Chapter Eighty-Nine: The Phantom Maze

“Why are you crying? Cry again and I’ll leave you out in the blazing sun!” The fat man had always hated women’s tears. Now, hearing a ghost sob as well, he felt his scalp prickle, and he snapped at her in irritation.

To ghosts, being set under the sun was a brutally cruel punishment. The female ghost’s crying cut off at once, though she still kept hiccuping miserably. After folding his arms and giving her a sideways look for a while, the fat man finally said, “Now you can tell us why you were crying.”

The female ghost gathered her thoughts and, after a few seconds of recollection, began to speak slowly and in detail. “I was once a female student in the first graduating class of Huaxia Vocational High School. My family was poor, so even though I passed the entrance exam for the top high school, I didn’t go there. Instead, I enrolled in Huaxia Vocational High School. But one night I had a stomachache from eating something bad and rushed to the bathroom. I never expected to run into a lecherous ghost there. It forced me to death and then ravished me, sob sob...” As she spoke, she began crying again.

“A lecherous ghost?” Song Nianqiang and the fat man both froze, then immediately understood. “You mean a lovesick ghost. Among the hundred ghosts of China, there is no such thing as a lecherous ghost; there is only the lovesick ghost.”

The two smiled, and the way they looked at the female ghost changed. With a figure that fine, no wonder a lovesick ghost had set its sights on her.

A lovesick ghost, as the name suggests, is a ghost that has become obsessed with one thing or several things. There are many kinds of lovesick ghosts: those obsessed with wine, sex, wealth, and rage; miserly ghosts, gambling ghosts, opium ghosts, and libertine ghosts. There are also more refined ones, who in life were obsessed with flowers and plants, music and chess, calligraphy and painting, birds, fish, insects, and beasts. In Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio, there is even a record of a chess ghost.

“Tell us. You’ve been a ghost in that school for so long, so what information can you give us? You’d better hope your answer satisfies us, or I won’t go easy on you.” After the fat man finished his nonsense, his tone turned cold as he addressed the female ghost.

“All right. Then I’ll tell you how the ghost forces in that school are divided. There are two factions there, and they have always been at each other’s throats, all because of me, hehe...” Her tone carried a trace of desolation. Even if the two ghost factions had been driven to enmity because of her, so what? After all, she was a ghost. In this life, she would never become human again.

“They can do nothing to one another, so they placed me on the boundary between their territories. The two leaders came every other day. All these years, I’ve lived a life worse than death. Sometimes I truly wished I could simply scatter into oblivion, but every time I summoned the courage, I thought of the flaw in the seal and gave up the idea of killing myself. I only hoped that one day someone would come and send me on.”

It is said that ghosts are heartless, yet before Song Nianqiang now stood a female ghost full of feeling and loyalty. Seeing tears pour down her face, Song Nianqiang was so shocked he changed color. He rushed out quickly, and in just a few seconds came running back like the wind. He had gone to fetch a bowl, and was now catching the tears that flowed from the female ghost’s eyes.

Seeing Song Nianqiang’s actions, the fat man wore a look of sudden enlightenment and deliberately said to the female ghost, “Yes, how could they treat you like this? Think of your family, think of your teachers. After you died, how heartbroken they must have been. I heard your father fell gravely ill because of your sudden death and is still bedridden to this day.”

The fat man was bragging without even drafting the lie first. Huaxia Vocational High School had been founded for more than twenty years; twenty years ago, the fat man himself was probably still being fired by his old man, either in a condom or against a wall. But the female ghost had no idea how long it had really been. She thought only a short time had passed, and so she cried even more sorrowfully.

After crying for more than ten minutes, the female ghost’s sobbing gradually turned to hiccups, and no tears were left. Only then did Song Nianqiang saunter lazily over to the fat man, a pleased look on his face. “Good haul. These are ghost tears, and they have miraculous effects in treating certain illnesses. They practically cure whatever they touch. We’ve struck it rich this time.”

The fat man quickly fetched a small bottle, and the two carefully poured the ghost tears into it before placing it on the altar table. Looking at the female ghost’s tear-streaked face, Song Nianqiang said solemnly, “So in all these years you’ve stayed in that classroom and know nothing at all about the forces outside, is that right?”

The female ghost nodded through her sniffles. “All right. Tonight we’ll take you back to Huaxia Vocational High School. After we deal with tonight’s matter, we’ll send you on, so you can be reborn into a good family in your next life.”

Hearing this, the female ghost nodded excitedly and quickly returned to the talisman.

After all that, it was already past ten at night. Song Nianqiang and the fat man had originally wanted to sleep for a while, but they were afraid of oversleeping, so they gave up on it. The fat man deliberately brought along the three blue talismans he had drawn so far and gave Song Nianqiang several talismans for protection. Then the two went out, took a taxi, and headed for Huaxia Vocational High School.

On the way there, a young couple, seeking excitement, sneaked into Huaxia Vocational High School in the dead of night. At first, they thought the darkness all around was thrilling, and they even made love once on the lawn. Afterward, the two of them had a sudden whim to go into a classroom and find something interesting, then sell it outside to earn enough for another room rental.

So they headed toward the teaching building. But the school had already become a gathering place for ghosts; to come to a ghost nest in the middle of the night was to court death. Not everyone had that thing hanging around Song Nianqiang’s neck, and not everyone had such good luck that ghosts would go out of their way to avoid him when he walked at night.

The young couple reached the third floor of the teaching building, but the corridor was pitch-black, so dark that one could not see a hand before one’s face. The girl felt a little afraid, but since her boyfriend was beside her, she swallowed the words at her lips and let him pull her onward.

Crash!

The sudden sound of shattering glass startled the boy, who had been on edge the whole time. He quickly turned to look, but seeing nothing, he gathered his courage and continued forward.

The moon quietly rose, making the black corridor not quite so dark. “Ahhhhh!” The girl suddenly screamed at the top of her lungs, and the boy, startled by her sudden cry, shivered as well. “Baby, what’s wrong? Don’t be afraid, I’m here!” he said, forcing himself to sound brave as he comforted her.

“Blood... blood... blood!” The girl trembled, pointing at a bloody handprint on the classroom door. Hearing this, the boy hurried to look in the direction she indicated, but on closer inspection there was nothing there at all. The door was perfectly fine; where was this bloody handprint supposed to be?

“Baby, are you seeing things?” Though the boy had a fair amount of courage, the scene before them was simply too eerie. The girl, utterly certain, cried out to him, “It’s right there on the wall. Why can’t you see it?!” Her expression was frantic beyond measure, and she was nearly in tears. Seeing that the girl didn’t seem to be joking, the boy took her hand and led her downstairs.

Soon the two of them had gone down a floor, but then the girl suddenly cried out again, pointing tremblingly at a number on the wall. “We were clearly going down. How did we get to the fourth floor?”

The boy also saw the large number posted on the wall, and panic instantly seized him. At a loss, he pulled the girl and ran downward again.

But when they reached the floor below and looked at the numbers posted on the stairwell wall, the girl burst into tears at once. “What do we do? What do we do? There really is a ghost here! Waaaah...”

The boy was driven to irritation by her crying and shouted at her, “What are you crying for? We haven’t even met the ghost yet! I refuse to believe we can’t get out. Go up! Up!”

After saying that, he again took the girl’s hand and headed upstairs. Yet no matter how they walked, they always returned to the fourth floor. Then a black shadow flashed past behind them. The girl was sensitive to such things and immediately felt a chill rushing up from behind, so frightened that she shrank her neck. After the ghostly silhouette drifted past behind them, it unexpectedly floated by in front of them as well.

This time the boy saw it clearly. Shivering all over, he looked in the direction the shadow had drifted—and there was only a wall.

“It’s over. We’re finished tonight. What a pity—I still have so many girlfriends, and I never expected to die here with you!” It is said that people never lie at the moment of death. Then the boy’s words must have been true. Hearing them, the girl did not get angry at all. Instead, she looked at him with deep, devoted feeling and said, “To be able to die with you, among so many of your girlfriends, is the happiest thing in my life!”

These two fools had clearly brought this upon themselves. They deserved to be trapped by a ghostly wall.