Chapter Eighty-Nine: Boarding the Ghost Cart
The young girl in the heavy fur-lined cloak, her face half hidden, lifted her eyes shyly.
She had cut bangs to veil a pair of large, watery eyes.
At that moment she peered through the gap in her fringe at Zhaofu Sheng, only to find that Zhaofu Sheng was looking at her as well. Their gazes met, and the girl gave a start, hastily turning her face away.
The woman seated diagonally opposite Zhaofu Sheng saw this and smiled with pursed lips.
“You need not guess. We do not know one another,” she said. “It is like—”
As she spoke, she turned as though to look at the broad-shouldered man in the blue robe, but her body remained seated and did not move with her head, so the turn revealed only the person beside her. She did not actually see the broad-shouldered man’s face.
Yet because Zhaofu Sheng faced her obliquely, she could tell that the woman had meant to look at the man.
As she turned, a look of fear spread across her face.
“Like that gentleman said, we came to ride this carriage by fate alone.”
The broad-shouldered man in the blue robe laughed.
“Since none of us knew one another before, why not introduce ourselves? What do you say?”
“All right.”
The others all nodded in unison at his words.
“...”
The scene before her was truly bizarre.
At first, when Zhaofu Sheng saw these people talking and laughing, she had indeed found the carriage and the man in blue odd, but she had not leaped to the conclusion that they were ghosts. She had only guessed that there were other spirit-bearers hidden in Wan'an County.
She had recently handled two ghost cases and risen to some renown; perhaps that had drawn the attention of some lurking figure, who now meant to give her a warning.
But when she saw them all nod together, a chill rose from the depths of her bones and shattered her former guess at once.
Only then did she realize that she might have run into a far greater trouble. The people in this carriage might not be human at all, and she may well have fallen into a situation akin to the one she had once faced in Dog Head Village, when her memory had been tampered with by a substitute ghost.
“Let us begin with the newcomer.”
The broad-shouldered man’s tone was casual, yet it carried a faint authority that brooked no refusal.
As soon as he spoke, the others on the carriage turned toward her with smiles.
A dozen pairs of eyes fell on Zhaofu Sheng at once, and the pressure multiplied in an instant.
She was already wary of the carriage; how could she dare truly reveal her identity?
Even with all those gazes upon her, she still wanted to refuse.
But then the dreadful thing happened again.
Her body seemed to defy her will. Zhaofu Sheng clearly felt the corners of her mouth lifting of their own accord.
Before the broad-shouldered man in blue had even finished naming her, and under the scrutiny of the others, pride and delight welled up in her heart; she even cleared her throat before speaking.
“Ahem.”
“...”
Damn it.
Zhaofu Sheng racked her mind desperately over everything that had happened that day.
From the broad-shouldered man’s words, it was clear that this carriage had come for her, but she had no idea how she had provoked such a sinister thing.
She had not been reborn long. The original owner’s identity had been simple, and before she had dealings with the Fan brothers, she had had no entanglement with any ghostly affair.
After her rebirth, she had handled the haunting in Beggar’s Alley and then remained within the Demon-Suppressing Office, never going out, until the case in Dog Head Village fell into her hands and she stepped beyond the office gates once more.
After resolving that matter, she had gone today to the Scholar Temple, spoken with Liu Yizhen, and then come to Granny Meng’s stall. In all that time, she had never dealt with anyone else.
It could be said that Zhaofu Sheng’s life was simple, her movements easy to trace. By reason, she should have had nothing to do with such an uncanny event.
She drew a deep breath, still desperately searching for clues connected to the broad-shouldered man in blue and the driverless carriage, when she heard herself say:
“I was originally born in Nine Gates Village, my family—”
“—and now serve as a chief officer in Wan'an County’s Demon-Suppressing Office, commanding a vengeful ghost, and am already approaching the edge of resurgence—”
She gave nothing away at all.
Everything that should have been said, and everything that should not, came pouring out of her like beans from a split bamboo tube.
The broad-shouldered man somehow produced a booklet from nowhere and began writing in it. The sight made Zhaofu Sheng’s scalp prickle, and she thought:
My name is already entered in the Soul Register, and again in the roster at the Scholar Temple. Now, by the looks of it, it will be written a third time upon this strange carriage.
If this carriage is also tied to a ghost, then by that reckoning I have already been recorded by three ghostly powers.
“No wonder one should not be too popular...” she sighed.
Even that sigh came from her own mouth. When it was done, she herself froze.
Only then did she realize that her body had not wholly lost control. It was not that she could not resist the broad-shouldered man’s orders; rather, whenever she felt resistance toward what he said, her body would betray her thoughts and make a decision entirely opposite to what she intended.
Once she understood this, it suddenly dawned on her: if she no longer fought him but instead followed his instructions, her body would not go out of control. She might even be able to glean clues from the others’ conversation and find a chance to escape.
With that resolve set, the sense of losing control vanished at once.
The upturned corners of her mouth fell; her expression no longer seemed stiff and became much more natural.
The broad-shouldered man, who was writing, seemed to sense the change in her mind at that instant and instinctively looked up at her.
Zhaofu Sheng smiled at him and reminded him, “Go on, keep writing. Have you finished yet? My name is Zhaofu Sheng, from Nine Gates Village.”
“...”
The others pressed their lips together and smiled strangely, saying nothing.
The broad-shouldered man did not answer her. He lowered his head and continued writing furiously.
At that moment, the man who had earlier spoken with Zhaofu Sheng and mentioned the birthday feast of Master Liu’s family suddenly looked a little strange.
His lips moved as if he wanted to speak.
Zhaofu Sheng looked at him. He let out a sigh of relief and then said, “The Demon-Suppressing Office of Wan'an County?”
“Yes.”
Zhaofu Sheng nodded.
She sensed that this person seemed very concerned about the Wan'an County Demon-Suppressing Office, and with that thought she suddenly noticed something else odd.
By rights, if the carriage was appearing in Wan'an County, then the people on it should be from Wan'an County...
No.
Zhaofu Sheng recalled the earlier introductions. They had only said which village or which township they were from; none had mentioned the words Wan'an County.
A suspicion rose in her mind: were the people on the carriage not from Wan'an County after all? Was this carriage not from this county either?
While she was thinking, the man laughed and said, “I never imagined I would run into you here, sir.”
The broad-shouldered man in blue seemed uninterested in this exchange of old acquaintance. He made no move to stop them.
Zhaofu Sheng steadied herself and asked him, “Are you also from Wan'an County?”
“Yes.” The man nodded uneasily and answered, “My humble name is Liu Po. I’m the third son in my family, so people call me Third Liu.”
At that, Zhaofu Sheng felt a faint sense of familiarity.
A distant memory seemed about to burst forth, yet a thin paper wall still stood between her and it, leaving her unable to recall where she had heard the name Third Liu before.
Just as her mind was taut with tension, Third Liu said again, “I am from Yellow Springs Village in Wan'an County.”
Yellow Springs Village. Third Liu.
The moment those two key clues reached Zhaofu Sheng’s ears, it was as if a key had opened the gate of a maze.
Disordered memories broke through the fog, and Fan Busi’s voice sounded in her mind:
“...Someone once discovered a strange carriage near Yellow Springs Village.”
“Anyone who mentioned the carriage would vanish mysteriously the next day... and after telling others about it, some of the people who heard the tale would also disappear...”
“No one knows what the carriage looks like...”
“...The informant, Third Liu, had previously heard a neighbor mention the carriage, and then the very next day...”
“Third Liu is certain to die!”
Fan Busi’s expression at the time surfaced in Zhaofu Sheng’s mind, and that final sentence echoed again and again in her head: Third Liu is certain to die! Third Liu is certain to die! Third Liu is certain to die!
Slowly, that phrase changed its taste, and Zhaofu Sheng unconsciously transformed it into:
Zhaofu Sheng is certain to die!
Zhaofu Sheng is certain to die!
Zhaofu Sheng is certain to die!
“Damn it! Damn it! Damn it!”
Zhaofu Sheng suddenly broke down and cursed. “Damn Fan Busi! Damn the Fan brothers! Those two jinxes!”
At last she understood where she was, and she understood the danger she was in.
On the day of her rebirth, she had activated the Divine Register. Once she had grasped her situation, she had been eager to take missions and earn merit.
That same day, Fan Busi had mentioned three ghost cases, and the first of them was the ghost carriage.
There were not many clues about the ghost carriage, but Fan Busi had just happened to say that the informant was named Third Liu, and that the carriage had once appeared near Yellow Springs Village.
And now the man on this carriage called himself Third Liu, and was indeed from Yellow Springs Village.
Two crucial clues matched the details of the case Fan Busi had described that day. How could Zhaofu Sheng not understand that she had unknowingly boarded the ghost carriage already?
“What a wicked fate! What a wicked fate! What a karmic evil!”
Zhaofu Sheng sighed three times in a row.
Fan Busi had said that anyone who mentioned the ghost carriage, or even heard of the ghost carriage incident, might disappear.
She had not understood then, but now she realized: the ghost carriage itself was a taboo, much like the substitute ghost. Once the ghost carriage was mentioned or heard of, it was as though a forbidden rule had been triggered and one had stepped into a prohibited zone.
She had heard Fan Busi speak of the case and thereby touched the ghostly law.
So even after she had stayed indoors and committed no wrongdoing, this trouble still came for her, because the moment she had heard of the ghost carriage case that day, she had already been marked by it.
Having made sense of that, Zhaofu Sheng quickly calmed down.
What had happened had happened; no amount of cursing the Fan brothers would help now. She might as well think of a way to escape this strange carriage.
“What’s wrong?”
The broad-shouldered man in blue seemed not to have heard her outburst. He still kept his head down and wrote.
The woman who had spoken with her earlier seemed to have a livelier temperament. Seeing her first grit her teeth in fury and then sigh so heavily, she could not help but grow curious and asked her a question.
“Ah, I finally understand why I was invited onto this carriage,” Zhaofu Sheng said with some sorrow. “But what I don’t understand is this: why did everyone hear it and yet I alone was taken? It wasn’t even me they were talking about. Why not take Fan Busi and Fan Wujiu instead?”
“Fan **? Fan **?”
The broad-shouldered man in blue, who had been writing all along, finally lifted his head at that.
Yet for some reason, when he mentioned the two Fan brothers, their names seemed to be trapped in his mouth and could not be spoken aloud.
He did not seem to notice this himself. As he spoke, he turned over the roster again.
“They are not here. They were not invited.”
“...”
Zhaofu Sheng wanted to curse again.
“They weren’t the ones being spoken of, and I’m dragged in just for hearing it?”
“Is there any justice left in this world?”
The man ignored her and continued smiling as he flipped through the booklet.
“Still, the Deputy Chief Officer you just mentioned, Zheng, is rather interesting. I have already entered him in the register.”
“...”
Zhaofu Sheng was suddenly at a loss for words, and for a moment felt a little sorry for the chief officer of the Demon-Suppressing Office in that distant county seat whom she had never even met.
“Alas.”
She sighed.
Now that it was confirmed this carriage was a ghostly thing, no wonder she had not seen a driver earlier. Of course the one driving it was a ghost, not a human.
Her gaze fell on the booklet in the broad-shouldered man’s hand, and a strange thought struck her: she had become quite something now, having been entered into the records of three different ghostly powers.
If ghosts had memory, thought, and awareness, they would probably be pointing at her nose and calling her a faithless traitor.
Zhaofu Sheng’s eyes turned as she pondered. She had stepped onto three ghostly boats, though she did not yet know which of the three powers was the most fearsome.
As for the ghost thrall, there was no need to mention it. It was far away in the Imperial Capital; even if it held some power, it was pitifully weak. More importantly, the Soul Register was not on Zhaofu Sheng’s person at this time.
After the Dog Head Village case, she had lent the Soul Register to Zhang Chuanshi so he could use the power of the ghost to ease his pain.
What she could rely on now was only the Book of a Single Life.
And this place happened to be close to the Scholar Temple.
Liu Huacheng was not someone to be trifled with. After his death, the ghost within him had revived, and he had been able to suppress the Headless Ghost. Clearly, he was no soft persimmon.
The Book of a Single Life was a vicious artifact born of him, and since she was now entered in that book, she could only hope Liu Huacheng would sense her plight, revive swiftly, and come snatch her away.
...
But all of that was only her beautiful fantasy.
Liu Huacheng and the Headless Ghost suppressed one another; it was impossible for him to revive at this moment.
Instead, Zhaofu Sheng began to worry. The Scholar Temple was suppressing three ghosts. If the ghost carriage had suddenly broken in tonight, would it shatter the balance and cause the three ghosts, which had been temporarily quiet, to revive?
At the thought, her expression darkened.
But only a moment later she faced reality again and thought of her own situation: she herself was a clay Buddha crossing a river, scarcely able to keep afloat. Even if Wan'an County were in peril, she had neither the strength nor the means to help.
The urgent matter was to find a way off the ghost carriage.
Fan Busi had said that one could board the ghost carriage but never alight from it, and no one had ever been known to escape once aboard. That was why this ghost case was so eerie and strange, with few clues to follow.
After thinking for a moment, and setting aside the guilt she felt toward Deputy Chief Officer Zheng, she said to the broad-shouldered man in blue, “How about we make a deal? Since you’ll have to invite Deputy Chief Officer Zheng from Baozhi County sooner or later anyway, why not go invite him now and find me some place to put down? What do you say?”
The man smiled pleasantly.
“This is not the time to invite him.”
“Why not?”
Zhaofu Sheng was taken aback and asked in return.
The broad-shouldered man patiently said, “There isn’t enough room in the carriage.”
“Not enough room?”
Zhaofu Sheng looked around and said, “It was already packed to the brim earlier, and yet you plainly made room for one more.”
Having learned that this carriage was driven by a ghost, she had already guessed that the people on it might not all be living.
The broad-shouldered man she was speaking to might be a ghost, or merely an illusion conjured by ghostly law.
But the ghost carriage was too mysterious. Her name had been recorded. Even if she escaped this time, the carriage would remain a hidden danger in the future. Better to use this chance to speak as much as possible and see whether she could pry out some useful clues.