do and wanting to get off and part ways with her.
When she’d asked what it was, he hadn’t said, and afterward he’d only told Zhang Chuanshi the road and left hurriedly.
This memory was far more concrete and detailed than the one at Wu Lifu’s house, but it made Zhao Fusheng’s hair stand on end all the more.
She didn’t even dare think about the memory in her mind.
This false memory was too real, too specific, down to Wu Dajing’s tone and manner in speaking, vivid to every detail.
If Zhao Fusheng’s will hadn’t been firm, and the memory hadn’t appeared so abruptly, nobody would have doubted it was fake.
The Wu family didn’t know what she was thinking, and hearing her question they eagerly chimed in one after another: “My Uncle Datong had a hard life.”
Wu Liyou spoke first. “He died early. Wu Liren was young then, so the funeral was never done on a grand scale.”
Wu Dajing nodded. “It was only at the beginning of last month that Wu Liren hired people to do the rites2 and picked a new resting place for him.”
Then he coughed twice. “I haven’t been well. Maybe it’s age, but I suddenly got nosebleeds, and when Wu Liren held the seventy-first posthumous birthday for his father,3 I didn’t attend.”
As he finished, two streams of black blood suddenly flowed from his nostrils, drenching the whiskers on his upper lip and flowing into his mouth.
Wu Dajing grinned, his lips and teeth all red.
“...”
Zhang Chuanshi’s breath came fast, and he bit his tongue hard so as not to scream.
Wu Dajing wiped it carelessly with a hand and casually smeared it on his trouser leg. “See, bleeding again.”
Zhao Fusheng wasn’t cowed by his terrible appearance.
Her gaze fell on Wu Dajing’s leg.
The village elder wore light gray trousers, and his casual wiping left four blood streaks of varying depth slanting upward on them.
Three were deeper and one was lighter, where the pinky fingertip had touched.
Most importantly, these streaks were identical to the bloodstains she had found on the carriage earlier, which then vanished.
Now Zhao Fusheng could be nearly sure her memory of traveling with Wu Dajing was true, and that the marks on the carriage had been left by this old man.
Something had happened in between that separated them.
Looking at the uncanny events at hand, a bizarre thought surfaced in her mind: Wu Dajing had probably been killed by the ghost’s rule curse, and this might be a replaying of a moment’s memory from when he was alive.
Zhao Fusheng rubbed her arms and, as if possessed, rubbed her nose.
On the carriage earlier she’d also smelled blood in her nasal cavity and throat. Might she, at some moment, have bled uncontrollably like Wu Dajing?
She was thinking when Wu Liyou said, “Please sit inside, my lord. We can talk sitting down. Are you hungry? I’ll have someone wash a bowl for you and ladle some soup.”
Zhao Fusheng put aside her distracting thoughts and nodded.
Wu Liyou hurriedly called for tables to be set up, and several women busily brought the prepared food to the table.
Everyone sat. Zhang Chuanshi stood behind Zhao Fusheng, warily eyeing Wu Dajing, who sat with them.
“When did this Wu Datong you mention die?”
Wu Dajing smiled apologetically. “He had a hard life. He died in the seventh month of year 215 of the Great Han. His son Wu Liren was still small then and couldn’t arrange the funeral. The villagers helped see to the burial.”
Wu Liyou nodded. “Later Wu Liren made good, and on his father’s seventy-first posthumous birthday he made up the funeral from back then, and even treated the villagers to a banquet and hired a spirit-medium who walks between the living and the dead4. It was lively.”
“Pity that not long after, Uncle Liren had his trouble. I suspect it’s because he disturbed the old grave,” put in Wu Shaochun, who sat nearby gnawing on a piece of chicken he’d been given.
Zhao Fusheng nodded.
Then she changed the subject. “By the way, Goutou Village doesn’t look very big. How many people are in the village in all?”
Wu Dajing had thought she would talk about Wu Datong, but she suddenly asked about the village’s population instead.
Wu Liyou and Wu Shaochun looked at each other. Wu Liyou asked cautiously, “Why does the lord ask?”
“It must be related to the case. Just answer. What’s with all the questions?” Zhang Chuanshi, turning fear to anger, scolded Wu Liyou loudly. “Is it you handling the case, or us?”
Scolded, Wu Liyou admitted fault repeatedly, and Wu Dajing said, “Our village has twenty-one households, one hundred twenty-six people altogether, mostly surnamed Wu.”
After that Zhao Fusheng said no more, and the others made small talk to warm the mood. By the end of the meal, Zhao Fusheng had learned a good deal about Goutou Village.
After the meal, as the Wu family cleared the leftovers, Zhao Fusheng suddenly said, “Tomorrow morning, call all the villagers. I’m going to Wu Liren’s house again.”
At her words everyone turned.
Wu Liyou asked, “The whole village?”
“Is there a problem?”
“No.” It was Wu Dajing who spoke, smiling. “It’s the busy farming season and everyone’s in the village. If you summon them, my lord, we can bring them all.”
Hearing him speak, Wu Liyou also hurriedly said, “In that case, Shaochun, you’ll have to run the errand tonight and tell the neighbors.”
“All right.” Wu Shaochun nodded, mouth glistening with grease.
Everyone dispersed one by one. Zhao Fusheng washed up simply and prepared to rest. Zhang Chuanshi, restless, followed at her side, circling her. “My lord, how can you still eat and sleep?”
“Why can’t I eat and sleep?” Goutou Village, though remote, had respectful, hospitable villagers, far better than the conditions when she handled her first case at Beggars’ Alley.
Zhang Chuanshi’s old face wrinkled like a bitter melon, and he complained, “But, but there’s a ghost in this village. Look at that Wu Dajing...”
Thinking of a being like Wu Dajing, who might be human or ghost, his heart quailed.
Zhao Fusheng had eaten at the same table with him and would sleep under the same roof.
If she hadn’t known the truth that would be one thing, but knowing it, how could she sleep?
He asked, miserable, “How sure are you for tomorrow?” Then his eyes flickered, and he looked uneasily at the space behind Zhao Fusheng.
He remembered she was a ghost-controller and guessed she would use the ghost’s power tomorrow to show her might and drive the ghost out of Goutou Village.
Seeing him ill at ease, Zhao Fusheng comforted him. “Rest easy and recover your strength. If things go well, we head back tomorrow, and that’s a full day on the road.”
She didn’t answer his question, but the meaning of her words put his anxious heart fully at rest.
He hadn’t known her long and didn’t quite understand her nature, yet for some reason he trusted what she said utterly.
Since she’d said that if things went well tomorrow she’d take him home, then she wouldn’t treat him as a pawn to send to his death.
Zhang Chuanshi’s eyes grew moist, and he hastily answered, “Thank you, my lord, thank you!”
He clasped his hands and bowed again and again, and after thanking her added, “Tonight I’ll sleep at your door and keep watch for you. If the ghost comes, I... I... I can hold it off!”
The old man feared death and was timid and sly, so his words were only a show of loyalty.
But Zhao Fusheng didn’t expose him, only nodded with a smile.
Zhang Chuanshi hurriedly backed out and even thoughtfully drew the door shut, making some deliberate noise outside to show he was right there.
Once he was gone, the smile left Zhao Fusheng’s face.
The ghost in Goutou Village probably wasn’t Wu Dajing. It was very likely following right beside her, waiting for its chance.
