Chapter 16
Chapter 16
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Translator: uly
Chapter: 16
Chapter Title: The Mask
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Even the finest system or the most excellent laws will inevitably rust and become useless if not constantly monitored and maintained.
The last thing he had done with his father before he collapsed had long since become nothing more than an empty formality.
“Do you know anything more about Jin-gil or Geumju?”
At the suddenly chilling tone in Yeon So-hyeon’s voice, the Mask Craftsman bowed his head even lower.
“What could someone like me possibly know? It’s all just rumors I’ve picked up here and there. It would only trouble Your Excellency’s ears.”
“I see.”
Yeon So-hyeon nodded and rose from his seat.
The Mask Craftsman hurriedly stood and tried to stop him.
“You’re just leaving like this? At least let us know Your Excellency’s noble name, so that someday we might repay this kindness…”
His wife chimed in.
“No matter how ignorant we may be, we’re not so shameless as to let our benefactor go without recompense.”
Even the children joined in, not fully understanding.
“Your Excellency!”
“Your Excellency!”
Yeon So-hyeon let out a sigh at the family’s renewed chaos.
That was when his eyes caught a white mask haphazardly shoved into the messy corner of the room.
“Then I’ll take this, at least.”
He reached out his hand, and the mask flew into his grasp.
At the wondrous sight, the Mask Craftsman and his wife’s eyes widened, while the children clapped in delight.
“With this, we’ll call all debts settled.”
The Mask Craftsman looked somewhat reluctant.
“…To be honest, that mask isn’t one I made.”
Yeon So-hyeon nodded.
“I thought as much.”
That mask was utterly different from the others scattered around the space.
“It’s the last work of my late father, and…”
“If it’s a family heirloom, I won’t take it.”
The Mask Craftsman waved his hands frantically.
“No, that’s not what I mean. I was just curious why you want that particular mask…”
It was a reasonable question.
The mask had no eye holes or nostrils.
Its surface was rough and unfinished, the paint job half-done at best.
Anyone could see it was an incomplete piece, or at the very least, subpar work.
“My father made that mask in his final years, right up until he drew his last breath. He wasn’t in his right mind. That’s why I left it in this state.”
The Mask Craftsman scratched his head.
“And not long ago, a begging monk told me it was an ominous object, so I was planning to destroy it soon.”
Even at those words, Yeon So-hyeon slowly examined the mask in his hand and smiled.
“What do you think your father meant to convey with this mask?”
The mask in Yeon So-hyeon’s hand reflected the candlelight, its sheen looking all the more eerie.
The Mask Craftsman shuddered and shook his head.
“It was made by a madman. What meaning could there be?”
“Really?”
Yeon So-hyeon’s white teeth gleamed.
“Pardon? What do you…”
“Didn’t something happen to your father before he lost his mind?”
At the question, the couple’s eyes widened.
“How did you…? No, that’s not important.”
The Mask Craftsman’s face darkened as he continued.
“The truth is, I had an older brother. He had far greater talent than I did. But one day, he was falsely accused and thrown in prison.”
His voice trembled, and his wife gripped his hand tightly.
“My father was a renowned craftsman in his own right, with ties to Luoyang’s inspector at the time. So he went to that inspector.”
Tears streamed from his bruised, swollen eye.
“…That inspector had promised to look into my brother’s case and clear his name.”
The children, pitying their weeping father, approached and hugged him.
He held them close and went on.
“But what came back was my brother’s cold corpse. He’d been beaten so badly with a rod that his lower body was a pulp.”
His body shook.
“I even heard the inspector himself carried out the execution.”
His wife handed him a cup of water.
He drained it in one gulp.
“…Later, when I learned the truth, it was absurd.”
He roughly wiped the spilled water with his sleeve.
“Two officials in Luoyang—one who had a grudge against an imperial high official visiting on tour—made a bet.”
Yeon So-hyeon’s eyes narrowed.
“They wagered by comparing the value of their prized possessions, and one of them used my father’s masterpiece.”
“…And?”
A sneer curled on the Mask Craftsman’s lips.
“I don’t know. But someone won, and the loser was furious.”
So his brother had become the target of that loser’s rage and died.
“From then on, my father went to the government office every day. My father…”
The Mask Craftsman’s voice faded from Yeon So-hyeon’s ears.
Instead, the mask in his hand whispered, showing him the story.
Or perhaps the Extreme Mountain True Heaven Scripture was reading the tale embedded in the mask.
In Yeon So-hyeon’s vision, he saw the old craftsman protesting at the government office’s main gate.
At first, the guards were merely troubled.
But a day passed, then two, and the old man’s steps never ceased.
Orders came from above, rebuking the guards.
Gradually, those guarding the gate grew ruthless.
Meanwhile, rumors spread through Luoyang’s streets about the old man who shouted daily before the office, eventually reaching the inspector’s ears.
‘That insolent old fool is trying to block my path!’
The old craftsman, who had lived his whole life honorably before heaven, cried out to the inspector.
‘Aren’t you afraid of heaven? Heaven knows your sins, and the earth knows them too!’
The inspector had the old man seized and subjected him to brutal punishment.
He fabricated charges of slandering an official’s honor with false claims.
The old craftsman survived by luck but soon lost his mind from the ordeal and died from the punishment’s aftereffects.
“…That’s how my father passed.”
The father wept, the mother wept, and the children wept.
So-hyeon tilted his head.
“And yet you still don’t understand the meaning in this mask?”
After much thought, the Mask Craftsman bowed to Yeon So-hyeon.
“It’s essentially my father’s relic. Please enlighten this dullard who can’t comprehend it.”
A low laugh escaped Yeon So-hyeon’s lips.
That laugh grew, echoing through the room.
It sounded like mockery, or perhaps a sob.
The Mask Craftsman felt it resembled his father’s mad laughter.
The bursts of frenzied, scream-like laughs that had filled the room!
Yeon So-hyeon saw.
The inspector had smashed both the old craftsman’s hands.
The cruelest punishment, ensuring the man who had spent his life making masks could never do so again.
Carried home by neighborhood youths, the old man went insane.
His hair disheveled, drool from his mouth.
He muttered nonsense, smeared shit on the workshop walls, stripped naked, and crawled through the streets.
Then one day, he shut himself in his workshop.
He sang a mournful tune as he carved the mask.
It was bound to be crude.
He carved it with his toes, replacing his lost arms.
His clumsy knife work left his feet bloodied.
Yet he didn’t stop.
He drank rainwater dripping through holes in the ceiling, having long forsaken food.
What kept him tethered to this world as he neared death was rage filled with hatred and pain toward it.
And as the mask was completed, he breathed his last.
Thus, the ghost object was born.
The lack of eye holes wasn’t because he couldn’t carve them.
He hadn’t.
So-hyeon’s prolonged laughter finally subsided.
He opened his eyes and slowly looked around the room.
The pitch-black darkness enveloped a scene like ruins.
The furnishings were all smashed, and fresh blood pooled on the floor.
The Mask Craftsman’s family, who had been there moments ago, was gone.
It had to be that way.
Yeon So-hyeon pushed open the creaking door and slowly stepped into the inner courtyard.
There lay the wife’s corpse, clutching the children tightly, now cold.
The blood from her merciless wounds faintly reflected the moonlight on the ground.
Yeon So-hyeon approached slowly and brushed back the frost-white hair of the children.
Their mouths were all torn, tongues lolling long over their mother’s shoulder.
He laid the Mask Craftsman’s corpse—whom he had carried—beside them.
He had already succumbed from the severe beating.
Yeon So-hyeon had been led here by the man’s resentful spirit.
While he was being assaulted, his wife suffered horribly, and when the children rushed in to resist, the fiends killed them on impulse.
Twisted limbs for the father, blood and strangulation for the mother, torn mouths for the children.
Thus, the family reunited in death.
Yeon So-hyeon slowly donned the mask.
Then he looked up at the empty sky.
Why had the old craftsman made a mask without even eye holes?
Yeon So-hyeon answered.
“…He couldn’t bear to open his eyes to this world.”
Something glistened and fell beneath the mask.
* * *
“Have you heard the name Geumju, known as the daughter of Jin-gil?”
At Yeon So-hyeon’s words, Jeong-a searched her memory.
“…Come to think of it, I believe I saw that name in my sister’s letter last time.”
Yeon So-hyeon nodded slowly.
“Your sister is an information broker?”
“Yes, my lord.”
Yeon So-hyeon closed the book he held.
“It’s been a while since you’ve seen her.”
Jeong-a’s eyes grew wistful.
“Yes, quite…”
Yeon So-hyeon smiled gently at her.
“Tomorrow, let’s go meet your sister.”
Jeong-a’s eyes widened.
“Really?!”
“Yes.”
Her face bloomed with joy, at a loss for what to do.
“You may not be able to stay overnight, but half a day should be enough. Catch up to your heart’s content.”
“Thank you! Thank you!”
Yeon So-hyeon waved off her repeated bows, then took a small jar from his bosom.
“What is that, my lord?”
Without answering, Yeon So-hyeon opened the sealed lid.
Inside revealed a modest amount of tea leaves.
Jeong-a examined them and said,
“…They appear to be nameless low-grade leaves. And poorly stored, at that.”
Yeon So-hyeon shook his head at her words.
“No. These tea leaves are very precious.”
“…Are they?”
The smile on his lips seemed somehow poignant.
“A precious gift received in return for a kindness not even properly bestowed…”
The two brewed and sipped tea from leaves barely enough for one person.
For some reason, that tea was exceptionally warm.