The Pacification of Ghosts - Chapter Three: Jia Zai-xing's Fatal Absolute Life Pills

In the prosperous merchant district of the capital, a mysterious medicine seller named Jia Zai-xing had established a lavish shop. His signs proclaimed miracles: "Absolute Life Pills—Defeat Death Itself!" The pills supposedly granted immortality, and desperate people from across the empire sought him out.

Zhong Kui arrived to investigate reports of people who had taken these pills becoming "neither living nor dead." The situation was more horrific than expected.

"Lord Zhong Kui," a distraught woman pleaded at the city gates, "my husband took those pills three days ago. He doesn't breathe, his heart doesn't beat, but he walks and talks. He's cold as ice but insists he's never felt better. What has he become?"

Throughout the city, Zhong Kui found victims of the Absolute Life Pills. They moved mechanically, spoke without emotion, and claimed to feel no pain, hunger, or fatigue. Their eyes were vacant, like dolls animated by invisible strings.

Han Yuan examined one victim closely. "This is abominable. Their souls are partially severed from their bodies—trapped between life and death. They're conscious but can't truly experience existence."

Fu Qu was disgusted. "They're like puppets. No wonder they claim to feel no suffering—they can't feel anything at all."

The medicine seller's shop was opulent beyond reason, decorated with gold and jade. Jia himself appeared to be a vigorous man in his sixties, with an unsettling smile that never reached his eyes.

"Great Lord Zhong Kui!" Jia exclaimed with false warmth. "Have you come for my Absolute Life Pills? Even a divine judge could benefit from true immortality!"

Zhong Kui's divine sight revealed the truth—Jia was already dead, had been for years. He was a corpse animated by dark magic, selling his own cursed condition to others.

"You're not selling immortality," Zhong Kui accused. "You're spreading living death. These pills don't prevent death—they trap souls in dying bodies."

Jia laughed, a hollow sound like wind through empty bones. "Death terrified me. I spent my fortune seeking immortality and found... this. Neither alive nor dead, unable to die but unable to truly live. The pills share my condition with others—why should I suffer alone?"

The Absolute Life Pills were made from ground bones of suicides, mixed with water from the River of Forgetfulness, and activated by Jia's own cursed essence. Each pill created another being like him—conscious but emotionally dead, existing but not living.

"You've weaponized despair," Han Yuan realized with horror. "These people sought eternal life but received eternal emptiness."

The pill victims began gathering outside Jia's shop, drawn by Zhong Kui's presence. They spoke in monotone unison:

"We feel nothing." "We fear nothing." "We want nothing." "Is this peace or perdition?" "Are we saved or damned?"

One victim, a young scholar, managed to break through the numbness momentarily: "Please, Lord Zhong Kui, I took the pill to live forever with my beloved, but now I can't feel love at all. I remember loving her, but the emotion itself is gone. This isn't life—it's a memory of life!"

Investigating further, Zhong Kui discovered Jia's true plan. He wasn't just selling pills for profit—he was creating an army of the living dead. Once enough people had taken the pills, he planned to overthrow both the living government and the underworld's authority, creating a third realm ruled by those neither alive nor dead.

"Think about it," Jia explained with manic enthusiasm. "No more fear of death, no more suffering, no more messy emotions. Just eternal, peaceful existence. I'm not a villain—I'm a visionary!"

But Zhong Kui saw through the delusion. "You're not eliminating suffering—you're eliminating the ability to recognize it. You've confused numbness with peace, emptiness with enlightenment."

Master Empty-Mind, the Buddhist monk from the previous case, arrived with potential salvation. "There is an antidote, but it requires a terrible choice. The victims must choose between true death or true life. They can't remain in between."

The antidote would force their souls to fully reunite with their bodies, experiencing all the suppressed pain, fear, and emotion at once—potentially killing them from the shock. Or they could choose peaceful death, allowing their souls to properly separate and move on.

"That's cruel!" Jia protested. "I gave them freedom from such choices!"

"No," Zhong Kui corrected, "you stole their ability to choose. Choice, even painful choice, is what makes us human."

Zhong Kui rendered his verdict on Jia Zai-xing: "You sought to escape death's natural order and dragged others into your twilight existence. For this crime against life and death alike, you will face a unique punishment."

Jia would be transformed into a warning—a statue at the crossroads between life and death, forever conscious but unable to move or speak, a monument to the folly of trying to cheat mortality.

As for the victims, each was given the choice. Some chose true death, finding peace in proper ending. Others chose the painful return to full life, screaming as sensation flooded back but ultimately grateful to feel again.

The young scholar who had spoken earlier chose life, despite the agony. "Better to suffer in truth than exist in lies," he gasped through the pain.

Continue reading: Chapter Four: The Petty Ghost's Clever Chain Stratagem