Records of the Halls of Ten Thousand Affairs: Chapter 21: The Ghost Hotel (Part 4)

Records of the Halls of Ten Thousand Affairs: Chapter 21: The Ghost Hotel (Part 4)

Zhao Fusheng barely touched his food. Su Xiaoyu’s remark at the start of the meal had killed his appetite entirely, and he spent most of it slowly sipping soup and occasionally asking Chen Jiu a question or two.

Su Xiaoyu, for her part, ate with complete lack of restraint. The dishes on this table were clearly a significant step up from the complimentary meals the hotel provided. Chen Jiu took one look around and calculated that even without drinks, this spread had to run five figures at minimum.

Either Zhao Fusheng simply lived this lavishly as a matter of habit, or he genuinely placed considerable value on having a practitioner in his corner.

“Wanshi Zhai I haven’t heard of it before. If you don’t mind my asking, Master Chen, which school are you from?” Zhao Fusheng asked pleasantly.

“That old man ah, my master,” Chen Jiu said. “He’s been living up on the mountain so long he’s lost touch with the wider world. He hasn’t made a name for himself out here, so you probably wouldn’t know him. Not worth bringing up.”

Zhao Fusheng chuckled and nodded. Two assessments formed in his mind simultaneously.

First possibility: Chen Jiu genuinely came from a distinguished lineage and simply preferred to keep it quiet. Second possibility: this young woman was a fraud, and the vagueness was there to prevent her from being caught out. Either way, there was no point pressing the matter now. Tonight’s work on the seventh floor would settle it.

The meal left Su Xiaoyu very happily full. She patted her rounded stomach and asked Chen Jiu quietly: “Boss, can we come back here to eat again sometime?”

“You’re insatiable. You just finished eating and you’re already thinking about the next meal.” Chen Jiu pinched her cheek. “Go do your homework. I need to work.”

Su Xiaoyu said a polite goodbye to Zhao Fusheng and scurried off.

With the girl gone, Zhao Fusheng inexplicably felt his shoulders relax. He shifted with a trace of discomfort and asked Chen Jiu: “Master Chen, what that little girl said earlier… was any of it true?”

“Well, Mr. Zhao, a clear conscience fears no ghost at the door.” Chen Jiu smiled in a way that didn’t quite reach her eyes. “You’re a great philanthropist. How could someone like you possibly be carrying that many lives?”

The words were meant as reassurance. They had the opposite effect. Zhao Fusheng broke into a cold sweat. He dabbed at his temple with a handkerchief, working to hold himself together. “Master Chen is too kind. Let’s not delay — shall we head up?”

“Of course. Mr. Zhao, your constitution is fairly strong, I hope?” Chen Jiu looked at him with what appeared to be genuine concern. “I hadn’t expected your seventh floor to be quite so dangerous. Manager Miao felt unwell both times she went up. If I hadn’t intervened, she would have been running a fever for at least three days. I should be upfront with you: if you find you can’t handle it up there, better to say so now and send someone sturdier.”

Zhao Fusheng waved this off at once. “On that score, Master Chen, you needn’t worry. I have strong yang energy. Things like this don’t bother me.”

Chen Jiu raised an eyebrow. She tidied the contents of her bag without further comment, then gestured for Zhao Fusheng to lead the way.

They took the same elevator. For reasons unknown, there was no ghost loop this time they reached the seventh floor without incident. And this time, the corridor lights were on.

Zhao Fusheng looked both ways, found nothing obviously amiss, and walked forward. “Master Chen, where should we start? Here?”

He had taken two steps when the light above his head flickered. A crackling sound, and it threatened to go out.

Then, from the far end of the corridor, the ceiling lights began dying one by one in rapid succession, the darkness racing toward him. Zhao Fusheng stumbled backward in a panic, turned around and found a pale white face inches from his own. He let out a scream that split the silence.

“Stop yelling. It’s me.” Chen Jiu held up her phone as a flashlight. “As you can see, the situation is real. If you’ve had enough, now is still a reasonable time to send someone else.”

Zhao Fusheng knew this was no coincidence. The hotel’s electrical system had been overhauled as part of the renovation. There was no natural reason for it to short out exactly when he arrived. Something unnatural was at work here.

But he didn’t want more people involved in this. And looking at Chen Jiu’s complete composure, he judged that she likely had some real ability.

He wiped his forehead, hauled himself upright on trembling legs, and said: “No, no, I’m fine. Just startled, that’s all.”

The ring of keys at his waist suddenly swayed and rattled, as though an invisible hand had brushed past, the sound jangling through the silence of the corridor in a deeply unsettling way.

Chen Jiu’s pupils caught a faint flash of gold. There was a life-protection talisman concealed at Zhao Fusheng’s chest. So that was why he had been willing to come up here. And why the presences around him hadn’t moved against him directly. Someone of real ability had placed that talisman on him in secret.

“Shall we?” Zhao Fusheng took out his phone, aimed the torch down the corridor. Every door on both sides was identical, and they looked profoundly unsettling in the dark.

Chen Jiu made a sound of agreement and followed him forward. She would start with the room where she had sensed a spirit earlier in the day.

Zhao Fusheng found the key, eased the door open with extreme caution, fully expecting some monster to lunge at his face. He shoved it wide, immediately leaped back several steps, abandoned all pretense of dignity and authority, and gestured for Chen Jiu to go in first.

Chen Jiu had no objection. She had simply never had much capacity for fear, or if she had, it was so attenuated as to make no practical difference. In any case, in all her years of living she had yet to encounter any person, creature, or situation that truly frightened her.

She stepped inside, let her senses extend for a moment, and felt it immediately. Even after the renovation, this small space was saturated with resentment. Whoever had died in this room had died with an enormous amount of unfinished grievance.

“Do you still have the hotel check-in records from back then?” Chen Jiu asked.

Zhao Fusheng trailed in behind her, keeping his voice low, as though afraid of disturbing something. “Long gone.”

“A fire that size, and you as the person responsible for the hotel you have no memory of the guests?”

“I’ll put it plainly.” Zhao Fusheng let out a breath. “There were over a dozen who died. A mother and daughter. A couple. Several colleagues on a business trip. That’s about all I can recall. When the fire broke out, a lot of them were still asleep. By the time they woke up, it was probably already too late to get out.”

“Is this around the anniversary of their deaths?” Chen Jiu asked.

“It is.” Zhao Fusheng’s voice was slightly unsteady. “Master Chen, are you saying that they… came back?”

The moment he finished speaking, a cold draft slid past the back of his ear, cutting through him entirely.

He shuddered. “That can’t be. That can’t be, can it? Last year’s anniversary was completely normal. Why this year, why now…”

“Mr. Zhao,” Chen Jiu said with curiosity, “what do you mean last year’s anniversary was normal?”

“Last year… the seventh floor had just been renovated. Guests stayed up here, and everything was fine. Nobody asked for a refund.” His expression was pained. “Master Chen, please, find a way to help me. Get them to go back. Tell them not to frighten my guests anymore. If this gets out, I’m finished. Please, ask them to have mercy and move on.”

“Ah, Mr. Zhao, it’s not as simple as me just asking them to leave. I’ve been sensing the energy in here, and the resentment is very deep. There’s clearly unfinished business. We’ll need to think this through carefully.” Chen Jiu shifted her tone. “Though I’m curious after the fire, didn’t you hire any priests or monks to perform rites for them? If their spirits had been properly sent on, they wouldn’t have come back with this kind of anger.”

Zhao Fusheng’s legs went out beneath him. He sank to the floor with a thud, deflated. “Master, of course I hired people. I paid a fortune for them. They all said the spirits had been sent on, told me to keep running the business, that plenty of foot traffic and sunlight would naturally disperse any remaining yin energy. And I thought that was the end of it. So how, how did they find their way back?”

In the darkness, Chen Jiu made no effort to read his expression closely. There wasn’t enough to go on yet. “All right. Let’s get you up first. This room isn’t one to linger in.”

The words were barely out of her mouth when Zhao Fusheng went to stand and felt something close around his ankle. Cold. Like a human hand.

His throat seized. He didn’t dare look down for a long moment. With enormous effort, he forced out a sound in Chen Jiu’s direction: “I’m having a bit of trouble getting up. Could you give me a hand?”

Chen Jiu turned. She saw the pale white wrist extending from beneath the bed, and understood immediately.

“So someone came back specifically to settle a score with you,” she said, and crouched slightly, giving Zhao Fusheng a pat on the shoulder. “Don’t be afraid. These kinds of spirits rarely harm people directly. At most they’re trying to frighten you. Curse it out a bit and it’ll back off on its own.”

Zhao Fusheng had no strength left for cursing anyone. He was so terrified he was a moment away from rolling his eyes back and fainting outright.

Chen Jiu shook her head with a contemptuous smile, flicked a finger through the air, and sent a blade of qi into the bony white wrist. It pulled back like a liquid and vanished beneath the bed without a trace.

“There. Get up.” Chen Jiu clicked her tongue and took a few steps toward the door. Inwardly, her assessment of Zhao Fusheng was taking shape.

Most malevolent spirits on Chinese soil operated according to the logic of cause and effect. If Zhao Fusheng had nothing to answer for, why was he this frightened? And why did the spirits seem to single him out?

Zhao Fusheng saw her turning to leave and scrambled after her on his last reserves, crossing the room in three quick strides then went sprawling flat on his face in the doorway.

Strange. Something was very wrong. The life-protection talisman Master Qingxu had given him had done absolutely nothing just now, as though something had thoroughly suppressed it. He had only felt one hand on his ankle, but across his back had come an invisible crushing weight, as though something enormous were pressing him down. Until Chen Jiu spoke, he hadn’t been able to move at all.

The door swung shut on its own with a bang.

He lay sprawled on the floor, breathing hard. Looking at Chen Jiu standing there as though none of this were remarkable, he felt his remaining doubts dissolve. She was the real thing.

“Master… is there a way to resolve this?” Zhao Fusheng wiped his face and fought to compose himself. His voice had gone slightly off-pitch, which struck even him as absurd.

“There is,” Chen Jiu said. “But you need to be honest with me. If you’re truly putting this in my hands, there can be no more concealment. Not for my sake for yours. Do you understand?”

“Understood, understood,” Zhao Fusheng said quickly. “Whatever you need to know, ask away.”

“Good.” Chen Jiu looked at him steadily in the dark. “Then tell me this. That fire, all those years ago was it really an accident?”

Something dropped in Zhao Fusheng’s chest. He couldn’t find words for a long moment.