IBGSW Chapter 78
Memory Returns
Everyone’s perception had been warped, and even Zhang Chuanshi, hearing her, nodded. “That’s right. That’s the number Wu Dajing said last night.”
The others chimed in.
Zhao Fusheng wasn’t flustered. She was gambling.
“No.”
She shook her head firmly. “That’s not what Wu Dajing said.”
“Not what he said?” Wu Shaochun and the others were confused.
At last night’s dinner, Wu Liyou, Wu Shaochun, Zhang Chuanshi and others had all been present and clearly heard Wu Dajing say the village had “nineteen households and seventy-nine people.”
Zhang Chuanshi was quick-witted. Seeing everyone hesitate, he at once shouted, “Right! The lord is right!”
He supported anything Zhao Fusheng said without condition, and even though what she said contradicted his memory, he shouted, “That’s not the number Wu Dajing gave last night. Our lord is a big figure at the Demon-Suppression Bureau. Would she lie to you country folk?”
Then he looked at Zhao Fusheng ingratiatingly. “My lord, am I right?”
“Correct!”
Zhao Fusheng gave him a satisfied look and nodded. “Wu Dajing didn’t say that last night. He said Goutou Village has twenty-one households and one hundred twenty-six people in all. Now only nineteen households have come, seventy-nine villagers. Who else is hiding at home and hasn’t shown up?”
Having lost her memory repeatedly, she had forgotten some of the past, but she had realized this must be the ghost’s killing rule.
Attack people’s perception and muddle their memory.
But she wanted to try: if a ghost could muddle people’s memory, could she reverse the ghost’s rule and twist their perception?
She didn’t know why the ghost affected people’s memories, but if she forcibly twisted the villagers’ perception, then would the ghost’s rule, because the villagers’ perception had been altered, be forced to yield and produce other changes to patch the gaps in perception?
With this in mind, she looked at Zhang Chuanshi. “Before I came, I looked at the household records. Goutou Village really does have twenty-one households and one hundred twenty-six people, as Wu Dajing said.”
Then she added, “When I searched Wu Liren’s house yesterday, I also found the village register. The recorded number is exactly that.”
In her memory, apart from finding a human-skin quilt tucked in the bedding, she had found nothing else at Wu Liren’s house.
But as she spoke with such certainty, her memory changed again, especially after Zhang Chuanshi, without hesitation, chimed in: “Right, the lord’s right.”
Then all the uncanny memories appeared in her sea of consciousness once more.
Scenes of her reading Goutou Village’s household records at the bureau, and finding the village’s population records after arriving at Wu Liren’s house, replayed one by one like scenes on a spinning lantern in her mind.
Just as she’d thought!
The ghost’s rule interfered with people’s perception and memory, but a ghost was a dead thing, with no thought, and its rule could likewise be used by the living.
When a person’s will was firm and they had guarded against the ghost, this interference with awareness could also be changed.
Once everyone was affected, the ghost’s rule would automatically repair the “error,” and Zhao Fusheng could catch more holes in the ghost and exploit them.
“That seems right...”
The villagers were simple-minded and manipulated by the ghost’s rule. Zhao Fusheng was a figure of authority, and once they believed her, they never doubted again.
“Some people really haven’t come.”
Wu Shaochun nodded too.
Just then, footsteps sounded outside.
Most terrifying of all, sounds also came from the side rooms in the previously quiet Wu Liren mansion.
Cough, cough, cough. A cough came from a side room at the inner side of the house. At the sound, everyone was stunned.
But the next moment the villagers’ perception was twisted and altered, and everyone’s memory changed again.
Hearing the cough, Zhao Fusheng tensed.
What had she come to Goutou Village for?
For Wu Liren’s family’s disappearance. Wu Liren’s family had vanished.
Zhang Chuanshi was alarmed for a moment too. He instinctively turned back to look at Zhao Fusheng, and then his expression began to change.
Fear first appeared in his eyes, then confusion, and a while later complaint and impatience. “What’s with Wu Liren? We came to handle a case for the people of Goutou Village, and Wu Liren, as village chief, knew you wanted the whole village here, yet he insisted on being the last to appear.”
Zhang Chuanshi didn’t even realize he’d been affected by the ghost’s rule, his memory twisted in an instant.
He hadn’t forgotten he’d come to Goutou Village to handle a ghost case, but he’d forgotten the case’s details, and couldn’t even recall that Wu Liren’s family had long since vanished.
In that instant the villagers too seemed to have forgotten Wu Liren’s disappearance, and complained in displeasure. “I think the Wu Liren family is too high and mighty. They don’t take the bureau’s orders seriously.”
Zhao Fusheng blinked.
At the instant her memory warped, she realized something was off.
The ghost’s rule had taken effect again. She felt that some perception had been changed, but suddenly she couldn’t recall what.
The doors of the side rooms on both sides opened, and Wu family members filed out.
From the large main room in the middle, a plump, fair-skinned middle-aged man hurried out in a flustered rush, buttoning his clothes and shouting as he ran. “I’m late, I’m late, forgive me, my lord.”
Then he called into the room, “Wife, hurry up.”
“Coming, coming,” a woman answered impatiently.
Then the side rooms outside opened one after another, and countless unfamiliar faces came out of them.
“Shaoguang.”
Wu Shaochun saw a young man and suddenly beckoned. “Come sit next to me.”
The man forced a smile, shook his head woodenly at him, and walked toward Wu Liren.
All the villagers moved aside in tacit understanding.
Wu Liren, just out of the side room, sat in the center, and the other Wu offspring gathered around him one after another.
The coughing inside the house grew louder. Before long the side room’s door was pulled open, and an old man with a grim look and a bluish-pale face, a coat draped over his shoulders, appeared before everyone.
Wu Liren called, “Father, take it slow.”
Zhao Fusheng’s back prickled and she turned her head instinctively.
And in the instant she turned, the ghost’s rule took effect again, and her memory of “Wu Datong’s death” was twisted, and all memories related to “news of Wu Datong’s death” were erased together.
Wu Liren’s children stepped forward to support the old man to a seat.
Then outside the gate, at some point, faint mist began to appear.
The mist soon spread over the whole Wu mansion, and outside the gate shadows arrived one after another.
First came a bent-backed, barefoot man.
His cheeks were pale, one shoulder was badly higher than the other, and his face was honest. Seeing him, Wu Liyou blurted, “Ligong, where did you go? Why are you only getting here now?”
The newcomer was Wu Ligong.
He hadn’t been there before, and everyone’s memory of him seemed to have vanished, with not a trace of recollection. But now his arrival was met with warmth by everyone, and in this reversal nobody found anything strange.
Next to arrive was an elderly woman, thin, white-streaked hair coiled behind her head, with two strands that hadn’t been tucked in hanging down on both sides of her face.
“Mother!”
Seeing her, Wu Shaochun cried out. “Why are you only getting here now?”
He seemed to finally remember he had a mother, and hurried forward to support her.
“...”
Zhao Fusheng looked at the absurd and terrifying scene before her and thought it truly strange.
She sensed vaguely that the villagers were being manipulated by some force, but at the same time her memory and perception were disturbed again, and the “oddities” that hadn’t made sense before were erased one by one.
The latecomer “villagers” sat down one by one, welcomed by everyone.
Wu Dajing’s old mother was the last to arrive, coughing, covering her nose with a handkerchief, and was helped to her seat by her sons and grandsons.
“Old Zhang, count again,” Zhao Fusheng called.
Zhang Chuanshi nodded and said, “By household. Report to me first.”
The people counted off at his request.
After about seven minutes, the noisy scene quieted again and the numbers were reported. Zhang Chuanshi checked three times and finally told Zhao Fusheng, “My lord, Goutou Village should have twenty-one households, and twenty-one households have arrived. The register records one hundred twenty-six people, and one hundred twenty-six have actually come.”
He scratched the back of his head. “You were right, my lord. Goutou Village really does have this many people...”
When he finished, even he paused. “Huh, why did I say that...”
Zhao Fusheng ignored him and turned her gaze to the packed courtyard. “I’m here to find out...”
She didn’t finish, and suddenly froze. “What did I come to Goutou Village to do? Why did I come?”
All her memories were jumbled, and the perception in her sea of consciousness was in chaos.
In her dizziness, the blood vessels in her brain throbbed.
She tried her best to recall why she’d come to Goutou Village, but a mysterious force was stopping her. The two forces of consciousness fought, and her nose stung as the smell of blood rushed up.
Two warm streams of blood ran from her nostrils, and the shadow of death fell behind her.
At some point the ghost fog spread in the village, and the malignant ghost’s shadow loomed in and out of view.
Just as Zhao Fusheng was growing groggy, she felt a coldness at her chest.
The pouch holding the Soul-Life Register that she carried suddenly came loose, and the ghost curse, which had been quiet, burst out, dense, terrible ghost language spreading along the register and across her body.
And beneath her figure, the malignant ghost she controlled, which had been held down by her merit after being used twice, seemed to sense something and began to stir toward revival.
The faint, half-visible shadows within the ghost fog gradually seemed to bleed out into thick mist. A shadow appeared, Zhao Fusheng’s face turned snow white, and the nosebleed that had been pouring out instantly stopped.
Her previously muddled mind suddenly became utterly calm.
All emotions were drained away, the feeling left her eyes, and she became like a corpse.
The wavering, muddled memories were pinned in an instant.
Zhao Fusheng had briefly borrowed the malignant ghost’s aura to escape the ghost rule’s control.
But she knew in her heart that this clarity was short-lived.
The master of the ghost servant was far away in the Capital1, and the ghost curse could protect her only for a moment, not forever.
And the malignant ghost she controlled was about to revive; the next time she used it would be when she lost her life.
Using this brief moment of clear thought, Zhao Fusheng ran through the only trump cards she had left.
In her hands she had a ghost arm, a human-skin quilt, and a scroll she’d brought from the bureau.
Thinking of this, she pulled the human-skin quilt from inside her robe, shook it open, and draped it over herself.
She had forgotten how the human-skin quilt came to her, and wasn’t clear why she did this, but she remembered that she’d slept last night covered by this quilt, and doing so must have brought her peace of mind.
After draping the human-skin quilt over herself, she took out the scroll brought from the bureau.
It was a case scroll recording past cases, with a strange case of living people bursting into flame recorded on it, and she didn’t know what bearing it had on the Goutou Village case.
She could no longer recall the Goutou Village case, but Zhao Fusheng believed she would never carry something useless.
Since she’d chosen to keep this scroll with her, she must have had her reasons.
The marks she had once left on it had completely vanished, and with her naked eyes she couldn’t see anything strange about the scroll.
Time was running out.
The malignant ghost she controlled, sensing something, seemed about to revive.
Zhao Fusheng steeled herself, gritted her teeth, flicked her sleeve, and shook out the ghost arm hidden within.
The ghost arm, affected by the atmosphere and surroundings, was also restless. She gripped it and brushed it over the scroll.
There was nothing on the scroll, and the ghost arm had no interest in ordinary objects.
But the moment it touched the scroll, the withered ghost arm suddenly began to lengthen, its shriveled five claws spread, and the human-skin paper it had been clutching fell silently.
The Beggar Ghost’s rule activated at that moment: whenever it reached out, no one, human or ghost, could refuse its demand.
The ghost hand tore through the void.
A malignant ghost can handle another malignant ghost.
It ignored the ghost’s rule, had no memory or perception, and wasn’t disturbed by it. It pierced the barrier and seized a blood-red paper figurine pieced together from cut paper.
The moment the figurine was caught, it trembled wildly.
In her sea of consciousness, the Investiture of the Gods prompted:
Detected the aura of a Baleful-tier malignant ghost. Capture it?
She ignored the prompt.
Because the instant she saw that shaking figurine, all her disordered perception and memory seemed struck by a violent shock, the lost memories returned to place, and the muddled perception was forcibly corrected one by one.
Magistrate Pang bringing Wu Dajing to report the case, raising the disappearance of Wu Liren’s family in Goutou Village; in telling the case, her realization that Wu Datong had once had an invisible eldest son who could not be mentioned; going to Goutou Village...
Wu Dajing nearly dying on the carriage to the ghost’s rule, narrowly pushed back for the moment by her ghost arm.
Reaching Goutou Village, in conversation Wu Dajing mentioned the birthday of Wu Datong’s eldest son and died horribly at the ghost’s hands; “Wu Dajing” returned; she lost her memory...
All manner of memories battered her sea of consciousness.
Like waking at last from an endlessly looping nightmare.
Zhao Fusheng let out a long sigh. “How perilous.”
