The city of Jiangling, perched strategically where the Han River flowed towards the mighty Yangtze, was a vital nexus of trade. Its docks bustled with boats carrying timber from the west, salt from the coast, and grain from the fertile plains. Warehouses lined the riverfront, and the counting houses of powerful merchant guilds hummed with the constant, rhythmic click of abacus beads – the sound of wealth being measured, tallied, and pursued. Within the imposing walls of the Salt Merchants' Guildhall, the most powerful of these establishments, however, the familiar sound had recently taken on a sinister, unsettling cadence.

  The Guildhall's main counting room was usually a place of focused, albeit stressful, order. Rows of clerks and accountants bent over ledgers under the watchful eye of Head Accountant Fan Yong, a man whose stern demeanor and meticulous attention to detail were legendary. Fan Yong had served the Guild for forty years, rising through the ranks, his reputation built on unerring accuracy and an almost obsessive dedication to numerical precision. But lately, the order within his domain had begun to fray, replaced by an atmosphere thick with anxiety, exhaustion, and a creeping, inexplicable dread.

  It centered around a specific object: an old, unusually large abacus that sat on Master Fan's personal desk. Crafted from dark, heavy wood, its beads made of polished black stone that felt unnaturally cold to the touch, the abacus had been in the Guildhall for generations. Master Fan rarely used it for daily calculations, preferring a smaller, more modern instrument, but he kept the old one prominently displayed, claiming it was a symbol of the Guild's long history and financial prudence. Recently, however, the silent abacus had become disturbingly active.

  Junior clerks, working late into the night under the immense pressure of quarterly reconciliations, reported hearing faint clicking sounds emanating from Master Fan's locked office long after he had departed – the rhythmic slide and tap of beads moving on their own. Some dismissed it as rats or settling timbers, but the sounds were too regular, too precise, like complex calculations being performed by an unseen hand.

  Then came the errors. Meticulously balanced ledgers would be found the next morning with inexplicable discrepancies – sums altered, entries transposed, figures appearing that defied all logic. Master Fan, enraged by these inaccuracies, blamed his subordinates, his tirades growing longer, his demands for perfection becoming almost tyrannical. The clerks, already stressed, grew fearful, double-checking their work obsessively, yet the phantom errors persisted, appearing randomly, sowing distrust and paranoia.

  A deeper malaise also settled upon those who worked longest in the counting room. They complained of persistent headaches, difficulty concentrating, and an overwhelming sense of anxiety focused on numbers, debt, and the terrifying possibility of ruinous mistakes. Sleep offered little relief, often disturbed by dreams filled with endless columns of figures that refused to add up, accompanied by the incessant, maddening click of abacus beads. Several promising young clerks resigned abruptly, citing nervous exhaustion, their faces pale and haunted.

  Master Fan himself seemed increasingly consumed. He spent longer hours in his office, sometimes found staring intently at the old black abacus, his lips moving silently as if in calculation, his own complexion growing sallow, his meticulous nature curdling into obsessive suspicion. He ordered new locks for his office, yet the clicking sounds at night, reported by nervous watchmen, continued.

  One of the remaining junior accountants, a diligent young man named Chen Liang, felt the pressure mounting intolerably. He was meticulous, careful, yet errors appeared in his ledgers that he swore he hadn't made. He suffered from the headaches, the numerical anxiety, the nightmares. He felt the oppressive weight in the counting room, a cold dread that seemed strongest near Master Fan's office, near the silent, watchful abacus. He began to dread the clicking sound, imagining it calculating his own potential ruin. Driven by fear of dismissal and a sense that something deeply unnatural was occurring, Chen Liang recalled hearing tavern tales of Xuanzhen, the wandering Taoist who dealt with strange afflictions beyond the scope of officials or physicians. Learning Xuanzhen was currently visiting a nearby monastery, Chen Liang sought him out, his carefully maintained composure finally cracking as he recounted the strange events at the Salt Merchants' Guildhall.

  Xuanzhen listened patiently, the young accountant's distress palpable. The details – phantom calculations, inexplicable errors, targeted psychological distress focused on numbers and finance, all centered around an old, imposing object – suggested a specific kind of spiritual disturbance. Not a violent haunting, but something insidious, perhaps linked to the intense emotions surrounding wealth, debt, and calculation, anchored to the abacus itself. It felt like a psychic parasite feeding on anxiety, or the lingering echo of a past financial tragedy.

  Posing as a travelling merchant seeking advice on navigating the complexities of the salt trade regulations, Xuanzhen gained an audience with Master Fan Yong at the Guildhall. The head accountant received him with strained formality, his eyes sharp and suspicious, yet holding a deep weariness. The counting room felt cold, despite the autumn warmth outside, the air thick with tension and the almost subliminal hum of anxiety. Xuanzhen immediately felt drawn to the large, black abacus on Fan's desk. It radiated a cold, focused qi, stagnant yet intensely active on a psychic level. It felt like a vortex, drawing in the ambient stress of the room and pulsing with an energy of relentless, obsessive calculation.

  Xuanzhen subtly inquired about the abacus's history. Master Fan stiffened. "An heirloom of the Guild," he stated curtly. "Belonged to Accountant Zhu, my predecessor's predecessor. A brilliant man, they say, but ambitious. Overreached himself. Died suddenly... financial irregularities were discovered later. A sad business. The abacus has remained here since." His tone discouraged further questions.

  If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

  That night, with Chen Liang's anxious assistance providing access, Xuanzhen returned quietly to the deserted Guildhall. He approached Master Fan's office. As the young accountant had claimed, faint clicking sounds emanated from within – the unmistakable rhythm of abacus beads manipulated with speed and precision. Using a simple Taoist technique to bypass the physical lock without damage, Xuanzhen entered.

  The room was cold, the air heavy. Moonlight slanted through the high windows, illuminating the desk where the black abacus sat. Its beads were moving. Smoothly, rapidly, they slid along the rods, clicking softly, performing calculations far faster than any human hand could manage. There was no visible operator, only the relentless motion of the beads themselves. The qi pulsing from the abacus was intense now, a cold vortex of frantic, unending calculation mixed with profound despair and a hint of spectral anger.

  Xuanzhen didn't interfere immediately. He observed, extending his senses, trying to understand the nature of the entity or energy driving the phenomenon. He felt the echo of Accountant Zhu, the man Fan had mentioned – brilliant, ambitious, perhaps driven to ruin or suicide by overwhelming debt or, possibly, by the very irregularities Fan had alluded to. Zhu's spirit, or rather, a potent psychic residue of his obsessive mind and desperate end, seemed bound to the instrument of his profession, trapped in an eternal loop of trying to calculate his way out of an impossible situation, forever tallying phantom debts or searching for the error that led to his downfall. This obsessive energy, anchored to the abacus, was now bleeding outwards, infecting the atmosphere, subtly influencing the ledgers, and preying on the anxieties of the living accountants, drawing sustenance from their stress.

  Suddenly, the clicking stopped. The beads froze mid-calculation. The cold in the room intensified dramatically. Xuanzhen felt a wave of overwhelming despair wash over him, accompanied by a flood of phantom numbers, impossible debts scrolling behind his eyes, the crushing weight of imminent financial ruin. It was the entity focusing its despair, its core experience, directly upon him.

  Xuanzhen stood firm, grounding himself, reciting a silent mantra of clarity. The wave receded, leaving him shaken but unharmed. He understood the entity wasn't actively malicious, but trapped, its suffering radiating outwards. It needed release from its endless calculation, not destruction.

  He knew the solution required breaking the loop, acknowledging the spirit's plight, and cleansing the abacus of its psychic burden. He instructed Chen Liang to discreetly gather information about Accountant Zhu's specific circumstances – the nature of his debts or the irregularities, if records existed.

  Chen Liang, delving into dusty Guild archives, uncovered the truth. Accountant Zhu hadn't simply overreached; he had been framed. Master Fan's own predecessor, seeking to cover his own embezzlement, had falsified records, pinning the blame on Zhu. Facing disgrace and impossible debts he hadn't accrued, Zhu had hanged himself in the Guildhall, near the very desk where the abacus now sat. His name was posthumously disgraced.

  Armed with this knowledge, Xuanzhen prepared the ritual. He returned to Master Fan's office late one night, Chen Liang standing watch outside. He brought not weapons, but symbolic items: a stack of high-quality spirit money, a brush and ink, a bowl of clear water mixed with purifying willow ash, and a small, clear-toned chime.

  He approached the abacus, which sat silent but radiating cold anticipation. He first lit incense, filling the room with a calming, clarifying scent. Then, he carefully laid out the spirit money. "Accountant Zhu," Xuanzhen spoke softly but clearly, addressing the lingering presence, "Your suffering is known. The injustice done to you is recorded. The debts you endlessly calculate were never truly yours."

  He took the brush and, on a piece of clean paper, wrote Zhu's name and a simple declaration clearing him of the false charges, citing the evidence Chen Liang had found. He read it aloud, his voice resonating with conviction. "Your name is cleared. Your honour is restored."

  He then lit the paper and the spirit money, letting them burn completely in a safe basin. "These false debts are paid," he declared. "Your earthly accounts are settled."

  As the ashes cooled, he struck the chime. Its pure, ringing tone cut through the heavy silence, designed to disrupt the obsessive rhythm of the phantom calculations. He struck it again, and again, letting the sound waves wash over the abacus.

  The abacus shuddered almost imperceptibly. A faint sigh, cold and weary, seemed to echo through the room. The intense psychic pressure lessened dramatically.

  Finally, Xuanzhen dipped his fingers in the willow-ash water and gently cleansed the surface of the abacus, wiping away the psychic residue, chanting a mantra of release and passage. "Your task is done, Accountant Zhu," he murmured. "The calculation is over. Release your burden. Find peace beyond the numbers."

  The coldness in the room dissipated completely. The abacus felt still, inert, just old wood and stone. The lingering presence of Accountant Zhu, acknowledged and symbolically vindicated, had finally found release from its paradoxical prison.

  Xuanzhen advised Chen Liang to discreetly place the evidence of Zhu's innocence where Master Fan might 'discover' it, suggesting that acknowledging the past injustice might bring further peace to the Guildhall (and perhaps prick Fan's conscience). He also recommended the old abacus be respectfully retired from use, perhaps placed in the Guild's archive or a quiet temple.

  Leaving the Salt Merchants' Guildhall, Xuanzhen reflected on the Silent Abacus. It was a stark reminder of how intense human pressures – ambition, the weight of reputation, the crushing burden of finance – could create ghosts as surely as violence or sorrow. Accountant Zhu's spirit wasn't a monster, but a victim trapped by numbers, his despair echoing through the tool of his trade. The resolution lay not in exorcism, but in uncovering truth, settling accounts both literal and spiritual, and offering release from the tyranny of endless calculation. The Guildhall might return to order, but the tale served as a quiet warning about the ghosts that can hide within ledgers and the heavy price of unjustly balanced books.