The City of Wrongful Deaths is an immense fortress enclosed by four high walls, situated within the Netherworld.
Its nature is somewhat akin to a prison in the mortal realm, yet its scale is so vast that it can only be described as a city, providing a place where countless departed souls can dwell and live much as they would among the living.
Someone might remark at this point: "Didn't you just dismiss the idea of people going to another world to live after death? How is it that souls can now live in the City of Wrongful Deaths? Isn't that a contradiction?"
Do not rush—hear me out.
The souls residing here are subjected to strict supervision. The spirit money and paper offerings burned for them by friends and family in the mortal realm cannot be received by them at all.
All money and goods intended for the dead are stored collectively under Maudgalyayana, who serves under Ksitigarbha Bodhisattva, and are not handed over until the souls have served their full terms of detention and are released.
Because their freedom is restricted, these souls locked away in the City of Wrongful Deaths cannot travel to the mortal realm to partake in offerings, even during the Ghost Festival when the Ghost Gate is blown wide open.
Not long after Shen Xuanrou arrived in the City of Wrongful Deaths and before she could even be settled, a major event occurred there.
Though this matter had nothing to do with her inherently, it nevertheless became intertwined with her. Whether one believes it or not, some things are truly predestined.
In the folk beliefs of places like southern Fujian and Taiwan in our country, there is a prevalent ritual called "Breaking the City," which imitates Ksitigarbha Bodhisattva's rites to deliver souls trapped in the City of Wrongful Deaths.
When performed by Buddhist monks and Taoist priests, it can invoke deities and Buddhas to rescue wronged souls from the City of Wrongful Deaths, allowing them to wait until their murderers face justice and witness them suffer retribution, thereby venting the grievances of the victims.
Alternatively, it helps the departed souls let go of the thousand-and-one worldly entanglements and chaotic ties of their past lives, thus sparing them from the torment of unnatural deaths and lingering bitterness.
I am not very familiar with this ritual myself, and Shen Xuanrou did not know the specific details either.
Suffice to say that shortly after she arrived in the City of Wrongful Deaths, the entire city suddenly blazed with a brilliant golden light. In an instant, the greyish hue that pervaded the whole place was completely swallowed by this radiance.
First, the phantoms of numerous Buddhist monks and Taoist priests emerged in the sky, and a distant, lingering, serene, and ethereal sound drifted into the City of Wrongful Deaths.
Accompanied by the circulation of profound scriptures, the figures of those monks and priests gradually converged into a colossal phantom of Ksitigarbha Bodhisattva. The golden light grew increasingly intense until it finally transformed into a blinding pillar of light that shot fiercely toward a certain spot within the City of Wrongful Deaths.
Then, Shen Xuanrou saw a human figure floating slowly within that golden light, departing from the City of Wrongful Deaths along the beam.
Ordinarily, this matter had nothing to do with her, and here it should have ended.
However, Shen Xuanrou told me that the monks and priests had generated so much vow-power that the golden Ksitigarbha Bodhisattva lingered in the sky for a long time without dissipating. Finally, amidst an ethereal voice echoing through the void, it shattered into dozens of rays of golden light that scattered across the City of Wrongful Deaths.
"May I, throughout future eons, widely provide expedient means for all sinful and suffering beings to attain liberation."
One of those rays of golden light fell upon her, and thus, she too was carried away from the City of Wrongful Deaths along with that light.
Bathed in that golden light, she felt her mind and body grow tranquil, all things turning into emptiness, as an ethereal state gradually claimed her consciousness.
For that single moment, Shen Xuanrou felt dazed, believing she was truly ready to let go of every remnant of her past life.
Yet very quickly, her clarity returned, and she stared fixedly at the end of that golden light.
She knew that once she entered that realm, everything from her past life would never have anything to do with her again.
Resentment, bitterness, and deep-seated animosity exploded within her mind.
Before reaching the end of the golden light, she broke away and fled back into the mortal realm. As for the specific details of how she returned to the mortal world, she did not elaborate.
Upon returning to the mortal realm, her very first impulse was to follow a dim, instinctive guidance to seek out her physical remains.
As for the family that had adopted her, their corpses had already been gnawed beyond recognition by wild dogs and cats, their bones exposed to the wilderness.
Yet for some reason, her own corpse had not been devoured. This was likely because she had died by poison, leaving her remains saturated with arsenic.
The wild dogs had dragged her body to a Yin-gathering spot, sniffed it, and walked away without taking a single bite, which was how her skeleton remained intact.
Absorbing the ambient moisture and lunar Qi of the Yin-gathering ground, her hair and nails had been slowly growing, showing faint signs of becoming a corpse possessed.
Without overthinking it, Shen Xuanrou slipped right back inside. At that point, she had no idea what she had become, nor do I know what she ought to be classified as.
My first reaction was that Shen Xuanrou had turned into a zombie, but upon closer reflection, it seemed somewhat different from a zombie—it should be more akin to a "ghost borrowing a corpse."
A human being possesses three souls and seven physical spirits. The three souls are known as Tai-guang, Shuang-ling, and You-jing.
The seven physical spirits are known as Shi-gou, Fu-shi, Que-yin, Tun-zei, Fei-du, Chu-hui, and Chou-fei.
This is what I read in Volume 54 of the *Daoist scriptures*, under the "Soul Deities" section. I won't go into too much detail about the specific contents of the three souls and seven spirits; interested friends can look them up yourselves.
When a normal person passes away, the seven physical spirits should disperse first, while the three souls return to the Underworld.
Because Shen Xuanrou died by suicide from poison, she naturally harbored a breath of grievance in her chest that she could not swallow, causing her seven physical spirits to remain undispersed.
Coupled with the fact that she was dragged by wild dogs to a Yin-gathering and malevolence-nurturing site, and because her poisoned body was neither eaten by wild dogs nor gnawed by wild cats, her corpse was perfectly preserved. With the right conditions of timing, terrain, and harmony all aligning, a corporeal transformation naturally began until she rose as a zombie.
Having returned to her corpse, Shen Xuanrou's revenge commenced.
Peace and quiet vanished from her adoptive family's household. People died every two or three days, and the victims met horrifying ends—their bodies ripped directly into shreds, their brains and intestines spilled all over the ground beyond any possibility of reassembly.
This matter quickly startled the local authorities, who immediately dispatched a coroner—what we would call a forensic examiner today—to inspect the bodies.
At first, the coroner was unfearful, even somewhat disdainful.
He merely remarked that the dynasty had just been established, and roving bandits and mountain outlaws waving the banner of "overthrowing the Qing and restoring the Ming" and committing crimes everywhere were ten a penny. Whether they killed for wealth or took pleasure in sadistic slaughter, he had seen plenty of methods far more cruel than this.
Later on, however, when that coroner managed to piecing the corpses together to perform the examination and deduced that the fatal wounds on the victims were two bloody holes in the neck, he fled without ever looking back.
No one could crack the case, and it became an unsolved mystery. The local authorities repeatedly sent bailiffs to interrogate and investigate, but in the end, everything came to nothing.
Rife rumors spread among the townsfolk that this family had committed wicked deeds, bringing about a terrible disaster, and that mountain demons and wild spirits had come to exact vengeance.
As the commotion grew larger, various self-proclaimed wandering Buddhist monks and Taoist priests began showing up at the door, claiming they were here to resolve troubles and settle karmic debts. Yet most of them were merely charlatans and swindlers of no genuine use.
Those who set up altars to perform rituals did so; those who chanted scriptures did so; and those who scammed a sum of money and ran off did so as well. For a time, that wealthy household became quite bustling indeed.