The Face Genius Actor

Episode 150

Part 16, Scene 21.

It’s stronger than I expected.

This thought crosses my mind as I barely manage to withstand the evil spirit king’s energy.

Moreover, the evil spirit king is getting stronger and stronger.

This is because every time a member of the evil spirit legion loses its life, the malicious energy returns to the evil spirit king.

At this rate, there’s no chance of winning.

As if on cue, the evil spirit king uses fake spell tags in bundles and then uses a binding technique to tie up my body.

I try to cut through the binding technique by swinging my ghost-slaying sword, but it’s useless.

The fake spell tags that the evil spirit king uses infinitely have immense power.

Their cumulative effect easily surpasses the power of the ghost-slaying sword.

Thud! Ziiing-

Eventually, my body is wrapped in black chains and slammed to the ground.

The evil spirit king walks towards me, step by step, and opens his mouth.

“You can’t win against something without substance. Just like our master eventually had to lose his life.”

“Is that really so?”

I ask this while exploding the energy of a spell tag I had hidden in my sleeve.

The evil spirit king belatedly thrusts a black spear at the spot where I was slammed to the ground, but it’s useless.

My body has already escaped.

“A fake can’t beat the real thing. Just like your fake spell tags lost their cumulative power to a single real spell tag.”

“Let’s see how long you can keep that up.”

The evil spirit king pulls out an even greater number of fake spell tags.

Then he unleashes a power incomparably stronger than before.

At the same time, the ground shakes and black spikes start bursting out from under my feet.

I move my body busily to avoid the spikes and use spell tags to nullify the power.

Certainly, at this rate, I will be the one to exhaust my spell tags first and lose.

‘I need to make a decisive move.’

I instinctively feel this and dive into the inner part of the evil spirit king’s body.

“I knew you’d do that.”

The moment the evil spirit king says this with an expressionless face, another spike rises from under my feet.

It’s the largest spike I’ve seen so far.

But the evil spirit king isn’t the only one who knows the opponent’s fighting style.

“I knew too.”

I answer like this and remove my left hand that was holding the ghost-slaying sword.

Then I block the black spike with my left hand.

“Foolish!”

As the evil spirit king shouts, my left hand cannot overcome the power of the black spike.

It was the hand holding the spell tags, but the power contained in this black spike is considerable, as it was set as a trap predicting my movement.

So I lose my entire left arm along with my left hand.

But…

“The ghost-slaying sword can be wielded with the right hand too.”

These were the words the evil spirit king said to me long ago when he first taught me swordsmanship.

I return these words to him as I plunge the ghost-slaying sword into the chest of the evil spirit king, who is staring with wide, surprised eyes.

Along with this, a bright light bursts out from the evil spirit king’s chest where it was trapped.

A bright light hidden in the black chest.

It starts to spread as if enveloping all of Hanyang, and the evil spirit legion disappears every time it touches this light.

Purification.

A phenomenon that can’t be defined by any other word.

“Why… a purifying light in your chest…”

As I ask this, the evil spirit king smiles in his true form.

“Well. I don’t know either. Did I know this would happen?”

With these last words, the evil spirit king disappears along with the bright light, and the purifying light finally rests on the spot where my arm was.

I quietly look at the place where the evil spirit king disappeared and open my mouth.

“Did you still want to die as a human? My old friend.”

* * *

Part 16 of flowed in an epilogue format after the final confrontation with the evil spirit king.

The scenes of Seo-hee forgetting her past sorrows and settling in a mountain village, and Yi-hyun ascending to the throne and vowing to become a wise king, were shown in order.

Then Yeon watched these scenes from afar with Wi-rang before setting off on a journey to defeat the evil spirits still remaining in the eight provinces of Joseon.

This was the end of .

[All humans die, but not everyone becomes an evil spirit. To die as a human and to die humanly. An exorcist is one who fights for this.]

With the final narration recording, the filming of ended.

We all rushed to have an after-party.

We couldn’t have this kind of after-party even after filming season 1 because we were busy meeting Netflix’s service schedule.

Perhaps because of this, the directors and cast of emptied their glasses non-stop as if they had a grudge against after-parties.

“Eat and die!”

“Cheers!”

It was fortunate that we had rented out the entire place for the after-party.

If someone saw this scene, it could easily be misunderstood.

Especially my brother and Director Kang Han-sung were very drunk, and they were raising their voices over unexpected topics.

“Actor Lee Si-hwan! Si-hwan!”

“Yes! Director! What is it?”

“You’re so lucky! Your brother is so great! I worried every day on set… How can such a person exist?”

“Director! Si-joon is my brother! So of course he’s perfect!”

“No! Globally recognized acting skills, plus the ability to write and direct works himself! If he’s good at everything, how are people like me supposed to live? Right?”

“Don’t die! You can’t die if you want to keep seeing my brother Si-joon! It would be such a waste!”

“I won’t die! But I want to die! Why is he so perfect, really! Why is he so handsome too! Isn’t it enough to just be handsome!”

“No! Si-joon can’t just be handsome because he’s my brother! But Director!”

“Yes?”

“Don’t die! It would be such a waste! You need to keep watching our Si-joon do well!”

“Okay! I won’t die!”

…Sitting in the same place drinking alcohol was unbearable for me.

Above all, the problem was that I couldn’t tell if the conversation between the two was sincere or if they were teasing me.

I tried to stop them but gave up and moved to another seat.

I thought it would be useless to try to stop drunk people.

So I made an effort to talk with everyone, from other lead actors to the youngest staff member in charge of props, as I moved around the tables.

Since it was the first project where I took on the role of director, there were bound to be shortcomings, and the after-party was the best place to confirm this.

It was also good for consoling people who might have been unexpectedly hurt due to my inadequacies.

Fortunately, even though they were quite drunk, hardly anyone expressed any resentment towards me.

The biggest complaint was that there hadn’t been many gatherings like this until now.

When I promised to arrange another gathering soon, one of the staff members shouted.

“Dakhanmari restaurant! Let’s have our next after-party at a dakhanmari restaurant!”

I smiled and nodded.

“Yes, that sounds good. Then let’s meet at a dakhanmari restaurant next time.”

The drinking party continued late into the night and only ended after the sun rose the next day.

* * *

After the filming ended.

Director Kang Han-sung and I devoted ourselves to editing every day without fail.

We spent almost all our time in the editing room except when we had team dinners at dakhanmari restaurants or when we had overseas schedules.

The recent overseas schedules were all award ceremonies.

During the filming of Season 2, all award ceremonies were attended by proxies.

It was unavoidable due to the filming schedule.

However, editing had relatively more flexibility, so I tried to attend award ceremonies whenever possible after filming.

As with , I could check rough cuts even on the plane.

So I participated in various award ceremonies, too many to remember all their names, and received honors such as quadruple crown, quintuple crown, sextuple crown, and so on.

I gladly attended even small award ceremonies in countries where the content industry wasn’t very active.

Of course, it was difficult to attend ceremonies in person if the flight time was too long or if the scale of the ceremony was very small, but I tried my best.

Fortunately, I had similar experiences with , so this process wasn’t unfamiliar.

However, no matter how many other awards we won, what domestic and foreign media focused on was whether we would win an Emmy Award.

The saying that the Emmy Awards are to the TV broadcasting industry what the Academy Awards are to the American film industry wasn’t for nothing.

In May, when Season 2 filming was in full swing.

won six awards at the Baeksang Arts Awards, including the Grand Prize, Best Drama, Best Director, Best Screenplay, Best Actor, and Best Supporting Actor, but.

Domestic and foreign media placed more weight on whether it would win an Emmy Award.

<‘Toema Hwan Ya Dam’, 6 Crown at Baeksang Arts Awards! Will the momentum continue to the Emmy Awards?>

Articles like this poured out daily regardless of the country.

For me, this Baeksang Arts Awards was a memorable ceremony where I received recognition for acting, directing, and screenwriting domestically.

But given the atmosphere around me, it was hard to be purely happy.

If wins an Emmy Award this time, it would be the second non-English language work to do so.

had already taken the title of being the first.

But it would still be significant for a K-drama to win an Emmy Award again.

For a non-English language work to win an Emmy Award only twice, and both times it’s a K-drama…

Even I thought it was something to be excited about.

So everyone was hoping that would make history in this way.

Therefore, news of other awards inevitably seemed like a prelude to the Emmy Awards.

There were also concerns about Season 2 being released before the Emmy Awards ceremony.

-I’ve been really looking forward to Season 2, but honestly, I’m worried

-Yeah, what if releasing it at this timing means we don’t win an Emmy?

-Season 2 could be good too lol Why assume like that lol

-I also hope it’s good, and I’m someone who really wants that, but honestly I’m a bit worried

-This Emmy Awards ceremony and Season 2 have nothing to do with each other;;

-Why do you think it would have any influence in the first place?

-The Emmy organizers will judge objectively, bringing in Season 2 service is nonsense

-What are you talking about lol Emmy judges are human too, of course they’ll consider Season 2 reactions lol

-I think they’ll inevitably consider it too

-Maybe Lee Si-joon rushed the service knowing this?

-We can’t know that lol But given Lee Si-joon’s usual personality, he probably rushed for the fans

-It’s certainly a stretch to say he rushed Season 2 service because of the Emmys, we don’t know if it’ll do well

-In that sense, I think Lee Si-joon misjudged this time… The Emmy seems to be slipping away now…

-Why say that when we don’t even have Season 2 results yet? We’ll know if it’s a misjudgment after seeing the results

-Honestly, with expectations this high, can it possibly meet them?

-Jimmy King was also confident it would succeed lol Don’t get cocky lol

-Jimmy King hasn’t seen Season 2 either, what confidence are you talking about;;

-Ah, this is really frustrating. Season 2 won’t be considered for the Emmys, I’m telling you

-It will be considered, you idiot! Think a bit! Could you not consider it if you were in their position?

-But is Lee Si-joon aiming for an Emmy by opening Season 2?

Conversations like this repeated like a broken record, and heated arguments broke out frequently.

It meant that was drawing international attention to this extent.

But I wasn’t too worried.

While I wasn’t sure about winning an Emmy Award, I was confident in the success of Season 2.

And on September 1st.

Finally, Season 2 was released on Netflix.

It was exactly one week before the Emmy Awards ceremony.