Chapter Ninety: The Paper Doppelganger
The proper moment comes, and the place can be shifted aside; before the proper moment arrives, not a single seat can be forced into existence.
The broad man in the blue robe wore his smile at exactly the right angle, as if measured with a ruler, and even as he spoke, it did not fade.
In the face of Zhao Fusheng’s repeated demands, he remained patient and explained:
“The seats on this carriage are fixed. Everyone sits according to name. Those who were not invited cannot get on, and those already aboard cannot get off.”
As soon as the man finished speaking, the flame of the tinder in his hand abruptly changed from bright yellow to green, and at once the carriage filled with a ghastly, ghostly chill.
Within the green glow, every face was washed over with a dreadful bluish pallor. Those who had been smiling and talking moments before all turned suddenly sinister and uncanny, their gaze on others enough to raise gooseflesh.
What was most eerie was not the change in the surroundings.
It was that above each person’s head there seemed to hang a crimson thread, glimmering with bloodlight, and at the end of each thread was tied a black wooden tablet.
The tablets were about as long as a palm, and each name upon them had been written in blood.
Liu Bo, Lin Hongfu, Fang Yurong...
An ominous premonition rose in Zhao Fusheng’s heart. She lifted her head to look above herself—
And on this glance, she could no longer see the roof of the carriage above her.
Wherever her eyes reached, there seemed only endless darkness overhead.
From that darkness hung a blood-red thread, ending in a wooden tablet bearing her own name: Zhao Fusheng.
The mere sight of that tablet sent a shiver through her, and instinctively she tried to rise and flee.
But the moment she moved, searing pain lanced through her organs.
The writing on the tablet seemed to melt and run, while the blood-thread wriggled inside it.
Under the agony, countless bloody filaments drooped down, winding toward her from above her head and shoulders.
At the same time, blood threads began to emerge from the bench beneath her, binding around her body, as if those filaments had started weaving a cocoon, trying to entomb her alive in the carriage seat.
Zhao Fusheng’s heart sank. She immediately tried to shake her sleeve and draw out the ghost hand.
Yet the instant she moved, the blood threads coiled around her wrists. Those strands seemed alive, trying to bore through her skin and pierce into her veins.
Strangely, though, Zhao Fusheng’s skin was exceptionally slick. The blood-red threads stabbed several times but could not penetrate her body, and could only bind her fast.
In this life-or-death peril, Zhao Fusheng’s face darkened, and she tried to awaken the fierce ghost she commanded.
But the moment her thought arose, the Divine Register gave a prompt: The vicious-level ghost is being restrained!
“...”
Zhao Fusheng cursed inwardly at her own bad luck.
She had not expected that the ghost under her command would be suppressed by this ghost carriage. No wonder it had shown no reaction at all after she boarded.
That ghost had once strutted about with great ferocity, killing nearly to the root the Demon-Suppressing Office of Wan’an County. Yet at the critical moment, it proved so useless.
What startled her even more was that the ghost she controlled was already a vicious-level entity, and yet before this ghost carriage it had been completely suppressed.
It seemed the journey tonight would be extraordinarily dangerous.
Zhao Fusheng steadied herself and forced calm into her voice.
“I see.”
Seeing that she was being sensible, the broad man in the blue robe kept the same smile on his face, but the flame in his hand shifted once more from green back to yellow.
The cold, resentful aura faded; the carriage was once again lit by bright light, and the previously dead, ghastly faces all broke into smiles and laughter. The atmosphere turned lively again, as if the scene of Zhao Fusheng seeing the name tablets and being bound by blood threads had been nothing but an illusion.
Though she could no longer see the surging blood threads, Zhao Fusheng felt all the more clearly that death’s shadow was drawing near.
Her nerves were taut, but she still managed a smile.
“Then when can that seat be freed?”
The broad man in blue smiled and said, “When the time comes, it will be freed.”
Zhao Fusheng understood that the thing speaking to her might not be human at all, and the disparity in their strength was vast. No matter how she pressed, she would likely learn nothing useful.
After a brief pause, she turned to the woman across from her and asked again,
“By the way, before I boarded, I heard you all talking so animatedly. What were you discussing?”
As she spoke, she glanced sidelong at the broad man in blue.
His hands rested on his thighs, his back ramrod straight. He paid no heed to her question and showed no intention of stopping the others from idle chatter.
“I think I heard you mention Master Liu,” she said.
“Indeed,” the woman replied with a smile.
“We are all going tonight to offer our congratulations to Master Liu.”
“To congratulate Master Liu?” Zhao Fusheng’s voice rose slightly.
Then Liu San said, “That’s right. Master Liu is a renowned great household in Wan’an County.”
As he spoke, he too curved his mouth into a smile.
For some reason, everyone on the carriage seemed to have their lips hooked upward, expressions as if cast from the same mold. One glance was enough to make the heart seize with dread.
“Since when has Wan’an County had such a wealthy family surnamed Liu?”
Zhao Fusheng set aside her fear of the ghost carriage and began thinking about who this “Master Liu” might be, as named by these peculiar “passengers.”
Wan’an County was not safe in its present state. The county’s famous gentry had long since fled or departed. What great household could there be?
Then she remembered something.
This was beyond the Beggar’s Alley, and Beggar’s Alley had originally been the ancestral shrine of the Liu clan.
Forty years ago, when Liu Huacheng was still alive, the Liu family had indeed deserved the title of a great household.
She was still thinking when she heard Liu Bo laugh.
“Why would there not be one?”
With his hands resting in front of his knees, he said, “Today happens to be the sixtieth birthday of Master Liu Huacheng. It is said that his descendants have set up banquet tables for several days straight, inviting guests to eat and drink as they please. Not only is there no charge, they even give out reward money.”
Ever since Zhao Fusheng realized she had boarded the ghost carriage, she had prepared herself not to apply ordinary reasoning to anything happening inside it.
But when she truly heard Liu San mention Liu Huacheng, her pupils still contracted sharply.
“I heard that people from ten miles around Wan’an County are all going to celebrate Master Liu’s birthday. It’s said to be quite a spectacle.”
As soon as his birthday was mentioned, the others in the carriage grew excited and began chattering over one another.
“I heard this old master once served as an official in the Imperial Capital—”
“His son hired people to order dozens of pigs.”
...
These remarks sounded perfectly normal, but the more normal they sounded, the more terrifying Zhao Fusheng found them.
At first, all she could hear was the voices inside the carriage, the ringing of bells, and the rolling sound of the wheels drawn by hoofbeats. But as more and more people mentioned “Master Liu,” the sounds of the outside world abruptly changed.
At some unknown point, the usually deathly quiet outside Beggar’s Alley had suddenly filled with uproar.
The hurried footsteps of countless people, waves of shouting from all sides, and from time to time the clear, lingering singing of actors mixed with earth-shaking drums, all pierced through the supposedly airtight carriage and reached her ears.
“Make way, the pork head is here!”
“You cursed plague-ridden fool, move faster! If the master comes out later and sees the tables not cleaned up, he’ll strip your skin right off—”
Hurrying, cursing, and the loud cheers of those listening to the opera all entered the carriage. Everything was too real to be a mere illusion.
Zhao Fusheng clenched her teeth and said in disbelief, “We’re really going to celebrate Liu Huacheng’s birthday?”
“Of course,” said the man in blue.
“Since we’re already here.”
As he spoke, Zhao Fusheng felt an even greater heaviness pressing upon her body.
The carriage was brightly lit, and she could not see the appearance of the blood threads or name tablets, but the bizarre scene from earlier had already lodged in her mind. By now she knew that countless strands of bloodlight were surely binding her, tying her together with the ghost carriage.
At some point, the golden jingle of bells outside had become increasingly urgent.
A thin mist began to spread through the carriage.
Under the influence of that mist, the candle flame in the broad man’s hand was suppressed and grew much dimmer.
The flame again shifted from yellow to green, and the eerie, uncanny scene returned once more.
Zhao Fusheng saw the faintly visible blood threads hanging down black wooden tablets above everyone’s heads. The lively discussion of Liu Huacheng’s birthday had abruptly cut off.
The smiling “people” sat motionless in place with strange grins.
The blood threads hanging from the carriage roof had wound themselves around each person’s necks when, at that very moment, a scream suddenly came from afar:
“Aah—”
The cry was filled with terror, as though the speaker had seen the most horrifying thing in the world:
“A ghost!”
A heart-rending shriek followed. Zhao Fusheng’s heart sank. She remembered how, forty years ago, the headless ghost had revived at Liu Huacheng’s birthday banquet.
The ghost carriage could actually cross time and return to the past.
Once it entered the Liu family ancestral shrine, that meant everyone aboard had been pulled into a ghost domain—
No, not everyone aboard!
Zhao Fusheng quickly realized that, judging from the situation, everyone on the carriage should already be dead.
Liu San was the best proof. When Fan Busi had brought up this ghost case, it had been six months ago. Liu San had been taken away by the ghost carriage and had never been heard from again.
In other words, the only living person on the carriage was her.
If she did not think of a way to get off, then she too would die aboard it, and Deputy Officer Zheng of Baozhi County would be the next victim.
Zhao Fusheng was anxious to the point of burning.
She could not remain on the carriage, and she could not rush into the ghost domain of the headless ghost from forty years ago.
Thinking of this, she asked the man in blue, “You said the seats on the carriage are fixed, and no one can board until a seat is freed.”
The broad man in blue, who had earlier seemed so genial and smiling, now looked terrifying beyond measure.
His face had taken on a greenish hue, and his eyes were dead with a corpse-like air. Though he still smiled, that smile had the stiff, forced quality of something dragged into place.
“That is right.”
As if he did not notice anything amiss, he nodded.
“If I get off the carriage and free a seat?” Zhao Fusheng asked.
The moment she finished speaking, everyone in the carriage, who had been wearing fixed smiles, turned in unison to look at her. Their expressions were strange, their smiles eerie, and malice gleamed in their eyes.
Facing the gaze of the ghosts, Zhao Fusheng paid it no mind. She still stared at the broad man in blue, waiting for his answer.
“You cannot get off,” the man in blue said in a cold voice.
“One seat per person. Once you’ve boarded, there is no reason to leave.”
Zhao Fusheng sighed.
“So that means once I’ve boarded this carriage, I cannot leave, and must stay inside.”
“Tonight is for attending Master Liu’s birthday banquet. Since we have all gathered, it is fate. We should enter the Liu household together and drink a cup of birthday wine,” said the man in blue with a strange smile.
“I’m not hungry,” Zhao Fusheng said stubbornly, shaking her head.
“And I don’t drink either. I’ve quit.”
“...”
The ghosts looked at her coldly.
The broad man in blue only smiled and said nothing.
The bells rang more and more urgently, and the mist inside the carriage thickened, the ghostly aura growing stronger.
A chill mixed with murderous malice swept toward her. Someone called loudly,
“A carriage of honored guests has arrived.”
As soon as the words fell, the carriage lurched violently.
In the dripping sound, a drop of foul-smelling blood fell onto Zhao Fusheng’s head.
A chill instantly poured over her from above, and the cold slithered down along her skull, at once fastening around her neck!
Death’s shadow surged in. Her gaze fell upon the corpses hanging across from her by blood threads, and her heart leaped into her throat.
She could not stay on the ghost carriage any longer!
The ghost arm could not be used, and the vicious-level ghost she commanded was completely suppressed under these circumstances.
But at this critical juncture, Zhao Fusheng was not without another trump card.
“Open the hell!”
With a turn of thought, her consciousness plunged instantly into her sea of awareness. The Divine Register activated, and hell opened soundlessly as shadows spread outward.
The Divine Register warned that opening hell within a special ghost domain required merit points to sustain it.
“Open it!”
With her life hanging by a thread, Zhao Fusheng had no room to care about anything else.
The Divine Register then prompted: Hell opening.
Merit points minus ten!
Merit points minus ten!
Merit points minus ten!
...
A relentless stream of merit deduction notices rang out, but now was not the time for Zhao Fusheng to feel the pain.
Seizing the moment as the shadows covered her, the red threads binding her body were severed at once.
The green candlelight was extinguished in an instant by the power of hell, and the true scene inside the carriage came into view!
She was inside a pitch-black sealed space. The broad man in blue who had been sitting by the door had vanished without a trace, and the men and women in the two rows on either side, who had been speaking to her just now, now stood rigidly in place. Their bodies seemed pressed by some force against the carriage walls, like dried corpses, already stripped of all signs of life.
The flesh on all of them seemed drained away, leaving only a layer of withered skin wrapped over bones.
Their corpses tilted their heads back, the dehydrated flesh of their lips unable to cover the exposed teeth, as though silently crying out.
This scene was certainly shocking to Zhao Fusheng, but she had already anticipated it and so did not panic.
What troubled her was that there was no door inside the carriage.
The surroundings were airtight, as if this were a sealed chamber welded shut. Unless some accident occurred, even if she saw through the illusion created by the ghost carriage, she still would not be able to leave.
The words of the broad man in blue surfaced in her mind:
“One person, one seat. No spare places—”
“Before the time arrives, those outside cannot get in, and those inside cannot get out.”
Merit points minus ten!
Merit points minus ten!
...
In that short while, Zhao Fusheng’s merit points were again consumed in large amounts.
It felt as if the sea of awareness where she had been storing merit points had become a flood released through a broken gate. Yet now she had no time to feel the pain of losing them; instead, she turned her consciousness into hell.
Inside hell, aside from a substitute paper figure that she had sealed and stored away, there were no other ghosts.
When that ghost from Dog-Head Village had been enshrined by the Divine Register, the Register had once informed her: a substitute paper figure, bearing her same surname, given name, blood, and flesh.
It was a perfect replica of her, with a fierce ghost inside it. Whether it would be useful now aboard the ghost carriage was unknown.
If the broad man in blue spoke true, then the moment she boarded the ghost carriage, she could never leave. In that case, there must be a place for her aboard it.
At the moment, the seating seemed just full enough. If another person were to appear out of nowhere, or if there were one more ghost, and the number of occupants exceeded the limit, it would be equivalent to the carriage being overloaded. That would violate the ghost’s law of killing, and the carriage door should open to force out one seat.
—But all of this was only her conjecture. If she guessed wrong, she would die at once by the hand of the ghost.
By now, however, Zhao Fusheng no longer had the luxury of thinking any further.