"Demon-Suppressing Bureau!"
Zhao Fusheng was greatly shocked. She retreated with stumbling steps until her back pressed against a damp wooden pillar, finally stopping.
"Great Han Dynasty, Demon-Suppressing Bureau, Zhao Fusheng—"
Her expression was ugly. She reached out and pounded the wooden pillar behind her.
The 'thump thump' sounds spread. The force of her fists bounced back. Everything was extremely real.
This street was lifeless, as if the people living here subconsciously suppressed their own presence. When the sound of Zhao Fusheng beating the wooden pillar came, it quickly attracted peering from people in the coffin shop.
A head pressed against the door frame and looked over. That person had a broad forehead, messy hair tied into a haphazard topknot on top of their head, and narrow eyes. When they looked over, Zhao Fusheng also instinctively turned her head.
Their gazes met. That person made a 'hiss' sound of inhaling sharply, then terror showed in their eyes before they quickly pulled their head back.
Finally, a 'bang' of heavy sound came, echoing throughout the long street.
The coffin shop door was slammed shut at once. Because the force was too great, even the signboard hanging outside the door was swaying.
Information about this person surfaced in Zhao Fusheng's mind: Old Zhang from the coffin shop.
As this person's identity information came to her, more related information appeared in her thoughts one by one.
The original hadn't been at the Demon-Suppressing Bureau long. Each day, she was mostly accompanied by the Fan brothers.
After these two brothers bought her, they didn't sell her to any evil or wicked hands, but instead brought her into the Demon-Suppressing Bureau and blood-bound her within it, making her the chief of this bureau.
'She' was both delighted and anxious.
TL: For this chapter, you will see pronouns written like this 'she', used to refer to the original Zhao Fusheng
The Fan brothers hadn't done anything offensive to her. Besides the way these two looked at 'her' being somewhat frightening, both parties mostly coexisted peacefully.
Initially, these two brothers watched 'her' extremely strictly, almost not allowing her to go out, making her spend nearly all her time inside the Demon-Suppressing Bureau each day.
Later, 'her' luck was extremely good, which gradually made these two brothers relax their control over 'her.' Occasionally 'she' could stand at the residence gate and look outside, gradually learning about the situation of this nearby street.
As time passed, the Fan brothers became more and more relaxed, almost no longer following 'her.' Sometimes 'she' went out alone to look around and could see that nearby people looked at 'her' somewhat strangely.
At that time, 'she' was puzzled and mustered courage to try talking with people, but when her gaze passed over, whether it was the coffin shop or the spirit money and incense candle shop people, they all showed expressions of bad luck and avoided her, treating 'her' like the plague god.
'She' was young, timid and weak. Being so disliked by everyone, she didn't dare approach again.
After that, strange incidents occurred frequently. When 'she' realized she was probably entangled by a ghost, the injuries she suffered were already getting worse and worse, and she could no longer go out until she finally died.
Precisely because of this, 'she' had some impression of this street but didn't have any real interactions with the surrounding people.
When she saw the coffin shop owner, she couldn't call out this person's name either. She only vaguely remembered the Fan brothers mentioning 'Old Zhang from the coffin shop.' As for what this person was called and their family situation, she knew nothing.
"..." Thinking of this, Zhao Fusheng's face turned iron-blue.
She'd already realized something was wrong.
It seemed that last night wasn't simply a dream. It was very likely the dream came true—she'd had an accident in her rental apartment, and after death, her soul transmigrated to the Great Han Dynasty and was resurrected in the body of this girl with the same name.
Borrowing a corpse to return to life, resurrecting from the dead—this should have been a great joy. But she still remembered the scene in the dream: a strange time and space, an orphan girl whose parents had both died, the eerie Demon-Suppressing Bureau, and the original owner entangled by a ghost, finally dying from the malevolent ghost's harm.
While Zhao Fusheng was in a daze, the Fan brothers in the courtyard had expressions of terror as if they'd seen a ghost. The two leaned shoulder to shoulder, their faces extremely ugly.
From where she stood looking inward, she could see the desolate courtyard with dilapidated side rooms on both sides.
The main hall should have been a place to handle official business, but at this moment, two corpses were laid out there.
Moreover, after being struck by lightning last night, the main hall was damaged and looked even more broken down.
Now in broad daylight, light shone through the broken hole into the room. Below, the tables and chairs were pitch black and oppressive. Whether because there were still bodies that hadn't been moved away, the room always gave Zhao Fusheng an eerie, cold feeling.
She rubbed her arms, looking around uneasily.
Besides the Fan brothers, she didn't see any other figures around, but she always felt there was a pair of 'eyes' watching her in secret. Without emotion, with a cruel, cold feeling—the same as the sensation 'Zhao Fusheng' in the dream felt before death when being spied upon.
She bit her teeth, took a deep breath, and after much hesitation, stepped back into the courtyard.
"You... you, are you human or ghost?"
Seeing her enter, Fan Wujiu shrank extremely fearfully behind his brother, retreated two steps, then mustered courage to poke his head out and ask.
"Human—" Fan Bisi was bold and careful. At this moment, his gaze fell on her back. Seeing she had a shadow beneath her, he forced himself to remain calm and said:
"When malevolent ghosts kill, they generally first create a ghost domain to cover the area..." He said this much, then saw Zhao Fusheng frown. Thinking that previously she'd lived as a country wild girl, she probably knew nothing about what a 'ghost domain' was.
Fan Bisi's gaze flickered as he explained:
"The so-called ghost domain is what folk legends call 'ghost hitting the wall.'"
Before malevolent ghosts kill, they first create a certain range of 'ghost hitting the wall' to trap people within.
Low-level malevolent ghosts create small ghost walls with weak killing range, which also means the number of victims will be smaller. Fierce ghosts, on the other hand, can create domains of a certain range. Such ghost domains not only have great influence, but malevolent ghosts are like fish in water within them.
Anyone who enters the ghost domain range becomes the ghost's prey, at its mercy for slaughter.
"Fusheng currently has a shadow and is moving. Earlier I saw Old Zhang from the coffin shop poke his head out, proving this place hasn't been affected by a ghost domain. She should be a living, normal person..."
"But—" Hearing his brother say this, Fan Wujiu first breathed a sigh of relief in his heart, but then he seemed to think of something and was shocked:
"She already died from..."
"Shut up!"
Fan Bisi shouted loudly in rebuke, glaring at his brother, not allowing him to speak the remaining words.
Fan Wujiu was scolded by him and first shrank his neck, then looked at his brother. The two brothers exchanged a glance. Twin brothers' hearts were connected—Fan Wujiu immediately understood his meaning and quickly lowered his head.
"Fusheng, yesterday you had an accident. I personally checked your breath and confirmed you were dead. How could you—"
After rebuking his brother, Fan Bisi turned to Zhao Fusheng with a smile.
He was both curious and somewhat frightened about this matter.
Zhao Fusheng was entangled by a ghost and had long triggered the evil ghost's killing rules. Logically speaking, she should have died without doubt.
In fact, she had indeed died. Yesterday, after the Zhao couple died, she was disemboweled by the ghost. The bodies of this family of three were all personally arranged for burial by the Fan Bisi brothers.
With those kinds of injuries, even if she hadn't stopped breathing at that moment, she couldn't possibly have survived.
But now she was alive and kicking, her wounds healed, and though her complexion was pale, her eyes were bright. It was as if she'd swept away the bad luck from being entangled by the ghost, and her whole person had become much more spirited.
This was truly strange!
This kind of strange occurrence, even though Fan Bisi had stayed at the Demon-Suppressing Bureau for a long time, he'd never encountered. His heart was somewhat curious, and seeing that Zhao Fusheng before him had a composed expression, not like her previous shrinking, weak self, his heart also became somewhat suspicious of her.
His mind rapidly began recalling whether there were any records in the Demon-Suppressing Bureau about this kind of bizarre and strange matter. Before long, he really did think of a possibility.
Zhao Fusheng didn't speak. Her gaze just fell on the two brothers as she desperately began recalling last night's dream and searching through the limited information in her mind, trying to figure out her situation.
After integrating the original Zhao Fusheng's memories, she roughly sorted out a simple thread.
Zhao Fusheng was eighteen this year, born in Jiumen Village under Wan'an County's jurisdiction. Her parents were destitute. Three months ago, two people claiming to be magistrates from the Demon-Suppressing Bureau arrived at Jiumen Village and bought her for five copper coins.
At first, she thought these two weren't good people.
In these chaotic times, human lives were like grass. Many local thugs and wanderers abducted women and children to sell into filthy places, and even the authorities didn't care.
She fearfully and anxiously followed these two into Wan'an County, but unexpectedly, these two didn't sell her to brothels. They actually brought her into the Demon-Suppressing Bureau of Wan'an County.
Speaking of the Demon-Suppressing Bureau, one must mention the Great Han Dynasty's system.
The original Zhao Fusheng, being a country girl, couldn't recognize a single character. The farthest she'd ever traveled in her life was probably this trip with the Fan Bisi brothers into Wan'an County.
The court's rules and regulations were like hearing from the heavens to her, but she knew about the Demon-Suppressing Bureau.
These days, ghosts ran rampant and frequently claimed people's lives. Many ghosts were extremely fierce—they could even massacre entire villages and towns.
To quell the malevolent ghosts' killings, the court therefore established Demon-Suppressing Bureaus in counties throughout the nation. Each Demon-Suppressing Bureau would be staffed with a stationed chief magistrate.
The chief magistrate specifically handled cases of ghosts killing people, maintaining peace in the region. Under the chief magistrate were magistrate assistants. When ghosts appeared somewhere, the local village chief or community head would report to the town, which would then report to the county. The county's Demon-Suppressing Bureau would arrange personnel to eliminate the threat.
In this way, the importance of the Demon-Suppressing Bureau to the Great Han Dynasty's common people went without saying.
The Fan brothers' identities were as magistrate assistants at Wan'an County's Demon-Suppressing Bureau. With such status and position, they weren't even subject to the local county magistrate's control, ranking far above county officials. To the original Zhao Fusheng, they were extremely important figures.
When she learned that this pair of twin brothers had truly brought her into the Demon-Suppressing Bureau, Zhao Fusheng's heart was filled with both anxiety and terror.
What made her even more uneasy afterward was that the brothers didn't harm her. Instead, they told her that the previous chief magistrate of the Demon-Suppressing Bureau had died accidentally while eliminating ghosts, and now the position of chief magistrate in the residence stood vacant.
They said they'd received a dying request from the previous chief magistrate that the next chief would come from Jiumen Village under Wan'an County's jurisdiction. They had found her following the previous chief's guidance and wanted her to assume the position of bureau chief.
At that time, Zhao Fusheng was like a frightened quail. Facing the brothers' back-and-forth conversation, how could she dare refuse much? Naturally, she meekly agreed to whatever they said she should do.
In the end, she dripped blood to bind her soul and became the chief magistrate of this bureau.
...
Thinking back now, Zhao Fusheng felt the original Zhao Fusheng not only took on the Demon-Suppressing Bureau's responsibilities in confusion, but also died unclearly.