Put it under pressure
Scene test: someone borrows help to rescue a friend, expecting a single payment. The next demand threatens the refuge where the friend is now recovering.
The wish comes true. The next task gets worse.
A useful supernatural bargain can be a machine for generating the next crisis.
What the rule allows
The Ghost Cabinet sets a task before granting a wish, then assigns a further task. The guide ties later difficulty to the wish and describes escalation.
Where it stops
Fulfilling the initial demand does not close the exchange. Receiving the benefit creates the next obligation.
Design the response
For an original contract, define what ending, refusing or transferring the bargain actually does. Do not invent a free exit after showing an inescapable price.
Your next design decision
Independent contract: an oracle repairs a civic disaster after one agreed task, then demands another by a fixed date. Refusing does not undo the repair, but the official who signed loses their voice until the task is completed; passing the contract to someone else is forbidden. After the mayor completes an inventory and the oracle repairs the harbor wall, it demands that she condemn the neighborhood housing the rescued families. She can refuse and govern without speaking, challenge the demand through the contract's recorded wording, or comply and displace the people she saved.
Who can help the mayor function if she refuses, and what would make that choice costly without making it impossible?
A new premise by CueShelf. This is not a scene from the source work.
Source & optional English reading
Mysterious Revival · Fo Qian Xian Hua
Our English paraphrases were checked against the original publisher’s setting guide. The English title here is an editorial rendering. No English reading link has been verified, so none is offered. These examples need no outside reading.
Publisher setting guide, supernatural entities, Ghost Cabinet.
You can use the full study above without opening another site.
Connect it to another story element
The warning bell can save the harbor and destroy its evidence
Make an emergency tool useful for a clear reason, and give its side effect a named victim or unfinished task.
Tonight's favor gives them a reason to meet again next week
Connect separate adventures through specific exchanges whose promises come due later.