Inside the hidden chamber, I sat cross-legged on a cold stone platform, palms wrapped tightly around the jade slip containing the Art of Disguise — the system's reward for successfully pulling off "Deflect the Disaster." The slip felt warm and smooth in my hand, yet it radiated a strange, pulling force, as though it wanted to drag my entire consciousness inside.

"System, can this thing really change my face?" I muttered, running a fingertip across the surface of the jade slip. The intricate runes suddenly blazed with a dim, ghostly light, and a torrent of information crashed into my sea of consciousness.

Ding! Loading the Art of Disguise… Please note: this is not an illusion technique. It reshapes facial muscles and bone structure through spiritual energy. Initial practice will be accompanied by intense pain. Host is advised to mentally prepare.

Intense pain? Wasn't it supposed to be just a bit of teeth-gritting discomfort?

My heart sank. Before I could even react, a sharp, piercing agony detonated from the center of my brow — as if countless fine needles had plunged simultaneously into the nerves of my face. A muffled groan tore out of me. My hands flew up to cover my face on instinct, and through the gaps between my fingers, I could feel the muscles beneath my skin writhing beyond my control.

"Hold it together!" The old man's voice exploded inside my head. "Can't even handle a little pain, and you want to play the pig to eat the tiger? Weren't your eyes practically glowing when you first saw the Art of Disguise?"

I clenched my jaw so hard my teeth ached, and beads of sweat the size of soybeans seeped down my forehead. The runes on the jade slip dissolved into streams of light, projecting a series of facial structure diagrams onto my retinas — red lines marking the acupoints and meridians where spiritual energy needed to be directed. Forcing down the agony, I followed the diagrams and circulated my spiritual energy, guiding it toward the Dicang and Jiache acupoints on my face.

"Ugh—!" Another wave of pain hit, like someone was twisting my cheekbone with a pair of pliers. I could feel the cheekbone shifting ever so slightly under the influence of the spiritual energy, the skin stretching and pulling with a raw, tearing ache. The reflection in the mirror grew blurry and distorted, the familiar face I had known all my life morphing into something strange.

Proficiency +1%… +2%… +3%… The system chime sounded in broken bursts. With each percentage point gained, the pain ratcheted up another notch. My jaw felt like it had been pried apart and reassembled, and the cartilage inside my nasal cavity crackled with audible clicks.

"System, do you have any painkillers?" I hissed through my teeth, the words coming out slurred.

There is one — Mafei Powder. But it will dull your spiritual energy perception. Are you certain you want to use it at a critical point in your training?

I hesitated, then shook my head. The assassins from Baizhen Pavilion were never far behind, and the waters of the Xuanmen Regulatory Bureau ran too deep to fathom. I couldn't afford time lost to recovery. Drawing a long breath, I drove the remainder of my spiritual energy in one surging flood into the acupoints across my face.

"Ah—!" A strangled cry lodged itself in my throat. My entire face felt as though it had been tossed into a tumble dryer and spun. The man in the mirror stared back at me: sunken eye sockets, a flattened nose bridge, thickened lips, the once sharp-jawed face now soft and nondescript — the spitting image of a middle-aged nobody you'd walk past a hundred times on any street corner.

Ding! Art of Disguise proficiency raised to 10%. Basic disguise form "Generic Passerby" acquired. Maintaining the form consumes 0.05% spiritual energy per minute.

I panted, reaching up to touch my face. The texture was alien and rough under my fingers. The man in the mirror grinned back at me, baring two crooked yellow teeth. This was what the system called "Generic Passerby"? He was so plain that his own mother wouldn't recognize him.

"Stop complaining," the system elder scoffed. "That's the whole point of disguise — the more ordinary, the safer. Get moving and practice the other forms. The higher the proficiency, the less it hurts."

The next three days, the hidden chamber became my personal hell. I practiced the Art of Disguise over and over, cycling from "Generic Passerby" to "Vegetable-Seller Uncle," each transformation accompanied by the grinding agony of bones shifting out of place. Once, when I attempted to disguise myself as a gaunt man with a pointy face and narrow jaw, I misrouted the spiritual energy through my right cheekbone and the entire left side of my face swelled up like a steamed bun, aching for a full day.

I finally understood what that warning at the bottom of the technique — not to be practiced by cultivators below Foundation Establishment — actually meant. This was essentially using spiritual energy to mimic a scalpel and carve up your own face. A Qi Condensation cultivator simply didn't have the fine-grained control over spiritual energy that a Foundation Establishment cultivator possessed.

Proficiency +15%… +20%… The system chimes grew steadily more rhythmic, and the pain faded in kind. By the fourth day, I could complete a basic transformation in under ten minutes, and I barely felt a thing.

Ding! Art of Disguise proficiency raised to 30%. "Form Memory" acquired — you may now replicate the appearance of individuals you have previously observed.

My chance had come. I thought of a Baizhen Pavilion informant I had spotted on the street two days ago: triangular eyes, a flat nose, a knife scar at the corner of his mouth, wearing an ill-fitting black jacket — he had looked every bit the small-time thug. I closed my eyes, painstakingly reconstructing every detail of the man's face in my memory, then circulated my spiritual energy.

This time, the pain was almost imperceptible — just a faint, crawling tingle beneath the skin. I opened my eyes. The mirror showed me the triangular-eyed, scar-mouthed man, the exact angle of the knife scar at his lip reproduced without a single deviation.

"Not bad," the system elder said, with rare approval. "Go and test it. See if you can fool the lower-ranked informants of Baizhen Pavilion."

I changed into a worn black jacket, deliberately hunching my back, and stepped out of the hidden chamber.

The streets of Donghai City were thick as ever with the damp reek of brine. I blended into the flow of people and deliberately let a faint, barely-there pulse of third-layer Qi Condensation spiritual energy radiate outward — the standard output of a bottom-rung Baizhen Pavilion errand runner.

Sure enough, I hadn't gone far before a man in a peaked cap sidled up beside me and murmured under his breath: "Brother — you with the 'Fish' side of things?"

End of Chapter 57: The Art of Disguise