Chapter 19
Chapter 19
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Translator: uly
Chapter: 19
Chapter Title: Pacifying Souls
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The two hulks cut through the crowd of bustling people.
The street was still noisy and chaotic, but no one met their eyes, and no one blocked their path.
As they walked, they snatched liquor jars from drinkers at the tavern next door and downed them, then devoured a few skewers from a street vendor.
Yet no one tried to stop them.
Even the patrolling guards ignored them completely.
Taller than the well-fed guards by a full head, with builds like oxen rather than men.
Ignoring the cold entirely, their loosely worn tops revealed dozens, hundreds of black skull tattoos and scars both large and small in stark clarity.
They were members of the Black Skull Gang.
They were martial artists.
Superhumans born with the talent to wield the mysterious power of qi in the form of internal energy.
No one dared stand in their way.
* * *
Moments later, they arrived at the street with the mask workshop.
"Ah, that looks like the place."
The Mask Craftsman's workshop sat in a quiet alley off the main road.
They stood at the alley entrance, gazing at the Mask Craftsman's shop.
"...Doesn't look like that Mask Craftsman bastard is there to me either."
"Yeah."
At the entrance to the mask shop, behind the storefront counter, sat a boy in plain white clothes.
Occasional passersby drifted through, but the boy seemed endlessly bored and utterly relaxed as he silently carved a piece of wood in his hands.
"Does he... have an apprentice?"
"Just ask him ourselves."
Passersby spotted the hulks and scattered, turning back the way they'd come.
The boy didn't seem to notice the two approaching hulks at all. He just kept his head down, focused solely on whittling the wood.
"Hey."
"Where's the Mask Craftsman?"
The carving knife stopped.
The boy, who had been working with his head bowed, lifted his face.
"......?!"
The hulks' eyebrows twitched.
The boy's face was covered by a mask utterly devoid of features—no patterns, no eye holes.
The roughly finished mask gleamed with a white sheen that somehow flickered ominously.
"Hmm."
To be startled by a mere mask, even for an instant.
That was something their usual selves would never allow.
"Hey, kid. Didn't the grown-ups ask you something?"
He subtly released a bit of his aura.
To an ordinary person, it would feel like encountering a tiger—legs trembling, chills racing up the spine.
But the masked boy showed no sign of fear.
If anything, he smirked with a relaxed air.
His neat white teeth came into view.
"Do you perhaps know the face of Avalokitesvara Bodhisattva?"
The utterly out-of-place question irritated the hulks.
Normally, one of them would have thrown a punch by now.
Their fists were unmistakably larger than this eerie boy's head, capable of shattering his skull more easily than crumbling a dry leaf.
Yet neither of them did.
No, they couldn't.
Something felt off.
Unsettling.
"Well, why debate the Buddha's way with the likes of you."
Giggling, the boy stood from his spot.
Before they could even react, he slipped into the back of the shop.
No footsteps sounded.
Only his low, echoing laughter lingered emptily.
By the time they snapped to, nothing remained where the boy had sat but wood shavings.
"...What the hell."
Even cursing to rally his aura just scattered futilely into the air.
Possessed by a ghost in broad daylight, of all things.
Pride kept them from backing off, but they couldn't bring themselves to charge right in after him either.
"...What was that?"
"No idea."
A thick shadow cloaked the back of the shop where the boy had vanished.
Midday sunlight should have made the shadows as bright as the light, but for some reason, it didn't feel like mere darkness to them.
"Still gotta grab him and shake him down, right?"
Channeling his internal energy to the max restored a sliver of confidence.
"...Yeah."
These were men who found twisting off a neck child's play.
Fists always spoke before words, and they'd killed more than a few notable martial artists in their time.
Such blatantly odd behavior from them now went entirely unnoticed.
They headed into the shadowed depths after the vanished boy.
The shop walls brimmed with masks.
Their underlings' report from yesterday had said they'd trashed the place from front to back.
And taken everything of value.
So why were these vibrant masks—every color, every shape, laughing, weeping—hanging everywhere in the shadow-draped shop?
It felt like the masks were staring right at them.
"This some kinda sorcery?"
The reply came a beat later.
"...Beats me."
The sorcery they'd seen or heard of amounted to cheap tricks that fooled the senses.
No parlor tricks could faze superhumans who wielded internal energy to shatter mortal limits.
"...This way?"
"...Seems like it."
The endless corridor of masks finally ended at a side door.
A straight hallway, so the boy must have passed through it.
Beyond lay the inner courtyard, workshop space, and living quarters.
Light leaked through the slightly ajar door, and somehow that sunlight felt welcoming.
The two, their minds fraying near the breaking point, hurried to the side door.
More like running than walking.
The first hulk to reach it shoved the door open—
"......Huh?!"
A white hand shot out from within and seized his throat.
"Guh?!"
He'd already channeled his internal energy, fully prepared.
The hulk protected his gripped neck with qi while grabbing the arm with both hands.
With his innate brute strength and internal energy, that slender arm should snap like a dry twig.
But—
".......!"
The white grip pierced his qi-shielded neck as if tearing flesh effortlessly.
His full-powered grasp couldn't even scratch that cold skin, let alone crush the arm.
Then, without so much as a scream, he was yanked inside like prey.
"B-bro?!"
The lone survivor startled and fell backward.
He rolled to his feet and bolted the opposite way.
He couldn't tell if his movement was a lightness skill or footwork anymore—he just flung himself at full speed for his life.
Yet somehow, the sunlit alley scene right there felt impossibly distant.
Growing farther by the second.
"Urgh!"
Was his mind outpacing his body?
His legs tangled, and he crashed down.
Pathetic.
Nothing more pathetic.
He bowed to the strong and bent to power, but when had he ever looked this wretched?
He didn't even register that.
He tried to leap up, but one leg wouldn't move.
Something gripped his ankle.
That same pale white hand.
"Ee, eeeek!!"
It felt like his ankle was freezing solid and burning alive.
As if dozens of oxen yanked at once.
The hand dragged his body inward with unimaginable force.
The hulk dug his fingers into the ground to resist.
Qi-infused fingers sank into the paving stones.
But his speed didn't slow a bit.
Sparks flew; nails snapped.
Fingers broke off.
Still, he couldn't stop.
"S-spare me! Spare...!"
He poured his last internal energy into grabbing the doorframe, but it was futile.
The frame he clutched shattered, and he vanished into the side door.
Clunk— clunk—
In the now-empty shop, only the side door that devoured the two men swung idly.
It almost sounded like the masks were laughing.
* * *
Yeon So-hyeon had known that showing himself at the Mask Craftsman's workshop would draw the Black Skull Gang.
He'd idled away carving, letting the peeking small fry go free, and those small fry had fetched proper big fish.
Martial artists, black path or white, were valuable—high in their organizations, with quality intel.
These big fish were no different.
But Yeon So-hyeon wore a dissatisfied expression.
"No, no. Is this it?"
He squatted by the dirt pit, fiddling with two hands.
Then backed up a bit, peered closely, and shook his head.
"This expression doesn't seem right either...."
He leaned in again to inspect the two severed heads.
No bodies—just heads, frozen in the world's most agonized expressions.
Tongues lolled long; bulging eyes burst with ruptured veins, dried blood streaking like tributaries.
The other rolling head nearby matched in anguish, little different.
"Tch...."
Yeon So-hyeon smacked his lips idly and plopped onto the dirt, picking up the piece he'd been carving diligently.
It was an Avalokitesvara statue, face unworked.
"Just can't pin it down."
Not a memory issue.
He recalled every mural he'd ever seen, down to the tiniest detail.
But....
"Imitating the form isn't enough."
What face does the Buddha wear, symbol of boundless compassion and mercy?
What face does the Buddha hold in my heart?
Lost in thought for a moment, Yeon So-hyeon's carving knife danced.
What he hadn't touched was quicker to count from the end; sculpting was one of his domains too.
His fluid hand birthed a clear form.
"...Done."
Yeon So-hyeon turned and placed the finished piece atop the grave mound.
He left the knife beside it.
The joint tomb of the Mask Craftsman and his family, built by Yeon So-hyeon himself.
Fresh earth blanketed in raw red soil, warmed by midday sun.
Yeon So-hyeon's Avalokitesvara lay atop it, gleaming white.
But the Bodhisattva's face bore no compassionate look—instead, a carved mask hid it.
Just like the one Yeon So-hyeon had worn.
A crooked expression mocking the world, eyeless sockets turning from it.
"...Black Skull Gang. And Geumju."
Gazing skyward a moment, Yeon So-hyeon murmured low.
"Mock them. Sneer. Ridicule. Insult. That will be your one and only resistance...."
And by now, no doubt.
That needlessly diligent 'Life-Seizing Ghost Sword' was probably tearing up Luoyang's underbelly in a frenzy, desperately hunting for him.
Yeon So-hyeon chuckled softly, then vanished from the graveside.
A biting winter wind swept past, rolling the two severed heads across the dirt.