Ning Chen searched the whole place and turned up no lead worth anything.

He went straight to the sixth department.

"Old Meng, you dare sneak a drink on duty?"

Ning Chen said it with a smile, looking at Meng Jianbai's flushed old face.

Meng Jianbai hurried to make his bow.

"My lord prince has it wrong. I was not sneaking a drink. I just made up a dose from an old prescription and tried a little of it myself... The medicine is meant for a cough. I must have had the weights wrong — it has come out an aphrodisiac instead."

"Mm?" Ning Chen gave him a strange look. "Do you want me to take you to the courtesans' quarter?"

"No need, no need... I only took a little. I can hold it down."

Meng Jianbai changed the subject. "Did my lord prince want me for something?"

Ning Chen nodded. "Old Meng, I only wanted to ask... is there any way to turn one man into another?"

Meng Jianbai was taken aback. "Meaning what?"

Ning Chen thought about it. "Say you turned me into you. The same face as yours, down to the last of it, but not the same temper."

Meng Jianbai laughed. "Of course there is. The art of face-changing."

Ning Chen shook his head. "Not the art of face-changing... However good a face-changer is, he cannot copy another man's face exactly."

Meng Jianbai thought for a moment. "Then it can only be the art of remaking a face."

"The art of remaking a face?"

Meng Jianbai said, "You take a knife to the face and file the bone down... that way you can turn one man into another."

"But the art of remaking a face has its limits. To turn my lord prince into me, we would have to be close in height and build, and close in the shape of the face and the bone under it. At the least the two of us would have to look something alike to begin with."

"The art of remaking a face carries great danger. Few men alive today…