The scent of parched earth and desperation clung to Fang Yanqing’s clothes like a second skin. He coughed, the dust scratching his throat raw. Gushui was less an outpost and more a cluster of sun-baked mud huts huddled against the encroaching Xichuan wasteland. His Hollywood life, a kaleidoscope of silicone, latex, and vibrant pigments, felt a universe away. Here, the only color was the dull brown of drought, punctuated by the pallor of starving faces.
He had reached the settlement just as rumors of an approaching Imperial tax convoy hardened into truth. These were the hungry jaws of the corrupt Great State of Tianze, come to strip the dying of their final winter rations. Yanqing, the Minister of Revenue's exiled son, had hands calloused from prosthetics and clay, not forged steel. Yet his chest tightened with stubborn resolve; he would not let these farmers starve.
The villagers, skeletal shadows, watched the horizon with vacant eyes. A boy, no older than ten, with eyes too old for his face, clutched a splintered wooden doll. His name, Yanqing had learned, was Dingzhe. He was a cynic in miniature, a product of a brutal world. “They’re here to take the last of the winter stores,” Dingzhe rasped, his voice a dry leaf. “Then they’ll take us.”
The glint of bronze armor shimmered in the distance, growing larger, faster. Yanqing’s mind raced. He had no weapon, no army, only the memory of countless hours spent crafting death for the silver screen. But death, in Tianze, was real. And sometimes, the sharpest weapon was a staged deceit.
“Bring me mud,” Yanqing commanded, his voice surprisingly firm. “Clay, anything that can be molded. And red, if you have it. Anything red.”
The villagers, too weary to question, moved slowly, gathering handfuls of crumbling earth, a few bits of brick dust, and a handful of crushed cochineal insects from a woman’s dye pot. Yanqing knelt, his fingers, once adept at sculpting alien visages, now pressed into the rough, gritty soil. He mixed the fine dust with spittle, then a little water from a precious, dwindling gourd. The cochineal, stirred into sticky tree sap, thickened into a glistening, arterial red. He needed to stage an epidemic.
“What are you doing?” Dingzhe asked, a flicker of curiosity momentarily eclipsing his usual despair. “Playing in the mud?”
Yanqing ignored him, his focus absolute. He smeared the greyish clay onto his own arm, molding it into raised, angry welts. He dabbed the cochineal paste onto the peaks, letting it ooze and drip, creating a horrifyingly realistic depiction of festering sores. He sculpted a weeping ulcer on his cheek, the red seeping into the dirt-streaked skin. The guise of the 'Red Rot,' a contagion rumored to scour the Xichuan borders, began to take shape.
“This isn’t real,” Dingzhe muttered, staring at Yanqing’s arm. His small face, usually impassive, showed a hint of revulsion. “Is it?”
“It will be real enough,” Yanqing said, his eyes scanning the approaching patrol. “We are all sick. Grievously so. You understand?”
He worked with furious speed, moving from villager to villager. A child’s face, already gaunt, became a canvas for grotesque lesions. An old man’s weathered hands sprouted oozing pustules. He instructed them, his voice low but urgent: “Cough. Groan. Do not speak unless you must. And when you do, speak only of the Red Rot.” The fear in their eyes was genuine, but now it was directed not at the soldiers, but at the grotesque art on their skin.
A dozen mounted enforcers trotted past the boundary stones, led by a scarred officer whose leather brigandine creaked under heavy shoulders. The man dropped from his saddle, grip planted on his saber hilt. “Where are your grain stores, vermin? The Emperor demands his due!”
Yanqing stepped forward, swaying theatrically. His face, a mask of putrid sores, was a masterpiece of horror. “Sir… please… we are… afflicted,” he croaked, his voice strained. He doubled over, feigning a spasm, a guttural cough tearing from his chest. A string of scarlet froth, courtesy of a carefully placed sap mixture, ran from the corner of his mouth.
The officer recoiled half a stride. Behind him, a rider yanked his reins hard. “Sir! Look at their skin! It’s the Red Rot!”
The villagers, now fully committed to their roles, groaned in unison, a chorus of misery. A woman, clutching her stomach, vomited a thin stream of muddy water, her face painted with the same ghastly sores. Dingzhe lay curled in the dirt, twitching and wheezing, his bare shins streaked with wet, oozing red pustules.
The officer's pupils contracted. The Red Rot was notorious along the marchlands—a fast fever capable of gutting entire garrisons within a fortnight, leaving barracks choked with corpses. He had burned supply trains after pestilence hit the western front, watching skin slough from living bone. The glistening welts and bloody saliva in the dust before him matched every foul memory.
“Mount up!” the sergeant barked, his heel catching in the stirrup as he scrambled backward. “Keep distance! Do not touch their gear! Fall back!”
The soldiers, pale and terrified, scrambled back onto their horses. They didn’t even glance at the meager grain stores. Fear of contagion, of carrying putrefaction back to their garrison barracks, outweighed any quota from the capital. They turned their horses and fled, a cloud of dust the only evidence of their panicked retreat.
Silence hung over the hovels before ragged exhalations broke it. Yanqing watched them go, his knees weak with exhaustion and the lingering adrenaline. He dropped onto an overturned grain mortar, pulling a scrap of linen from his cuff to scrape the dried sap off his jaw.
“It worked,” Dingzhe said, his voice quiet, no longer cynical. He sat up, staring at Yanqing’s hand as the paint smeared away. “You… you made it up.” A spark of something new, something akin to wonder, lit his eyes.
Yanqing offered a tired smile. “It’s stagecraft, kid. Just paint and nerve.”
Before he could finish cleaning his face, a shadow fell over them. The air grew colder, stiller. A figure, cloaked in robes as black as midnight, stepped from the deepening twilight. The newcomer stepped forward in unbroken silence, cutting short the tentative murmurs of the crowd. Yanqing felt a sudden, sharp pressure against his throat, the cold kiss of honed steel. A voice, low and devoid of emotion, sliced through the quiet.
“Tell me, artisan,” the figure demanded, edge biting into his skin, “how did you counterfeit an epidemic?”