S3E19 · Hell Money

In San Francisco 's Chinatown, a Chinese immigrant, Johnny Lo, makes his way to his apartment. There, he is confronted by someone telling him to "pay the price", and is overtaken by three figures wearing shigong masks. A security guard later finds the three figures near a crematory oven, in which Lo is being burned alive.

Fox Mulder and Dana Scully investigate Lo's death, the latest in a series of fatal incinerations in Chinatown; Mulder believes that ghost activity is behind the deaths, while Scully suspects a cult. The agents collaborate with Glen Chao (BD Wong), a Chinese-American detective with the SFPD. When they find a Chinese character written inside the oven, Chao translates it as meaning "ghost." Mulder also finds a scrap of burned paper in the ashes, which Chao identifies as " hell money ", a symbolic offering to deceased spirits. The agents locate Lo's apartment, where they find his collection of charms, as well as bloodstains underneath the recently installed carpet.

Meanwhile, another immigrant, Hsin, tends to his leukemia -stricken daughter, Kim (Lucy Liu). To pay for her treatments, Hsin attends an underground lottery in which participants either win money or lose an organ, depending on tiles chosen from a pair of vases. One man wins the lottery but selects a bad tile, and his body is found later that day. Scully performs an autopsy and finds that he had been selling body parts, noticing his numerous surgical scars. The agents question Chao, who claims that the local community maintains a code of silence and does not reveal anything, even to him.

Chao finds information that leads them to Hsin, who installed the carpet in Lo's apartment. Hsin has a bandage over his eye, having lost it to the lottery earlier. Returning to his home, Chao is confronted by the three masked figures. Upon learning about the attack, the agents attempt to visit Chao at the hospital but find him missing. Meanwhile, Hsin is visited by the Hard Faced Man (James Hong), one of the proprietors of the lottery. Hsin tells the man that he wants to end his participation, to which the man replies that the rules cannot be broken and warns him that the ghostly fire will consume him if he leaves the lottery. The agents match the blood on the carpet in Lo's apartment with Chao. They try to visit Hsin, but find only his daughter at his apartment.

Hsin wins the lottery, but selects the tile representing his heart. Chao comes in and tries to persuade one of the lottery's organizers to let Hsin live but to no avail, causing Chao to knock over the table with the vases, which reveals the lottery to be fixed. Chao then storms in the room where the surgery on Hsin is about to be carried out and fires at the Hard Faced Man, after which the agents come in and arrest them all, including Chao for his involvement in the lottery. They interrogate the Hard Faced Man, but because no one who participated will testify against him, it is unlikely he will be prosecuted. Hsin is brought to the hospital and his daughter is placed on an organ donor list. Chao mysteriously disappears, awakening in a crematory oven before he is burned alive.