Fish Gills

鱼鳃 / Fish Gills (Title of the Aquatic-Soul Warden)

Drowned after being dragged underwater by aquatic creatures (被水族生物拖入水中溺亡)

Era of Death: Unknown, during a mortal lifetime as a river fisherman.
Current Ghostly Stage: Li Gui (厉鬼) — Vengeful Spirit.
Underworld Jurisdiction: The Netherworld Court, serving as one of the Si Zhi Gong Cao (四值功曹), the Four Duty Deities. Specifically tasked with the collection and management of all aquatic souls.

The stretch of river where Fish Gills originally drowned and spent three years trapped is locally known, in certain districts, as the **Fish Gills Shoal (鱼鳃滩)**. Fishermen avoid it at night, claiming that a pale, greenish light sometimes glows from the water’s surface, and that those who stare too long will feel a cold hand grasping their ankle. An abandoned shrine on the riverbank, dedicated to no named deity, is sometimes maintained by older villagers who leave offerings of rice wine and steamed buns, hoping to secure a good catch without encountering the Warden of the Deep.

This entry establishes Fish Gills (鱼鳃) as a specialized Underworld functionary within the Gui (鬼) scroll. He is the Warden of Aquatic Souls, one of the Si Zhi Gong Cao (四值功曹), and operates at the Li Gui stage. His narrative is closely linked with the Underworld Court, particularly the Ten Yama Kings (Shi Dian Yan Luo), from whom he received his appointment. His history of conflict over jurisdiction with the Dragon Kings of the Four Seas (四海龙王) is a defining feature of his role. For comparison in Underworld structure and official hierarchy, see the entries for Cui Jue (Cui Furen) and the Heibai Wuchang. His state as a permanent, appointed servant of the Netherworld, rather than a wandering spirit, contrasts with the typical ghostly path described in the Scroll of Gui’s total volume.

Fish Gills currently exists at the Li Gui (厉鬼) stage, a Vengeful Spirit. He has persisted as a ghost for an unknown number of centuries, his existence shaped by the singular circumstance of his death and his subsequent transformation by the Underworld.

The Li Gui stage is defined by memory pollution and self-loss. Fish Gills did not merely die; he was consumed by the environment he once exploited. For three years, his soul was trapped at the bottom of a river, entangled in mud and fishing nets, slowly absorbing the Yin Qi (阴气) of the water and the fading souls of countless fish, turtles, and water-creatures. This involuntary feeding did not simply make him stronger—it fundamentally altered his identity. He is no longer a human fisherman. He is a composite being, carrying within him the last gasps of the drowned, the cold sediment of the riverbed, and the slow, silent consciousness of aquatic life. The original fisherman’s memories are buried deep beneath layers of non-human experience, and the name he once answered to has been forgotten under the title bestowed by the Netherworld: Fish Gills.

The fisherman died on a crossing. His small boat, laden with the day’s catch, was rammed from below by a massive, malevolent fish. The boat shattered. As he plunged into the dark water, a length of his own fishing net wrapped around his ankle, dragging him down. He did not drown quickly. He fought, his lungs burning, his hands clawing at the net that had been his livelihood and was now his shroud. His last conscious sight was of the sun’s surface growing dimmer, and then nothing but the silt-bound dark.

When his soul detached from his body, there was no release. His spirit, now a Li Hun (离魂), floated upward. But instead of being drawn toward the Underworld by the natural pull of the afterlife, his soul was instantly entangled by the very river that had killed him. The water, heavy with Yin Qi and the remnants of countless drowned creatures, acted like a secondary body. He was trapped. He attempted to reach the surface, to touch a passing boat, to call out—but his spectral form was caught in the current. The first lesson of soul-departure came not from wind or sunlight, but from the crushing weight of the water. Every ripple of the river felt like a tight band squeezing his incorporeal throat. The cold of the deep was not a temperature, but an endless, gnawing pressure. He was not dead and free; he was dead and drowned forever.

Unable to rise to the surface or sink into the Underworld, Fish Gills found his only shelter was the riverbed itself. The thick mud, the roots of waterweeds, and the wreckage of sunken boats became his spectral haven, shielding his fragile soul from the gentle but persistent current that acted upon him as the Gang Feng (罡风) acts upon surface ghosts.

His survival was not a choice, but a consequence of his death. His own lingering soul was bound to the river, but the river was also a repository of other lost souls. The ghosts of fish suffocated on hooks, of turtles crushed by boat hulls, of eels stranded in drying ponds. These were not human souls, but they were souls nonetheless—small, dim, but present. In the silent years beneath the water, Fish Gills began to absorb them. There was no active hunting, no act of violent consumption. The Yin Qi of the river simply flowed through him, and with it, the fading consciousness of the water’s dead. He did not have to try; the river fed him. Each absorbed soul deposited a fragment of memory into his own. The cold shock of a hook, the slow settling of mud, the ancient patience of a turtle—he began to know the river not as a fisherman, but as a fish.

By the time the Underworld’s agents located Fish Gills, he was no longer a single entity. He was a composite of the river’s accumulated deaths. The soul of a giant catfish contributed a deep, sonorous patience. The soul of a carp contributed a flickering awareness of light and shadow. A drowned merchant, who had been claiming his own spot on the riverbed for decades, added the final human layer—an old, weary knowledge of the surface world.

In his spectral form, Fish Gills could no longer distinguish the fisherman’s original thoughts from the thoughts of the fish he had consumed. When he remembered the touch of sun on his skin, was that his memory, or the memory of a fish that had once breached the water at dawn? When he felt the pull of the current, was it his own lingering fear, or the last sensation of an eel that had drifted into a drainage pipe? The original self of the fisherman was still present, but buried deep beneath layers of non-human perception. He was becoming the river.

Had the Underworld not intervened when it did, Fish Gills would have crossed the natural threshold into a Gui Wang (鬼王) state. The entire river was becoming his body. Every ghostly eel and spectral minnow was part of his domain. He felt the banks of the river as his own skin, and the muddy bottom as his own bones. If left unchecked, he would have become a localized river-god of the dead—a Ghost King of the waterway, with a sprawling, anonymous consciousness.

But the Underworld pulled him back. The soul-escorts of the Netherworld, likely Niu Tou Ma Mian (牛头马面) themselves or a specialized aquatic retrieval team, found the node of his consciousness buried in the mud. They extracted him, breaking his bond with the river. This process, a kind of spiritual surgery, carved away the biological consciousness he had absorbed while preserving his core. He was not allowed to become a Ghost King; he was instead reshaped into an official functionary. His path toward the Gui Xian (鬼仙) stage—the possibility of reverse-cultivation from within the ghost state to generate pure Yang—was sealed permanently by his enforced service.

Fish Gills has a direct and ongoing relationship with the Netherworld Court. He was not captured as a fugitive; he was discovered, extracted, and then *appointed* to his position. This places him outside the standard path of a wandering soul.

He has stood before the Ten Yama Kings (Shi Dian Yan Luo), likely before the King of the Fifth Court (Yan Luo Wang himself) or the King of the Seventh Court (King Taishan), who specializes in water-related deaths and souls. During this audience, the Karma Mirror (Nie Jing Tai) would have shown not only his own life as a fisherman but his long entanglement with the souls of the river. The judgment was not one of punishment, but of functional assignment. He was deemed uniquely suited to manage the souls of aquatic creatures.

He has faced the River of Oblivion (Wang Chuan). But he did not drink Meng Po’s Brew (Meng Po Tang). His role exempts him from reincarnation. He stands at the boundary between the Underworld and the water, directing souls to their appointed paths. He is a permanent observer of the crossing he was denied.

**With the Daoist Path:** Few Daoist practitioners have attempted to perform a Chao Du (超度) ritual on Fish Gills. Those who did, and sensed the immense, fused nature of his soul beneath the water, quickly desisted. The ritual would have required separating him from the legions of aquatic souls bound to his core—a task beyond the capacity of ordinary priests. The Daoist establishment of the Netherworld, via its appointed judges, has approved his function.

**With the Shen Path (Spirit Path):** Fish Gills’ primary point of conflict is with the Dragon Kings of the Four Seas (四海龙王), who govern not only the weather but the life and death of all scaly and shelled beings in their domains. A legendary conflict arose when Fish Gills attempted to collect the soul of a Dragon King’s offspring who had died in a territorial dispute. The Dragon King’s court argued the soul fell under divine jurisdiction, not Underworld jurisdiction. The case was escalated to the Yama Kings, who ultimately ruled in favor of the Underworld, establishing Fish Gills’ authority over *all* water-kind souls, including those of draconic lineage. He is now a recognized counterbalance to the Dragon Kings’ power over life in water.

**With the Buddhist Path:** Buddhist monks have been known to chant sutras at the water’s edge where Fish Gills presides. The deliverance rituals are intended to ease the passage of all aquatic souls, but they roll off Fish Gills like water. His soul is too deeply integrated with his role to be released by faith alone.

**With the Mortal and Yao Path:** Mortal fishermen often offer spirit money and incense at riverbanks, not to appease Fish Gills, but in a general, fearful gesture toward whatever lingers in the deep. Some small shrines are maintained, though rarely by name. Fish Gills does not seek tribute. Yāo (妖) who live in or near water—such as the Great Turtles (灵龟) or River Serpents (蛟)—are aware of him. They know his jurisdiction and will, in moments of their own death, feel the cold pull of the water-warden drawing near.

Fish Gills is not in limbo, nor is he in a state of dissolution. He is *active*. He is a permanent functionary of the Underworld, a Si Zhi Gong Cao (四值功曹), the Warden of Aquatic Souls. He no longer inhabits a single river; he moves freely through the waters of the mortal realm, appearing where an aquatic creature dies to collect its soul and escort it to the appointed processing station in the Netherworld.

He has not consumed the Meng Po Tang, and he has not re-entered the cycle of reincarnation. His original True Spirit (Zhen Ling) remains intact, but it has been permanently repurposed. The fisherman is gone, but the function remains. His consciousness will persist as long as the Underworld’s need for an aquatic-soul warden persists. His eternal sentence is to swim the line between life and death, always wet, always separate.

There is no calendar that marks the end of his appointment. This is his afterlife, and it has no expiration date.