Chapter 44
Chapter 44
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Translator: penny
Chapter: 44
Chapter Title: Three Heads Together
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**Three Heads Together**
The assignments were two: the Clone Art and the Artifact Manipulation Technique.
Seoran decided to start with the Artifact Manipulation Technique.
It wasn't a decision driven by any clear intent.
She was simply envious of the barrage of artifacts Geum Yeongyeong had unleashed.
It was multiple artifact operation training, no less.
How cool would she look once she'd mastered it?
Seoran let her hopeful imagination run wild.
Bombs shaped like puppets swarming like bees at a single gesture.
She would be a dazzling maestro commanding the battlefield.
The floundering forces of evil, bereft of retreat, would despair—then be swallowed by a massive flash.
A scene of artistic justice in action.
And crucially, she'd have to stand with her back to the flames.
Looking back at the explosion? Not cool.
Her reverie over, Seoran immediately pulled out her materials.
From the gift bundle came twenty wooden beads.
Gripping a bead and activating the Artifact Manipulation Technique turned it into a flying brush.
In simple terms, it was a bead-to-brush transforming artifact.
Seoran manipulated the brush to draw a picture.
Bold ink strokes swept across the paper.
When one stroke-drawing was complete, her self-portrait was finished.
The beaming smile on her face was utterly satisfying.
Somehow, she was getting into the groove.
Seoran's poltergeist art class continued.
She indiscriminately drew every object around her, gradually increasing the number of brushes she could control at once.
Finally, she could simultaneously control all the brushes to produce twenty identical perfect drawings.
Seoran moved to the next stage.
Now it was time to depict entirely different subjects at once.
This was on a whole different level from drawing a circle with the left hand and a triangle with the right simultaneously.
Seoran's room turned into a total mess in an instant.
Control errors, mid-flight collisions, unintended ink ejections.
Ceiling, walls, floor—everything was splattered with ink.
Days passed like that.
Seoran gazed at her twenty completed still lifes with eyes brimming with emotion.
Success had arrived after countless trials and errors.
Her white clothes had long since turned black.
Now it was finally time to train the Clone Art.
Tossing aside the brushes, inkstones, and paper in disgust, Seoran dashed to the garden and immediately created one clone.
Spiritual power gathered in fluffy clouds, forming a human shape.
Before long, another Ryu Seoran was born.
Everything was identical to the original—except the expression.
The original Seoran, keeping a blank face, began manipulating her clone this way and that.
Forward rolls, backward rolls, handstands with foot-clapping.
With her rigorous experimental spirit, Seoran successfully gauged the clone's limits.
The clone's physical abilities were exactly at the Qi Condensation level.
Impressive compared to a mortal, but far too frail for direct combat use.
It seemed impractical for real battles.
There were two main ways to control a clone.
The first was issuing commands to the clone from an observer's perspective, like Seoran was doing now.
The second was splitting her consciousness to directly control the clone.
What Yeo Mujin intended was the second method.
Seoran split her consciousness and possessed the clone.
A flood of sensory information poured into her brain.
The original body's view of the clone and the clone's view of the original body overlapped into one.
It felt exactly like watching a 3D movie without the special glasses.
The dizziness subsided somewhat.
Seoran created a few more clones.
The overlapping vision intensified accordingly.
Seoran kept increasing the number of clones.
She planned to get used to consciousness splitting first.
The clone Ryu Seorans stood in tight formation, packed like sprouts in a jar.
Every bit of spiritual power poured in transformed into clones.
The cluster of clone Ryu Seorans, expanding around the central original Ryu Seoran, suddenly stopped growing.
Through the shared clone vision, she saw new clones dissipating like smoke the moment they formed.
Seoran halted the consciousness split and closely observed the cause.
Clones standing near Seoran were fine.
But as distance increased, the clones grew blurrier, like low-resolution video.
It seemed there was a proficiency-based range limit.
Seoran split her consciousness again and controlled the clones.
The girls, identical in appearance, executed martial forms in unison.
Every one wore a blank expression.
The clones had zero autonomy.
She had to directly control every one of the dozens of clones with just the original body.
It felt bizarre, like playing a multiplayer party game solo with multiple controllers.
Seoran's training continued through the changing seasons.
As her Clone Art proficiency rose, the clone creation limit and activity range restriction gradually eased.
*****
Summer ended, and autumn arrived.
Seoran's Clone Art proficiency had advanced by leaps and bounds.
Now her clones were everywhere.
Even the Black Bamboo Sect members had grown accustomed to the swarming clones.
Harvest season for the crops arrived.
Clones appeared in droves, lining up in rows.
Then they impassively swung their sickles in unison.
The kitchen was always busy preparing massive meals.
Clones appeared in droves and took positions.
Then they impassively sobbed while peeling onions.
Autumn deep cleaning time came.
Clones appeared in droves and picked up brooms.
They accidentally shattered pottery and were all chased out.
At first, it was simple chores like cleaning or carrying.
But as Seoran grew accustomed to consciousness splitting, the clones began performing far more complex actions.
Namely, circus acts.
Passing through continuously thrown hoops at high speed.
Building a human tower shaped like a narrowing-then-widening gourd.
A chaotic dagger-juggling frenzy with a hundred clones exchanging hundreds of daggers.
The great showgirl, Ryu Seoran, single-handedly turned the entire Black Bamboo Sect into a festival.
Witnessing the spectacle, Ho Hye-mun got an idea.
A grand play to show the writing class students.
Venue: the writing room. Audience: the students. Theme: rewarding good and punishing evil.
Cast: solely Ryu Seoran—a one-woman show.
Ryu Seoran gladly accepted the proposal.
She'd been out of new training ideas anyway.
She needed a fresh challenge.
On the day of the play, Seoran's clones gave stellar performances.
The clones couldn't speak, but it didn't matter.
The all-talented beauty Ho Hye-mun also had voice acting skills.
She performed all the characters' lines solo.
Blank-faced actors, needlessly brilliant voice acting—and on top of that, an excellent script.
Damcheong, watching alone, muttered to herself.
“This feels just like a puppet show.”
It was a very small voice.
The audience, engrossed in the near-silent movie vibe, didn't hear.
But Seoran, directing the stage, did.
“A puppet show?”
Inspiration struck again.
*****
The First Puppet-Making Conference.
The participants gathered.
Just Ryu Seoran, Ho Hye-mun, and Damcheong—three in total.
Yi Agum was studying, and Geum Yeongyeong was training, so they were absent.
Seoran spoke first.
“A tragic incident occurred recently.”
Ho Hye-mun asked on behalf of the group.
“What happened?”
Seoran replied with a devastated expression.
“My invention, the Bamboo Shoot Cannonball, is made of clay puppets. So when registering it initially, I applied under the puppet category. But just a few days ago, I got a notice. They're forcibly changing the classification number.”
Ho Hye-mun gasped.
“Oh no!”
Seoran nodded and continued.
“So from now on, Bamboo Shoot Cannonballs are classified as disposable artifacts.”
“Disposable, like talisman artifacts or thrown artifacts?”
“Exactly...”
“That's really bad...”
Damcheong, who had been listening quietly, asked.
“Is changing the classification number such a big deal?”
Seoran answered.
“It changes the number of digits in the development grant funding from now on.”
Damcheong jumped in surprise.
“That's a real disaster!”
Ho Hye-mun asked Seoran, who was nodding.
“So why did you call this meeting?”
Seoran pulled out a sheet of paper and showed it.
‘Artifact Classification Criteria Change Notice.
Puppets in artifact classification are as follows:
One: Modeled after human form.
One: Modeled after beast form.
One: Others designated by the Scripture Pavilion curators.
Reference Notes:
Do not apply items modeled after plants or architecture as puppets.’
Seoran declared.
“From now on, I'm going to make puppets. Because a great idea came to me. I gathered you all here to ask for your help.”
Ho Hye-mun said.
“What do you need? You performed my play, so I'll cooperate as much as I can.”
“I'm bored anyway, so I'll help.”
Damcheong added.
“Thank you so much. Please stop me if I lose sight of the goal while making puppets and go overboard. The puppets this time must absolutely resemble humans or animals. I want to avoid finishing them only to realize they're bamboo shoots again.”
She was determined to snag that grant.
Suddenly curious, Damcheong asked.
“But what inspiration hit you?”
Seoran smiled.
“I think I've been too obsessed with autonomy until now. So I'm letting it all go.”
With enlightenment, Damcheong's deer antlers flashed.
“No way...”
“My goal is fully manual-operated puppets.”
It was a statement utterly divorced from the ultimate ideal of puppetry.
Any puppeteer present would surely scream, “That's not puppetry!”
But there were no proper puppeteers here.
Everyone just marveled at the genius idea.
“That's an idea I've never heard of!”
“First time for me too!”
The two amateurs praised her in succession.
Naturally, Seoran's confidence soared.
And so the three put their heads together in deliberation.
If Geum Yeongyeong and Yi Agum had been there, this tragedy wouldn't have happened.