After the Play Ends (1)
The three who appeared before Dang Woo were the actors who had played Hwan and Woo, along with a single gisaeng. Once they had taken their seats, Dang Woo offered them tea.
A maidservant poured for the three of them, after which Dang Woo dismissed her from the hermitage. Only then did the conversation begin.
"So. I saw that amusing little fabrication you stitched together out of me and the Illusionist. Your idea, was it? Muyeong?"
"They say that if you mix just a little truth into a lie, even someone who knows the truth can't look away."
The actor who had played Hwan answered. Dang Woo turned his gaze to the one who had played Woo.
"Ah. So the plan was to keep me absorbed in the performance. That much, at least, seems to have worked."
"We would also ask you to rule on whether we successfully passed the trial."
"Do you have the tablet?"
"We do. But if you refuse to acknowledge our passage, we cannot show it to you."
Dang Woo stopped Dang Min, who had been about to speak with a rigid face. He took a sip of tea, let out a short breath, and spoke again.
"If you will not show the tablet, I cannot rule that you passed. Are you afraid the Dang Clan will intimidate you into handing it over? If that had been our intention, you would already be rolling on the ground."
"Did you put poison in the tea?"
"Would I need to? I am simply leaning on the prestige of a great house that you yourselves fear."
When Woo hesitated and avoided a direct answer, Dang Woo smiled and pressed on.
"At least tell me this much—was it truly you who took the tablet? Give me that, and I will try to reconstruct the rest myself."
"We did take it… but if you wish… by all means, try."
Dang Woo stroked his long white beard and began to speak as if murmuring to himself. Everyone seated around the table leaned in to listen.
"All three trials of the Illusionist Hall are bound to the Ten-Step Illusionist. First, to slip past the patrolling warriors, one needs the Illusionist's secret arts—the Art of Reverse Appearance and the Bone-Shrinking Skill."
He looked at Hwan as he continued.
"Even the Shadowless Divine Thief once breached those patrols. The Dang Clan has no shortage of maids and servants coming and going; he would have used face-changing to become one of them and slipped into the Illusionist Hall."
No one touched the tea or the sweets. They waited on Dang Woo's next words. He felt, for a moment, as though he had become a storyteller, and went on.
"The powder on the floor was a test of an obscure Illusionist technique. He used Heavenly Silkworm Thread."
Heavenly Silkworm Thread was the rarest filament drawn from the cocoons used to make silk. Tougher and more lustrous than ordinary thread, it was reserved for the finest brocades.
Even among Sichuan's famous Shu brocades there had once been a weave called Shu Royal Gold, made solely of Heavenly Silkworm Thread—lost, it was said, during the wars. But that was a story for ordinary people.
Heavenly Silkworm Thread possessed a peculiar property: inner energy could be poured into it to heighten its nature. The Illusionist had infiltrated by face-changing and then strangled his targets with the thread.
It did not look like a weapon, and it could be put to far more uses than mere killing—walking along a strand without ever touching the floor, for instance.
After the wars, obtaining the thread had become nearly impossible, yet the Shadowless Divine Thief still possessed a single length left to him by his master.
That was how, even on his previous attempt, he had crossed the powdered floor without leaving a print and reached the tablet. But…
"Last time he failed because of the Tracking Fragrance. I wonder what method he used this time."
Just as Dang Woo said, the Shadowless Divine Thief had been caught on his previous trial before he could even leave the Dang compound. He had failed to escape the warriors following the scent.
"Can you smell the Tracking Fragrance on us?"
The actor who had played Woo spoke. Dang Sohye watched her grandfather with open curiosity.
"If I could smell it, we would not be sitting here trading questions. So it seems the time has come for you to tell me where the tablet is."
Hwan drank his tea, sighed, and asked,
"May we take it that we have passed the trial?"
Dang Woo looked to Dang Min. The trial of the Illusionist Hall interested him, but the formal declaration of passage belonged to the clan head.
"Hmph. From this moment on, if you produce the tablet, I will acknowledge that you have passed."
Dang Min made the ruling with a lukewarm expression. Dang Woo turned back to the actors.
"Each gate of the trial is, in its own way, simple. For the Illusionist's disciple, the Divine Thief, at least."
With the face-changing, Bone-Shrinking Skill, and Heavenly Silkworm Thread he had learned from the Illusionist, the Divine Thief could infiltrate any number of manors. But he was not the Illusionist.
"The title Ten-Step Illusionist is an expression of reverence for that man's Art of Reverse Appearance and Bone-Shrinking Skill. Yet the disciple—the Shadowless Divine Thief—carries no character for 'illusion' in his name."
Hwan took another sip of tea. The others waited.
"If the Illusionist could afford to be caught by his opponent, the Divine Thief's method of never being caught at all is written right into the title."
"Yes. Which is why, last time, he stole the tablet before the performance even began—and was caught the instant it ended, thanks to the Tracking Fragrance."
Dang Woo cut in. Hwan smiled and continued.
"Exactly. And perhaps… the Grand Elder found the character for 'thief' in the Divine Thief's name distasteful."
"If there is one absolute truth in today's play, it is this: I was the Illusionist's friend. Would a man like me acknowledge a disciple who walks a different path from his master?"
"As I said earlier, for the Divine Thief this trial is remarkably easy. That will make you wonder why he failed the last one. The answer is the Illusionist himself."
The moment the words left Hwan's mouth, the table began to tremble. Everyone stared at Dang Woo in alarm.
"You might want to choose your words more carefully. Sichuan folk do not suffer insults lightly."
When Dang Woo released the table, the vibration stopped. He was a renowned master of the martial world whose name carried the honorific "Venerable"; the number of experts above him could be counted on one hand.
Hwan offered a brief cupped-fist salute and pressed on.
"Yet there was no other choice. Even the Illusionist, who beguiled so many, met his end in the end… and for his disciple the Divine Thief to make the arts of concealment his own secret technique was an inevitable decision."
"Concealment arts… hmph."
"After failing the previous trial, the Divine Thief is said to have recalled his master's words. The Illusionist told him…"
"Technique is not what matters. What matters is the heart. Steady your own heart and unsettle your opponent's—that is the shortest road to success."
"Precisely. And once the Divine Thief understood that… he passed this trial."
"Unsettle the heart?"
Dang Sohye could not contain her curiosity. It was the gisaeng who answered.
"As far as we could determine, three people took a special interest in the trial. The Dark Cloud Poison Sovereign, Dang Woo, who sits here; the Master of the Illusionist Hall, Dang Yu; and lastly… the Young Phoenix of the Dang Clan, Dang Sohye."
"Me?"
"The Dang Clan handles many weapons, but it is most famous for its poisons. And long before it ever turned to poison, the clan was already renowned for its insatiable curiosity."
"That a clan like the Dang would take an interest in poison is only natural. And curiosity, as a rule… cannot look away once it sees something it does not understand."
Hwan took up the gisaeng's thread. The three members of the Dang Clan gave small nods.
"For Dang Woo we prepared a play that mixed truth and falsehood. He sat through the entire performance with an embarrassed face and never left the front of the stage."
"We had heard that if the face-changing was crude or the play failed to please him, he would simply walk off to the Illusionist Hall. So we prepared the content with great care."
Woo picked up where Hwan left off. Listening, Dang Woo realized just how thoroughly the performance had held his attention.
"And the play about the Ten-Step Illusionist at the inn…"
"The Master of the Illusionist Hall, Dang Yu, could hardly be ignorant of the Illusionist. That performance was meant to provoke him."
"Both at the inn and on tonight's stage there was a scene in which an actor vanished. Dang Yu's attention fixed on the stage machinery."
Dang Sohye recalled how she herself had concentrated her gaze. A new question rose.
"Tonight's stage was built higher than the one at the inn. Was that also…?"
"It was. Actors truly disappeared from the stage from time to time. Sometimes a shadow covered the movement; sometimes the stage floor opened in time with a swinging door."
"Then another actor, face already changed, would open the floor from a different entrance and appear. That method kept Dang Yu's attention locked on the stage."
Where Dang Sohye had checked the shadows with her eyes and then withdrawn her interest, Dang Yu had continued to watch the stage intently. Once he confirmed that people were genuinely vanishing, he refused to leave the front of the stage—determined to discover whether it was the work of a high-level martial artist or some hidden mechanism.
"Then how did you divert my attention?"
"With this."
Before everyone's eyes, Hwan performed the face-changing art. A white mask settled over his features. Two characters were written upon it—
"Martial-less White Face! Then you are—!"