A Prophet - Chapter 11 (Part 3)
Chapter 3 - Ghost General Technique
In the evening, upon returning to the guild headquarters, Grandpa Zu convened an emergency meeting to specifically analyze the events of that day.
Grandpa Zu said, "This scheme had its dangers, but we emerged unscathed thanks entirely to Farong's adaptability. All brothers of the guild should ponder this deeply and study it diligently."
Huang Farong, bright and clever, quickly stood up and said, "It is all thanks to Grandpa Zu's capable guidance on ordinary days."
Zhang Zizhan stood off to the side, chuckling quietly.
Grandpa Zu had also heard of the "Ghost General Technique" before, but had never studied it in detail. Today, when Huang Farong suddenly blurted out on site that this was the "Ghost General Technique," it still sent a jolt through Grandpa Zu's entire body.
The "Ghost General Technique" was a form of witchcraft practiced in certain Southeast Asian countries, divided into the "Minor Ghost General" and the "Major Ghost General." As the saying went: Minor Ghost Generals command objects, while Major Ghost Generals command people. This meant that the "Minor Ghost General" controlled animals, whereas the "Major Ghost General" controlled humans.
According to records in Miao and Xiang Gu Witchcraft, the Ghost General Technique was a branch of gu witchcraft. Gu witchcraft originated in China; as early as the Spring and Autumn period, there was already the saying: "When grain is left to accumulate for too long, it transforms into flying gu, known as gu." This "Ghost General Technique" had actually been invented toward the end of the Ming dynasty by a Miao girl named Gu God Alei.
During the Chongzhen reign at the end of the Ming dynasty, Li Zicheng (King Chuang) led a massive popular uprising, to which the Miao people responded passionately, creating a phenomenon where "all Miao tribes of Hunan rallied to King Chuang." To assist King Chuang in dealing with the imperial court's forces, Alei used an earthworm from the snowy peaks of the Tianshan Mountains as a host body, implanting intensely ferocious horsefly gu into the earthworm. Several months later, she successfully refined the "Ghost General Netherworld Gu." This type of gu insect could lurk inside the bodies of humans and animals, capturing souls and controlling minds.
In the seventeenth year of Chongzhen, Li Zicheng fought a bloody battle at Ningwu Pass. Alei deployed this gu in the drinking water sources of the government forces. After the imperial soldiers drank it, the entire army fell into a daze and completely lost any combat capability. King Chuang captured Taiyuan in a single stroke and embarked on his eastward expedition.
On March 19, Li Zicheng entered the Zhengyang Gate of Beijing, the Chongzhen Emperor hanged himself, and the Great Ming Dynasty perished. When Li Zicheng doled out rewards based on merit, the girl Alei grew arrogant and immensely proud, relying on her great contributions. Unexpectedly, Li Zicheng issued an execution order against Alei. This was what they called "cooking the hunting dog once the hares are caught"—when you were needed, you could shine brilliantly, but now that the realm was pacified, who would dare keep such a dangerous gu god by their side?
Huang Farong said, "Capturing souls and controlling minds are both exaggerations. The 'Ghost General Technique' is nothing more than applying the principles of the combination of yin and yang. All things in creation are divided into yin and yang, and gu insects are no exception. First, yang-natured gu insects are placed in food or water. The gu insects are so minuscule that they are completely invisible to the naked eye. Once a human or animal ingests them, the gu insects lurk inside the body, multiply rapidly, and travel through the bloodstream into the brain. Yang governs activity while yin governs stillness. Once these yang-natured gu insects take root inside a human or animal, the subject becomes restless and agitated. At that moment, the sorcerer places another batch of yin-natured gu insects onto the target object. Catching the scent of the opposite sex, the yang-natured gu insects grow even more frantic, pulling and dragging the human or animal toward the opposite-sex gu insects in order to achieve the union of yin and yang. Once a human or animal is afflicted with the 'Ghost General Technique,' they lose control of their own actions and become completely at the mercy of others. Later on, certain Miao and Xiang women used this to deal with faithless husbands, placing gu in their men: if they could not keep their hearts, they would at least keep their bodies. This is how the legends of the Miao and Xiang female fiends arose in later history."
"When I saw a pack of hedgehogs rush out and noticed they showed no fear of humans whatsoever, I knew someone had used the 'Ghost General Technique' on them. Back when I accompanied Fifth Granny (Qiao Wumei) to visit a gu sorcerer in Hunan, I witnessed such a 'Ghost General Technique' firsthand. Some were cast upon hedgehogs, some upon locusts, and some upon rats... Once these animals are controlled, they become abnormally excited, and skilled gu sorcerers can mobilize them to do anything."
What Huang Farong said was no exaggeration. After Japan launched its full-scale invasion of China, Japanese military sorcerers widely collected "Ghost General Techniques" throughout Southeast Asia. In 1938, during the construction of the Anti-Japanese lifeline known as the "Burma Road," the Japanese ground forces could not enter the rear stronghold of Yunnan to carry out sabotage, so they dropped bombs from airplanes. Alongside conventional bombs, they dropped a massive quantity of bacterial bombs, which concealed numerous gu insects inside. After the explosions, the gu insects scattered into the local forests, and certain pangolins ingested them, becoming manipulated by Japanese sorcerers to attack the highway under construction. These pangolins burrowed desperately into the roadbed, riddling the highway with holes. The Kuomintang authorities urgently mobilized local sorcerers to burn massive amounts of mugwort at the construction site to drive these small animals away and ensure the smooth completion of the Burma Road.
Gu insects feared mugwort above all else, as mugwort had been renowned since ancient times as a sovereign remedy for dispelling evil. The smoke emitted when mugwort burned would enter the animals' respiratory tracts, diffusing its medicinal potency straight to their hearts and minds, causing the gu insects inside their bodies to dissolve upon contact. Of course, this applied only to lesser sorcerers and gu insects; if one encountered a sorcerer of profound skill who had cast a "Major Ghost General" upon them, relying solely on mugwort fell far short of what was needed, and one had to enlist certain Buddhist chants to cleanse the victim's mind and soul.
After listening to Huang Farong recount the origins of the "Ghost General Technique," everyone was deeply struck by the miraculous nature of gu witchcraft and began discussing it eagerly all at once.
Grandpa Zu sank into deep contemplation. Who had cast the "Minor Ghost General," sneaking into the coffin beforehand to tamper with it and manufacture the illusion of a coffin full of dark hair, and then casting the "Minor Ghost General" a second time to disrupt the joint burial site?
Just as he was deep in thought, a servant with bound feet came to report that a friend from the newspaper agency had come to visit. Taking out his pocket watch, Grandpa Zu saw it was already midnight, the hour of Zi. Knowing it must be important, he hurriedly said, "Hurry and invite him in! Have him wait for me in the study!"
The visitor was a deputy editor-in-chief from the newspaper agency surnamed Wu, personal name Junran. He was an inside man at the paper whom Grandpa Zu had bought off with a heavy sum of silver dollars; whenever Grandpa Zu wanted to make a big splash in the papers, Wu Junran was the one who helped pull it off.
Dispensing with pleasantries, Wu Junran pulled out a sheet of paper. "Grandpa Zu, take a look at this!"
Grandpa Zu took it and looked, and was utterly shocked! It was a news article with the headline: Fake Ghost Marriage Exposed by Flaws, Successor of Tie Buzi Suffers Defeat. The content roughly stated that Grandpa Zu's group of people had been swindling in the Jianghuai region for many years, recently putting on divine pretenses to perform a ghost marriage for someone, only to incur public wrath when a white immortal broke the game on the day of the burial, causing the coffin to be bitten open and skeletal remains to scatter all over the ground.
"When is this news scheduled to run?" Grandpa Zu asked Wu Junran.
"It was supposed to be published tomorrow, but tonight, right before printing, it was temporarily pulled. The matter was personally arranged by the editor-in-chief himself; even I was left in the dark. The newspaper's rule is that tomorrow's news is prepared the day before and then printed overnight to be distributed on the streets the next day. The editors of each section are responsible for gathering and submitting articles for their own pages, and any articles temporarily pulled must be collected and destroyed. Fortunately, I have a man down at the collection office who handed this manuscript over to me. Feeling that something fishy was going on, I made a special trip here to inform Grandpa Zu," Wu Junran said.
Upon hearing this, Grandpa Zu let out a long sigh. "It seems this has been premeditated for a long time."
Wu Junran asked, "Premeditated?"
Grandpa Zu replied, "When I performed the ghost marriage today, a swarm of hedgehogs indeed arrived to wreck the site, but I managed to neutralize them. That is why this report was pulled. Who submitted this manuscript to the newspaper agency? Can we trace who is behind it?"
Wu Junran said, "I asked around. It is rumored that the editor-in-chief personally handed the manuscript in!"
"Personally handed it in?" Grandpa Zu felt the situation growing increasingly grave.
After giving Wu Junran several dozen silver dollars, Grandpa Zu murmured a few instructions in a low voice right into his ear, and Wu Junran quietly slipped back to the newspaper agency.