Soran (1)
"You know face-changing too? You've never even been to Sichuan… How?"
Ak Jun asked the moment they returned to the inn. Jinmyung gave a short laugh.
"To ordinary people, face-changing looks spectacular. To a martial artist, it's nothing more than a parlor trick."
"I can use martial arts, but I still can't do face-changing."
Ak Jun and Myohong pressed him, too curious to let it go. Jinmyung sighed as if he had no choice and swept the dust from the table with his hand.
"There were books on miscellaneous arts in the Murim Alliance archives. Face-changing was written up in one of them…"
He smeared the dust across his own face. Soot clung to him like a false beard, and Myohong's first thought was that the place needed a thorough cleaning.
"The foundation of face-changing is swapping facial disguises with rapid handwork."
Jinmyung stretched one hand out to draw their eyes, then wiped the soot from his face with the other.
"Hand speed like that is well within reach of anyone with a decent level of martial skill."
Ak Jun nodded.
"They also call it mask-shedding — the art of wearing several layers of masks and peeling them off one by one."
"But was face-changing really that remarkable? Remarkable enough to be recorded in the Murim Alliance archives?"
"That book wasn't only about face-changing. The Bone-Shrinking Art was in there too… Put simply, face-changing is a branch of the Disguise Arts."
When Jinmyung finished, Ak Jun made no effort to hide his surprise. Myohong looked back and forth between them, then turned to Jinmyung.
"What's the Bone-Shrinking Art, and what are the Disguise Arts?"
"The Bone-Shrinking Art is… well… an art that lets you change your build. The Disguise Arts let you change your face."
"What? How can a person do that? Does that mean martial artists just go around swapping faces and body types whenever they feel like it?"
"The reason martial artists dismiss these arts as mere tricks is that frequent use of the Bone-Shrinking Art puts a severe strain on the body — enough to make proper martial techniques difficult. As for the Disguise Arts… you can just slap on a human-skin mask and be done with it."
"But if you combined face-changing with a human-skin mask…"
Ak Jun murmured, and Jinmyung nodded.
"Exactly. You'd have a spy who could infiltrate anywhere. The Haru Sect barely trains in martial arts, so they can pour the inner energy they've built through breathing methods straight into maximizing these side arts."
"But I've heard martial artists can even silence the sound around them. Doesn't that make it useless?"
Ak Jun smiled at Myohong's question.
"What Jinmyung means is that for every method of defense, there's a method of breaking through. And if you don't know the method, it's even easier to get past… So you read that book and learned face-changing from it?"
"Face-changing was one of the businesses I planned after sending you two ahead… Though using it at the mask stall was more of an improvisation."
"Improvisation?!"
Myohong cried out in shock. Jinmyung fanned his hand at her, gesturing for calm.
"Just like wiping the soot off just now — if you divert someone's gaze, peeling off a single mask is easy. And my whole business was about drawing every eye in the first place."
Ak Jun was stunned all over again. If Jinmyung pulled every gaze toward himself… what would that free the Haru Sect to do?
"That's why he brought up subcontracting. They'll gather all the attention — and while they do, we move on something else."
"If it succeeds, the great work we've put off for so long…"
"You're going to stake the great work on something this uncertain? What about the information on those people?"
In the Haru Sect meeting hall, the courtesan replayed her conversation with Jinmyung. A clerk seated at the table spoke up.
"For now… aside from the fact that they settled here about half a year ago, we have nothing. No information beyond that they came from outside Sichuan."
The courtesan cast an irritated look around the room, and everyone present shrank into themselves. An old man at the far end of the table asked quietly,
"Are we certain he used face-changing?"
"Elder. That's something only you would know."
He was the old man who had kept the mask stall. He was also the last disciple of a master of face-changing.
War had taken his teacher from him. Because of that, his own face-changing remained incomplete.
The mask stall had been little more than a pastime — a way of tending, like a withering orchid, to an art that would vanish with him.
The knowledge that another practitioner of face-changing existed set a fire in his chest. He wanted to meet the man at once.
But he was a member of the Haru Sect. He would not move without the Branch Leader's order.
The courtesan could read the old man's heart as clearly as if it lay open before her. He was, in his way, living history of the Chengdu branch of the Haru Sect.
Taking that heart into account, she issued a single command. The old man received it and left the branch hall.
A few days later, Ak Jun woke, came down to the first floor of the inn, and found a courtesan of the Haru Sect already seated at a table. He went to the kitchen, brewed tea, and set it before her.
She took a sip, then looked down into the cup.
"This is barely better than plain water. Is this your way of telling me to leave?"
"I'm offering the best hospitality I can manage."
"So you proposed a business venture when you don't even have enough to feed yourselves day to day?"
Ak Jun gave a dry laugh and drank his own tea, emptying the cup without answering her question.
"That isn't why you came."
"…"
"Elder. When you go, do you think you'll remember the tea you never finished — or the realm you never reached?"
The courtesan looked down at her cup for a moment. Then she flung the tea into Ak Jun's face. He wiped it away — and the courtesan was gone. In her place sat the old man.
The same old man who had sat beside the mask stall. Ak Jun snorted, raised the teapot high to shield his face, and poured fresh tea. When he set the pot down, his face was Jinmyung's.
"How did you know?"
"Call it putting myself in your shoes. Someone selling masks for the Sichuan Haru Sect who doesn't know face-changing? Absurd."
Listening to Jinmyung, the old man stripped off the woman's garments. Beneath them he wore a man's clothes. He released the Bone-Shrinking Art and set his attire in order.
"In the last war, there was a figure active in Sichuan known as the Illusionist. They said he could become someone else in the span of ten paces, and so they called him the Ten-Step Illusionist."
At Jinmyung's words, the old man smiled bitterly.
"That Illusionist is said to have had a single disciple. During the war, the master stayed behind alone in a killing ground to save him. The disciple who lost his teacher could not bear the shame and vanished from the ranks."
"You know a great deal."
"I happened to read a lot of books."
The old man drank his tea and asked,
"So. You said you'd use face-changing to steal every eye in the crowd? You'll need quite a few supplies."
"Unlike an inn or ordinary trade, there's no need for a constant stream of goods. It's work you do with your body."
"I don't know how you perform face-changing… but my master said that unless the method draws on the energy of nature itself, it is a simple matter."
"To share a thought with the grandmaster of face-changing — I'm honored."
"Can you perform Qi-Flow Face-Changing, by any chance?"
"What's that?"
Qi-Flow Face-Changing was the profound essence of the art — altering the face by regulating one's energy. The old man had never reached that realm.
"You can use face-changing, yet you know nothing about it?"
"Is face-changing Sichuan's pride, and the reason the Ten-Step Illusionist earned a place even in the Murim Alliance records, simply because he reached the highest realm of the Disguise Arts?"
Jinmyung's words were arrogant, yet they called the old man's master's voice back to him. His master had always said technique was not what mattered.
Walking into that killing ground, his master had told him: steady your own heart and unsettle your opponent's, and any technique becomes perfect. The old man still had not climbed to that height.
"'Ten paces, and he is a woman. Ten paces more, and he is a child.' That is how the accounts of the Ten-Step Illusionist read. At a glance it looks like a record of his deeds… but compared to others, remarkably little of his actual exploits is written down."
"Others? What sort of book lists so many people?"
"The Zhuge Clan's history of the founding war — the supplementary volume of meritorious veterans' recollections."
It was a book the old man had never heard of. He set that aside and listened to the rest of Jinmyung's account.
"So I thought about it. What if no one ever saw anything of the Illusionist except those ten paces he walked? Face-changing is the same. In a theatrical performance, the face is always covered at the critical moment, isn't it?"
In Sichuan Opera, the traditional theatre of the province, face-changing drives the drama forward. And the performer hides the instant of the change behind a fan.
"It was the same when I used it. A little sleight of hand, and people's attention went to my hands instead of my face."
"You… what is your name?"
"Call me Myeongjin."
The old man nodded and rose. Myeongjin could use face-changing. Regrettably, not at a higher level than his own — but still.
"Come again tomorrow at noon. The Branch Leader wishes to see you."
"Unless the conversation is about a partnership, I don't expect I'll be going back."
"It is about a partnership. She wants to work out the terms."
"Understood. I won't go far."
The old man left the inn. The courtesan had given him two orders: confirm the level of his face-changing, and gauge his intentions.
He had been able to carry out only the first. But he was not greatly concerned. If he reported their conversation exactly as it had been, she would read the man's intentions clearly enough.