IBGSW Chapter 92
Disaster-Tier Ghost Calamity
What kind of answer was that? Liu Yizhen was momentarily speechless.
Zhao Fusheng gave a wry smile.
"I can't tell you the details, but I think the problem is very serious."
It involved the Shikong1 Golden Bell on the Ghost Carriage.
She had stolen the bell with the ghost arm, and the malignant ghost driving the carriage relied on that bell to find its way. Without it, the carriage that had run wild through Wan'an County without restraint had, for the time being, stalled—most likely stuck in the Liu Clan Ancestral Hall of forty years ago, frozen on the day of Liu Huacheng's sixtieth birthday.
Looking on the bright side, Zhao Fusheng had thoroughly resolved one ghost case: the Ghost Carriage case shouldn't recur for the time being, and the innocent people of Wan'an County were safe, for now.
Unfortunately: the Confucian temple was in danger.
The Headless Ghost and Liu Huacheng had been held in relative balance, but with the carriage parked there, the slightest disturbance might provoke both ghosts into reviving at once.
Neither of those two was a soft peach. If they formed a ghost calamity, it would be extremely hard to handle.
At that thought, Zhao Fusheng's face twisted into a mask of pain.
Another matter occurred to her—at the instant the driver flung her off, she had seen the ghost name register lying on its lap, with a name written on it: Zheng He.
Zheng He
She had never heard the name before, but the one person with a surname Zheng she was most familiar with right now was…
She suddenly asked:
"What's the name of Deputy Commander Zheng of Baozhi County?"
Her mind leapt wildly from one thing to another.
Liu Yizhen couldn't figure out where she was going, but since she asked, he answered:
"Zheng He."
It was him after all!
Zhao Fusheng bared her teeth, sucked in a breath, and sighed:
"I really owe him an apology."
The carriage had lost its bell, but the driving ghost still had two great malevolent objects.
Without the bell to lock onto targets, it still had the ghost name register.
If it went on to take people from the register's list, Deputy Commander Zheng might well be the Ghost Carriage's next unlucky catch.
But the silver lining: with the bell lifted by her, the carriage had lost its bearings. Even if it kept blundering around, without the guiding bell it would not be easy to pinpoint Deputy Commander Zheng in the short term—if he was lucky enough—
Luckily, Deputy Commander Zheng’s malignant ghost was about to revive; with any luck he would die before the carriage ever found him.
Zhao Fusheng sincerely hoped:
"I hope his luck holds."
"……"
Liu Yizhen listened to her sigh a couple of times, utterly out of the blue. All he could vaguely guess was that the ghost case she'd gone through last night had something to do with Deputy Commander Zheng.
He couldn't tell how the two were connected, but he wasn't very curious by nature, and he knew ghost cases were matters of life and death, so he didn't ask.
"Forget it. He'll have to fend for himself."
Zhao Fusheng shook her head and asked Liu Yizhen:
"Any food? I'm hungry."
"……"
Liu Yizhen couldn't quite keep up with her jumps in thought, but upon hearing this he shook his head anyway:
"Not cooked yet."
"Not cooked?" Zhao Fusheng nodded at him suddenly.
"In that case, let's go have soup at Meng Po's stall. I have something to ask you anyway. We can talk on the way."
Liu Yizhen hesitated.
For some reason he felt a faint unease, and on guard, he stayed where he was.
"Come on."
Seeing him not move, Zhao Fusheng coaxed, "My treat!"
Since they'd met, she hadn't been the ruthless, scheming type. They were each constrained by the other, both carefully feeling out a way to coexist in peace.
She was extending goodwill now, only inviting him for soup at a place not far away, with Meng Po, an acquaintance, there. It should be fine.
His unease was probably an illusion.
With that thought, Liu Yizhen nodded.
The conversation had cost them some time, and by the time they left Beggars' Alley it was already getting light.
Meng Po's stall was already set up, with a few people drinking soup.
When they saw Zhao Fusheng arrive, they wolfed down the soup in their bowls, dropped two big coins on the table, and without even wiping their mouths got up and hurried to greet her:
"Lord Zhao, good morning!"
They were runners from the yamen.
Magistrate Pang had carried out Zhao Fusheng's arrangements to the letter. From the moment she'd said to keep strict watch around the Confucian temple and set up patrols, Magistrate Pang had acted at once, treating it as the county's top priority.
Zhao Fusheng nodded to them.
The runners, thrilled at her response, then turned fearful of her status as a ghost-controller and quickly slipped away.
The tables where people had just sat were quickly deserted. When Meng Po, busy at the stove, turned and saw Zhao Fusheng, her face showed relief: "Lord Zhao is here."
Zhao Fusheng nodded and said:
"Two bowls of soup. I'm starving."
Meng Po answered, ladled two bowls and set them on the table. She didn't hurry off. Instead she wiped her hands on her apron and said, looking at her:
"Last night I saw you get into a carriage. I called to you several times and you didn't answer, and I was worried something had happened to you—"
Liu Yizhen, who'd just lifted his bowl and taken a sip, caught this sentence completely off guard and choked, soup spraying out:
"Pfft!!!"
Soup mixed with spittle sprayed all over the table. Meng Po froze.
"Ew—"
Disgust crossed Zhao Fusheng's face. She complained:
"You're revolting."
Liu Yizhen glared at her.
He really shouldn't have left the Confucian temple so easily to deal with Zhao Fusheng.
This woman was nothing but trouble. He should have trusted his instincts!
She'd run into a thorny ghost case last night, and now Meng Po was mentioning a "carriage"—how could Liu Yizhen not guess that this case had to do with the carriage!
There weren't many carriage-related ghost cases. His face turned ugly:
"You lied to me!"
Anger rose in Liu Yizhen and he lost his usual calm composure.
His face went from livid to pale. After a while he set his bowl down heavily on the table, looking grave.
"Yizhen—" Zhao Fusheng called earnestly.
"Why such harsh words? How is that lying?" She put on an innocent look:
"I only invited you for soup. I never said anything."
"……"
Seeing the two, who'd been getting along peacefully, suddenly start quarreling right after she spoke, Meng Po didn't know whether she'd said the wrong thing and caused a rift, and looked at a loss.
"I-I'm sorry, was it me that—"
"It's nothing to do with you."
However angry he was, Liu Yizhen could tell right from wrong. He sighed and glanced at Zhao Fusheng:
"She set me up."
"I did not." Zhao Fusheng refused to take the blame.
After denying it, she signaled with her eyes for Liu Yizhen to calm down, then turned to Meng Po:
"You saw me get on the carriage last night?"
As she asked, her mind raced.
Meng Po nodded and wiped her hands again, uneasily:
"It was a black carriage with no driver. It looked wrong to me, and it didn't look like the one the Demon-Suppression Bureau used to bring you here in the morning, so I called to you a few times—"
As she spoke, she stole a glance at Liu Yizhen, afraid he'd flare up again.
Liu Yizhen's face was exceptionally grave, fists clenched, yet he said nothing, wearing the look of someone resigned and swallowing his anger.
"But you seemed not to hear me, and stumbled right up onto it," Meng Po said. Not knowing what she'd said wrong, she hurriedly finished:
"I ran after it a couple of steps, but the carriage left and vanished in the blink of an eye. I thought I'd seen wrong."
"Not long after, I saw the bureau's carriage come to fetch you, and I was still worried."
She'd packed up and gone home, and hadn't slept much all night.
"Thank goodness I saw you come back this morning. Last night I must have been overthinking," said Meng Po.
Zhao Fusheng nodded with a smile.
The dangers of last night couldn't be described in a few words, but she didn't say much of it to Meng Po, only:
"It's fine. Last night I ran into someone I knew and got on the carriage to have a few words."
Liu Yizhen glared at her helplessly. After Zhao Fusheng exchanged a few idle words with Meng Po, the old woman turned to clear dirty bowls from other tables.
When she'd gone, anger showed on Liu Yizhen's face:
"You've done me in!"
"I haven't." Zhao Fusheng shook her head.
Liu Yizhen said:
"You met the Ghost Carriage last night." He said it flatly:
"And this can't be mentioned to outsiders, or whoever hears it will be marked by the malignant ghost’s rules."
When they'd met again in Beggars' Alley, Zhao Fusheng had deliberately said she couldn't tell him. That act had thrown him off, making him believe she had no intention of dragging him into this ghost calamity, so he'd relaxed his guard around her and been ambushed.
"Yes."
Zhao Fusheng nodded, beaming:
"But I wasn't the one who brought up the case. It's all coincidence."
"Coincidence my—"
Liu Yizhen wanted to swear, but his manners were decent; when the words reached his mouth, he swallowed the last one by force and said instead:
"You pulled me out and said you had something to ask me. You meant to discuss this case with me from the start."
He glared at Zhao Fusheng darkly.
Meng Po watched the two with worry, stealing glances. The soup Liu Yizhen had sprayed over the table hadn't been cleared yet, and the two freshly cooked bowls of millet and vegetable soup sat on it, steam carrying the scent of food curling upward.
The air between Liu Yizhen and Zhao Fusheng was taut.
After a while, Zhao Fusheng suddenly burst out laughing:
"Pfft."
"……"
Liu Yizhen stared at her numbly.
After a while, even he found it a bit ironic. He couldn't help twitching the corner of his mouth and shook his head.
"Figured it out?"
Zhao Fusheng raised an eyebrow.
Liu Yizhen regained his composure and nodded:
"You have your reasons for doing this. I just have to accept it and face reality."
Back in Beggars' Alley, he'd known the Beggar Ghost's killing rule and still chosen to ladle out a bowl of porridge and hand it to her.
Now it was merely the wheel of fortune turning: when she needed his help, she'd dragged him in.
Back then Zhao Fusheng had been set up and said nothing; she had been biding her time, and now she was paying him back.
The world was unsettled.
Born in a world ruled by malignant ghosts, neither of them had anywhere absolutely safe to begin with.
Liu Yizhen himself lived in the Confucian temple, sharing quarters with three ghosts. That was dangerous enough.
A dog with plenty of fleas doesn’t fear more bites, and a man deep in debt stops worrying!
At that thought, he simply asked outright:
"What do you want me to do?"
"Don't make it sound so ugly." Zhao Fusheng shook her head:
"Truth is, this has to do with you too. Even if I didn't warn you, you couldn't have escaped it."
Her words made Liu Yizhen freeze.
"What do you mean?" Though he asked, his mind had already begun recalling anything involving ghosts and carriages.
The clue Zhao Fusheng had given was clear. A past conversation between them flashed through his mind, and an old case rose up:
"Decades ago, something my grandfather handled—"
His pupils contracted, and he said in a shocked voice:
"The ghost calamity in the Capital caused by the Headless Ghost case, the ghost-controlling Gold General who died—"
"Exactly."
Zhao Fusheng nodded.
"When you mentioned the Capital Ghost Case, you said the Headless Ghost's revival caused the death of a Gold General in the Imperial Capital."
When Liu Yizhen mentioned that general, he'd added in passing: the ghost the general controlled possessed a great malevolent object that seemed to command either a boat or a carriage.
At the time Zhao Fusheng hadn't connected that general with the Ghost Carriage case. But after escaping the carriage last night, having watched a malignant ghost drive it with her own eyes, she suspected that this carriage was the very ghost and Ghost Carriage once commanded by the Capital Demon-Suppression Bureau's Gold General.
"But—" The news shook Liu Yizhen's understanding, and for a moment he was lost for words:
"Do you have proof?"
"No."
Zhao Fusheng shook her head:
"But it's a carriage driven by a ghost!" she said.
The Great Han was now overrun by malignant ghosts, and there were certainly plenty of great malevolent objects, but few that were in a malignant ghost's hands and were vehicles.
Liu Yizhen couldn't argue.
Zhao Fusheng went on:
"The ghost has distinctive features: a green robe, jade-buckled gold belt."
But the Gold General had been dead several decades, and Liu Yizhen didn't know what he'd looked like. Zhao Fusheng, newly reborn in the Great Han, though she was now a member of the Demon-Suppression Bureau, was only a temporary appointee and didn't know the bureau's rules well; she still depended on Fan Bisi's guidance for everything.
"We can find out later if we ever get to the Capital. What matters most is that my malignant ghost has reached Baleful-tier."
The moment she said this, Liu Yizhen's expression changed.
If the anger he'd shown earlier, on learning he'd been pulled into a bizarre ghost case, had been partly an act, then his astonishment now was far more genuine.
Though he tried to control it, the muscles of his face still twitched for a moment.
"But once I boarded, the Ghost Carriage completely suppressed it."
Hearing this, Liu Yizhen grew much more serious:
"To fully suppress a Baleful-tier malignant ghost, that carriage's power is at least Calamity-tier—" His eyelid twitched, and he added expressionlessly:
"Possibly even—"
He left the rest unsaid.
Zhao Fusheng nodded and finished it for him:
"Disaster-tier."
The Ghost Carriage together with the malignant ghost driving it—combined, the terror could even exceed Disaster-tier.
That fit the Gold General's standing back then.
The Great Han court had gathered the strongest ghost-controllers in the world. To be named a Gold General in the Capital, that general must have controlled a ghost entity of at least Calamity-tier, possibly Disaster-tier.
Of course, Zhao Fusheng said this because she had dealt with the malignant ghost that drove the carriage.
That ghost was well-off: a Golden Bell, a ghost name register, and also a horse and a carriage.
Only when all four pieces were gathered did they form a one-of-a-kind great malevolent object.
So Zhao Fusheng was certain this carriage was more than Calamity-tier; counting the malignant ghost itself, it could surely be rated a Disaster-tier ghost calamity.
"……"
Liu Yizhen stared, dumbfounded, and after a long while let out a long breath:
"No wonder you guessed they were the same case."
"And more than that, the carriage has entered the Liu Clan's Ancestral Hall."
She said it lightly.
