Chapter Thirty-One: Obtaining the Ghost Lantern
Chapter Thirty-One
“Yes, at the time, the Emperor was furious and believed Liu Huacheng deserved to die.” Paper Zhang assumed Zhao Fusheng’s sigh was about Liu Huacheng’s crimes. He disagreed inwardly, but, remembering her unpredictable nature, feigned agreement.
Zhao Fusheng let him misunderstand; she was too tired to clarify.
“Did the situation spiral out of control after that golden general died?” she asked, curiosity getting the better of her.
“Of course it did.” Paper Zhang nodded.
“Two ghost disasters occurred side by side; even the Emperor nearly perished in that catastrophe.” Paper Zhang answered.
A sudden pop from the oil lamp pressed upon the human skin paper on the table made the light flicker, and in that shifting glow, a sinister shadow crossed Paper Zhang’s brow.
He realized his slip, quickly adjusting his expression to a somewhat insincere smile.
“In short, the Demon Suppression Bureau paid a heavy price to dismantle this newly awakened vengeful spirit, but how to seal its corpse became an annoying problem for everyone.”
“Logically, if someone in the capital could dismantle this vengeful spirit, they should also be able to suppress its corpse,” Zhao Fusheng speculated. “Or was its power still peculiar after being dismantled?”
Paper Zhang, now familiar with her sharpness, was not surprised. He nodded, “Yes. The corpse possessed a power that could suppress other spirits.”
Zhao Fusheng was stunned.
She had only recently been reborn, and her understanding of this world was as haphazard as driving ducks onto a stage. So far, her knowledge of vengeful spirits came primarily from the Fan brothers and Paper Zhang’s piecemeal explanations.
The rules and powers of vengeful spirits were still unclear to her, but she had seen in her dreams how “she” was killed by such a spirit, and knew well their terror.
Now Paper Zhang claimed that the vengeful spirit created by Liu Huacheng possessed the ability to suppress other ghosts.
“Nearly all Demon Suppression Bureau officials of command rank or higher wield spirits; without exception, they are restrained by this corpse, which almost led to disaster in the capital. That alone shows how special this spirit was.”
Paper Zhang saw how shocked Zhao Fusheng was by his words and offered her a meaningful smile.
“Ghosts cannot be killed. Such a scourge cannot remain in the capital, but subduing it is no simple task.”
At that time, Liu Huacheng, who had thought himself doomed, saw a glimmer of hope.
He was decisive and petitioned the Emperor, offering to atone for his crimes.
“In the end, as you might guess, he took the spirit’s remains and suppressed them in the Liu ancestral shrine, using the Liu family’s fortune to hold it down. Things went smoothly for more than a decade, until his sixtieth birthday, when the vengeful spirit revived.”
Paper Zhang finally laid out the whole story behind the Liu family’s haunting.
It involved old events, the capital, and the Demon Suppression Bureau headquarters; no wonder Su Long barely mentioned it in his records.
But as Zhao Fusheng grasped the root of the matter, new doubts arose: Paper Zhang’s ancestors had dealt with spirits for generations, clearly not benign characters. She and he had enmity between them. Even if she had managed to subdue him in a fit of madness, it shouldn’t have frightened him into immediately divulging everything.
When things are too abnormal, there must be something sinister. She grew wary, convinced something was amiss.
Alert as she was, her face wore a cheerful smile, while Paper Zhang seemed to see past it into her wary eyes.
“You don’t believe me?”
“Should I believe you?”
Paper Zhang grinned.
“Why would I lie to you?”
He himself found this amusing, chuckling hoarsely as if his throat was filled with sand.
“I know what you’re thinking.”
“What am I thinking?” Zhao Fusheng asked, amused.
“You’re afraid I’ll trick you—lead you to your death.”
His eyes glinted.
“Do you know? Dealing with spirits requires sacrifice.”
Spirit-wielders sacrifice their own lives to feed the vengeful spirits, gaining their powers in return.
The spirit controlled by Jia Yi is hardly virtuous—it uses ghostly language to create soul ledgers, not simply because it’s temporarily under Jia Yi’s control.
“According to official law, though Demon Suppression Bureaus are largely autonomous, independent from local magistrates and government offices, they are directly supervised by the court and must resolve three haunting cases each year or violate regulations.”
He smiled maliciously.
“Has Fan Bisi told you about any of this?”
Paper Zhang deliberately sowed discord.
He recalled Zhao Fusheng calling Fan Bisi “Brother Fan,” unsure if they had reached a temporary alliance.
Zhao Fusheng was struck; she had guessed as much, but not with Paper Zhang’s clarity.
She stayed silent; Paper Zhang didn’t mind, and continued.
“If Jia Yi wants to survive, he must regularly sacrifice to the spirit he controls. Anyone who fails to fulfill their annual tasks becomes a feast for this vengeful spirit.”
Both sides restrain each other, forming a perfect balance.
“And who knows how many have become ghost thralls without dying in a haunting each year.”
Paper Zhang laughed.
“I suppose Fan Bisi hasn’t told you all this. With your intelligence, you must have guessed things aren’t right, which is why you’re so eager to enter Beggar Street?”
He thought himself clever, confident he had found Zhao Fusheng’s weakness, unaware her urgency to enter Beggar Street was not only to comply with official law and resolve haunting cases, but also because she possessed the List of Deification and hoped to gain merit from it.
She gazed deeply at Paper Zhang, then played along, nodding:
“Yes. Since you know I must enter Beggar Street, and we’re not friends, why help me and reveal the spirit’s secrets?”
“You think I’m helping you?” Paper Zhang’s eyes widened, lips curled into a mocking smile.
“You want to resolve a haunting case—once you enter Beggar Street, do you think you’ll survive?”
He laughed wildly, his voice sharp and wheezing like a leaky bellows.
“Don’t you know that dealing with spirits is a one-in-ten-thousand chance at survival? Even if you manage to control one, you’re never safe. Using a spirit’s power means being influenced by it—too much use, you lose control or go mad. Using vengeful spirits only leads to death.”
He sneered.
“You died and came back, mastered a spirit—so what? You can’t solve this case, no matter what I tell you!”
Zhao Fusheng refused to be affected by him, asking the crucial question.
“When the Liu family’s vengeful spirit revived, how did Su Long and Zhang Xiongwu handle it?”
Paper Zhang, though ill-intentioned, believed Zhao Fusheng was doomed, so he answered.
“My grandfather burned five ‘ghost lamps’ and entered the spirit’s remains, repairing the seal.”
“What kind of seal?”
Paper Zhang paused, then smiled.
“A special coffin, said to have been crafted by a prominent figure in the capital.”
Zhao Fusheng nodded.
“Where was the coffin placed?”
“In the Liu ancestral shrine.” Paper Zhang cooperated, then asked, “Is that your last question?”
“The Liu ancestral shrine has been converted into the Temple of the Master—so there’s a spirit in the temple now?”
She didn’t answer his question, but posed another.
Paper Zhang’s brow twitched; after a moment, he suppressed his impatience and nodded.
“Yes.”
“You—” He was about to speak, but Zhao Fusheng’s face suddenly darkened, cutting him off.
“Enough. Give me some ghost lamps. I’m leaving.”
“How blunt.” Paper Zhang grinned.
“I’ve got plenty of lanterns—take whichever you like.”
Zhao Fusheng was not content to let him off so easily. Her eyes shifted.
“Don’t lanterns require lamp oil?”
Paper Zhang’s house was filled with all sorts of special human skin papers, suggesting he had many lanterns.
She remembered the two broken human skin lanterns she saw outside the Demon Suppression Bureau when she awoke—their papers split, lamp oil spilled out.
That oil was strange, reeking of an inexplicable, rotten stench, and seemed to carry lingering traces of ghostly energy.
The ghostly aura was faint, and she had just awakened, so she hadn’t noticed at the time. Now, recalling it, she realized the lamp oil was unusual.
Paper Zhang’s smile disappeared; his face darkened, eyes flashing with malice.
Zhao Fusheng met his gaze, unyielding.
After a long moment, Paper Zhang sighed deeply.
“Fine.”
He slowly extended his hand, reaching into his other sleeve.
A sudden shrill, raspy howl erupted from within, and the sleeve trembled violently, as if two “little men” inside were fighting.
After a moment, the commotion subsided.
Paper Zhang’s face was slightly sallow as he withdrew a pitch-black box from his sleeve, swept aside the pile of human skin papers to reveal the stone table beneath, and placed the lamp box with a soft thud, pushing it toward Zhao Fusheng.
“The lamp oil is here.”
The box was small, about two inches high, the size of a child’s palm. Its material was unknown, but the sound it made was heavy.
It was entirely black, the lid and body joined seamlessly, with no visible gap.
Surrounded by human skin papers, it gave off a sense of deep unease, chilling from the heart.
“So little?” Zhao Fusheng eyed the lamp oil box, studying it for a while.
She was unimpressed by its weirdness.
At present, Paper Zhang was indeed ill-intentioned, but he wouldn’t be foolish enough to sabotage her now. Besides, she trusted the vengeful spirit she carried, so she boldly reached out for the box.
Paper Zhang forced himself to ignore the irritation her words caused, and said,
“You’re not afraid I’ll trick you?”
“No.” Zhao Fusheng replied without looking up.
Paper Zhang was stunned, then curled his lip in contempt.
He thought Zhao Fusheng was just like any other spirit-wielder—arrogant after gaining power, forgetting their own limits. Such people, he believed, would never even know how to spell “death.”
Zhao Fusheng sensed his disdain, but didn’t bother to explain.
Paper Zhang was no good.
He valued ordinary lives as nothing, kept corpse slaves at home, made lanterns out of human skin—his methods were cruel and bizarre.
Such a person would never act openly; Zhao Fusheng trusted not his “character,” but the “nature” of her vengeful spirit.
After talking with Fan Bisi and Paper Zhang, Zhao Fusheng also realized something: entangling spirits were difficult to deal with. Some Demon Suppression Bureau command officials died from hauntings, but more died from their own spirits losing control, or from officials sent by the court.
Ghost powers could also restrain each other.
For example, she was entangled by a vengeful spirit, but also cursed by Jia Yi’s ghost thrall spell, meaning two spirits were vying for her life.
At that moment, Zhao Fusheng realized she was a “prized commodity.”
Both spirits wanted her dead, forming a mutual restraint; amid her fear and anxiety, she realized she might use this principle to her advantage.
If Paper Zhang tampered with the box, her vengeful spirit would retaliate.
If that happened, she’d still have about two-thirds of her life to gamble, but Paper Zhang would die for sure.
If he was smart, he’d know now was not the time to make a move.
...
Once she took the box, she sensed something was wrong.
Unlike the gentle feel of human skin paper, the lamp oil box was chilling to the bone, with a sinister ghostly aura that stirred the vengeful spirit within her, threatening another revival.
The oil inside the box seemed to be a “low-level” spirit itself!
The Zhang family’s secret formula for ghost lamps was probably tied to this strange lamp oil; the human skin paper was secondary.
Holding the lamp oil, Zhao Fusheng mused, but spoke aloud,
“So stingy.”
“Humph.” Paper Zhang’s face was ugly; he sneered.
“This stuff is extremely rare. Once lit, the area covered by its light becomes a death zone—even in a ghost domain, vengeful spirits will treat you as a dead thing.”
Forced to hand over such a box, he was deeply unhappy.
“But let me warn you: the lamp oil is limited. It’s fine against small spirits, but won’t last long against big ones. Once the light goes out, you must escape quickly, or you’ll still die.”
There’s another large chapter at two in the afternoon~
(End of Chapter)