Chapter 5

“Your Honor, Chen Yulan refuses to repay her debts, and her daughter has been harassing me without cause. I hold a collection agreement bearing a perfectly clear thumbprint.”

A bailiff took the contract and presented it to the bench.

As the judge examined it, the wind in the courtroom grew colder.

Mom went pale with anxiety. “I never signed that. I thought I was registering for the mutual aid association.”

Auntie Zhou smiled thinly. “Whose fault is it you can’t read?”

The judge looked up.

“Xu Wanwan, of the living world. Present your evidence.”

I knelt as required and submitted each item: photographs of the ghost money I’d burned, the cemetery video, and the cemetery’s surveillance footage.

On the screen, a goateed man crept up to the headstone at midnight. He removed the original spirit-routing talisman and replaced it with yellow paper.

I looked at Auntie Zhou.

“That’s Liu the Half-Immortal.”

Her smile faded a little. “I don’t know anyone by that name. Perhaps some swindler among the living did it.”

Next, I submitted the ghost-bank transaction records Master Qin had traced.

The cinnabar codes matched every transfer. Every one ended in Zhou Guifen’s ghost-money account.

Her expression finally changed, but she gritted her teeth.

“Any money in my account was collected under the contract.”

She pointed to it. “Chen Yulan voluntarily pledged her offerings against the debt. Her soul-imprint proves it.”

The judge spoke. “Examine the contract.”

A bailiff shone a green lamp over the paper. The red thumbprint gave off an eerie light.

“It is indeed Chen Yulan’s soul-imprint.”

Silence fell.

Mom tried to rush forward. “I did give my thumbprint—but not on that paper!”

Auntie Zhou cut in at once. “The contract is here. So is the soul-imprint.”

My heart sank.

Then I remembered the crucial point.

“Your Honor, I request the original registration ledger from the New Ghosts’ Mutual Aid Association.”

Auntie Zhou stiffened.

The judge glanced at her, then at me.

“Granted.”

He struck the sounding block.

“Bureau of Spirit Records. Retrieve the file.”

While we waited, the courtroom felt like an ice cellar.

Auntie Zhou threatened Mom under her breath.

“Keep this up, Chen Yulan, and you won’t even get a chance at reincarnation.”

I stepped in front of Mom.

“Worry about whether you’ll get to keep your new house.”

Soon, a bailiff brought an old ledger.

It recorded that Chen Yulan had joined the New Ghosts’ Mutual Aid Association on the third day after arriving in the underworld. Her soul-imprint sat beside the entry.

The judge checked the collection agreement again.

Its signing date was the seventeenth day after her arrival.

More importantly, beside Mom’s thumbprint in the ledger lay half an ink impression. It matched the edge of the print on the collection agreement exactly.

The judge’s gaze chilled.

“Check between the layers.”

A bailiff ran a fingertip along the contract’s edge and peeled out a layer of carbon paper, thin as a cicada’s wing.

Every ghost in the courtroom fell silent.

Mom stared for two seconds. Then she understood.

“Zhou Guifen! You transferred my thumbprint from the mutual aid register onto that contract!”

Auntie Zhou went white. The mahjong tile clattered from her hand.

The judge struck the block hard.

“Bring in Liu the Half-Immortal.”

They hauled him in shortly afterward, even his goatee seeming to droop.

One look at the evidence, and his legs buckled. He confessed everything.

“Zhou Guifen came to me in a dream. She told me to change the route for receiving the offerings. She promised me twenty percent of the ghost wealth to improve my fortune.”

Auntie Zhou still tried to wriggle free.

“I was only keeping it safe for Chen Yulan. I was afraid she’d squander it.”

Mom rolled up her sleeves in fury.

“Even if I squander it, it’s money my daughter burned for me!”

The judge struck the block again.

“Zhou Guifen. Forgery of an underworld contract, misappropriation of offerings, and intimidation of a departed soul. The charges are proven.”

She collapsed.

At last, she wasn’t smiling.

**8**

The underworld court worked quickly.

Zhou Guifen had to return every bit of ghost money she’d stolen, with penalties added. Not a coin was to be withheld from Chen Yulan.

She was also sentenced to three years of underworld hard labor: pushing a millstone, copying scriptures, and counting ghost money every day.

But the truly devastating punishment was this:

For three years, she was forbidden to touch a mahjong tile.

The earlier terms had merely left her looking ashen.

At “forbidden to touch a mahjong tile,” she wailed louder than she had at the sentence of hard labor.

“Your Honor! I’ll push the millstone! I’ll copy scriptures! I’ll count the money! But no mahjong? You might as well kill me!”

The judge remained expressionless.

“You’re already dead. There’s nothing left to kill.”

I nearly laughed.

Beside me, Mom muttered, “Serves you right.”