Chapter Seventy: The Damaged Paper Figure

Chapter Seventy

Zhao Fusheng’s eyes throbbed, her head ached, as if someone was gouging out her eyeballs, causing her to knit her brow and let out a low groan of pain.

Her memory was fragmented; after Wu Liyou had left, her mind went utterly blank. Any attempt to recall brought a piercing pain between her brows.

She simply let herself sink to the floor, leaning against the low cabinet, breathing heavily.

After a long moment, she lifted her hand and saw it covered in blood. She wiped it absently on her waistband. Only after resting for a while did she open her eyes again.

At that moment, the pounding at the door resumed, echoing through the silence.

Wu Liyou, not hearing any response, called out anxiously, “Sir, you…”

“It’s nothing,” Zhao Fusheng forced herself to answer, suppressing the headache. “I just kicked something. Don’t bother me.”

Wu Liyou, relieved to hear her voice, murmured his assent.

Pressing her fingers into her brow, Zhao Fusheng began to organize her thoughts.

This journey to Doghead Village was shrouded in strangeness. From beginning to end, she had not seen a single ghost, yet the presence of a vengeful spirit seemed to linger everywhere.

She glanced about the room. Two lamps flickered, their flames unsteady. The only sound was her own labored breathing; no one else was present.

On the bed, the bedding lay in disarray, as if untouched by human hands.

The table was a mess, smeared with oil stains.

In one corner stood an inkstone, holding a little ink—most of it, however, was spattered across the table.

But there was no sign of brush or paper.

Examining it more closely made her head throb again. She drew in a sharp breath, closed her eyes, and reached into her clothing.

Sewn into her inner lining was a small pocket containing a pouch.

She drew it out and, from within, produced a jade book.

This was the Register of Souls of the Demon Suppression Bureau.

As soon as she opened it, the register—under the control of the vengeful spirit—reacted. Cursed marks crept across her palm, winding up her arm, swiftly crawling up to her neck and cheeks.

A dense web of black and red runes chilled the air with their ominous, ghostly presence.

Her head and arm were numbed with cold, but the swelling pain faded away.

When she opened her eyes again, her mind was much clearer.

“The vengeful spirit has appeared after all.”

She did not know what she had done to trigger the spirit’s deadly intent.

But clearly, the vengeful spirit of Doghead Village did not kill with a single blow; otherwise, she would already be dead—instead, she merely lost a great deal of blood and suffered a splitting headache.

Realizing this, Zhao Fusheng sat up.

The most urgent matter was to recover her lost memory.

“With my disposition, if a case involves ghosts, I would certainly proceed with caution.” Having regained her composure, she calmly stowed the register back in its pouch and secreted it in her hidden pocket.

She patted her sleeve—inside, the shriveled ghost arm still clutched a piece of ashen human parchment, which she left there.

The human-hide quilt she had taken from Wu Liren’s bedding was bundled in her jacket. Other than that, she had nothing else of note.

Confirming that none of her essentials were missing, Zhao Fusheng let out a quiet sigh of relief and mused to herself:

“In a ghost case like Doghead Village, unless I had no clues at all, I would have made a mark if I sensed anything amiss.”

With that thought, her gaze fell upon the table.

The inkstone was there—she remembered asking Zhang Chuan for it, and Wu Liyou had fetched it for her.

But now, looking at it again, she could not recall why she had wanted it—this was the crux of the problem.

She would not waste her efforts in a ghost case.

Doghead Village was desperately poor; the Four Treasures of the Study were rare indeed.

If she had requested ink and brush, it could only be because she had discovered something crucial, and fearing she might forget, wished to record it as a safeguard.

Her expression brightened.

If she had intended to write, surely brush and paper must have fallen somewhere.

Though Wu Liyou’s house was robust, the arrangement was haphazard as in all rural homes. She glanced around but saw no sign of brush or paper.

Then it struck her: the missing items might not be misplaced at all, but “ghost-hidden”—like her scrambled memories, not truly lost but obscured by interference. The objects might be right before her eyes, yet invisible to her because the spirit’s rule had been triggered.

Unruffled, Zhao Fusheng drew a deep breath and slowly exhaled.

She reasoned: if a moment ago her body had been under ghostly control, and her memory lost, then in her fleeting clarity, she would have seen a toppled oil lamp, fire on the table, her own blood staining everything.

Combining this with Wu Liyou’s behavior—leaving after grinding ink—she reasoned she had not left the table during her lost time.

Her gaze settled on the table.

Ink stains mixed with spilled lamp oil were still wet.

She bent down to look underneath; nothing but bare earth.

She bit her lip, tore off a bit of dead skin, and began to feel about the tabletop.

It was small, with only an inkstone and lamp upon it, its surface rough but now slick with blood, oil, and ink.

She found nothing at first, but undeterred, she crawled under the table, groping about the uneven ground—still nothing.

Nothing useful beneath or around the table. Was her reasoning wrong?

Her brow furrowed.

“Before I ‘lost my memory,’ I was at the table. If I lost something, it must be here.”

A ghost, possessing neither emotion nor memory, acts only by its rules; it could not have cunningly hidden her items.

Unless she had recorded a key clue, triggering the spirit’s law and thus rendering the item invisible.

She suddenly recalled fighting the vengeful ghost in Beggar’s Alley: when she struck it with a stick, its body flickered and vanished.

To humans, a vengeful spirit’s body hovers between illusion and reality. Only a spirit can counter a spirit.

This realization brought a glint to her eyes.

She flicked her sleeve and the shriveled ghost arm slid out into her grasp.

She swept the ghost arm across the empty floor. Suddenly, the fingertips snagged on something unseen.

Delighted, Zhao Fusheng manipulated the ghost arm to hook at that spot again.

Though the ground was bare, through the ghost arm she distinctly sensed an object—a rolled scroll.

She remembered the case files in the Demon Suppression Bureau and used the ghost arm to lift the object.

As soon as it left the ground, the force interfering with her perception dissipated under the ghost arm’s power.

The hidden item materialized—a sheepskin scroll dangling from the withered hand.

She was overjoyed.

But then, the ghost arm, previously restrained by the power of merit, began to stir, as if awakening.

The fingers twitched, the grip loosened, and then seized the corner of the scroll in reverse.

Her eyes flashed coldly; one hand gripped the ghost arm, the other clenched the scroll, and she yanked hard.

She was strong after merging with the ghost, but the arm’s grip did not relent.

The struggle tore a corner from the scroll.

The ghost arm, unwilling, twitched twice before reverting to its shriveled state.

Unfazed, Zhao Fusheng tucked the ghost arm back into her sleeve and turned her attention to the now-damaged scroll. Her eyes narrowed at what she saw.

In rough brushstrokes on the scroll was written: “The Forgetting Ghost!”

The ink was faded, but it was unmistakably her own handwriting.

Without hesitation, she dipped her middle and index fingers in the inkstone and pressed a dot onto the paper.

The fresh ink was deep and black, sharply contrasting with the faded words “Forgetting Ghost.”

She lifted the scroll to the lamp.

In the glow, the words “Forgetting Ghost” stood awkward and pale, almost vanishing.

Below the words, several neat lines of small script recorded another case file.

This was a Demon Suppression Bureau file, one she must have brought with her to record events related to the vengeful spirit.

Tilting the scroll, she saw faint traces around “Forgetting Ghost,” as if something else had been written but now erased.

“Erasure marks!”

A chill ran through her. This was akin to erasing memories, wiping away the traces left by the vengeful spirit.

Even the writing itself could vanish.

“Forgetting Ghost…”

She was certain she had written those words.

Not only did the title match her current predicament, but the handwriting, the simplified characters—all of it was proof.

She was staring at the three words, lost in thought, when a sudden chill seized her, making her scalp prickle.

A bone-chilling sensation enveloped her—a pair of invisible eyes seemed to fix upon her in the darkness.

The vengeful spirit!

It was nearby.

The thought flashed through her mind, but she did not panic or call for help, nor did she search the corners for the ghost’s trace.

Instead, she recalled the ghost arm’s earlier anomaly—the sudden revival, the relentless grip on the sheepskin scroll.

At that instant, she unfurled the scroll and held it to the lamp.

The flame licked at the back of the scroll, but did not burn it.

Illuminated by the red glow, a pair of blood-soaked, dark red eyes surfaced on the scroll, staring at Zhao Fusheng with chilling intensity.

Night deepened, and the voices of Wu Liyou and the others had faded from the old house.

In the eerie, shadowed room, she was alone.

At some point, the lamps had dimmed, and those uncanny eyes, cold and emotionless, sent shivers down her spine.

In Zhao Fusheng, her recklessly bold side suddenly took over.

Fear pushed to the extreme, she became calm.

She did not scream or fling the scroll away, but with brutal composure, dug her fingers fiercely into the pair of eyes.

Her fingers pierced the parchment, gouging out the eyes.

Yet the expected gush of blood did not come.

The moment her fingers punctured the scroll, the vision vanished.

The bloody eyes disappeared, the bloodstains across the scroll melted away.

In their place, a palm-sized, incomplete paper figure fell into her hand.

It was patched together from scraps of skin, seemingly about to fall apart, yet bound together by some unseen force.

Stunned, she felt the lock on her memory give way, and a torrent of chaos flooded her mind.

She instinctively turned the paper figure over and saw, written on its back in tiny script: Han Year 205, July 31st.

Boom!

The shackles on her memory shattered; the missing recollections returned in full force.

Wu Dajing’s report—the son of Wu Datong—returning to Doghead Village—mentioning the birthday of Wu Datong’s son, at which Wu Dajing died tragically—discovering the bedding at Wu Liren’s house—deducing the eldest son’s birthday—writing it down on the shed skin, which transformed into a paper figure—her bleeding from every orifice and losing consciousness—

All the memories surged back, as if waking from a dream.

“The second time—” She caught herself.

“No, the third!”

It was already the third time she had lost her memory.

The first interference had been in the Demon Suppression Bureau, when Wu Dajing mentioned Wu Datong’s eldest son, causing a lapse in her recollection, later recovered through indirect questioning.

That was just the beginning. The second time came after Wu Dajing’s death.

The people of Doghead Village had all traces of Wu Dajing wiped from their minds—even his own son believed he had merely gone to town.

The third time was just now.

It seemed subtle and unremarkable, yet was perilous beyond measure.

On the way here, Wu Dajing had mentioned that Doghead Village had bad feng shui; when villagers grew old, they would sometimes bleed from the seven orifices—his own mother had died thus, not long after.

Before his death, Zhao Fusheng had seen Wu Dajing’s nose bleed twice; he said the problem had begun days before.

The villagers, ignorant of the truth, did not realize this was the vengeful spirit’s killing law.

Thus, Zhao Fusheng’s current symptoms—blood loss, memory loss—fit perfectly with the invisible eldest son’s killing pattern.

Yet Wu Dajing, who grew up knowing Wu Datong and his son intimately, had survived for days, only dying when he mentioned the spirit’s birthday.

Zhao Fusheng, encountering the case only recently, had already bled from every orifice and lost her memory immediately after noting the spirit’s birthdate—

A glint of comprehension flashed in her eyes as she murmured to herself:

“It seems I’ve stumbled upon a vital clue, created something extraordinary.”

The spirit’s trait: invisibility.

To mention it or investigate its past was to drag it from the hidden currents of time—this triggered its law and brought about its curse.

It was not so much law as it was a curse.