[Understood. I shall observe as the Deity has instructed.]
Rise replied this way to Jinseong’s statement.
Jinseong’s words were treated as absolute truth, and following them seemed entirely natural in her tone.
It almost resembled the loyalty an exotic pet shows to its master, the devotion a believer offers to a cult leader, or the trust a family member has towards the head of the household.
Perhaps Rise’s attitude appeared so utterly subservient that it evoked such impressions.
“Then I shall contact you again shortly. You won’t have to wait long, surely.”
Jinseong said this and ended the call.
Thereafter, he sat at the foot of the staircase, his eyes unfocused, staring blankly into space, and spent his time this way.
His eyes had no focus, as if he were gazing into an empty void. They seemed to detect something invisible wriggling, shifting left to right, up and down, in and out without aim. He deliberately induced eye strain by tightening and relaxing his ocular muscles, amplifying fatigue intentionally.
When his eyes became sufficiently tired, he started altering the shape of the vitreous body within them using the insects he controlled.
Subtle but sufficient to disturb the vitreous humor, their movements caused the sensation known as floaters syndrome.
To Jinseong’s vision, it was as if actual specks of mayflies hovered everywhere, sparking like tiny embers that flickered and vanished in an instant, disrupting his field of view. Between these flickers, elongated streaks and shadowy figures would sporadically appear and disappear, creating the illusion of large insects darting in front of his eyes. Even with his eyes closed, the impressions lingered, disorienting his senses of sight.
Disorientation.
The flickering light and shadow danced in his vision. The mayfly-like forms darted around, stopping abruptly only to disturb his view again. The disturbance of the vitreous body triggered illusions that not only affected his vision but began to ripple into his other senses, spreading gradually.
Nonexistent insect sounds seemed audible in his ears.
Distant sounds like the building’s boiler, water pipes, traffic from outside, and general urban noise mixed to form an auditory metamorphosis that mimicked insects.
Humans tend to hear what they wish to hear. His brain interpreted the dance of “insects” in his field of vision as reality, extracting from all noises the specific sounds associated with them, feeding the perceptions back into his brain.
This way, the illusionary insects transformed into tangible entities with the sound of their wings.
Next came taste and smell.
The air felt nauseating, causing Jinseong’s tongue to register an unusual sensation. It made the usual surroundings seem strange and incongruous. This heightened sensitivity made even the familiar environment feel abnormal. He noticed the taste of the air on his tongue, and the faint smell of mold as well as lingering incense could now be distinguished. Even the specific metallic scent of the railing and the peculiar chemical tang of newly applied paint added to the sensory chaos.
All these sensations disrupted his senses, convincing his body that the environment was suitable for insects.
Then came the tactile experience.
The hairs on his skin stood on end and the air brushing against his exposed arms evoked the sensation of insects landing or brushing past. This illusion of constant contact irritated him, making him swat at himself, further reinforcing the delusion that insects were crawling around him.
As time passed and darkness enveloped the stairwell, only faint light from streetlights outside filtered through the window, the sensory disturbances grew.
Jinseong now believed that he was inside a den full of vermin.
Rising, he began to chant an invocation.
A sound that was far closer to the language of insects than humans flowed from his lips. It was akin to the chorus of crickets combined, the imitation of cicadas through human vocal cords, and the cacophony of all grass insects collected together.
The more Jinseong chanted, the more insect-like the tones became. As the sounds grew insectoid, so did his physical form.
What had been a straight-backed posture bent like that of an old man, a hump protruding as if laden with eggs. The hands of Jinseong began to be enveloped by a dark, sticky liquid.
Glug.
The liquid climbed up his hands and spread along his arms like a legion of caterpillars ascending a tree, carefully covering every bit of his skin. Soon his arms were entirely submerged in the black goo.
Then, the goo explosively spread from his arms to cover his entire body—his bent back, the hump, his legs, neck, and face, stopping only just below his chin.
This black liquid gradually hardened, much like asphalt setting. As Jinseong slightly shifted, cracks formed, spreading and creating ghastly patterns as though the ground suffered from drought. From these cracks emerged a sheen, giving the appearance of fish-like scales, transforming Jinseong into a creature resembling an abnormal being covered in scales.
With scales all over his body and elongated, claw-like fingernails, he now resembled a monster out of a low-budget horror movie.
“C-hh.”
Jinseong manipulated his vocal cords, emitting a sound akin to the screech of metal on metal, the same harsh tones one might hear from an elderly voice whose vocal cords were ruined.
Aware that his magic had functioned correctly, Jinseong chuckled satisfactorily.
“Exquisite, exquisite—ly.”
The magic Jinseong had practiced emulated insects to change his form.
However, the method differed slightly from past practices.
Previously, he mimicked insects to alter his form, but now he inscribed symbols on his body to transform it.
At present, Jinseong was an entity resembling insects, a host for them, a collection of insects, a person breathing within the insect’s lair, and a controller of insects all at once.
Host and head.
Residence and treasure.
Through this ritual passage, Jinseong had become more efficient compared to his past transformations.
The finishing touch to this transformation was the mask that concealed his face.
Jinseong summoned gold from within his grasp as if extracting it from thin air.
The gold, melting within his clothes, slowly trickled up from the gaps in his armor and over his shoulder, climbing towards his head. It pooled at the crown of his head and began to inflate like rising dough.
The molten gold then lost its form, shifting and cascading down his face, hardening in erratic patterns, forming a definitive shape.
The mask bore an uncanny resemblance to insects.
Not just any common grass insect, but to the ancient locust, known historically as a harbinger of terror. The difference lay in how the face mask retained a strange human-like quality and peculiar snake scale patterns.
With his mask complete, Jinseong slowly lifted his head.
Holding the railing with one hand, he descended the stairs.
His figure seemed ominous, yet oddly fitting.
After all, insects are most active during the night.
—
It was said that those who befuddle the world and deceive the people practice hokse mumin (惑世誣民).
Hok (惑) confuses the heart, disturbing the spirit.
Mumin (誣民) describes the manipulative practices of the superstitious, duping the ignorant with clever rhetoric.
